Podonomics

Paul Colligan and Alex Mandossian are trying to answer the question of whether you should use a podcast to focus on communicating with your audience or to earn money in Episode 44 of their Internet Marketing Podcast. I won’t tell you what the final word is, so you’ll have to head on over to listen.

I look at it another way. I believe you should be using your podcast as part of your funneling process. Since podcasts are offered free, this should be the item that pulls prospects in. Your podcast is the breadcrumbs and you use it to lead them to your website to purchase the full course meal.

So, in a sense, I’m saying that you are using your podcast to communicate in order to monetize later on. Yet, you should think about your podcast as feeding your product funnel so that you’re clear about the action you want listeners to take after listening to your podcast.

Technorati: alex mandossian, paul colligan, podcast monetization, funnel, sales

I heard through the grape vine about 3-months ago that DigitalEve Toronto, the rebranded Webgrrls founded by a few Canadian women about 5-years ago to encourage women to pursue careers in technology, was going down the tube.

Wired Woman seems to be going strong with 2 chapters (although they had about 3 or 4 chapters about 2-years ago).
Well, rumour no more. I just visited the DigitalEve Toronto website and they have a final message from the board of directors. The final word?

It has been decided by a unanimous vote by the board members to officially close the Toronto Chapter due to lack of interest and income.

Jeepers, Batman! Although frankly, it comes as no surprise that Digital Eve Toronto has closed up shop. In my opinion, women’s technology associations are no longer relevant for many reasons.
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Just finished up a telephone session when one of the participants asked about consent forms for podcasting.

I know The Podcast Brothers use a consent form. You can download the PDF version here (careful, clicking opens a PDF document).

While I like what The Podcast Brothers have done, I find that it’s way too legal for my taste. So, inspired by an email that Bryan Person sent to me a couple of months ago when he interviewed me for his podcast, I put together a quick list.

It’s less official than the one The Podcast Brothers use, but effective nonetheless. Here’s what I send to my guests.

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Google keeps showing why it’s a billion dollar company through innovative web based services. It’s wildly popular Adsense program, which you see on thousands of blogs and webpages across the web, will soon be offered as insertions in streaming and downloadable audio, according to this guy.

While Google may be on to something and will probably do it differently from other podcast advertising services, I still preach that you can’t win offering ads in your podcasts. While you will probably make a few pennies, this model fails in comparison to the amount of money people are making using podcasts as a lead generation tool.

I’ll wait for the metrics before I even consider offering ads in my podcast.

So, I mentioned that there were 2 highlights that came out of my speaking journey last week. The first was meeting Michael Port. Here’s the 2nd.

Last week Friday, I spent most of the day with about 300 professional organizers at their annual conference held in downtown Toronto. Professional organizers are a fun, energetic bunch of people.

I gave a presentation called How to Get Publicity Without Sending Out a Press Release, a presentation about conversational media. At the end, I gave all the professional organizers 5 action steps for their homework assignment.

Quite simply, I gave them tips on how to launch their own blog and steps to get started with their first post.

Would you believe that only 1 person out of that whole group took any action? Her name is Michelle Lynne Goodfellow and here’s what she said to me by email:

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I was perusing iTunes, looking for one of my client’s podcasts. I went to the podcast directory homepage and guess what I found? A video podcast called Justice League Heros.

The little girl in me just couldn’t resist and immediately subscribed. She squealed in delight as the music started, but she soon turned quiet when the big girl in me reared her authoritative presence. However, the big girl justified it by saying, “This is research.”

I was curious why Warner Brothers released the video and audio portion of the podcasts. So, I clicked on the text link beside their podcast listing in iTunes, which took me to their website. There, I found out about the release of a video game by the same name.

What I liked about the Justice League Heros Podcast:

• I found the audio listing for this podcast in iTunes first and found out about the video podcast via the description. In it, it said there’s a video podcast AND told me how to get to it.
• The video podcasts were short, under 5-mins.
• When I clicked through to the website from iTunes, it took me here. So nice to see that they’re using their podcast as a lead generating tool.
• They’re using other social media tools, namely a blog, well, a pseudo-blog. On it, someone gives a behind the scenes look at the creation of the characters for the video game. I say it’s a pseudo-blog because it’s actually presented in flash and you can’t leave any comments.

What could be improved:

• Just one thing - I was taken through hoops just to buy the thing. I went to the Xbox website and it took a few clicks (about 4 altogether), before I found the details here, only to discover it’s not for sale yet. The path of the breadcrumbs was much too long and I grew tired trying to find what I was looking for.

Other than that, very nicely done. Nice to see a corporation doing it well.

Some thoughts as I stumble through the web this morning.

• Can magazines stay relevant? The American Magazine Conference is happening this week in Phoenix, Arizona and companies such as Google & Yahoo are there to lead sessions on digital media. I really like some of the comments I’m reading as to why magazines need to incorporate digital media into their overall strategy.

“We cannot be over-dependent on the print magazine. We have to look for new streams of revenue. It’s not really a choice.”

“Publications that have engaged in relationships with their consumer base across multiple content points are more desirable than one four-color page in a magazine.”

“Given that the digital world is growing at a much faster rate than old media, there’s top-down pressure on publishers to get into new platforms, to find new ways of using their content.”

• Online Stars & Hollywood. A talent agency in Los Angeles is scouring the web looking for online stars to peddle wares for companies who want to launch online advertising campaigns. United Talent will accept submissions and sign clients who don’t have agents. As one person said on the video podcasting dicussion group I belong to:

“Yep, everybody wants to get rich off us. Too bad we can’t figure it
out for ourselves.”

One of the things that Dr. Kathy King mentioned at the International Podcasting Expo in her presentation on Podcasting in Education is that if the audio you create doesn’t need to be heard by strangers, then don’t podcast.

I echo this point.

At WebProWorld, they have a very vibrant discussion forum. On one of the topics, someone asks if it would be a good idea to podcast their product descriptions and provide a link to the audio beside every product in their shopping cart.

It wouldn’t work for one main reason:

• Podcast aren’t infomercials. If as the poster said he wants to provide additional information about his products, this would make more content for a podcast.

Instead, this website owner should just plug some audio on his website. Since this type of content doesn’t need to be broadcast to the world, there’s no need to wrap the audio in a RSS cocoon and release it as a podcast.

Remember, podcasts are lead generating tools that are infotainment based. Just rattling off the features of your products in a 3-minute podcast isn’t good enough. No one would listen anyways.

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’m currently reading Tim Sanders The Likeability Factor. I came across a chapter called Unlikeability Doesn’t Work, where Sanders describes the 4 reasons why being unlikeable can not be an option in our modern world.

I decided to take a spin on Sanders’ unlikeable factors and turn them into reasons why using these factors can make you a really effective podcaster. Aside from frequency, length and content, here are elements I believe make a podcaster effective and relevant in our modern world:

1. Effective podcasters desire long term results, not quick hits. Building relationships with other podcasters, building their platform and building a loyal base of listeners can only be done over the long haul. In his book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson argues that the long tail effect has much more of an impact on businesses than does the one hit wonder. With limited budgets, effective podcasters understand that popularity is built over the long haul and that the quick hit is no longer good for business. Effective podcasters understand that success is measured, not by links and clicks, but through long shifts, moments of time ticking away while you rise in popularity.
2. Effective podcasters measure success not by number of listeners, but by involvement. People desire to belong to something. This is something that Andrew Michael Barron has been saying in his presentations recently. Belonging is one of the steps on Maslow’s Hiearchy of Needs. Individualism is dead on the internet, especially when it comes to using social media tools. Just because I’m the sole podcaster on my podcast doesn’t mean I’m alone. People comment on my blog, call my comment line and send me emails. They’re involved in my dialogue, although I set the tone. Yet, I don’t control the outcome of that conversation. Effective podcasters don’t measure success using an outdated ROI model, instead, they measure success using a ROLI method - return on listener involvement.
3. Effective podcasters understand that physical boundaries don’t exist. A podcast is created that doesn’t speak to any one culture or way of life (not unless the podcast is specific to a particular group eg. gays, republicans, Catholics). They refrain from mentioning local landmarks in their hometown of Edmonton because they understand that someone in the UK may be listening. They are aware of their place in the global marketplace and produce a podcast that addresses this awareness.

Can you think of any others?

Technorati: podcasting, Andrew Baron, tim sanders, chris anderson, the long tail, Marketing, likeability