There is amazing research out of Edision Media / Arbitron as they have released their third annual study on podcast listening.  Get this, nearly one in ten Americans listened to a podcast this month.  One in five have listened to a podcast ever.  The audience is growing rapidly.  Audio podcasting is up from 13 percent to 18 percent this year, and video podcasting from 11 percent to 16 percent. This is fantastic news for our clients who we are helping to podcast.  Think about how effective and affordable podcasting is.  What a great way to communicate to people who want to hear what you have to say.  Wow!

Matthew

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1. Listen to what other people are blogging about before you jump in. Explore your industry’s blogs. Use Google Blog and Technorati to search for blogs using your keywords. Find some and read the posts. If they’re relevant, make a comment. The easiest way to get started is by adding to the conversation on someone else’s blog. This also ups your creditibility in the public eye.

2. Determine your outcome for your blog. Is it research tool for getting customer feedback? Is it a tool to drive sales? Do you want to provide support for your clients?

3. Practice first before going live. Write 5-10 posts to get a feel and read posts by others in your space.

4. Create an editorial process. Sometimes compliance needs to approve the text. What happens if you can write on your expected day?

5. Create a plan so that people can find your blog. You could use a press release from prweb.com, or buy some Google Adwords. Let all your existing database know through email blasts or radio spots. A great, free way is to add to the conversation on other’s blogs and leave have your blog URL in your signature. Put links in your posts to other blogs that have your potential audience base.

6. Enable comments. Moderate them by removing off-topic responses or offensive responses and respond to the ones that drive the conservation. Go on to other blogs and comment on them.

Jonathan

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Avinash Kaushik, Google’s so called ‘Analytics Evangelist’ says many web marketers are out of touch with the experience consumers are seeking from visiting their websites.

Free Online Resarch Tool

He advised marketers to create conversations with consumers using a simple, short and free online survey created by www.Iperceptions.com, an online research firm. The survey asks: Who is coming to your website? Why are they there? How are you doing? What do you need to fix?

The surveys “get customers involved in fixing things,” he said.

Kaushik describes his day-to-day duties of his job at Google to Adage as “giving a lot of talks” to teach people how to make better websites and spreading the word about Google’s seven “analytic tools,” mainly Google Analytics and Ad Optimizer. He noted that anyone from a mom-and-pop business to a Fortune 500 brand could use these tools.

“Google is giving the same tools that, only prior to Google, you had to get at a big advertising agency or digital firm for free.”

When asked to explain in more depth what Google Analytics — and his role as an analytics evangelist — means for digital and traditional advertising agencies, Mr. Kaushik said: “We want to be the company that really lives the spirit of accountable advertising.”

Matthew

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Web 2.0 and the Social Web are really about relationships. So to ID whether a new technology will stick around or fizzle away, ask these questions:

1. Does it enable new ways of connecting people?

2. Is it easy to signup?

3. Does it move power from the establishment to the people?

4. Can the community that uses it create enough content to feed itself?

5. Is the platform open source or open to partnerships?

If it fosters a new way to create new relationships in a new way, it will most likely thrive within the social web.

Jonathan

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Well, I bought the book Groundswell - its great. Last week I defined the Groundswell. This week I’m going to talk about the 5 things companies can do to engage with the Groundswell.

1. Listening - this already exists in trad. company form called research. This entails monitoring the conversation your customers are having with each other.

2. Talking - this is what we usually call marketing. “Participating in and stimulating two-way conversations your customers have with each other”.

3. Energizing - sales. Finding the lead customers and using their enthusiasm to sell each other.

4. Supporting - Support. Using groundswell tools like social networks to and social forums to enable your customers to support each other. Support

5. Embracing - Development. Integrating your customers into the way you do business. Your lead customers will have great ideas for new design and product offerings.

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A lot of our clients have either published books or are in the development process of releasing a book.  Here’s an idea, what about releasing a couple of the chapters as a podcast?  That’s exactly what Seth Harwood did, he writes crime stories.  Seth started out the podcast route, eventually released his novel through Amazon with a small publisher, and how has been picked up by Random House.  It may seem strange to give away part of something you are creating and hoping to sell but it has several advantages.

I know feedback is a critical component to getting a book project off the ground, or I wouldn’t get so many manuscripts.  How about distributing that first chapter through your podcast feed to get feedback from listeners who are already supporters?  If you get  enought feedback then create an online forum for fans to participate, give you ideas and suggestions on what they are looking for.  This type of market research has an added value in building up an audience that is ready to go out and  support the book sales once it is released.  It obviously works for a crime story writer, can it work for you?

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Forrester Research recently published a fantastic book explaining the social web phenomenon and how companies can harness its energy.

The “Groundswell” is how your customers define you in the social web by talking about you on Facebook, listing you in Wikipedia and posting user-generated videos on YouTube.

This inevitable force will only continue and is creating lasting, permanent change to the way business is run.

One of the great concepts I pulled from this book is the idea of Social Technographics - defining how your customers interact on the web. Listed by level of engagement on the social web from the top down there are: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives. Each age group, gender, and nationality has a general profile. This is the first step in identifying where your customers hang out on the web and the best approach to engage them.

Click here for Forrester’s free profiling tool.

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