Showstoppers Webinar on Social Media, Blogging and Podcasting

Yesterday's ShowStoppers Webinar, "How to Engage Bloggers & Podcasters to Boost Buzz and Generate Coverage" was a success with over 159 signed up, and more than 90 attendees. Maybe some folks got stuck in traffic as it started at 11AM EST, but 8AM on the West coast. Our host was a long time colleague, Steve Leon, cofounder, partner and producer of the fabulous ShowStoppers press events.

There are always lessons learned when woking with new technologies. This was one of my first webinars. I really enjoyed the process, and look forward to even better future sessions. We used GoToMeeting (http://www.citrixonline.com/) and had several dress rehearsals. This was key, because the first time, I learned that the entire webinar needed to be very conversational. We had a PowerPoint as a guideline for the participants, but the goal became not to read from it. This gave us plenty of time in advance to come up with questions for Steve our host, and to set up the function for participants to email in questions. Lena West, one of the speakers, was a great guide as she has set up many shadowblogs and crisis PR blogs for major clients.

Here's another tip ... It's really important to silence all of your telephones prior to doing a webinar. I use Vonage, so I went online and disconnected the call waiting function, and voicemails. I put a do not disturb sign on my door, and closed all windows. Don't use a mobile telephone, or the speaker function on your direct land line. This is important in our case, as the webinar was recorded, thanks Lena West, who is a columnist and blogger for Entrepreneur Magazine and an Infoworld blogger. She is also CEO of XynoMedia, a New York-based social media strategy firm, serving high-growth companies and PR firms.

Let's go back to the basics here and review the inportance of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing. SEO is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. A site’s ranking in a search is essential for directing more traffic to the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. It requires:
•Participation
•Openness, transparency and disclosure
•Conversation
•Community Driven
•Facilitation (facilitating conversations that are already happening online)

That said, our webinar focused on just a couple of the tools that are used in social media marketing -- blogging and podcasting. Lena had some great tips for PR professionals insofar as pitching bloggers -- lessons I too have learned in a recent blog and podcast tour for a diet book. KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. One paragraph, links to the press releases, or website info. Lena made the point, fiercely... if she wants more info, and is interested in covering your pitch, she will contact you. Period. Do not send attachments, long press releases, or long anything, for that matter. Bloggers and podcasters are really busy. And as my associate Mike Keesling said, who used to work at a news station in Hawaii, he got hundreds of pitches per day and only had time to read the headline (subject in email) and a couple of concise sentenses. So if you cannot consolidate your email pitches into a couiple of sentences, then you are hosed.

If you want to read more tips, I strongly suggest that you download Lena's little eBook of invaluable info on pitching bloggers and podcasters without ticking them off. Go to
http://www.xynoMedia.com/showstoppers to download your copy of The Blogosphere Cluebook: How PR Agents & Publicists Can Effectively Engage Blogosphere Influencers Instead of Ticking Them Off by Lena West.

Enjoy.

Sources:
PowerPoint: http://www.showstoppers.com/webinar/bloggersandpodcasters.ppt
The Webinar: http://www.showstoppers.com/webinar/bandp.mp3

The Value of Podcasting and Online Radio/TV

I mentioned these numbers in my last blog, but some info is worth repeating. According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this.Internet radio has been around for awhile. One of our clients, Big Media USA, Inc. , provides this service. It's not music, it's information.

Just think of them as the Time Warner of the Internet -- with a number of stations that have a number of channels on topics such as business, health, sports, spiritual, etc. In fact, very soon I am going to be hosting a new channel there on social media marketing.

The value here is that Big Media has been around awhile, so their site has allot of content on it, and Google spiders their site daily. This is great, because if you have a radio or podcast show on BMUSA, and your key words are in the copy of your show promo, or in a press release that BMUSA or you put out, you will be spidered too.Podcasts are easy for others to listen to or watch online 24/7.

Plus the content is great to have transcribed for use elsewhere via social media marketing -- in press releases, online articles, and even in forum posts -- all excellent ways to optimize your website for better rankings by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, etc. Then if someone is seeking information open something, they may come to your podcast. That's why it's important to keep them short, and get the key messages about you and your products or services into the first five minutes or less as you can.