In this video podcast, Marketing Voices’ Jennifer Jones, and others, talk with industry insiders to find out how combining social media with the art of storytelling in blogs, wikis and podcasts will foster conversations, convert incremental audience, and ultimately increase audiences’ engagement with brands. How can you use social media to create a voice for your brand that resonates beyond your corporate Web site? How can syndication help move your brand’s voice to your audiences, and bring those audiences back to your brand?

Tags: social media, syndication, rss, Marketing Voices, Jennifer Jones, PodTech, brand engagement, corporate messaging, conversation, blogosphere, blogs, engagement, community, marketing mix, incremental audience

In this video podcast, Marketing Voices’ Jennifer Jones, and others, talk with industry insiders to find out how combining social media with the art of storytelling in blogs, wikis and podcasts will foster conversations, convert incremental audience, and ultimately increase audiences’ engagement with brands. How can you use social media to create a voice for your brand that resonates beyond your corporate Web site? How can syndication help move your brand’s voice to your audiences, and bring those audiences back to your brand?

Tags: social media, syndication, rss, Marketing Voices, Jennifer Jones, PodTech, brand engagement, corporate messaging, conversation, blogosphere, blogs, engagement, community, marketing mix, incremental audience

Find out how combining social media with the art of storytelling in blogs, wikis and podcasts will foster conversations, convert incremental audience, and ultimately increase audiences’ engagement with brands. How can you use social media to create a voice for your brand that resonates beyond your corporate Web site? How can syndication help move your brand’s voice to your audiences, and bring those audiences back to your brand?

Tags: social media, syndication, rss, Marketing Voices, Jennifer Jones, PodTech, brand engagement, corporate messaging, conversation, blogosphere, blogs, engagement, community, marketing mix, incremental audience

Robyn Tippins, Yahoo’s community manager for MyBlogLog tells Jennifer Jones just how to make RSS work best.

Putting it on the top right hand side of a Website and following the leads of companies like Apple, IBM, NetFlix and the History Channel is the smartest strategy, says Tippins. Tippins has been a social media expert since 1993 and her work has appeared all over the Web.

Tags: Really Simple Syndication, RSS, Robyn Tippins, MyBlogLog, Jennifer Jones, social media

Tags: iPhone, remix, Randi Jayne, David Prager, Irina Slutsky, Nora McDevitt

Tags: IBM, corporate blogging, podcasting

Unlike Forrester the Diffusion Group is more bullish and recently put out a report that says the podcast user base is currently 4.5 million and will grow to 60 million by 2011.

At PodTech we do podcasting day in and day out and it is clear from the PodTech.net data is that usage is up and users are accepting and listening to podcasts. Independent of the Forrester report I see a bright future for podcasters and podcasting and soon we’ll have some data to report on usage and consumption patterns. Where I do agree with Charlene is that users want quality content and tend to gravitate toward brands that they come to know and trust. That being said expect to see a new breed of brands emerge that earn the trust of users.

Update: I edited out my comments earlier because some folks thought they might be too harsh on Charelene. They were not intended that way. I know Charlene and she is a very solid analyst. I was just surprised and that came across the wrong way.

A couple of podcasting metrics have been floating around recently.

- According to Forrester, 1% of the households surveyed listen to podcasts regularly.

- eMarketer estimates there will be 3 million active podcast listeners by the end of 2006, 7.5 by the end of 2008.

- Diffusion Group estimates there will be 11 million by the end of the year.

- NPR reports to have had 18 million podcasts downloaded since August and eight NPR’s titles are in the iTunes top 100.

- Rick Gervais’s podcast had two million downloads in the first seven weeks of its being available on iTunes. They claims its was the most popular podcast on iTunes during that period.

- Liberated Syndication (libsyn), has three thousand users, hosting over 55,000 episodes and has over a million downloads a day.

- iTunes player currently has about 30 million users. Apple’s Websites have about 36 million unique users a month.

- The US has about 100 million broadband users.

Okay, what does it all mean?

The average of the three US podcast active listener estimates is 5 million. I suspect the large discrepancy in the estimates (between 1 and 11 million) can in large part be explained by differing definitions of “active” or “regular.”

More blog posts here and here

We are working on metrics at PodTech because we are working with advertisers and producers. A new metric centered around attention will be the big story. Steve Gilmor is leading a most important effort in this area and I see podcasting and new media having a metric on this very soon. Stay tuned.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Geoff Ralston defines Web 2.0: “”it’s about *us*! - it’s just there all the time. It’s always with you. It’s with you in your car when you’re walking around. It’s everywhere. It’s always on. It’s part of your life, and in much deeper ways. It’s an evolution that will just keep on getting stronger, deeper, and more!”

With the recent podcast announcement around Podcasting I sat down with Geoff Ralston to talk about not only Web 2.0 but Yahoo 2.0

Enjoy the Podcast.

Transcript:

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Yahoo launches its’ podcast platform. Everyone talks about Web 2.0 but this launch really highlights Yahoo 2.0. Yahoo was all about the Web 1.0. Yahoo is now moving to a new model - same mission providing great results for people. Yahoo has always been doing that, and you have a great loyal base (of users). What is Yahoo 2.0? What’s the main vision behind it? How do you see it? How are you guys looking at this Web 2.0? What is Yahoo 2.0?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
It’s pretty amazing to me and all of us who have been around since the very beginning have seen how quickly how things have and are changing. Web 2.0 is an evolution. The thing that freaks people out is that how quickly the evolution is happening to the Web. We are in the mist of amazing change, and that change is not so simple to describe. It’s not just one thing. This change is epitomized by podcasting, and by the growth of strong communities. These communities are having a strong impact on services throughout the net. I think web 2.0 is interesting because it much more of a dynamic environment. It’s much more interactive. There is content being created by the ‘cloud’ and more content is being created by people using the ‘cloud’. There is all this real time stuff happening, and the web of information is growing and changing. It seems much more faster, and much more in real time. We’re all consuming much more, much faster, and in more real time. Content is being delivered to us fast with things like RSS, Atom, and other syndication methods. It’s coming in much more quickly. It’s happening in real time. It’s more human because it’s just everyday people doing it. It’s about us! It’s much more about us! It’s about trust. It’s about the content that you can trust. It’s about relationships. Relationships with your communities and relationships with the service providers like Yahoo. Web 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 is going to be about creating those relationships – long term relationships- and bringing them with you as you go anywhere. The last thing that I’ll say about Web 2.0 is that “it’s just there all the time”. It’s always with you. It’s with you in your car when you’re walking around. It’s everywhere. It’s always on. It’s part of your life, and in much deeper ways. It’s an evolution that will just keep on getting stronger, deeper, and more!

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
How do you guys handle the massive surge of content generated by users?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
We build some really cool technology, and buy lots of equipment. The good news is that there is Moore’s Law. We (Yahoo) were built to scale. The harder part is on the consumer side. How do we take that tidal wave of information and make it consumable usable interesting helpful to people who are trying to wade their way through it? How to navigate to the content that is relevant to them?

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Everyday users. Not super geeks.

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
Web 0.5 was about super geeks, Web 1.0 was about basic stuff, and Web 2.0 is about connected services to everyone, and that will continue be in the Web 3.0 and 4.0.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
iPod juiced up the podcasting market. Videoblogging down the road, and people are having connected devices. The notion of community is not a ‘walled garden’. Communities are global. How do you look at that from in an open way? How are you looking at this whole movement toward open source and open services?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
The conversation about openness is the key aspect of web 2.0. Even though we moved from the walled garden in web1.o where you could get to wherever you wanted, you were still limited to what you could do, and what services you could use. What’s more those services where standalone, and they didn’t let others inside them. What’s happening (now) is a realization that there will be infinite ways to use the content out there that comprises the web. To really make it useful and to connect people, you need to be open in bringing everything in like Yahoo Search and Yahoo Podcast. For example with Yahoo Podcast, we want to allow users to find any podcast out there. You also have the other end of how can we open up Yahoo so that other developers can create value for users of Yahoo. We have done some things like opening APIs across Yahoo so that 3rd party developers can find cool and interesting ways to add value to users.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Talk about from a user perspective what are you doing in the (Yahoo) 2.0 model to service users. Talk about users and then talk about developers. What does the developer community look like? Are they software developers or media developers? Is a 15 year old kid a developer? Look at podcasting someone can consume a podcast and they share it and build it into their community.

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
Users in web 2.0 want to make their life simpler and easier, but what they are going to be concerned with is the experience that they are having. How is it that I’m getting what I want to get, how am I creating those relationships, how am I able to leverage the relationships that I have to get what I want done? When you come to Yahoo service, you have a particular task in mind that you are trying to achieve. Our goal is to allow you to achieve it no matter what device that you’re using – mobile phone, mp3 player, or web browser on a PC. Who is a developer? Whether it’s Yahoo or someone else, it could be a 15 year old or a software company. We are actually indifferent as long as that developer abides by the rules, doesn’t abuse user trust, and creates value in the end. That’s what we’re looking for. What we’ve seen is that it could be someone in a garage or it could be a partnership with a company.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
So you’re looking at it as ‘sand box’. A developer can use your resources?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
It’s not Yahoo doing the discovery (of the service or content). It’s the community doing the discovery. They are doing the choosing, and it is Yahoo building the technology. Providing the capability to enable that community to filtered content, and allow it to float to the top. It’s a search for simplicity and relevancy. We want the right content, the right service, the right task completion so that what you’re looking for floats to the top so that it’s easy to find.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
With podcasting and video – where is that going?

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
Eventually you’ll have a chip implanted in your brain and you’ll have braincasting . Really we have a simple philosophy about all sorts of different content – people should be able to consume it how they want, when they want, and where they want. What’s going to happen is that more and more people will be creating podcasts and videocasts. There will be a democratization of content so that we could do things like podcasts very easy. There is going to be an extraordinary explosion of this type of content. This explosion of production values and the value the content creates. It will all be brought up in the “ether” and it will grow and grow. We will build really interesting ways for people to make their choices to navigation through all that “stuff” that really works for them -from mom’s videocast to the newest coolest technology interview in the world.

John Furrier, Founder PodTech:
Can you give a final parting comment to users and developers.

Geoff Ralston, Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer:
For users, welcome to the world of knowledge information and choice - it’s a great world for you and I hope that you love it. For developers, listen to what was said because users have choice so create an experience that they can chose.

Web 2.0Yahoo Podcast InfoTalk PodTech.net PodTechInfoTalk Silicon Valley Technology Podcast John Furrier InfoTalk podcast shows PodTech.net

IBM’s blogging strategy and podcasting views are a major shift in corporate culture and IBM is pioneering new ground that will certainly change peoples lives. IBM is showing the way and I’m sure people will follow. Very impressive.

Correction: At the end of the podcast I mention that Ben and Christopher are senior executives of IBM. Ben and Christopher are managers that head up the blogging and podcasting initiative. Internally within IBM the word senior executives means a head of a business unit or equivalent. Sorry Ben and Chris for the misquote on the title.

Transcript:

Guests: Ben Edwards and Christopher Barger - IBM Marketing & Corporate Communication Executives
Host: John Furrier, Founder of PodTech.net

John Furrier – PodTech:
Welcome to the PodTech.net infoTalk series. We’re here at the IBM headquarters with Ben Edwards and Christopher Barger, two IBM communication executives that corporate communications. Welcome to the podcast.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Thanks John.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Thanks very much.

John Furrier – PodTech:
I’m psyched to be here in the IBM studio. It’s very professionally laid out and we’re at corporate headquarters here at IBM. You guys are in charge of the podcasting strategy within IBM. You have a blogging strategy already out there with your employees, communication to the world and amongst themselves. What’s your view on podcasting, how do you guys see this rolling out and what’s your view on that?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think there are two broad areas that we and our colleagues at IBM are interested in podcasting. The first is just to take advantage of the utility and the economics of web distribution / web syndication. A lot of things have happened internally over very large, very expensive teleconferences for example it could be and are going to be transitioned to podcasting. Things like education materials for our very large, very mobile global sales force. That can go into it as well. The second broad area is really for our external audiences to dig into IBM and to listen to the wealth of experts we have here within the company.

John Furrier – PodTech:
IBM is obviously a leader in a lot of areas and considered, on the marketing side, the leader. You guys are looking at podcasting now as a user generated content model within IBM. You guys have been doing big production for years. You have high-end production from annual report to shareholders to, as you mentioned, international events but, podcasting is for everyday people. You have 300,000 employees at IBM some who are blogging, but now podcasting is for everybody. How do you see that kind of trend where the employees can start communicating internally with podcasts and then externally? How are you guys going to handle that?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
We’re in a transition from one mode to another and there’s a lot of communications we do, that we’ll continue to do, that will come out under the old model. For example, if you look at share holder communications we generate as a company a lot of packaged share holder communications that we get out to our inventors on a periodic basis. As our employees become interested in generating their own content, I think the model for us in corporate is to really encourage those who have talent, who have a good voice, and who are going to improve our ability to be able to create markets, make new markets, and win business and to find them and help them set up and enable them to blog and to podcast and to reach out. On the other hand, to try and allow our audiences, externally, to find the things they want to find within IBM. So, to dig into IBM, to dig into our experts, our employees, and to tune in to the voices or the written materials that they are going to find useful and interesting.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
One of the interesting, or more exciting things is that in a large company like IBM you’ve got a lot of experts, you’ve got a lot who are among the best there is at what they do, but it’s easy to get lost in such a large company. This is a way of democratizing everything. I might not know somebody in our lab in Silicon Valley who’s a particular expert on something and have no way of realizing what they were good at, what they are so smart on, and why I should be paying attention to them. By democratizing everything, by giving them this kind of a utility, it gives them a voice to get their expertise out. More importantly for me, it gives me a way of identifying who our experts are, identifying the people that I need to be paying attention to, learning more about my own country, learning more about what we have that is out there that is deserving of my attention.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think also, to Chris’s point, demand really pulls talent in this area. Imagine that a company, where you have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of different feeds of one form or another…it’s the marketplace of listeners, consumers that’s going to promote the interesting ones and then other people can find them. It’s really a way of allowing interesting things to filter up to the top.

John Furrier – PodTech:
It’s almost a classic long tale within IBM. You have all this content from research to recruiting to business unit oriented content that traditionally was in written form or marketing materials. The consumers are now looking at consumption with iPods, MP3 players, and young people too are consuming things via this new format. You guys are in communications and you have been communication with your current podcast now on the share holder’s side. On marketing communications, how do you see that marketplace and that trend happening? Do you see the IBM business units moving more towards this format? You’ve been talking about it internally, what’s been some of the reactions and feedback you’ve gotten?

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
There’s a lot of excitement and I think you’re definitely going to see marketing jumping on this. Even as soon as we put the internal tool out and began to promote this internally, we were getting inundated with people wanting to know how we could do this externally. Wanting to know what makes a good one, how we could best grab the audience, just trying to tap into the expertise that we’ve developed even in the past couple of months. There’s tremendous interest. They’re definitely going to be using it. Now it’s just a question of making sure that it’s done well and that we’re adapting our tactics to the new medium rather than trying to force the old into the medium.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think there’s a general sense that people are struggling a little bit with the old ways of marketing and selling product services and they’ve leapt on this (podcasting) because it can be so compelling and it can be so powerful when done well. As Chris says, there is a lot of interest brewing and bubbling on.

John Furrier – PodTech:
People are learning too. You can get started, people can get their voices heard, it’s a learning environment right now. People are jumping in and publishing and people are subscribing.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Right. There’s a technical barrier so there is some trepidation about how to record, post and create the RSS feed, and so on. I think that we in corporate communications can help with which is why we were talking about the enablement model.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think there’s an excitement about this too, going back to the previous point, I think there’s a realization that old techniques aren’t working so much anymore. There’s definitely a shift, especially in the younger generation, the way you reach them, the way they will listen to you. There’s a realization among…generally among corporate communications that the old ways aren’t working anymore as well as they used to. Everyone understands the potential of this if done well. That’s why they are leaping on it so fast… the realization that something different and new needs to be done.

John Furrier – PodTech:
It’s a different model too in terms of what I am seeing with my podcasts and talking to other folks with the podcast. It’s really influence marketing because, with blogging and now podcasting, transparency and truth really is a big driver in how things react and distribute within the blogosphere. Podcasting is obviously the brother/sister of blogging, but really it is about providing an influence so a product manager to a CEO can podcast their information and influence the young generation of people consuming. Now within IBM that’s a big shift from how they were doing things before. So it really is about adapting. What hurdles do you see and what challenges are you guys looking at in terms of …this is happening very fast, you guys are doing it, you’re communicating about podcasting. In your mind, as communication pros, what are those next hurdles for you?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Well, part of it is technical. We want to help with some pilot projects inside the company. You mentioned shareholder communications podcast. That’s generated as much if not more excitement inside IBM than outside. When people listen to it and think for themselves about the possibility of deploying what you call this influence on marketing model. In other words, really what you are facing is a consumer who really has almost infinite choice of what he or she listens to, watches, or reads. That’s just a proliferation of media. You need to make the actual content of your communications interesting and appealing. You have to give value inside the content. It’s very fortunate that we have this huge resource of experts in all sorts of different fields in IBM that we can tap into and get their voices out.

John Furrier – PodTech:
You have a ton of content. You have pros from on the technical side also on the business side as well. Now all of those are being unleashed very quickly so podcasting can happen very quickly. Within the blogosphere on the internet everyone’s connected the velocity of information travels so fast so it’s a galvanizing of a community. What I’m seeing with podcasting is: when someone publishes their voice, like Chris said a researcher could be in Silicon Valley, he’s reaching out on a virtual basis and actually creating a virtual community of “like minds”. It really is turning out to be a very interesting influence, not so much marketing, but community. How is this different? Community models within IBM were mainly the website. This is kind of new. It’s one of those things where you look at it and you say, “How do we harness it or do we stay away from it?” You guys are actually going into it.

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Yes. I think the website actually plays a big role. We already have those communities in our various families or sites on IBM.com. We can build that sense of community out further using podcasting and using blogging…getting people interacting, join the conversation, listen to our experts.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
The best part of it is, to the point that John was making about the change, is until recently the communities have been preconditioned, preset. This is a way to bring everything from the bottom up. The communities create themselves. A person doesn’t have to necessarily go sign up for a specific community or go become part of anything specific anymore. He or she can just look and see who’s blogging, who’s podcasting on the subjects that matter to them that they are interested in, that they have expertise in. Those communities form on their own and they form from the bottom up. That’s really where the shift is happening.

John Furrier – PodTech:
It’s a user generated content model but it’s not just for individuals. It’s for corporations because they have individuals. So it’s a combination of bottom up and top down coming together.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
Right. That’s a big shift for a lot of companies to realize that you can let go of the control of this and allow the bottom up to work. There is a level of trust of your employees that has to come into play here. That’s a bit of a culture shift.

John Furrier – PodTech:
You guys have mentioned previously when we were talking earlier about self-governance. Within your blogging policy that you have, in essence there is a lot of trust and that is a big part of transparency and truth, and trust. Don’t you see the self-governance becoming a big model? Has that been a big part of why blogging has been successful at IBM? There’s almost like there’s a self governance built in. You guys don’t have a command and control blogging strategy. You have an open and trustful strategy. Explain how that’s working with the folks out there.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
It works very well and you are absolutely right that the communities govern themselves, that they police themselves. One of the big concerns that was originally brought up was if conversations start going in the wrong direction, what if somebody says something bad. And you find that it’s like an old fashion town meeting, the first time the town loony gets up everyone gives him the microphone and pays there attention, and after he says a few crazy things everyone just rolls there eyes and they don’t pay him any attention anymore. But the smart ones, the ones that are well articulated with well thought out ideas, criticism, or whatever - those are the ones that people flock to. The idea to just let go and trust the community to weed itself and to identify who its leaders are that has been real interesting for me to watch and to see it happening.

John Furrier – PodTech:
I think that is a huge success and think that is the model. A final question for you both if you could both answer that would be great. In the next five years what is your prediction, take your IBM hat off, in communications what is going to be different about our world in five years?

Ben Edwards – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
We are really in a lot of turmoil at the moment, we are in transition from on world to another and we don’t know what that new world looks like yet. We have a sense of it, the self-governance, user generated content, the web itself is evolving very quickly, with read/write web or Web 2.0 it is very real, very alive, and the web is information, generation platform. By itself, it’s fascinating to watch and it’s happening incredibly rapidly. To hazard a guess, I am interested in a whole bunch of areas in my field of communications, in the corporate side, there is also in the media side, and what happens to the main stream media and how do they adjust to blogging to podcasting. I think that we have clearly established a direction; in terms of adoption of these new media, new forms of production and consumption of communication and content, I think, you’re going to find the generation gap widening. You see that already. You really have layers of practice, and layers of use and there are some people that are tuning into some things and other people are tuning into others and it is sometimes difficult to bridge the divide. I think that is going to widen, actually.

Christopher Barger – IBM Marketing / Corporate Communication Executive:
I think that you will continue to see the idea of user generated content is only going to get bigger. To Ben’s point, about the main stream media, I think that’s the big adjustment that they’re going to have to make is to understand that everybody has a microphone and everybody can fact check them. They’re going have to adjust that everybody is a player now. And that they have, instead of fifteen or twenty competitors, they got a hundred million competitors. On the technology side I am particular excited about video-casting, vidcasting, or vodcasting, whatever you want to call it. I think that especially as that younger generation starts to come up that is where, they may not have, we were talking about this earlier, they may not have the attention span to listen to 15 minuets they may decide, “I’m used to songs, I want five minuet bursts of information and that is that.” If you add video to it, you double the attention span. I am excited about were that is going to go. I think that’s really going to be a big opportunity for both corporations and for the private side.

John Furrier – PodTech:
We’re here with Ben Edwards and Christopher Barger, who head up the blogging and podcasting strategy. Thanks so much for the podcast. Great predictions talking about your podcasting strategy, how you guys are evolving, very successful blogging strategy. Thanks so much for the podcast.

IBM PodcastIBM InfoTalk PodTech.net PodTechTechnology Podcast Podcasting Strategy Technology Podcast John Furrier InfoTalk podcast shows PodTech.net