Podcasting and Blogging now Marketing Tools

Hi Marketing Associates, I can’t help but be fascinated with the way in which Marketing is developing, hence my last two blogs, “Future of Advertising and Future of Marketing.”

Apparently the new generation (under 30yrs) is going to revolutionize communication.

We are already in the midst of the death of Mass Marketing, not only is the fragmentation of media splintering the target audience but this group does not consume media as the +30yrs olds. Welcome to the new media generation, they are into media experiences and interactivity and most of all peer to peer advice.

But apparently this is not the end, now we find two additional marketing tools, Podcasting and Blogging.

Far from viewing workday blogging as bad thing, IBM sees it as the next big thing for marketing.

Other companies have fired people for blogging, but IBM is encouraging it, said Christopher Barger, Big Blue’s unofficial blogger in chief.

The company now has 15,000 registrants on its internal blog, with more than 2,200 of those employees maintaining external blogs.

Its embrace of digital marketing also extends to podcasting, with the company creating podcasts around cultural tech themes such as the home of the future, the car of the future and the store of the future.

Marketers should look at blogs as a real-time cheat sheet on how to be relevant with customers, said Intelliseek's chief marketing officer, Pete Blackshaw. The name of the game is to be as conversational as possible vs. being static. ... It’s a bonding technique with your consumer.

Podcasting, last year so nascent a technology that few marketers had even heard about it, is this year a topic of avid interest, being tested by marketers as mainstream as Volvo, General Motors Corp. and Warner Bros.

The new medium that combines the audio format of radio with the download and global distributon capabilities of the Internet and iPod/MP3 players was the subject of an Ad:Tech session entitled "Podcasting's Future in the Marketing Mix."

Infant field
Podcast content ranges from slick programs developed by professional radio stations to kitchen table banter recorded by individuals. The use of advertising in podcasts is a field in its infancy, but it's marked by one clear tactic: Avoid being intrusive so as not to upset what is generally a small but very targeted audience.