Out-Smarts Marketing Services

A recent Information Week article asks the question - Is podcasting dead?. The article cites that “there is no easy way to sample podcasts without an excessive and irretrievable investment of time” as the reason that podcasting hasn’t taken off.

Lets look at the numbers to see if podcasting is indeed dying a death. eMarketer estimates that the total US audience for podcasts reached 18.5 million in 2007 and is expected to grow by 251% by 2012. These statistics hardly reflect the death throes of a dying medium but the growth rate isn’t exactly stellar if you compare it to other web 2.0 technologies.

The reason for its slow adoption rate is indeed, as Alexander Wolfe of Information Week suggests, a result of podcast complexity. And this doesn’t only apply to users.

Creating and publishing a podcast is not as seamless or as simple as it should be either. If you’ve read any of my new experiences in podcasting posts you will know of my own frustrations with the technology and I am relatively tech savvy. It seems to me that if you want to podcast you have to be a true propeller head. At this point that is podcasting’s main barrier to entry.

iTunes has tried to streamline the podcast publishing process but even using Garageband to create a podcast on a Mac doesn’t guarantee simple podcast submission.

On the bright side for podcasting, more and more traditional media outlets are using the technology to disseminate audio so that users can listen on the run and users are recognizing the benefits of being able to listen on their terms (coincidentally, one of my first ever blog posts back in 2005 touched on this). Global TV in Vancouver offers video and audio podcasts of its news content.

Podcasting is not dead but its not exactly burgeoning either. As podcasting is promoted more to the mainstream it will become more prevalent (it is slowly gaining popularity, especially in the 35-54 age group) but until producers can create and publish podcasts efficiently and users can access them as easily as turning on the radio, podcasting growth with remain slow.

I bet you’ve been dying to find out how I finally managed to get the podcast up last week. It was no easy feat let me tell you….

I got several responses to my request for tips. One very intuitive one was to use iTunes to reduce the size of the file. Choose Preferences and Advanced and Importing (click on custom to set the rate) in iTunes should get you there then Advanced and save as to complete the process. Too simple perhaps - alas the file was too gargantuan.

The final resolution? I ended up using ftp to post the podcast directly on to the website server and then link to it from there. And I claim to not be a propeller head…

Along the way I also learnt that iChat can be very useful for supporting podcasts over the Internet. And received some great tips on how to make the podcast experience better for the user: more juicy stuff for you to look forward to in future New Experiences in Podcasting as I put these suggestions into action (or try to at least).

When you subscribe to a blog or podcast or populate a portal like iGoogle the technology that brings the information to you is called RSS. Its a way of publishing information easily so as to make it available to subscribers in a central on-line repository.

Why take advantage of RSS? There are many reasons:

1. Pull rather than push - articles come to users rather than them having to hunt them down;
2. Subscribers get the latest and greatest information as its posted;
3. An RSS link encourages traffic to your site;
4. Users can have a bunch of sources of info in one place - much like a newspaper;
5. RSS can be used internally to disseminate info too.

How to set up an RSS feed?

• First get your site set up to support RSS by adding a few short lines of code.
• Place code on your site that the RSS feed readers can find your info.
• Publicise your feed by telling the world and everyone you know in it at every opportunity.
• Add the RSS feed button to your site so visitors know you the can easily subscribe. Feedburner has widgets to support this on their site.
• Submit your feed to syndicators and search engines to make it easier for your audience to find you.

Once thats done, your good to start publishing your own data feed over the web.

Social media for marketing and business development is the hot topic on the networking circuit in Vancouver these days and today’s SMEI event was no exception. With expert panelists from BCIT and Oracle bringing their unique experiences in SM to the panel, the event proved to be insightful.

It started off with a brief intro to Web 2.0 described as being “Tech, Process and People - but most of all collaboration” then went on to a 101 of web 2.0 terms such as RSS, blogs, podcasts for the real newbies in the audience.

Once the panelists got started the true value of the event became apparent. Justin Kestelyn, Director of Development Programs at Oracle discussed their web 2.0 adoption and the benefits they have gained from using a more transparent strategy and involving their customers and partners more. He made a great point in that by involving their customers and allowing them to have a voice these invariably become evangelists at little or no cost to Oracle. He points out that Web 2.0 is an attitude, a new way of doing business and not just an Internet term.

Next up was Robert Duncan from BCIT whose presentation centred on LinkedIn as a means of developing relationships (a topic close to my heart). He focuses on LinkedIn in particular of the social networks available and has over 800 contacts that he uses extensively to spread awareness of what he is doing at BCIT and in his work with innovators. He pointed out that by joining groups in LinkedIn you have access to all other members of that group - a great way to extend your network further. Its easier to do business with people you already know something about.
The last panelist to get up was James Wells also from BCIT and a founder of Lendary Social Financing a company that uses web 2.0 technology to build trust online and to put investors in touch with entrepreneurs looking for money. “Word of mouth is vital to growing any business these days”, he pointed out - “go out and do it - if you fail you learn”.

The conclusion - if companies don’t embrace web 2.0 then they face failure or a steep catch up. It costs very little to adopt these technologies and the benefits in terms of buzz are profound.

Interesting to see Vancouver mega blogger Miss 604 there. I am looking forward to her take on proceedings too.

The new Wired magazine arrived today and in it (p132) is a great map of “The Secret Life of a Blog Post” - a cartographic view of what happens between hitting publish and your post reaching its audience. Apparently when you post, your musing goes through several scrapes, pings, indexes and crawls automatically before reaching the reader.

Well that might be the case for blogs hosted in a blog service like Wordpress but I have found that for corporate branded blogs that are an extension of a companies web site that this is not the case at all: you have to do the legwork yourself if you want your blog to be picked up by all the right creepers.

Here are some tips:

• Always remember to set up auto pings or manual pings with blog engines like: Technorati so that these servers know your blog is out there and crawl it for updates and new posts.
• Remember also to submit the blog URL to search engines and set up auto pings with those too.
• And lastly submit your blog feeds to RSS aggregators or appropriate on-line media mashers.

Once you’ve done that go back to the map, track the process and you should be good.

Back in the last century the web was seen as a great way to create an on-line brochure. The idea was that if you had a web presence you could be attracting new business 24/7 while you were sleeping. Alas the days of the static website have come to an end. Its simply not good enough these days to slap up a web site and leave it to stagnate for months. There’s nothing worse from an audience perspective than returning to a website that hasn’t changed since your last visit or worse a site that has dated “news”. I don’t know about you but when I go to a site like that I assume the company is kaput and go elsewhere.

A website is no different from having a phone, if no one knows your number then no one is going to call, if you don’t answer or return your calls then having the phone is pointless. Interaction is key. Likewise a website is simply a tool to facilitate business but if there’s no interaction you may as well not bother.

Fortunately technology has also come a long way in the last decade or so and its becoming easier and easier to create dynamic user experiences that will keep visitors coming back. A blog, for example is the perfect way to ensure that your site is updated regularly and it encourages users to interact. RSS feeds are another way to make your site fresh by linking to applicable news feeds or posts from iconic blogs in your industry. Using photo and video technologies to showcase your offering and allow for an enhanced user epxerience is made simple by the likes of Flickr and You Tube. None of these techniques cost much to implement but the impact of these on the effectiveness of your web site can be huge.

Brr Brr Brr Brr - is there anybody out there?

To save me time and effort I like to subscribe to information on the web and have it come to me so that I can read and enjoy when I have a moment. Doing so helps me avoid the frustration of sifting through the internet wilderness trying to re-find cool feeds I have enjoyed in the past. My tool of choice to do this is Google Reader.

I recently wrote a blog piece that describes how to easily set up and use this to your advantage. Read The Scoop on Google Reader for a Google Reader How To….

In the post for Bluelime Media - RSS- not so simple after all, I looked at RSS from the user perspective in an effort simplify and explain how RSS works and how you can get set up to receive the articles and feeds you’re interested in.

A recent blog post by Darren Barefoot has both a great description of RSS as well as a link to a video clip that really simplifies RSS for the neophyte. Both are must views for everyone using the Internet as a source of information as they explain in very simple terms how RSS feeds can benefit you and save you time.

I wrote an article recently for Bluelime Media called “RSS not so simple after all!” that talked about RSS from the user perspective. Now I want to look at RSS from the corporate perspective.

Incase you didn’t read the article, RSS is a means by which information can be easily be published and made available to subscribers in a central on-line repository.

From a corporate standpoint, their are many reasons to take advantage of RSS both to publish information and for research:

1. RSS makes it easier for prospects to find your articles;
2. subscribers get the latest and greatest information;
3. helps establish connections to your web site and drive traffic;
4. gives you the ability to research multiple sources at once;
5. great tools for disseminating information throughout the organisation.

So as an organisation, how would you set up an RSS Feed? The first thing you have to do is contact your web designer and find out if your site is set up to support a syndication feed (if you have a blog you may already have a feed set up). If not, its easy to set one up by entering a few lines of code - check out O’Reilly for help to do this.

Once the feed is set up, you should let people who visit your site know by adding the RSS Feed button which usually looks something like this:

I created the graphic for free by signing up with Feedburner but I am told you can do the same with FeedForAll. Having the button on your site in a prominent place will allow people to easily click to set up a feed that brings your article directly to them as its updated.

To complete the process, have your web designer add code to your website templates so that the RSS feed readers can find your posts and submit your feed to syndicators and search engines to make it easier for your audience to find you.