If you’re wondering about business podcasting—how to start one, where it might fit within your communication planning, or even how to make your current podcast more effective—winning the FIR Listener Contest could be the answer you’re looking for!

To mark the third anniversary of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report on January 3, we decided to run a contest for listeners where the prize is a free copy of How to Do Everything with Podcasting, the book written by Shel Holtz with Neville Hobson (FIR’s co-presenters) and published last June by McGraw-Hill. The book’s list price is $24.99 / £14.99 / C$29.95.

How to Do Everything with Podcasting walks you step by step through the process of creating, publishing and promoting your own podcast. It includes a substantial business focus that will help you see how businesses can use podcasting as an effective and measurable way to communicate with customers and employees.

There are actually three copies of the book up for grabs, depending on where in the world you are.

We’ve arbitrarily divided the world into three segments—The Americas, Europe and the Rest of the World— and we’re looking to award the book to one winner in each of these areas.

The whole FIR team is behind this contest—Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, together with FIR correspondents Lee Hopkins, Dan York, David Phillips, Eric Schwartzman and Sallie Goetsch—and will judge each entry.

How to Enter

1. Tell us your answer to this simple question:
   “I think a podcast will help my organization/my client because...”
2. You can communicate your answer to Shel & Neville in English in any way you wish—email, recording (audio or video), comments to this post, whatever way you think is the most effective. Look around the FIR blog for your contact options.
3. Submit your answer by the deadline—Friday January 25, 2008 at 6:00pm GMT.

That’s all there is to it.

We’re looking forward to your entries! (Complete Rules Here.)