Podonomics

I found out by way of Frank Barnako’s blog that Episode 3 of Starbucks Coffee Conversations Podcast will be the company’s last. Since launching its podcast, Starbucks has received nothing but poor reviews.

I said to myself, “It can’t be that bad,” until I went to iTunes, subscribed and then listened to all 3 episodes.

Slit my wrists, please.

The hosts, Scott McMartin, Director of Coffee Education and Aileen Carrell, Manager of Green Coffee Sustainability, were dead boring. Poor Scott didn’t even sound as if he wanted to be there. At least Aileen had a little pep in her step.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

• The podcast focused on the cultivation, manufacturing and choosing of coffee beans. Boring!
• Both hosts were obviously reading from a script. How inauthentic.
• The jazz music playing in the background while the hosts chatted was quite irritating.
• It was waaaaaaaaay too informercial. Every few minutes, the hosts talked about what’s for sale at their store.

Here’s what Starbucks should’ve done instead:

• Get stories from those who serve coffee behind the counter on some of the weirdest requests they’ve received from customers. Sort of like Niles Crane from Frasier, when he would always ask for coffee with fat free cream, whipped cream without the froth and a splash of nutmeg without the spice. There must be some crazy customers like that.
• Interview customers on some of the wildest, saddest, happiest moments that happened to them while sipping on a brew at their stores. I know I’ve closed a good number of business deals at Starbucks located at Yonge & King in Downtown Toronto, so I’d have some great stories to tell.
• Interview an expert as to why coffee is so addictive. Yes, I’d want to know.
• Do an episode simply asking customers about their first coffee sip. What was the taste like, how old were they, what did it feel like, etc.

Starbucks has no problem getting customers. I mean, everytime I walk into a Starbucks, the lines are very long. Instead, Starbucks should’ve used its podcast to extend the customer experience.

Overall, Starbucks’ focus was wrong. They failed because they focused on the coffee bean. They would’ve succeeded had they focused on their best asset - their customers and the stories they would happily tell about their experience with coffee.

Technorati: podcasting, starbucks, Coffee

Here’s a great example of what can go wrong when you don’t have a set of guidelines for your employees to follow when it comes to using blogs, podcasts and other social media tools.

Garth Turner, a politician turned journalist turned politician (in some order), was recently kicked out of the Conservative Party (the party in power in Canada) because of some inflammatory remarks he wrote on his blog. Garth was elected last winter to the federal Conservative Party and represents a riding in Southern Ontario.

Some highlights from his blog:

• On Stephen Harper’s image (Canada’s Prime Minister): “He’s a [George] Bush clone.”
• On the Conservative Party’s environmental plan: “Green plan gonads.”
• On same sex marriage, Garth said he’s vote against re-opening the vote (the Conservative party wants to re-open the vote in an attempt to squash the bill that makes it legal to marriage as a same sex couple).

And so on.

One journalist said that Garth was inviting the Conservative Party to kick him out due to his openess on his blog, or in Craig Oliver’s words of CTV news, Garth is “an internet virtuoso.”

Did Garth Turner do anything wrong? Nope. He was using his blog to engage his constituents in the conversation. Garth clearly understands that his blog is meant to display openess, honesty and transparency. Garth “gets it.”

Did the Conversation Party do anything wrong? Yup. They didn’t draft up an official set of guidelines to let their party members know how to and how not to use social media while representing the Party.

Instead of reacting to Garth’s blog, the Conservative Party could’ve been proactive with a set of written guidelines that could’ve been shared with all party members. Instead, the Conservative Party has put their minority status in a precarious position and have lost an intelligent man who now sits as an Independent in the House.

Guidelines. Draft them up. Today. Don’t sit in ignorance with social media. Even though your corporation or business isn’t using blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc., chances are your employees are.

Technorati: Blogging, conservative party, Canadian Politics, Current Affairs, Stephen Harper, Conservative Party of Canada, podcasting

I got an email from Anita who’s organizing a Corporate Podcasting Summit that will take place in London, England March 19 & 20, 2007. She said that the sessions for the Summit will heavily rely on case studies, compared to the Summit that was put on in June 2006 in San Francisco which relied more on theory. It appears that the British want to see whether or not their competitors have fallen flat on their faces or are wildly successful before they themselves even bother embracing podcasting.

Interesting…

I was speaking to a publisher today about my book idea (btw, if you were thinking about writing a podcasting how to book, forget it). He was jazzed about my idea, although he did say that my book would need to focus more on case studies - companies that have been there, done that when it comes to podcasting.

Interesting…

Scotiabank recently released their podcast called The Money Clip. They were the only bank in Canada podcasting, however, that distinction lasted only about a month. Just today, I stumbled upon a press release announcing that BMO has teamed up with Profit Magazine to publish a bi-weekly podcast called The Business Coach.

Interesting…

If corporations are now demanding to see case studies of their competitors or counterparts using podcasting in their marketing mix, does that mean we’ve reached the inflection point in corporate podcasting?

I was at a networking event last week Thursday. Actually, I was asked to be a model in a fashion show showcasing the designs of Linda Lundstrom. But I still consider it to be networking because of all the business women in attendance.

While waiting to be fitted, I had a chance to sit down with Diane Brooks and her friend, I believe her name was Amanda. Amanda asked me what I did for a living. I told her that I’m self-employed and I help businesses use podcasting to fill their sales funnel.

Diane, who’s an image consultant, started raving about podcasting. Although Diane isn’t podcasting (yet), she told her friend that it’s the best way to communicate a message to your employees or customers.

Amanda then said, “But how can it work in my environment?” She’s in the HR department of a large Canadian retailer and she said that they have communications challenges between head office and the field (namely, each retail outlet).

Amanda said that podcasting couldn’t work because:

• Retail stores are geographically dispersed.
• Retail employees can only spare 5 to 10-minutes in a team meeting, then have to run back to the floor to help customers.
• Each store only has one computer and it may not have Internet connection, nor does it have the ability to play audio or video files.
• As much as she’d like this to happen, retail employees won’t access work related podcasts from their home computer (as Amanda says, who wants to do work at home?)
• And there were more, just can’t think of it right now.

Looking at the problems that Amanda described, podcasting can work, but I was stuck at how the solution would look. Does every employee get an iPod? Do we get Internet access into every store? Do we put Podcast Link in every store? And how much would all this cost?

For the first time in my life, I was stumped. Typically when people explain their marketing and communications issues, I can easily spout off a solution to their problem. But Amanda presented me with a challenge that I had to mull over for a few days.

I’m still mulling.

And while I’m mulling, Amanda’s situation really highlights an issue that those of us in the social media space don’t want to hear.

That while it’s important for people to engage in “the conversation” - meaning that it’s ideal to launch a blog, a podcast, and other social media tools to compliment your existing promotional tools - not every corporation or business can be part of this conversation.

Issues such as dispersed teams, language, geography, time, lack of technology are just some of the issues that plague organizational teams.

And, if it’s going to take a complete infrastructure overhaul and cost millions of dollars for a corporation to upgrade their technology just so they can launch a blog or a podcast, then this is a very expensive dialogue that’s not worth having.

Eric Rice posted on his blog that there’s a conversation we’re not having (thanks for the link C.C.). He was referring to the fact that social media consultants are neglecting to teach senior executives why social media is so important and why they need to get in the game.

I’ll take that one step further. The conversation we’re not having is understanding that not everyone can be a part of the conversation.

Technorati: corporate podcasting, blogging, Marketing, Business, social media, Podcasting

I’ll be speaking at a number of events this week in Toronto. I’m providing some details below.

SOHO Thursday October 19th @ 4pm

BUZZ ON A BUDGET: How to Use Social Media to Boost Your Business, Fill Your Sales Funnel & Get Millions of Dollars in Free Publicity Click here to register (thanks to Kate for the hook-up)

BBPA Thursday October 19th @ 7pm

Buzz on a Budget: How to Use Blogs, Podcasts & Other Social Media Tools to Boost Your Business

Professional Organizers in Canada Conference Friday October 20th @ 3pm

How To Get Media Interviews Without Sending a Press Release

If you make it out to any of these events, do take an opportunity to introduce yourself to me. I’d love to meet you.

On Friday night, I took the GoTrain. What makes the GoTrain so great? It’s a regional transit system that whips you from city to city in speeds faster than a car. In 20-minutes, I made it from Downtown Toronto to Mississauga. By car, it would’ve been 30-minutes and by public transit, it would’ve been an hour.

As I sat back to enjoy the ride, I had the pleasure of being an observer in other people’s conversations. Word of mouth marketing was at work on the train and although some say it’s hard to measure, it’s still very powerful.

Take for instance this conversation between 2 teens that I overheard. One was reading the paper and stumbled upon an ad for a Holloween event called Screemers. He showed the ad to his friend and this is how their conversation went:

“Did you go?” Teen A asked.

“Yeah,” said Teen B.

“How was it?”

“It was okay.”

“Should I go?”

“Nah.”

“Cool,” said Teen A as he returned his gaze back to the newspaper.

Screemers just lost a customer that night. I wonder how many they lose through word of mouth marketing? And how can Screemers combat this? By using the very tools that consumers are using to recommend products and services to each other. These tools are blogs, podcasts, discussion forums, and other user-generated media.

Screemers could launch a page on MySpace, find a few friends, post a few audio endorsements and be in control of the conversation.

That’s one idea. Do you have any others?

Technorati: word of mouth,

It’s not just the PR and agency folks having fun with podcasts. Small businesses are climbing on board as well and are using podcasts to accomplish very specific goals.

Meet Shonnie Lavender & Bruce Mulkey. A married couple who just recently launched a podcast called I Do! I Do! geared to brides and grooms-to-be to help them write - and stay committed to - their wedding vows.

Why did they launch their podcast? To raise awareness about their product called The Wedding Vow Workbook and of course, to sell a few copies.

Here’s what they did to get to Episode 001:

• They planned their strategy, understanding who they want to target with their podcast, what topics they’ll cover in each episode and how many copies of their workbook they’d like to sell
• They’re using Wordpress to publish their podcast and podpress to make it easier for people to listen to and download their podcast
• Their podpage has the same look and feel of their website
• The audio quality of their podcast makes it sound like they stepped into a studio (and I know they didn’t)
• The outro has 1 call to action asking listeners to go to http://marriagevowworkbook.com/

I’ll report back in a few weeks how many copies of their workbook Shonnie & Bruce sold. This is a great example of a small business taking advantage of podcasting to help spur on sales. Can this model work for your own business.

Disclaimer - Shonnie purchased my Plan A Killer Podcast bundle and used the steps in the workbook to launch her podcast.

Technorati: podcasting, Marketing, weddings, wedding vows

If you want to stay up to date on what’s happening with Podcamp Toronto, you can check out the blog here.

Technorati: podcasting, podcamp toronto, podcamptoronto2007

I remember listening to one of my client’s podcasts. My client was the host and she was interviewing another woman.

For the life of me, I couldn’t tell the difference between their voices. When my client asked the question, yes, I could tell them apart. However, there were points where there was banter between the 2 women and I could no longer tell the voices apart.

Here’s a tip - When interviewing someone of the same gender, say that person’s firstname throughout the interview. I don’t mean that you say the person’s name everytime you take a breath, but get into the habit of repeating that person’s name ever so often.

Believe me, it will help you later on when you’re editing the raw recording and it will help your listeners follow along easier.

Technorati: podcasting, podcasting tips

As you may have noticed, I tend to stay away from commenting on breaking news in the technology field on my blog only because I want my voice to be unique. If I blog about something that thousands of other bloggers are already blogging about, my voice gets lost in the shuffle.

However, I can’t ignore Google’s billion dollar purchase of YouTube. This is just a significant watershed moment in the technology field. Debbie Weil said it best when she called the Google acquisition of YouTube an inflection point. Mathew Ingram wrote that Google’s purchase of YouTube will make “old media” finally realize that user generated media is NOT a fad. Some, like Jon Watson, have questioned why Google would make this purchase in the first place.

As for my thoughts on this issue? The Google acquisition clearly shows that infotainment - information that’s entertaining - and not content, is king. Anyone can produce content. That’s evident by the sheer number of podcasts that are out there. I read on someone’s blog that there are just about 82,000 podcasts on iTunes alone (I’ll find the link).

But why is it that not all 82,000 podcasts stand out? It’s because content isn’t king, infotainment is. This is probably the same reason why Google felt that YouTube was a good buy - user generated infotainment is taking over.

Technorati: podcasting, google, you tube, mathew ingram, debbie weil, jon watson