BrandingFire Blog

I’m heading to Podcamp Nashville tomorrow. I’m not a podcaster, but the place will be crawling with the new media/social media elite. And I already talk with many of these people online, so I’m looking forward to meeting them in person.

If you’re going, look me up!

I’ve mentioned before that I think a great way to connect people with your brand, no matter if that brand is Coca Cola or Daughters of the American Revolution, is with stories that are meaningful to them. New online technologies are making it easier and easier to tell those stories, be it through websites, blogs, video, podcasts, Twitter, Jaiku or any number of other technologies emerging daily.

Someone Who Gets It
I’ve found one guy who “gets it”. And he’s in a place you might not first think to look for him. He’s 8th Grade teacher Eric Langhorst. He’s so passionate about using technology to teach history that he maintains a blog about it and does speaking engagements on the subject. And his passion for history and teaching the subject are so contagious that others are noticing. Mr. Langhorst was just named the 2007-2008 Missouri Teacher of the Year. (Perfectly fitting that he podcasted about it.) In addition, he was awarded the 2007 Governor’s Humanities Education Award. (Congrats to him!)

Check out his blog here. I’ve subscribed. He may be officially teaching 13-year-olds, but I know I can learn a lot from this guy!

Who inspires you? Where do you go to learn how to better promote your organization or tell stories that fan the flames of passion for history in other people? Add a comment to this entry or give me a shout out and tell me about them.

Podfade - This occurs when a podcast ceases production or is distributed so infrequently as to appear out of production. The reason for this generally boils down to:

• lack of time
• lack of listeners
• lack of goals
• lack of things to talk about

What’s really interesting is that podfading isn’t limited to amateur broadcasters. It’s happened to professionals as well.

How do you limit your chances of podfading?
Here are a couple of ideas on how you can limit the risk of becoming another podfader:

• Understand that podcasting requires a time investment - Podcasting is easy and cheap to get into, but be sure there is a time investment required for recording, editing and uploading the shows. And the more popular your podcast becomes, the more time you will need to invest in it to keep it popular.
• Make sure you have a reason for podcasting - Even if it’s just to entertain people, you need to have a purpose for producing a podcast, otherwise you’re likely to lose interest when the next “cool” thing comes along.
• Recognize that it may take a while to build a following - Don’t expect to be the big dog on the block by episode #10. It’s possible that no one will listen to you for quite some time. Hopefully, you’ll give them something interesting to listen to and have something remarkable to say, thereby building a following. But it could take a while.

Good luck and happy podcasting!