I Want to Hear Your Ads…Please
Each week, I listen to approximately four to ten individual podcasts per week. If you’re not familiar with the term, a podcast is a mash up of the words “iPods” and “broadcast.”
In a previous post, I blogged about Podcasting Your Brand Message. Check it out. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Basically, podcasts are highly specialized radio shows that people subscribe to on their computers. You can listen to podcasts on an iPod, burn it to a CD for the car, or just listen on the computer. Many podcasts are highly specialized, serving a niche audience. Check out the massive variety of shows at Podcast Alley.
And yet, I am amazed at how few podcasts include any advertising. Believe it or not, I want to hear ads for products that are relevant and important to me. I actually want to know more about…
New Technology Podcast
My favorite tech podcast is CNet’s Buzz Out Loud. Although the “podcast of indeterminate length” runs a little long, it is always interesting, always educational, and…always about new technology. The people who are listening to a one hour plus podcast about cutting-edge tech are probably receptive to…I dunno…an ad for a website that sells new technology at a great price.
Screenwriting Podcast
The absolute best podcast on screenwriting is called “On the Page.” Each week, Pilar Alessandra offers smart, actionable advice to aspiring screenwriters. As a writer, I am also an avid reader, so I would like to know if an interesting new writing book becomes available. Yes, it would be very smart to advertise a the right book on a targeted podcast, especially if the show discusses topics relevant to writers.
These are just two examples of podcasts perfect for highly targeted advertising. It’s a lot like speciality magazine advertising.
That is, when I subscribe to Popular Photography magazine, I expect to see ads for photo equipment, services, and other cool photo stuff. I spend as much time drooling at the ads as I do on the reviews. Sometimes more.
Podcasts offer you an opportunity to connect your product with people who are passionate about the category.
With tough times ahead, advertisers want unique opportunities to connect with their customers. Many niche podcasts have a small staff, but a large, dedicated following.
This means a podcaster probably doesn’t have a sales force to come and woo your ad dollars. The Internet is reversing that model, and now you are going to have to find them.
The payoff could be huge for your brand. Instead of an apathetic audience, you could be tapping into passionate, motivated audience eager to buy your product or service.
In the meantime, I’ll just be listening to ad-free podcasts…and hearing nothing about your brand.
Freemium – A Net Business Model
Free is great, isn’t it? The Net is packed with free stuff.
Need a free dictionary? Use Dictionary.com. Need some free music? Listen to Pandora. Want some free news? Try CNN.com. Free classifieds? Try craigslist.com. Free phone calls? Dial Skype. It’s all free. I should know, I use all of these sites and services.
And, insanely enough, many applications are free. Years ago, you had to pay for word processing, spreadsheets, and databases. Now, you can get pretty powerful software, all for free.
As I noted in an earlier blog, free isn’t really free. Someone is paying for it in the hopes of earning money. While most of these applications and resources will remain free, there are a few that are starting to turn a profit on the “freemium” model.
That is, it’s free, but to unlock powerful premium features, you gotta pay. Hence, the techronym freemium.
Freemium in My Life
Here are some examples of free and freemium services that I use:
Google Docs:
Free productivity software. Good stuff. I use it a lot. All free, until I want to roll it out enterprise wide to my coworkers or employees.
And if you use GMail, you may eventually run out of space. Yup, look at the bottom of the GMail window, and you will see a little “% used” message. After you exceed your GMail limit, you may be prompted to upgrade to a paid Gmail account.
Zoho Docs:
Similar to Google Docs, Zoho is a productivity software suite. Actually much broader and more powerful than Google docs, but not as well known.
Similarly, you can do a lot with Zoho, but if you want more features and space, you pay a Freemium price. I’ve been impressed with Zoho’s software suite and may tap into a few of their premium features.
Flickr:
A photo sharing social network. I keep all my photos here. And now, with a pro account, I have greater control over my photo sets and I can upload videos.
Someone gave me a freemium Pro Account for my birthday and now I am addicted to it.
Evernote:
A free to use idea-and-stuff capture system. (It’s hard to explain. Check it out.)
A freemium account unlocks more space and flexibility in Evernote and some cool digital camera features.
WordPress Premium:
This very blog is based on free WordPress software. The free version allows me to blog on their platform or even install it on my own web server.
But a premium version unlocks some extra features and hosting options.
Will Freemium Work?
Will the freemium business model work? Will people pay for stuff that they are used to getting for free?
Let’s hope that the added features are an incentive to get people to shell out a few bucks. Because eventually, some of these programmers and content creators are going to want to get paid…they have to pay the rent and utilities too.
For now, most everything on the Net is free and freemium features may help to keep it that way.
In the future, freemium features are going to matter a lot. This will be the way that many sites capture revenue…and the way they attract advertisers and partners. (For example, “how many people are registered for the free service vs the freemium services?”)
For more on freemiums, check out:
- Is Freemium Really the Way to Go?
- The freemium business model: giving away pays
- The Freemium Business Model: Anything There for the Media?
And, as always, a visit to my personal website at buddyscalera.com is still free
Free…Me
A true Brand-You story.
Back when I’d graduated college, the job market was pretty tight. Not as tight as now, but jobs were scarce for communications majors.
I was working as an editor and writer, but I really wanted to get a job in public relations. Unfortunately, I had nothing on resume that showed PR experience, so I wasn’t getting called for interviews.
A friend told about a PR event she ran for a hospital. It sounded good, so I asked if I could borrow the idea.
I visited my local town rec center and offered to plan a “Summer Cycle Safety” event for kids in town. Something to teach the kiddies the rules of the road and encourage them to wear helmets ‘n’ stuff. I wasn’t looking for any money; just a volunteer project for experience.
They liked the idea (and my fee), and agreed to let me organize the event. Got a local bike shop to donate a helmet. Found a local sports-medicine physician to talk about bike injuries. Involved the police department, who brought safety literature. Some refreshments, a few signs, and we had an event.
With the Summer Cycle Safety event, I wrote a press release, which ran in the town paper. And I braced myself for the hundreds of people who would come streaming to the event. (Actually 25 people showed up, but who’s counting?)
Fortunately one reporter/photographer showed up, took a few shots, and we got a small article and photo in the town paper. But that was all I needed. I finally had something for my resume!
The very next PR job I applied for included my freshly updated portfolio. They called me. And I got the job.
I gave a little of me — for free — and it paid off.
Newspapers: Throw a Lifeline to Your Newsroom
It’s not just the Internet that is killing newspapers. Newspapers are killing themselves. As the newspaper dies, it struggles to remain profitable…causing an inevitable death spiral.
Right now, newspapers could hold on longer if they could throw a lifeline to their local news reporters. Instead, to save money, newspapers are buying content from news wires. Unfortunately most people can get the same articles for free online. Making me pay for something that I can get for free isn’t really a sustainable business model.
Let me give you an example with my own daily newspaper The Record. The Record has always been part of my life, and I do not want to see it go out of business.
But here’s how the content from today’s (March 23. 2009) newspaper breaks down. I counted each homegrown article and each wire story article on every page. The newspaper was very thin today (46 pages), so it was pretty easy.
My apologies for the lame graphic. I input all the data into a Zoho.com spreadsheet. It may give advanced chart design features, but I just couldn’t figure it out. I felt it was more important to share the data, which is embedded in this graph. Feel free to utilize the info in the Zoho chart or spreadsheet.
This is a visual representation of how much homegrown content (56 articles) versus news-wire content (57 articles) is featured in today’s paper. That’s a 50-50 split of original content versus syndicated content.
It’s pretty obvious from the graph that the A section is mostly pulled from sources that I can get for free…and in real time. That’s just not a good way to keep readers. The A section is all available instantly on Google News.
Moving to the B section, things start to change. In the Local section, MOST of the news is relevant to me, based on region. The paper uses some syndicated sources to enhance the local news.
Over in section C, we see more wire content popping up. This is the Entertainment section, so we have a mix of regional stories and bunch of syndicated stuff that I can get just about anywhere.
Finally over in section D, we’re in Sports and Classifieds. All of the Classifieds are local, but none of it requires a reporter.
This isn’t exclusive to my local newspaper. As you read your daily newspaper, take notice of who is writing it. If it says “staff writer” it’s written in house. But if it says “Associated Press” then you can get that article (or one just like it) from Internet news sources.
Ironically, I was planning to write this post, and in today’s Record they printed a letter from a reader who wants more local news reporting.
Saving newspapers will require more than recycling wire stories. It’s about covering local events that matter to readers. And that means throwing a lifeline to the newsroom and paying reporters to create a product that people want to buy.
Don’t Sue Me, I’m Just a Blogger
Some day, I may write a scathing, irony-laced blog posting that draws the ire and fury of some individual or business. It’s not likely, mind you, but it could happen.
Maybe I need MediaGuard blog insurance, which is now being offered by Chubb Specialty Insurance. Nope, I’m not making this up. This, my dear readers, is a sign of modern times.
Y’see, community generated content doesn’t have a big corporate sponsor backing it up. So if a politician is angry at how an article was written, there are ways to address those concerns. The political party can threaten to pull their advertising from a newspaper…but that’s not really going to scare a blogger. Or they can threaten to sue the media organization.
Right now, here in North Jersey, we’re watching a blog-saga unfold in real time, as a prominent political figure is suing a citizen for things that she’s written in her blog. Check out: Free speech, thin skin and cyberspace and 80 take speech fight to streets from our daily newspaper, the Record.
In the case of a newspaper or media outlet, they may have lawyers on staff. If not, there are plenty of corporate lawyers in the yellow pages. Media moguls have a budget and can fight a lawsuit, if they so choose.
But what if you blogged something that someone didn’t like? Do you have the funds to defend yourself against a lawsuit?
Which, of course, brings us to our MediaGuard insurance.
Nowadays, bloggers are no longer just technogeeks who have the ability to understand web development. Nope, blogging takes little technical ability to get started. As a result, there are lots of really influential and important blogs out there that generate lots of traffic and attention. Blogs like the Huffington Post and Perez Hilton get more traffic than some newspapers have readers.
A mention on one of those sites…good or bad…can have a effect on someone’s career. And, of course, that alone could make someone want to sue them. Or you.
Blogger insurance. It sounds funny today, but will you need it tomorrow?
Twitter for Marketers – A Brief Intro
As Twitter has grown in popularity, questions about how, why, and when to use it have skyrocketed. In advertising/marketing agencies, there is a responsibility (and pressure) to use new technology for branding.
According to Nielsen, Twitter is growing really, really, really, really fast. So, if you’re a marketer, you’re probably trying to figure out how to grab the tail of this comet.
For starters, you need to have something to say. I’m not kidding here. If you have nothing to say on a regular basis, don’t try to jump into the conversation.
Twitter is all about content. Messages, words, and insights. It’s fast, short, and fresh. If you or your brand doesn’t have something to share daily, you may want to sit out the Twitter craze. (Then again, most brands and categories have SOME industry news, so talk to your staff writer about info opportunities.)
Twitter content is legendarily short. Each message can run as long as 140 characters. Yes, you read that right, Tweets (a cute name for a Twitter post) are only 140 characters or less, including spaces, URLs, and line breaks.
(That paragraph actually ran 187 characters. Too much for a Tweet!)
There are plenty of tips and tricks for working within the constraints, community, and technology supporting Twitter. It’s a fun challenge for marketers, especially as the new opinion leaders begin to carve out their turf in this brave new technical world.
Future blogs will touch on how to leverage Twitter and some good examples of people who self promote using this “micro blogging” technology.
In the meantime, check out how I use my Twitter account to share ideas about content, marketing and technology at Marketing Buddy.
My First Self-Published eBook for Kindle
I’ve officially entered the eBook age. As an author, I have published my first eBook for the Kindle. Gimme a big “whoo hoo!”
To explore the technology, I wanted to get something up there on the Kindle store. So I took the complete scripts for my comic book series “7 Days to Fame,” reformatted it, created a Kindle account, and published it on Amazon.com.
7 Days to Fame eBook cover
Check out my 7 Days to Fame – The Complete Scripts
To be honest, it wasn’t very hard to reformat for the Kindle. Mostly it just came down to reformatting for the smaller screen and checking for bad line breaks and hiccups in the code. Just a few hours of work and now it’s done.
This isn’t the first time I was part of an eBook. There’s a transcript of a podcast interview that I did a few years ago with Paula Berinstein called Writing Comic Books: A Writing Show Interview
But for me, this is much more fun, since I actually did the reformatting myself and published it. It’s…addictive.
Week 2 with Kindle 2
It’s week two or so with the new Kindle 2. Despite being an extremely easy device to use, I still found it took me time to become really comfortable with it. Like most people who saw it for the first time, I was reaching for the screen, since it really looked like it would be perfect for a touch-based interface. Maybe next version.
Over the first few days, I handled it gingerly. It was transported carefully in the original box, since I hadn’t opted to buy one of the many available cases.
Then, after a while, I started to just treat it like another part of my collection. Dropped it in the pocket of my heavy winter coat, and off I went. And you know what? It survived. Nice. The Kindle 2 is proving to be a tough, road-worthy companion.
Right now, I primarily subscribe to the New York Times daily and one of my favorite blogs, which is Read Write Web. And despite a few gripes about navigating articles, I’m really impressed with K2. Durable, fast, convenient. So far, so good.
Been exploring a few Kindle-specific blogs too, which is making me feel like I am part of some cool new club for readers. Check out:
Joe Wikert’s Kindleville Blog: All Kindle, All the Time
Presented at Marketing Conference
As a marketer, you have to get out there sometimes and interact at events. I was fortunate to be invited to be a faculty speaker at ExL Pharma’s “The 3rd Pharmaceutical Search Engine Marketing Strategies Conference: Best Practices for Integrating SEM into a New Media Mix.” The conference was held in Princeton, NJ, which is a really inspiring location.
This was a smaller, more intimate conference, which was nice because you really got to engage with the speakers. In a larger room, you can sometimes get overlooked in the conversation. But here, we could really ask questions, get involved, and interact.
During my part of the conference, I discussed interactive content and how it affects search engine optimization and some of the latest SEO techniques. Of course, it was a pharma marketing discussion, so everything I presented was customized to the needs of the audience.
Here’s the actual description of what they had me present:
Demonstrating What Skills are Essential for Building a User-Friendly, Search-Friendly, and Persuasive Site
- How To bring consumers to your site and convert them into customers
- Significant changes/shifts in SEM for Pharma over the past 12 months: What is new right now?
- Competitive SEM research: Search engine marketing does not occur in a vacuum of just your company. Learn what competitive data is out there and how to best leverage the information prior to launching your campaign or to optimize on an existing campaign
During my presentation, I really tried to engage the audience and invited them to participate. I used one of the core decks our agency uses to pitch new SEM business, but modified to to be more educational and less sales oriented. It was a good deal more colorful with larger pictures and fewer words.
There were several really impressive SEM/SEO presentations over those two days. And even though I do this full time, I found myself discovering new techniques and perspectives that helped me improve at my job. That alone was worth the price of admission.
Plus, it was really interesting to see how several micro-bloggers used Twitter to cover the convention for people who could not attend.
I need to offer special thanks to Jason Youner and Shawn O’Hagan for inviting me to participate at their event.
Here’s my bio from the ExL Pharma event. Kind of cool to be called “faculty.” I like that. Makes me wish I had gotten an MBA or something so I could teach at the college level.
iPhone 3.0 Features for 17 Million People
As Apple has rolled out a list of impressive new features for the iPhone operating system (OS), one important detail has been giving only minor coverage.
According to CNet, there are now 17 Million iPhones out there…and 13.7 Million of those were sold in 2008. Um…wow. So, despite a struggling economy, people will find enough money to buy products that are really, really good. Or, in the words of Steve Jobs “insanely great.”
iPhone OS 3.0 great news for marketers & publishers, since iPhones (really just mini computers) are perfect for multimedia communications. Better applications make it easier for people to consume media of their choice. If they want news, they’ve got it. If they want video, it’s all there. And, if they actually want product information, it’s there too.
The iPhone continues to grow as a business and personal device.
Insanely great? An understatement.
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