Podcasting with Reckless Abandon

I recently received an e-mail press release with the following headline: "Gaylord Opryland Joins the Podcast Revolution." It turns out that this Nashville, Tenn., hotel has put together a few mp3s, which they're making available on their Web site as well as on iTunes.

My first reaction: Why are they bothering? I went to the site and listened to the audio files, which consisted of interviews with various hotel employees, explaining how they do their jobs and what is so fantastic about the property. The interviews didn’t include any useful information about the hotel that couldn’t be found on GaylordOpryLand.com. Nor were they particularly entertaining. And aside from the charming Southern accents of the interviewees, the podcasts did little to evoke a sense of what it’s like to be at the hotel—a shame, as it’s quite a nice property. If I were a meeting
planner considering booking this property, I would file this one under “waste of time.”

So why did Gaylord bother creating the audio-casts? Well, why not? It doesn’t take much‹just some pretty basic recording equipment, a day’s work for someone in marketing and a few minutes for each of the interviewees. If customers and prospects don’t like it, they won’t listen. If they do, they might pass the podcast along or sign up to receive an RSS feed. And Gaylord goes back to the studio to cook up more. Either way, the hotel could learn a lot about its target audience.

What do you think? How important is it to have superior content if you want to market your brand with podcasts, viral video or another hot technology?

Should You Be Podcasting?

Comments

[juliasmm]

I don't like blatantly commercial podcasts because it defeats the purpose of what a podcast is meant to be. Otherwise, it's just a five-minute long audio commercial.