Free port podcast service gains following

The port-focused audio podcasts – covering topics as diverse as changes in port ownership models and insurance to maritime tips and predictions for 2010 – have been played 1,700 times in the last month alone.

James Tweed of Coracle Online says that the company has made ‘ease’ a priority. “We want to make as simple as possible for people to get hold of the information,” he said. “We even have a link to embed the podcasts (which are automatically updated) on your own company website where you can get either staff or stakeholders to look at them.”

Most are only 10 minutes long, making the podcasts easy to fit into a working day. Besides maritime industry podcasts and its shipping-focused e-learning courses, the company also has a free service that helps to sort out the flood of industry information than can be found on social sites such as Twitter – without drowning in it.

CoracleVoice.com monitors the way people are talking about the sector on Twitter, and it makes for valuable market intelligence. Mr Tweed explained: “What we try to do is try to help make sense of what people are saying about the industry by looking at what’s said. But we also monitor what kind of effect each comment has, by seeing who is following the author and who reacts to the Tweet. After some number crunching, we put this all on the Voice site, under the Twitter Maritime Top 40, which shows you the topics of interest, to the minute.”

Coracle offers a bespoke premium service for companies who want to get more detailed intelligence, but “this gives you a feel for what is going on right now”, said Mr Tweed. The sites can be found at: www.coraclevoice.co.uk and www.shippingpodcasts.com under the ‘Ports’ menu. Podcasts can be accessed by applications such as iTunes or direct online.