Weighing Podcasts vs. Webinars

With all respect to Jackie Huba, I disagree with her assertion that companies should dump their webinars for podcasts or videocasts.

She explains that the self-serve nature of mobile media means people can listen to podcasts / videocasts when and where they want. They don’t need to be tied to a computer at a specific time.

Unfortunately, what Jackie overlooks is that the best webinars are interactive. This type of audience engagement is very difficult to achieve within a video or audio podcast format. So my suggestion is that you need to take a close look at your content and your intended audience. If your content is unidirectional, I would consider what Jackie suggests. However, I would only do so if your intended audience is iPod and/or podcast savvy. As we saw yesterday, not everyone is.

One other suggestion: why not do both? Run an interactive Webinar and then podcast it later for the time-shifters.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.