I’ve written before about the benefits of blogging (here and here) to professionals and business. One particular benefit of blogging can be building authority and trust (in so far as trust can be built in a non-personal relationship anyway).

Since the holidays (and my way-off-the-early-adopter-curve acquisition of an iPod) I’ve been listening to quite a few podcasts*. One particular thing has struck me about podcasts, and that is how much more personal and ‘real’ it feels to hear someone’s thoughts spoken in their own voice compared to the relatively inexpressive words on a screen method. Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders podcast on productivity is a good example of this, in the past I’ve infrequently visited the 43 Folders blog, but I have now taken to listening to their podcast avidly.

There are several reasons I’m a fan, I like the tone, humour and length of the 43 Folders podcasts. But from the important thing about this from a professional perspective is the boost that podcasting has given the podcast’s producer, Merlin, in my awareness and respect (and I would assume the same has happened for many other listeners too). The point is, he had a good blog but it was the added intimacy (at least apparent intimacy) and novelty of a podcast that really made me take notice. Of course in the world of marketting getting people to take notice is pretty crucial, so this may be worth noting, perhaps I’ll even give it a go myself.

* What’s a podcast? A podcast is technically little more that a chunk of audio (often amateur produced and talk-based) that through some technical stuff (RSS and the like) automagically arrives on your iPod (or other MP3 audio player) as each new ‘episode’ is published. Kind of like radio on demand combined with the ease of publishing approaching that of a blog.