About two years ago, I had a chance to hear Bill Caskey speak at a Rainmaker event. I had heard him before and always enjoyed his presentation, but that night, he really made an impression on me. His topic was podcasting. He explained how easy it was to do, and why any business professional interested in packaging their expertise needed to explore this medium. He gave some specific examples of clients who have hired his team as a result of their podcasting.

I was intrigued by the possibilities of building awareness of our marketing, social media, and web design services in Indianapolis, so I challenged my intern with the task of figuring it out, and so began my podcasting adventure.

I started with short 3 – 5-minute programs, which I embedded into my website. Some are short, solo programs and others are brief conversations with friends, business owners, and other marketing experts. I have recorded them in my office, over the phone, and in noisy coffee shops. The podcasts are a nice change of pace from our text blogs. They give me a chance to deliver content, without sitting down to write. And I have really come to enjoy the medium, but you can’t say a lot in 3 – 5 minutes.

So, we have expanded the format to thirty minutes using BlogTalk Radio. We have been testing the longer format for a few weeks, and so far, I am happy with the change. Not only can people listen live, but they can hear the recorded program from a number of locations, BlogTalk Radio, our Podbean account, right here on Business Notes from Roundpeg, and now iTunes. The new longer format works well for busy people, who can subscribe to the RSS feed right from their iTunes screen, and then download it to the phone to play as they are walking, exercising, or driving in their cars. The multiple locations provide some credible external links to the site.

Is it worth the time? Have we sold anything as a result? That is a hard question to answer because of all of our marketing ties together. We have seen an increase in traffic to the site, specifically to the posts with the podcasts, so it is a start. I do send links to individual programs to prospective clients. And the feedback we receive is good, so we are going to keep refining the programs. And we will keep Podcasting, as long as I have More than a Few Words to share on any topic.