Web Design and Digital Marketing Information
Using Podcasting for Business Marketing
Social Media Trends
Written by Lesa Seibert   
Monday, 13 September 2010 00:00
by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

Podcasts have become such a popular marketing tool for small businesses that everyone wants to get on board.  Here are 9 essential steps a business needs to go through to get started:

  1. Do some homework. The best way to learn about podcasting is to listen to podcasts.  Visit directories such as RSS Player or Libsyn or use iTunes, and look for podcasts with a similar style or subject to you want to create.
  2. Decide on a topic. Podcasts could focus on a company's products or services, an industry or on management or professional issues. They can have the same or similar topics to what you would use for a blog.  Whatever the topic, make sure it is related to your company's business in some way.
  3. Gather your tools. Producing a podcast requires:
    1. A microphone, digital audio recorder or USB headset to record podcast episodes, if you are doing audio only.  If you want to do video podcasts, then a video camera with a decent microphone.
    2. Computer with sound card and high-speed Internet connection
    3. Audio recording and editing software, either licensed software or free open-source programs such as Audacity, if you are doing audio podcats, or video editing software if you are doing video podcasts such that you can find here http://freevideosoftware.org/.
  4. Be natural. When it is time to record a podcast, organize talking points, but don't use a script.  People don't like to be sold, they like to hear what you think.  If you podcast is a how to, just talk through the steps.
  5. Build a catalog. Before going live, build up a catalog of a dozen or more episodes. Coming up with ideas is easy, but can take a little time. They can come from talking to customers, going to conventions, reading trade magazines, or following current events.
  6. Be consistent. Length, professional quality, and subject matter of a company's podcasts are important but not as much as on-air consistency. Whether it is once a day, once a week or once a month, pick a schedule and stick to it. Podcasts are like radio or TV shows: audiences expect a schedule. If you need to adjust your schedule, let your audience know before you do it, then they will know to expect a deviation.  If you just don't post one for a week or two, they might think you have quit and won't listen again.
  7. Not a D-I-Y type? Hire a pro. Professional producers can handle the technical aspects of starting or creating a podcast.  For example, some companies offer a small-business audio podcast starter package at around $1,000 and video package at around $2,000 that covers scripting and recording three to four podcasts plus lots of extras, including finding a hosting service, setting up a podcast blog and submitting broadcasts to podcast directories. 
  8. Find your podcast a home. Companies can physically host a podcast anywhere, including with the service they use for their website. What really matters is getting the word out that it's there. For maximum exposure, list podcasts on directories such as PodcastAlley.com, Podcast411, Podanza or TalkShoe. Also submit to iTunes after you have done a few.  If you are doing video podcasts, set up a YouTube channel for your company and host them there as well.  Most people don't realize that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine next to Google.
  9. Forget about making money. Some podcasts collect revenue from advertising that podcast directories put on their sites. But that should not be why a company does it. Podcasts should be part of a company's overall marketing strategy.  To get your company name out there, having an optimized website, a bog and podcasts will go a long way to create exciting results.
 
Facebook for Business
Social Media Trends
Written by Lesa Seibert   
Sunday, 08 August 2010 12:55
by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

More and more clients and business owners are asking about Facebook and how to use it for their business.  We have a seminar coming up on August 19 on using Facebook & Twitter for Business.  But for those who can't attend, lets look at how Facebook is becoming a highly effective solution for marketing your business.

For those who live under a rock and don't know, Facebook is the world's largets social network, with over 400 million active users.  Another fact about Facebook is that over 50 percent of Facebook users log in every day.  Users have come to rely on Facebook to stay connected, so if you have a web presence, it should be connected in some way to Facebook.

Three Ways Facebook Can Help Market Your Business

  1. Great way to interact with your customers - The best way to interact with customers and potential customers on Facebook is to launch a Business Fan Page.  It provides you a place to post current info about your industry, company.  More importantly it provides a place for users to talk about your company, your products and for you to interact with them.  Fan Pages are very cost effective in that they only cost a couple hundred dollars to hire a firm to set them up and customize them for you.  You can also hire someone to maintain them for you if you don't have the internal infrastructure to manage it yourself.  They provide you with a direct way to communicate with your customers, where direct mail can cost thousands and you may or many not get a response.  A great example of a Facebook Fan Page is Coca-Cola and the California Academy of Sciences.  Our Xstreme Media fan page can be viewed here.
  2. Facebook is a great source for consumer data - Facebook provides a very effective way to gather data about your consumers.  There are Page Insights for Business Fan Pages, that give you very detailed analytics of your visitors, including number of visits, how many return regularly, how long they stay, gender, age group, location, etc. 
  3. Facebook can help target your advertising - Another way to effectively market though Facebook is to utilize Facebook ads.  The benefit to them is the fact of how targeted you can be with who sees them.  You can select who your ad will be delivered to by age, gender, education level, location, relationship status, etc., and most importantly by keyword.   If you want to target exercise lovers, you can base your keyword targeting on the word "exercise" and Facebook will then only show your ad to those people who have exercise in their profile.  It will show you how many people on Facebook this is as well. 
All Facebook advertisers and marketers need to understand one important rule - DON'T SPAM.  Unlike traditional media where the ads and content are all about you, Facebook and social media is about creating a conversation with your consumers and providing them useful information about your industry that will make them think of you the next time they need lawn care, exercise equipment or web design.  It does take a little shift in thinking away from the traditional media model and into the consumer driven world of social media, but it is doable.  People ask, well what if someone posts something derogatory or a complaint, shouldn't I just remove it?  NO...  instead use it as an opportunity to interact with your customers and find out the source of their dislike, hopefully to correct their issue or give them a satisfactory resolve. Interactivity like this will spread like wildfire because just as they posted how much they disliked you when they were unhappy, they will post just as much about how you were understanding of their issue and helped to correct it.

A great example of this is that the Facebook Fan Page for Coca-Cola was not created by the company - it was created by two consumers who really enjoyed the product.  When Coca-Cola found it, they didn't take the page away from them, instead they let them continue to run it and even gave them a tour of their Atlanta facility.  Because it is real and authentic, more people want to visit, and it has become one of the biggest Fan Pages on Facebook.  It is a shining example of a brand using Facebook as a brand advocacy group to connect and engage with consumers - on the consumers terms.
 
Facebook, Your Business & Open Graph
by Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

Now, more than ever, business owners need to be aware of the power of Facebook and establish a presence there.  Facebook recently announced several visionary and aggressive initiatives that are combining the social net with the existing Web.  What is the big initiative?  Full support of Open Graph.  Every business owner should look at using these tools on their website, especially if you have a B to C type business.

What is Open Graph?  Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API.  The three aspects of this platform (the Facebook API, RDF-Based markup and plugins), bring together an almost realized vision of a fully social, personalized and semantic Web.  While the developer API and Facebook's support of semantic markup will appeal to developers, Facebook has made Open Graph easily accessible through plugins.  Social plugins provided by facebook enable your site to create more personal, social experiences for visitors with just one line of HTML.  If you use these plugins, you should inform your site visitors that Facebook social plugins are in use.  Coupled with the RDF-based markup, these plugins will be smarter and richer.

The new Faceook API is awesome, with easy to access user information, such as profile data, friends, etc.  For example, our company profile information can be accessed like this: http://graph.facebook.com/XstremeMedia.   The authentication is based on a protocol that makes it simple to connect but also to prompt for permissions to access user information. 

Highlights of Facebook Social Plugins

  • Like Button - The Like button lest users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click.  The code that you need to integrate is fro an iframe and can be placed very easily.  You can customize how the link to the Liked site appears on ta user's FAcebook profile by adding meta data for title, site name and even an image.
  • Activity Feed - The Activity Feed plugin shows users what their friends are doing on your website through Likes and comments.  If a user is logged into Facebook the plugin will automatically be personalized to highlight content from their friends.  The plugin is available via a simple iframe code that can be placed on a Web page.
  • Recommendations - The Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site that they might like.  To generate the recommendations, the plugin considers all the social interactions with URL's from your site.  For logged-in Facebook users, the plugin will give preference to and highlight objects their friends have interacted with.  You specify a site for which to show recommendations.
  • Like Box - The LikeBox enables users to Like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly on your website.  In addition to giving Facebook Page owners the ability to attract and gain Likes directly from their website, users can see how many others already Like the page and which of thier friends Like it too.  Users can also read recent posts from the page and Like the page without needing to visit Facebook.  You are able to specify the height and width, number of connections, and choose whether or not to display the profile stream for the public.
  • Login with Faces - It makes sense that users are more likely to sign up for your site if they know that their friends of colleagues have done so already.  The Login with Faces plugin shows profile pictures of the user's friends that have already signed up for your site.  Site owners can specify the maximum number of rows of faces to display along with a login button.
  • Comments - The Comments Box easily enables your users to comment on your site's content - whether it's for a Web page, article, photo or other piece of content.  Then the user can share the comment on Facebook on their Wall and in their freinds' streams.
  • Live Stream - The Live Stream plugin lets website or application visitors share activity and comments in real time.  The Live Stream Box works best when you are running a real-time event; like live streaming video for concerts, speeches or web-casts, live Web chats, webinars, etc.