Corporate Podcasting
Podcasting is similar in nature to RSS, which allows subscribers to subscribe to a set of feeds to view syndicated Web site content. With podcasting however, you have a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates and instead of reading the feeds on your computer screen, you listen to the new content on on your portable media player. ClickCaster is a pretty neat way of creating a podcast directly from the web.
VODcasting (also called “vlogging”) - the “VOD” stands for “video-on-demand” is almost identical to podcasting. The difference is that the content is video versus audio. Channel9 and the BMW vodcasts are great examples.
Among the innovations in the podcasting world is the ability to create podcasts without a computer. This involves using a phone to create and publish podcasts from pretty much anywhere. GCast is an example. Scenario for the Retail World: District Manager could talk about the new marketing plan on his way to work and these would be distributed as podcasts to subscribing store managers. The store managers would download the podcasts to their smartphones and listen to it on their drive home.
Podcasting has been likened to TiVo because it allows users to listen to their selected podcasts whenever they like. And because of the portability of the player devices, users can listen to audio files while at the gym, commuting, or just walking around.
The impact of Podcasting is becoming very real for the business world. Many companies small to large are adopting the emerging technology and using this as a competitive advantage to get closer to their employees and customers.
I have been exploring technology that could benefit the retail world and I definitely think that podcasting and vodcasting are a great fit for the retail store where having computers for every store associate is not practical. Podcasts and Vodcasts could become a training medium for store associates. New employees could subscribe to training in specific areas and download it to their personal media players, smartphones or pocket pc.