You’ve hit the nail on the head with ” make it worthwhile for the end user”. Audiences have such differing and changing needs that ‘because we can’ isn’t a good reason to use new channels or features.

Ra ra ra … keep up the good posts.

The main reason I would use them now is if it was difficult to get across something to the viewer via the written word alone. Also I don’t only use video or podcasts, they tend to be deep dive material most of the time, the key message would be written and may be repeated with additional information in a visual or audio format that is shareable. Look at the BBC and see how they integrate short clips of video and audio into longer written articles. Bite size chunks go down better.

A couple of things we found, mostly from my own preferences, are that new media formats need to be short, portable, shareable and make the viewer forget they are watching or listening to something work related – it has to be interesting, sounds simple but I’ve seen (and created) some very dull videos – like writing it is a skill to develop and not something you can assume just by picking up a camera, it takes practice.

There are of course more practical or technical issues that prevent people from using the new media offered to them, so it is important to make sure you are offering the right format or doing something odd with codecs that just means people give up before they started.

Creating videos or podcasts can be quick but the editing and posting of the material can take 10x as long.