I never thought I’d say it but I’ve been flirting with Cinchcast. For the uninitiated, Cinchcast
allows the simple production of brief podcasts which are housed within Cinchcast and easily shared. It’s intuitive, clean and you can even do it from your iPhone or Android device. It’s brought to you by the folks over at Blog Talk Radio.
You can check out my first attempts at cinching here and here.
A couple of thoughts on its value:
Pimp your blog. I’ve been summarizing some of my blog posts a day or two after posting and the response has been good. It allows you to catch those who may have missed the first Tweet pitch for your post. An sometimes as ideas cure and people comment, a follow-up micropodcast allows you to summarize and clarify.
It’s well-suited for adult ADHD. When your audience knows they’re not on the hook for a 25 minute podcast diatribe, your message is an easier draw. While there is no limit to the length of your dialog, the developers suggest you “keep it short and sweet.” I like this.
Cross-medium messaging. I think Cinchcast offers an alternate, readily accessible medium for sharing ideas. If you’re like me, I like the idea of a different format for my information. Sometimes I just get tired of reading.
It’s customizable for big operations. Check out how Pepsi used Cinchcast to drive participation in a recent social media outreach. Beyond soft drinks, I think it holds real promise for targeted messaging in health care.
Is there any downside? Given that talk is cheap, there’s a tendency for some users to blather on about senseless issues. And the barrier to entry for those looking for information on micropodcasts is potentially higher given that you have to spend a couple of minutes listening before deciding whether it’s something of value. I find it frustrating that most Cinchcasters never take the time to describe with text what’s in the cast.
So if you want my ears, summarize the post, keep it focused, and give me actionable points.
In a way Cinchcast reminds me of the raw early days of blogging when the run-on rant with deliberate misspellings was all the rage. Visit Cinchcast’s main stream and tell me if you don’t agree.
In sum, I like Cinchcast and I’m going to give this a test run. Stay tuned.
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This is really interesting. Maybe soon we will be loading up our ipods with playlists consisting of short-and-sweet audio blog posts from our favourite bloggers — a good brew for the morning commute. I'd make a mental note of the interesting posts and check them out in full when I got to a computer. Looks like Robert Scoble (http://www.cinchcast.com/scobleizer) is on Cinch too and showing some interesting ways to use it (e.g., interview with Evernote people). I agree that good summaries are definitely necessary to make this worthwhile.
Jury's out on how it will fit in with workflow. I do find that the alternate medium changes my attitude about information!