"I feel like [synergy in an organization or company] is overlooked a lot when it comes to marketing podcasts," Blake Althen of podcast-producing company Human Factor told me recently. "At least with organizations I've done work for, the magazine/newsletter department might be doing their thing, the email people might be doing their thing and the events people are doing their thing, but there's not a lot of synergy. And we tried to close that gap and have done it really well.

"Who do you want to be listening?" asked Kate Super, founder and executive producer, Sidford House Media, during a session on Creating Successful Podcasts this morning at Association Media & Publishing's annual conference here in Washington, D.C. "That will tell you a lot about what your content should be."

Two years ago, the Book Industry Study Group, with all of its 138 members, had to make some money. So Brian O'Leary, BISG executive director, decided to do webinars—more specifically sponsored webinars. 33 of them. In one year. All sponsored.

Long gone are the days when a B2B editor could be a platform specialist. A typical day for today’s b2B journalist runs the gamut from breaking news to in-depth features to data-driven content to webcast to podcast to event programming to awards programs and more, with social media tying in at every turn.  

The 2019 Jesse H. Neal Awards, which recognize the best in B2B journalism, provided no shortage of highlights at this year’s ceremony in New York City on March 29.

One session at SIPA Annual 2019 June 3-5 in Washington, D.C., that already has my attention is How 3 Publishers Became Award-Winning Podcasters starring Joseph Coleman, director of content, Coleman Publishing, Lynn Freer, president, Spidell Publishing Inc. and Stephanie Williford, CEO, EB Medicine.

We should not be intimidated by podcasts (myself included). We should be excited. Get a good guest, ask questions for 2 or 4 or 20 or 38 minutes and put it out there. If you can keep it going, you can build up quite an archive.

At the start of an AM&P Lunch and Learn talk that Chris Blose, VP of content for Imagination, gave here a couple weeks ago, he asked the audience of about 30—a fairly diverse group in most categories—how many had listened to a podcast that day.

With soft music and staff writer Ryan Ermey's clear voice, Kiplinger launched its first podcast series, Your Money's Worth last week. The first episode was titled, How to Score Holiday Deals on Black Friday and All Season Long, and features an interview with Andrea Browne Taylor, online editor at Kiplinger.com.

"As you develop a podcast concept, expect it to morph and change. 'Our original thought with the podcast was to fill a gap in how IBM Cloud educated sellers and partners about new features,' say the hosts. 'We were going to do episodes on the new stuff. We quickly realized that 1) we couldn't keep up, and 2) episodes about new capabilities were really boring; like Ian and Steve fell asleep.'"