A few weeks ago in a flurry of activity I logged onto the E-Business Club website to sign up for a whole bunch of web and technology related seminars and workshops.

Really because by accident I discovered East Midlands Development Agency (emda) business funding sources are only being made available through these Business Link run courses. I can see the sense. Get bums on seats and make the funding available to those who show an interest and commitment to sustaining their business through gaining knowledge and training.

So that’s why yesterday I attended the “Setting Up a Business Podcast” workshop run by Dr Rob Marchant. This was an all day action planning course to show the delegates how to make podcasting work for their business.

The objectives included:

• Seeing how the delegates could use podcasting and what others have done
• Developing a strategy through planning and development exercises
• Getting to grips with the technical info needed to know how the make a podcast
• And finally working on an action plan for the delegates to follow through

The last item in that list is a pre-requisite for making a funding application through the ebusiness programme.

I think this is a great way to follow through from knowledge acquisition and training into a solid means of assistance to help small businesses get where they’re going. To me, this sounds like joined up thinking!

The morning session explained what a podcast is and defined the areas the discussion would be confined to i.e. audio podcasts, not video podcasts. Initially I was quite disappointed because I’d signed up for the course assuming video would be covered. But as it turned out there wouldn’t have been enough time to do so.

Rob Marchant explained jargon like mp3 files, Really Simple Syndication et al. Then he moved onto the benefits such as additional communications, visibility, greater impact than text and increasing your perceived expertise. There were a number of other benefits too.

Potential uses such as brand building, industry news and customer loyalty were investigated and discussed with delegates and more besides.

The afternoon session covered the planning process, the tools required for the podcast production process including hardware and software. I found the interactive demonstrations of miking techniques and the post recording session with the software to develop a slick and professional podcast to be the most valuable part of the course, although without all the theory behind what goes into a podcast the production process would have been pretty pointless!

There were only half-a-dozen delegates, which was ashame for those who missed out but it all went off very well for those of us who attended. Thanks Rob for a very informative and helpful workshop.

You may want to check out what other courses are available by going to www.ebusinessclub.biz and registering - it’ll be well worth your while if you want to get the most out of your web presence - and let’s face it we could all do with more business I reckon.

Today, Microsoft’s MySpace has upgraded it’s video facilities to compete against Google’s YouTube, and you can find the site at www.myspacetv.com.

It is reported that…

“MySpace TV will be an independent site and will not require a user to have a MySpace ID. There will be integration between MySpace and MySpace TV, enabling MySpace users to display their videos easily within their profiles.”

But that’s not my experience. I was redirected to Myspace to sign up for an account. I’ve done so and will investigate further.

My reasons for doing so are because I’ve already been exploring the possibilities of video podcasting. By that I mean using a blog to distribute video material to potentially interested visitors to my website.

Of course, in my case this gives me the ability to introduce this relatively new medium to any of my clients who see the marketing potential of using video on their own websites. So expect to see a video podcast of me presenting a short “Blogging For business” seminar in the not too distant future here in this blog.

Once this is up and running a group of business associates are looking to put together a series of training workshops on marketing and pr, which will equip businesses with the knowledge to use the latest web tools such as video and audio podcasting alongside blogs to better promote their businesses on the web.

One of the major obstacles to video blogging has been storage and bandwidth issues, but I am now at the stage where these problems can be solved. In other words we have a workable solution.

Already audio podcasts are having many beneficial effects for the producers and users/potential clients, and video podcasts are fast becoming a reality for medium/small businesses to use in their marketing mix, too.