Many of us believe that leveraging podcasting technology can give companies a marketing edge that will allow them to increase their online visibility, increase their client acquisition rates and improve customer loyalty. More and more companies start adding podcasting to the marketing mix for their business as they believe that adding podcasting to company’s marketing mix can have tremendous positive impact on its business.

A podcast is a series of audio or video digital media files which are distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from most other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added. Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. How does marketing with podcasts work? Podcasting is one of newest communication tool for business. Like website, newsletter and email marketing, podcasting is used by companies to communicate messaging to their target audience. If you have a podcast, they can actually stream the audio and let it play while they are doing other tasks at their computer. People tend to multitask in order to be more efficient with the use of their time.

However, efficiency is the doubtful thing about podcasting. This is an inefficient means of receiving information. In the time you can listen to an average podcast, you could have caught up on several blogs, or read a chapter in a book, or read the latest issue of the newspaper. This idea, that listening to a podcast is a waste of time when you can read things so easily on the Web, is one that people have raised since the early days of podcasting. When people ask this, they aren’t really questioning the idea of podcasting so much as they are questioning the perspective of those that do like podcasts.

From scientific point of view, we consume information more effectively while reading rather than listening. Also we memorize much better when we read that when we listen. Visual memory is stronger. Also, people usually read faster that listen. And when you read, you can dwell on a word or phrase, go back to understand a phrase or sentence, and stop and think when you want. When listening to a podcast of a speech, not only are you limited to approximately the speed of a person speaking, but it is considerably harder to go back to review. If you download to my mp3 player, of course you can speed up a bit, but I don’t think you can do a similar speedup when listening on a computer, especially when listening to a streaming server. You can also skim/skip much more easily when reading than when listening. Because spoken language is so temporary, each sound hanging in the air for a fraction of a second, the brain is forced to immediately process or store the various parts of a spoken sentence in order to be able to mentally glue them back together in a conceptual frame that makes sense. “By contrast,” Carnegie Mellon Psychology Professor Marcel Just said, “written language provides an “external memory” where information can be re¬read if necessary.

According to Harold Bloom, the literary critic,

You need the text in front of you. From this we learn that art and wisdom only go in at the eyes. What comes in by the ear is manifestly a lesser experience.

The major benefit of podcasting is that audio and video podcasts allow portable content, letting you consume the media anytime and anywhere you want. On the other side, we don’t listen effectively on the go. Our main attention is somewhere else. We hear, but not listen. So again podcasting lacks effectiveness. Who is doing it? I mean today everyone spends some time in front of computer either at home or at work. Why would those people bother themselves with ipoding and podcasting. They check emails and at the same time read RSS feeds. By the way, you need to have an ipod to receive poscast! Not everybody has and uses ipods so often in their life like internet. So what for is podcasting on the go  if everybody anyway will go to the internet??? I think podcasting can be effective for only small category of people who like to use new techniques and gadgets. Me myself, I always try to catch up with new gadgets and communication technologies. But what’s the aim of developing these gadgets and technologies-effectiveness for sure. The reason to develop them is to make existing thigs more easy. Do podcasts make our life easy??? My answer is NO. It’s definitely easyer and faster to read content than to look for your iPod, turn the podcasting, listen to it, adjust volume and so on when only one click is required to read the news on the web page or in your outlook. I don’t think podcasting will grow to big popular thing. I really don’t believe that one day will come when everyone will be using podcasts as they use RSS feeds and blogs today.

To sum up, companies can use podcasting to inhance thair business, but it will be effective only for companies that need it, the companies that serve the segment that is interested in podcasting and such things. But for all usual companies it’s just waste of time and wase of money. Blogs are cool, but podcasts not.