One of the most powerful tools that I think you can use for marketing on line is audio and video content. This might be in the form of a short piece of video on your web site explaining a process or offering an overview of your product, or could be in the form of a long running audio or video podcast series, syndicated across the web through sites like iTunes and YouTube. The exciting thing is that both of these possibilities are open to virtually any small business or individual, allowing you to compete on almost level terms with much larger organizations and big business.

As with all successful web marketing, this involves creating content that will appeal to your target buyers and then delivering it in a way in which they will find it, be interested in it and in an appropriate format for them. This gives you a chance to talk to your prospective customers and clients directly and for them to become familiar with you as a source of expertise and knowledge, a way of building a relationship of trust and familiarity.

If you’re not familiar with podcasting, a good way to think about it is that it’s like listening to a radio show, either on your computer or by downloading it to a handheld device, like an iPod. The beauty of the podcast is that you’re not tied down to a particular time or schedule, you can listen when you want, walking the dog, driving the car or just relaxing at home.

Once created, your podcast can be hosted on the internet and your users can subscribe to it using a number of different services or just directly from your website. The most famous resource for podcasts is of course iTunes, with it’s massive library of free materials. Anyone can get their podcast listed on iTunes as long as it complies with a set of fairly simple guidelines, the trick is to make you’re podcast easy to find by using the correct categories and keywords (more of this later).

As part of my work with the band boyzone, we created a series of video interviews where the various members of the band spoke about the reasons for their separation in 2000 and why they have now come back together for a tour in 2008. By using video interviews we were able to deliver the correct message to fans and to convey the genuine emotions and motivations of the band. These interviews were then converted into a series of audio podcasts which are available for free subscription on iTunes and released a week after each of the video episodes appeared on the boyzonetour.tv web site. This has the effect of making the message available to a much wider audience of iTunes users, which in turn drives traffic back to the boyzone websites, where if the viewers are inspired and interested they can then buy tour tickets or merchandise.

Click here to subscribe to the boyzone podcast with iTunes

Although boyzone already have a very large fan base, the same principals apply to any small business or organization, in that you can deliver your message to a large audience of people and give them the information they require to decide whether to take further action.

I hope this is a useful introduction to podcasting and will go into more details about the actual techniques in later postings. Please let me have any feedback on any of the posts.