I have been under the rock of launching a new Podcast for and about San Francisco. MosaicSF launches next Monday.

MosaicSF is the cornerstone of our SF agency marketing program. I will talk more about this next week.

In the meantime, check out our placeholder site.

So I wake up and wonder why I am not getting more comments. I think that my Blog and Podcast are doomed.

But wait….

Then I go to my stats and I see that I am getting an average of 109 new Podcast feed subscribers per day - after only 7 weekly shows. If I trend this out, that’s over 35,000 subscribers by the end of Year One! Hey, this is rather positive and a decent indicator of the power of Podcasting. Now, my Podcasts are fairly targeted (like, just how many marketers are out there?) so imagine the potential a strong marketing Podcast from Toyota on car maintenance, or a show from Post Cereals on nutrition, or…. A design show from Apple. Or a show on San Francisco from Microsoft (yes, we are soon to be pitching MosaicSF). You get the idea.

By the way, if you want to get out ahead of Podcasting as a marketing strategy, remember that I am speaking in Boston on April 28 -29 at the Boston University Podcasting Academy.

Imagine the money that large marketers like Nike, Disney, Kodak and BMW spend every year to get new customers. Now imagine the amount of time and effort these companies spend keeping their customers. Well, they spend little keeping their customers happy let alone keeping them at all. The ratio of “get” to “keep” is abysmal.

This Podcast entitled “Get a Grip” is an audio version of a white paper I did on customer retention in fall 2004 (you can get a PDF of the white paper “Get a Grip” by going to the Ralston360 website.) This white paper is my rant against corporate marketing departments that are customer acquisition focused and retention blind. I mean c’mon…. Nike doesn’t stay in touch after I buy custom sneakers on NikeID. BMW doesn’t stay in touch after I watch BMW Films. Disney drops me after spending six grand on a family trip to Disney World. Kodak has no clue at all who I am. These guys are nuts! What’s worse is that this malady is so easy to cure.

By the way, Seinfeld gets customer care and to prove it I include a clip of his famous rant at the car rental counter.

I’d love to hear of any poor customer follow-up that you have experienced.

This Podcast is 18 minutes long.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcast [17:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“Can Podcasts Make Money?” I am asked this question often. I have the answer. But let’s first look at an extremely popular show that is going to pay-per-listen from free.

The Ricky Gervias show, a moderately entertaining Podcast (my view) from the star of the UK’s original version of “The Office” has been so popular that it was just added to the Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded Podcast. The show has averaged 261,670 downloads per week. The show can be listened to at the Guardian website or on iTunes. The next series of Ricky’s show will become paid at $2 per episode.

First of all, 261,670 downloads per week is outstanding. That said, I am not so sure that Ricky is going to maintain numbers that are anywhere close to this. The show isn’t really that fulfilling and it sounds a bit too off the cuff. At best, it has given me 10 minutes of entertainment.

BUT WAIT, if Ricky just keeps 5% of his current monthly downloads (he clearly has a dedicated audience)… that’s 1,046,680. 5% of that is 52,334 and at $2 per show he’ll be making $104,668 per month. Hmmmmm, not too shabby.

So, can an entertainment Podcast make money. Guess we’ll see.

Back to the original question. Yes, Podcasts can make money if they have either a large audience or are very focused on a vertical category. Here are some examples. Podclimber, a show about rock climbing, is selling sponsorships. So is Grape Radio. So are the repurposed shows from KCRW, an NPR station in LA.

Look, advertisers follow the audience. And, despite the pitiful budgets most major advertisers still place in digital media, we are seeing the early adopters make the move into Podcasting.

Hey, east coasters. I am going to be one of the speakers at The Podcasting Academy at Boston University, one of the first conferences on Podcasting. Come on up to Boston on April 28 and 29 and learn all about Podcasting from really smart experts – and me.

I will be speaking about the business of Podcasting with John Federico of Audible and Mark McCrery of Podtrac.