Using Social Media: Creating Podcasts For Your Employees

Earlier this week, I wrote 10 Easy Ways to Build Social Media Into Your HR Practice.  Now I am sharing specifics on each of the ideas I suggested.  These are written with beginners in mind.

Today, we’re going to learn how to create podcasts for your employees.  There are so many employees who prefer a quick hit of information in verbal form.  With hundreds of email coming in each day, key HR messages can tend to get buried and possibly never opened.  When thinking about your internal communication strategy, it’s key to build in other ways to have the key messages heard.

Create podcasts for employees- What information do you share?

HR is tasked with communicating throughout the year on a variety of topics.  Consider:

• Leadership meetings and updates
• Annual benefit enrollment
• Performance review process
• Merit increase information
• Local office initiatives
• Charitable giving updates and opportunities

How to get started

Firs, have a conversation with your Marketing leader.  It is possible the company already has a preferred method of creating and sharing information via podcasting.  If not, there are many online services. These services vary by ease of use, level of security, ability to share on a company site, cost, and ads included.  You’ll want to start by thinking about those aspects before deciding on whether you want to be self-hosted or use a third-party site.  Here are some of the options:

• PodOmatic–  This is a free service that offers both podcasts and minicasts.  They have free options as well as “pro” options so you can determine the level you need based on your requirements.
• BlogTalkRadio–  Another popular site for it’s ease of use, BlogTalkRadio provides many options for either free or paid hosted podcasts.  They are easy to share on your website or via social media.  The instructions are clear and you can get started in just a few minutes.  A great option for beginners.
• LibSyn (Liberated Syndication)-  One of the largest platforms to host podcasts, this site has a great feature of offering  the option for mobile apps for your podcasts.

There are many other options out there and you can always choose to self-host.  That option is obviously more technical in nature, so talk with your IT department before taking on this type of project.

Stay tuned next week for more tips on how you can incorporate social media into your HR practice.