A discussion about corporate and business podcasting with tips and guidelines

Marshall Sponder, KMM's Web Metrics Guru blogger, was recently interviewed in a podcast about Web Analytics and Privacy Filters. While the interview it self is wonderful, the Zoom In Online site is a little wonky.

Podshow recently took a beating in the community for designing their site in such a way that it was almost impossible to get at individual podcaster's websites. Zoom Online has kind of the same thing going in that I can't figure out how to just plain old listen to a show.

A trip to Zoom's podcast page presents me with a list of podcasts. One would think that clicking on the 'Listen' link would allow me to direct download the audio file. Such is not the case, however. Clicking on the Listen link takes me to the comments page for that show. Sure there are RSS and iTunes subscription buttons, but no apparent way to just click and listen.

Now a podcast is a podcast because of the RSS feed and there's no technical requirement for a podcast to be direct downloadable. However, the stats are showing that less than 50% of listeners use any sort of podcatcher at all, so not allowing you show to be direct downloaded is definitely limiting your audience.

There are many people like me out there that don't even have a podcatcher installed on their computers. I had to jump through some hoops to listen to the show and I only bothered because it was relevant to this post.

Rule of thumb: You must provide a feed. You should provide direct downloads.