This session is moderated by Anne Kennedy.
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D. APR
She started off saying she wants to talk more about podcasting, saying podcasting is not just a fad. She showed slides of figures to prove it is not a fad. Feedster is managing about 6,000 podcasts (podcasts with more then 5 subscribers are included in this study). She explains that podcasting is not just radio. A Detroit band named The Transfer is using it. Sunspot is an other band that is using it to promote. Product promotion is an other use of podcasting, Henkel used it to promote its duck tape. Audio books, EarthCore launched on March 24, with weekly episodes, after 5 weeks over 1,400 RSS feed subscribers. Audio Obit, blog of death is written for obituaries. E-learning is using it as well, some schools provide lectures for download. Social networking is into podcasting as well, "SparkCasting". Audio Guides, PodGuides.net - for travelers. Business applications are using it (competitive intelligence, analyst briefings, corporate breaking news).
Where is the money in podcasting? Money in content, ads, production, publishing, hosting, promotion, searching, catching, and listening.
Success is about imagination and implementation. She shows examples of sites using it...She explains how its important to give multiple avenues to locate the podcasts on the topics you offer (through podcast landing pages, linked through related articles and side navigation - hope I got that right).
Recommendations: - Focus on Findalibilty - Use a separate RSS feed - Include keyword rich wrappers - Submit to podcast directories - Provide solid content
She just released a new book named Business Blogs.
Daron Babin, CEO NewGen Broadcasting He is going to talk to us about podcasting from the radio perspective. He said it has been a learning process of what we need, on demand. Podcasting he explains is not new, its been around for a while. Archives of MP3s have been around since 1997. Being able to form and hand them off in an organized fashion is the new part. For WebmasterRadio.FM it was first about broadcasting and then they got feedback that the listeners wanted to listen to it when it is convenient to them. They put 1 to 1.5 hour shows into one podcast, because that is what his listeners want. But for many, short podcasts are best. As soon as he added podcasting they made mistakes. They had to quantify the listeners to the advertisers. On average I have X podcasts getting listened to X times. FeedBurner he said is great at managing those feeds and provides great stats. He said it is very worth the fees. He said podcasting is in such great demand, that it "blew his socks off". A particular program had an average reach during the live broadcast, then they launched the podcast and that show is getting pounded really hard. Bandwidth consumption jumped a 160X before podcasting. Pitfalls; (1) track your feeds, (2) be prepared for bandwidth issues. Podcast.net, podcast pickle, podcasting news, pod feed. You need to set up pinging, to ping all podcasting directories, so the directories know about it. Keep files at 128 bit rate, its average right now.
Daron then ends with the basic principles of SEOing podcast feeds (titles, anchor text, descriptions). Use good audio gear. Excellent job, no notes, no presentation.
Jeremy Zawodny, Technical Yahoo! Yahoo! Inc. RSS Feeds and Search
Why RSS? Traffic - RSS is the ultimate opt in. - Readers fetch content frequently - Syndicate summaries and send clicks back to your site - Add to My Yahoo! button increases subscriber base - More and more starting to subscribe
Why RSS? Ranking - Bloggers love RSS feeds - There are a lot of active bloggers - They link to sites they like - they do this every day - quality links help ranking - Theres a lot of automatic linking going on.
Online Aggregators - Bloglines - My Yahoo
RSS Search - Technorati - Feedster - Bloglines - PubSub
My comments: FYI - RSS search is very useful, but I have seen spamming of these engines grown daily, making it almost unusable.
Feed Finders and Directories - My Yahoo - Syndic8 - Hundreds of others
My Yahoo Content Directory - Cute directory,
Web Search Results - Yahoo highlights sites that have RSS results
RSS Soon to be Baked In - Built in Browsers - Built in the Mail Clients
Pings & the FeedMesh - RSS Pinging makes the Web active - Updates coming in real time - RSS based search vs. web search
What Can You Do Today - Good Content - Provide Feeds and Ping - Add Them to Directories - Use The Add to My Yahoo Button - Read the Publishers Guide to RSS - Use the RSS auto-discovery link
Yahoo!'s Role - One Top Shipping Feeds -- Aggregation -- Publishing -- Pings -- Discovery -- Search
Garrett Rooney, Software Engineer Bloglines
He shows off bloglines, IMO, one of the best blog readers available.
Audience Benefits - Consumers: Provides manageable access to new dynamic content, Web based, free. - Publishers: solutions for building, sustaining and measuring audience, percents distributed of denial of service attacks from desktop readers - Advertisers: new web ad venue, rick historical targeting info
Consumer Adoption - 27% of people in US who are online read blogs, 12% post comments and 7% create - 5% use RSS aggregators - Evenly divided male/female - 70% of blog creators/readers are online for 5+ years
Bloglines Evolution - Focus is on increasing the adoption of the service by mainstream consumers - Free, personalized news in any language - Where does it go from here? -- World Class Blog search -- Multimedia content -- Functional RSS feeds for more than just news -- Richer blogging tools -- More sharing and social networking features
