How to get and use a successful intranet podcast

June 10, 2009 at 11:13 am | Posted in best practice, beta testing, intranet, social media, Uncategorized, user testing | 8 Comments
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In my last post about the right collaborative tools I said I would talk about how BT has been successful using podcasts.  How did we achieve this?

Why use podcasts?

BT needed a cheap and easy way for people to explain by ’show and tell’ with other people how to do something.  They say a picture paints a thousand words and demonstrating how to do something in a few minutes is much better than screens and screens of guidance and tips.

What did you use?

BT beta tested an open source solution with a few users who were keen to share content this way and helped them with their work.  Others wanted to find out how to do things using this approach rather than reading words or phone calls.  Building on the experiences of podcast producers and consumers we have developed it into what we call Podcast Central.

Podcast Central has grown in a year to over 300 podcasts.  In May alone we had over 22,000 page views and over 8,500 downloads. 

We have wider needs such as online training courses becoming shorter podcasts with a more friendly, informal, approach.  We are reviewing what to use in future so any suggestions you can share will be great.

How does Podcast Central work?

I have attached some slides on how we use Podcast Central.  They take you from the BT Homepage, our corporate intranet portal, to Podcast Central.  You can find out how we publish a podcast, how we view a podcast,  feedback comments and ask for a transcript. 

It is based on the You Tube approach of keeping it simple and easy and not trying too many ‘nice’ features that can over-complicate the user experience.

8 Comments »

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  1. [...] Listen to podcasts [...]

  2. [...] using other social media tools that benefit both people and BT.  These include wikis, blogs and podcasts.  These are all available for people in BT to use even if they are [...]

  3. [...]  These include ‘killer applications’ at the start of our intranet that I have posted about before – BT Homepage, Directory, BT Today and more recently social media tools like Blog Central, BTpedia and Podcast Central. [...]

  4. [...] So you have a chance to see how BT has benefited from the social media tools I have posted about before like BTpedia, Blog Central, BT Today, RSS and podcasting. [...]

  5. How to get and use a successful intranet podcast – Mark Morrell…

    This article has been submitted to IntranetLounge, a website with a collection of links to the best articles about intranets…

  6. [...] Podcast Central now has over 1,000 podcast episodes with over 20 added in the last week [...]

  7. [...] Examples of effective knowledge sharing and collaboration [...]

  8. [...] Listen to podcasts [...]


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