Why Your Webinar Should be a Podcast

They’re basically the same thing…

I frequently get emails about upcoming webinars offered for free by different organizations. But, often times they are during normal business hours and fairly difficult to attend at times. Plus, when I can make it, and I’m sitting at my desk, I’m inundated with distractions! While I think webinars are a great way for businesses to build brand, provide value to the industry, and promote their services, it can be inconvenient at times. So, why not turn them into a podcast?

Podcasts are REALLY Convenient.

You can listen to podcasts virtually anywhere, at any time. The audio can easily be distributed on platforms like iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud, making it really easy to access from a smartphone, iPad, or desktop computer. I understand most organizations will record their webinars so people can watch them later. But, that really limits someone’s ability to tune in from anywhere and on the go. The craze behind the booming market of podcasts is due to the ease of uploading content and for its ease of passive access that an audience can tune in to when they’re driving, exercising, or maybe just cleaning around the house.

No Change Needed.

If your organization is already doing webinars, you have all you need to upload a podcast…audio. You can extract the audio from the file the webinar generates and that’s what you would use to upload to a podcast streaming site hosted by your organization. One downside here is that a podcast is normally all audio, so you’ll loose the visual aspect of “watching” a webinar. But, I think getting the audio out there to someone who may have otherwise not tuned in to the webinar is worth the tradeoff. Another downside is the potential of not capturing the contact information of someone who engages with the webinar. And similar to above, while you miss out on this information, isn’t the point of these to get the word out to as many people as possible? While you may not capture the information needed to follow up on a lead or add someone to your email mailing list, by distributing the webinar as a podcast, you still may generate the one extra piece of business or brand awareness needed to make the webinar efforts worth it.

How do you upload a podcast? Easy! There are many ways you can upload a podcast to get it to iTunes, and most other podcast players. The simplest way is to create an account with www.Anchor.fm. Once you upload your audio there, you can direct it to other major podcast platforms. Or you can use SoundCloud, Libsyn and many other platforms and feed that directly to iTunes and other places. The difference between the major hosting platforms comes down to price, user interface, reporting tools, and ease of access across the different podcast streaming platforms. If you’re interested in a full run down on how to start a podcast and the gear I use, you can read my Podcasting 101 article here.

Hope this was helpful!

Thanks for reading,

Richard

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Richard Waithe, PharmD | Richard@vucahealth.com

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