Podcasts are Two Way

Tom Hespos demonstrates that he gets what Podcasting is about in his article What Podcasting is Not. He notes that "...at first glance, it appears to be another one-way medium." He continues:

Quite a few clients have asked me recently about whether podcasts are appropriate venues for their broadcast commercials. I caution them against this because podcasts are firmly in the interactive camp, and broadcast thinking tends to not get us very far in such media.

He lists the ways in which the best podcasts create a two-way interaction:

1. Reading weblog comments
2. Reading Email comments
3. Playing audio comments sent by email

Finally, he says of "push" podcasts,

...add "buy my crap" commercials and the long-term prospects for success become quite dim.

Now this interactivity requirement means that we must be doing a series, not a on-off commercial. Even if your podcast is informational in nature, it is little more than an infomercial if it isn't serial and frequent. While generating audio content is relatively inexpensive, it does take a long-term commitment to do a podcast right.