Unless you were living in the cave for the last six months, you've probably heard about Podcasting. Savvy marketers begin to adapt this new technology as a marketing tool to help them communicate with their prospective customers. In this article, I am about to explain why Podcasting can be so popular while other proprietary streaming audio protocol failed. These simple facts help you assure your visitors to adopt the technology and subscribe to your podcast.

Introduction to Podcasting

Podcasting, as its name implies, is a combination of two terms:

1) iPod: a popular media player by Apple, and

2) broadcasting: delivering your audio files to those that subscribe to it

But it may not always have to do with iPod. One of the myths when it comes to podcasting is that you need an iPod to listen to the audio. Nothing can be more wrong than that. Different creative ways are invented to use virtually any media player which has the capability to play audio file for podcasting.

According to Wikipedia, podcasting is a method of publishing audio programs via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s).

Yet others refer podcasting as downloading audio content (an enclosure contained in a feed) and synchronize it with your iPod or other media device.

So which one is true? Both of them. Yes, I'd like to view podcasting as delivering audio content through an RSS (version 2.0) feed and for clients to grab the content and listen to it at their own pace and place. The community later invented new term to refer to the client part: podcatching.

Why is it so popular?

End-users tend to adapt new technology if it requires minimal effort on their part. They may very well scared off by podcasting the first time they hear it. Thanks to an awful name assigned to it.

Letting them know that they require very few simple steps to start podcasting helps. Adds to the fact about the benefits of podcasting and the kind of content waiting for them, and they will be sold in no time. If you use these tactics to persuade your site visitors to subscribe to your podcast, you will see higher conversion from visitors to subscribers.

Probably one of the important factors that makes podcasting so popular is that it uses existing technologies and expands on current ones that have proven to be working.

This is not to say that proprietary technology won't succeed, but it sure helps if it can leverage and build on things that are widely accepted standards and protocols.

MP3, RSS, and HTTP

Podcasting -- which most of the time is in the form of audio -- uses the well known file format such as MP3. Imagine how hard podcasting have to try to penetrate into the market if it tries to invent a new file format for itself. MP3 has been around for quite a while. It is small (in file size), portable, reliable and popular.

Current media players and portable devices have been built with support for popular file formats, including MP3 even before podcasting is ready. This can only mean that once podcasting is opening door to the public, it can reach as many target audience as it possibly can.

Podcasting takes the existing RSS 2.0 standard to carry its metadata content. It builds upon the standard, make it working with much less of a struggle. Dave Winer made this possible by adding enclosure to RSS feeds.

Finally you can use the same standard that is used by web browsers to request and send data. Yes, the same language for the World Wide Web: HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP).

Using the same protocol for the web means that podcasting can transfer the feed and the payload without reinventing the wheel. At the same time it will be supported by existing web browsers with no or at least minimal development.

Alternative and traditional download of audio file comes natively supported by any web browser, while supports for RSS and podcast feeds require minimal development on top of existing codebase. If podcasting and RSS use different protocol, they may not be integrated into any browser at all.

Additionally, you can host your podcast feed and audio files on any web server used to serve HTML documents.

Developers can simply put together features from different standards and protocols and immediately have a working podcast client to use. Of course, if they are going to make it good, they have load of works to do, but at least the whole things have been simplified.

What's next?

Realizing that podcasting is a great marketing tool is not enough. There has to be enough end-users adapting this technology for it to be effective. Think of it like e-mail. It is a useful tool but pretty much useless unless all of your friends and her sisters use it.

Especially with a new technology like this, you need to help visitors to understand the technology. Explaining the benefits on a webpage, including how they can take advantage of the content. Link to it on your blog or podcast page, preferably beside your Podcast RSS feed.

I have no doubt podcasting will become popular soon with the integration of popular music/media player with Podcasting such as iTunes. The question now is, how you can take advantage of it to your business after they subscribe?

Copyright 2006 Hendry Lee