Friday Find #4 — Podcasts Rule!
Posted by D'Arcy McKittrick on Mon, May 04, 2009 @ 01:18 PM
Author’s note (full disclosure): I stole the title of this post from an article in my local newspaper. In my defense, I had the title developed but hadn’t gotten around to writing the blog post. So I was scooped, and that is my somewhat flimsy excuse for “reusing” the title.
If you are a small/medium sized tourism business operator, or a local/regional tourism destination marketer, there are 3 things that I know about you:
- You are convinced by now that “online” or digital marketing is critically important to the success of your business and/or tourism destination.
- You are struggling to stay on top of the latest and greatest developments in digital technology and digital marketing for tourism.
- You never have enough time to read everything that you would like to read, including information about digital technology and marketing.
In short, you have a problem that essentially is about how to allocate your scarcest resource: your time. Enter podcasts as a potential solution — specifically podcasts developed to help you stay current with all things digital.
Podcasts are audio and sometimes video content that you download from a website and listen to, or in the case of videos view, whenever you want. The really cool and useful thing about podcasts is that if you have an MP3 player, iPod or smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.), you can consume podcasts whenever and wherever you want. Think driving your car, on a train, on an airplane, in an airport or at a boring hockey game, to name just a few.
The good news — many, many freely available podcasts about digital technology and its uses for marketing. The bad news — many, many freely available podcasts about digital technology and its uses for marketing. In other words, you could spend large amounts of the time you don’t have sampling available podcasts to find those that will help you stay on top of the digital world.
To help you sort through the abundance, and in the spirit of Friday Finds, here is a list of 3 audio and video podcasts that I have come to enjoy. In fact I enjoy them so much, that i look forward to housecleaning on Saturdays so that I can put on my headphones, turn on my iPhone and get caught up while cleaning bathrooms, vaccuuming and washing floors. (I don’t dust or do windows).
Spark from CBC Radio — audio, 25-30 minutes in length, released weekly, host Nora Young, “… surprising and irreverant look at tech, trends and fresh ideas” with focus on Canada, available from the Spark blog or iTunes.
Marketing Over Coffee — audio, 20-25 minutes in length, released weekly, hosts John Wall and Christopher Penn, “…weekly discussion of what’s new in marketing …” with focus on U.S.A, availlable from website or iTunes.
Digital Planet – audio, 25-30 minutes in length, release weekly, host Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson, “how digital technology affects our lives around the world”, global reach, available from BBC website or iTunes.
As noted above, there are many others. If you have the time, cruise iTunes’ selections or type “tourism marketing podcasts” into Google search and follow the links.
In the next Friday Find, 3 video podcasts to check out.