1) Pick your tech. Find the easiest way (for you) to start recording media. I do recommend our site (www.blogtalkradio.com), as you can start recording via your phone (don’t have to buy anything) and when you hang up ten minutes later the episode is avail as an archive and a podcast. Realize you asked us not to pitch, but as we’re free and you don’t need to buy equipment, it is the easiest way to get going. If you want to learn other methods via things like GarageBand and Audacity, I wrote a tutorial when I was at About.com you might like here: http://podcasting.about.com/od/podcasting101/ht/makeprompod.htm.

2) Start small and short. Once you choose how you’ll record, find a friend at work and interview him/her for five minutes or less. Write down your questions (prepare) and then listen to the recording. Don’t worry about the tech side of things yet (sound quality, etc.) Ask questions like: Could I understand everything I was saying? (diction) Did the structure of the interview make sense? (Clarity of communication/message) How was the pace? (Rushed/dragged). Remember that podcasting is a way to get your message out there-content is still king. Ask about ten colleagues to also review your first show and listen to their critiques to improve before going live.

3) Interview your CEO/other VP’s and don’t make it a pitch. Audio is great for this since your CEO can look at questions while he/she answers. Content wise, interview them for thought leadership answers versus product/service descriptions. Make episodes short so you can have lots of them.

4) Interview people you’d like to have as clients. But only IF you genuinely want to interview them anyway–meaning, a great way to know a potential client is to ask them about their expertise if it will serve the listeners of your show. Make sure they don’t pitch themselves or their firm, and work to have a conversation that adds value no matter whether or not you work together. Remember you should offer them a copy of the MP3 (sound file) when you’re done which they’ll put up on their site and you can ask them to link back to you.

5) Rethink your storytelling. If you’ve mainly used print to tell your brand’s story, start thinking about the audio and visual mediums of sound and video for ways to talk about your firm. Issue an audio press release that features the voice of you CEO plus two employees. Play music in the background and minimize the “press release” speak in favor of realistic sounding conversation about your latest news. Or shoot a video of an employee gathering at your firm showing people having a genuinely good time and put it up on YouTube. (This will be a powerful tool for your HR department). Make sure collateral helps tell the story of your brand you want it to tell, but start doing something NOW.

Hope that helps.
-JCH

Our request is:
“What the best idea you heard at the New Media Expo that would help a business person who is currently not podcasting - to help them quickly jump in?”

We’ll also add this request:
“Please, no philosophical meanderings, advanced technological hoo-haw or sales pitches - just great ideas that will get someone up and running as a podcaster quickly and with minimum of heartache and brain damage.”

We think that’s cheeky enough. After all, about 99.9% of us average business people still don’t do any podcasting (that we know of) and we’re still, well, just a little bit confused by the technological challenges and the potential benefits.

You can leave a comment on our blog article - http://goldencompass.com/blog/you-have-a-friend-in-the-podcast-business/#more-119