Employee lead Podcasting at IBM yields Benefits

Eric Mattson emailed me this weekend regarding a survey I filled out for his research. I left the thought that “Seblog accounts would be standard issue at many corporations within five years time”, maybe it’s happening faster than first predicted.

This weekend while driving back to the Bay Area, I heard via Podtech how IBM to publish podcasts of nearly any topic. A forward thinking initiative as it’s realized that folks will self-publish anyways, so why not harness under the company name?

IBM has some unique podcasts such as Shortcuts reports cnet, “…which is all about giving individuals answers to their questions about how to use personal technology” or the employee produced Battle of the Bands which features employee performers like Seven Ender and Lisa Swain.

We know IBM for their corporate blogging program, recently I ran across Tony Pearson’s blog, a Marketing Brand Manager at IBM’s Storage group. I find this unique, as there are few blogs in the Data Storage industry written by folks with a “Marketing” title, everyone has a voice.

Corporate Benefits:

• Though leadership: Folks will publish information that they are domain experts at.
• Knowledge Sharing: Employees are sharing tips, tricks, and other helpful information using a variety of mediums.
• SEO Domination: Search Engine Marketing power for topics they discuss.
• Brand Lift: Even non-technology podcasts and blogs help to show the ‘human’ side of a mass company
• It’s fun, encourages collaboration, and inexpensive.

You can read IBM’s podcasting and blogging guidelines here. I expect this to advance to video in the near future. As this evolves, maybe IBM could open another line of business for employee lead bands and create a music label or “TV” station!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 1:40 am and is filed under Community Marketing, Podcasts, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.