Morgan Stanley issued their Internet Trends Report this week showing how six of the top ten internet sites are social. Some are very familiar names, others may not be: YouTube.com, Live.com, Facebook.com, hi5.com, Wikipedia.com and orkut.com. None of these sites were even on the list three years ago.

Another surprise, YouTube plus Facebook page views may be more than Google page views. Half of Facebook users log in daily, YouTube has 258 million viewers half log in weekly or more often.

It’s easy to see how important it is to have an online presence in these social media sites. For many consumers the internet is becoming the primary way that they connect, communicate and form a community.

80 percent of respondents to the USC Annenberg School Center study on the digital future, found that the internet is the number one source of information right next to a personal source. This essentially is a social network the internet being the tool connecting the community.

How is your business using social media sites and marketing to communicate with your core audience?

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The past week I spent at the Web 2.0 Expo. It was interesting to hear the various perspectives on SEO, SMO, new tools to use for the social web, and the new startups being launched. But by far the most compelling talk I heard was held by O’Reilly at the end of the show.

Through this talk the two founders of O’Reilly’s consulting division spoke about their experiences consulting for enterprise-size, traditional corporations and how these corporations are loosing market share rapidly as a result of the social web. They presented the “seven deadly sins” of social media including not wanting to be engaged in two-way dialogue with their costumers, not wanting to include their “lead costumers” in the beta-testing and product feedback, among others.

By far the most profound point was (and I’m paraphasing): We could give you all a web 2.0 strategy to take back to your company, but the fact is that if a there is not a critical mass of employees within your company that are on-board with this new philosophy - its not going to work.

This is pretty amazing - that essentially the current corporate culture itself, within the company, is the cause of its own downturn. And that this is the only way to remedy the situation.

A perfect example of this is the Comcast video shot by a customer. A Comcast tech arrived to service an account at someone’s residence and fell asleep on the couch after waiting an hour on hold with homebase. Here’s the video:

To combat the bad press - Comcast spent $x Millions in a new “speedy, reliable service” advertising campaign.

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I recently listened to a great podcast episode by one of the premier podcasting experts, about showing up in search results within iTunes. I’ll link to that episode at the end of this post, but its worth distilling the message here first.

Results whether they be in Google or iTunes are based on Relevancy and Authority. Within iTunes, relevancy works much the same way as in other search engines - how relevant is your content to the searched keyword. Using your keywords in your title, name, summary, and keyword tags make you relevant. All of these are indexed and searchable by iTunes.

Authority is based on how popular a podcast is. This is measured primarily by how many daily new subscribers a podcast has. That is, how many new people click the subscribe button on a daily basis for a podcast. This is how iTunes “ranks” a podcast. It is not based on how many total subscribers or how many unique downloads a podcast has and certainly doesn’t include how much of any of this occurs outside of the iTunes directory.

The other component to authority is ratings and reviews. The amount of positive “star” ratings, is an easy and great way to increase authority and search results when keyword searching within iTunes

Thanks Jason for that great bit!

iTunes SEO Podcast

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One of the greatest perks of my job is that I get to work with some really wonderful content creators.  I have gotten to learn about real estate, finance, health and legal issues from some really bright minds.  These radio and podcast show hosts do a fantastic job of communicating their knowledge and educating people on how to improve their lives.

But it seems obvious to me that focusing on simply creating great content is only part of the equation.  When Stephen Covey set out his 7 Rules for Highly Effective People, he offered this advice: Begin with the end in mind. In other words, work backwards from where you want to end up and make choices that will lead you there.

I think it’s great to focus on the content, to have compelling interviews, to educate listeners about your passion, but the next question is how do you want the listeners to respond?  All of the radio shows and podcasts that I distribute and syndicate have a goal of growing their customer  base as a result of these efforts, but often times they forget to regularly invite the listener to get involved.

One of my favorite ways to engage with the listener is to offer something of value to them, a free report, an article that you reference on the program, some way for them to get in touch with you.

One of my financial clients has started doing this every week and seen fantastic results.  He generates over 100 calls per episode by offering a free report.  The listener has two opportunities for getting in touch, they can go to his website and enter their email address or call a voice mail number and leave a message.  The report is then emailed to them.  It’s easy to find the free report button on his website and using a voice mail box is also very effective as the majority of people listening are away from their computer, in the car, at the gym or whatever.

Of course, these are rich email addresses to build the all important data base and new content can be feed to these listeners on a regular basis.  My encouragement to you is keep producing great content, but also think about how do you invite your listeners to be in touch.

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Hi all. We’re kicking off our new site and blog today and committing to posting twice a week. I’ll be writing every Monday and you can read Matthew’s posts every Friday. Thanks for joining us.

Firstly I’d like to mention the Web 2.0 Expo at Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from April 22-25, 2008. Looks to be really profound with all the experts there and great training courses. I’ll be hanging out in the Marketing and Community track as well as poking around the expo to see whats new for podcasting and new media.

Here’s an excerpt from the presentation description:

“Find out how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) along with web analytics are turning online marketing from art into science. See why Facebook, MySpace, Google, and LinkedIn are creating a Social Networking Revolution and helping you make lots and lots of “friends”. Learn how to create buzz with viral marketing, social networks, the social graph, and community evangelism. This track will tell you every

thing you need to know about blogs, social networks, online videos, widgets and other online

marketing tools that make a difference.”

So if you’re in town, stop by and say hi - or check in with us to see what we learned. We’ll probably blog about it so check back.

Ciao.

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