The justification for podcasting and 'Web 2.0'

Hi all,

It's been a busy couple of weeks and I've finally got back to writing a few lines here- thank you all for your kind comments and trackbacks.

I'm in the middle of a stint of meetings with agencies and marketing companies, all of whom are excited about podcasting and other engagement tools, but who are also worried that this might all be just a flash in the pan.

A simple question they ask is, why do I want to podcast? Sure, we're all media owners now, but do we really want to be?

Good question.

I've often said here and elsewhere that podcasting sits in the 'Web 2.0' toolkit, but there are so many definitions of Web 2.0 that you could probably fill in your own blanks.

So here's my definition, and it puts podcasting in a pretty fundamental place.

If I want to buy something online, what do I do? I probably go to Froogle, Google's price comparison service. Maybe I go to Ebay. If it's a full moon perhaps I'll try Kelkoo. These are all superb examples of Web 1.0- superb manipulation of data and information.

The problem is, these bring commerce down to one factor: price.

So if you run a company that's proud of its service, proud of its people, proud of its ethical commitment, proud of its customer satisfaction, proud of its agility, proud of its responsiveness... hey, tough luck.

To me, Web 2.0 simply means web services that go beyond information manipulation. Whether it's engagement and participation, a fuller media offering, a deeper corporate insight or even just a few more points of audience contact, podcasting, along with blogging and the plethora of other new online developments serve to build brands and services which go beyond raw data.

So when clients say to me, "Why should I podcast?", I say: do you want to compete on price, or do you want to compete on all the other values your brand stands for?

Maybe podcasting isn't the only answer (or isn't the whole answer). That's fine. But to fail to add engagement media into the mix at all is to make price, or other basic data, the only differentiator in your business.