Tuesday my first-ever podcast was released, an interview (about ten minutes long) with Ken Rayment at Better Process Podcast.

Our topic was why industrial firms should use WordPress as a platform for their websites, whether or not they have a blog.

The podcast was quite an experience, one that gave me a greater appreciation of how difficult it is to think on your feet when the microphone is on. Ken was easy to talk to, but I found myself wanting to say ten things at once. It’s sure a lot easier on a keyboard! I’ll probably look for more opportunities to do podcasts, only because many people would rather hear it than read it.

The most important podcasting lessons I learned -

• The more focused the topic, the better.
• Prepare thoroughly.
• Don’t try to say too much.

About Better Process
Ken’s mission is to give American small and midsize manufacturing firms ideas to enable them to thrive in an economic climate that isn’t particularly friendly to manufacturing. He was in Chicago last night and we had dinner together. He’s a great guy. I wish we had recorded our dinner conversation.

One of the many interesting things we talked about was how engineers use the web pretty much exclusively to find suppliers and do research. Companies that sell to manufacturers need to be visible on the search engines, and they need to put out information that engineers can use. But isn’t risky to put detailed product specifications on a web page? We concluded that it is, but it’s even riskier to withhold information. Engineers will simply search online until they find what they want.

Not an ideal choice, but one that companies really need to make.