The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media

Chapter 12. Podcasting: Overlooked, Underutilized Marketing Tool

WHAT IS A PODCAST?

Apple's Web site defines podcasts as "an episodic program delivered via the Internet using an XML protocol called RSS." (Thought you'd love that.) Let's define it more in layman's terms.

Remember when you had to scour the newspaper or TVGuide to find your favorite television shows, then gather at the appointed time to watch? Later, TiVo and DVRs came along, allowing you to record programs for viewing as it fit your schedule. Apply that same methodology to the Internet and you have podcasting.

Podcasts are digital media (music, the spoken word, or video) distributed over the Internet and downloaded onto your computer, MP3 player, or mobile device to watch or listen at your convenience. They are "asynchronous" in that they are not time-frame dependent, and can be consumed at a different time than they were created, a function officially known as time-shifting. MP3 is the most popular file format.

The important thing to remember in what differentiates a podcast from, say, streaming audio or video is the ability to subscribe to a particular show via a special type of RSS feed. (We cover RSS in more detail in chapter 14.)

Though the same content can also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from most other digital media formats by its "ability to be syndicated, subscribed ...