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I meant to have this out to you on Wednesday last week after I recorded it, since the prior evening I attended a Third Tuesday meet-up in Toronto, which was the inspiration for the podcast. However, you see, I bought a new macbook pro.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my new mac, but this is my first mac and since I recorded the podcast on the mac there was a BIG learning curve to figure out how to get it ready for publication on this blog. As you will hear, it’s not quite right, but the message is definitely clear enough to enjoy. Apologies for the change in volume and odd shuffling noises.

How Do You Measure Social Media?

This Third Tuesday meet-up was a good one, the topic being - How do we measure social media? - with three expert panelists (Katie Paine, Marshall Sponder and Marcel Lebrun) taking questions from the audience made up of mostly PR and communications professionals, and related consultants and small business owners.

The idea of measuring the impact of social media is akin to measuring the effect of branding. Social media, much like branding, is often difficult to directly correlate with a business outcome, despite it obviously having a big impact on business results. I won’t go into here since I do so in some depth in the podcast, so have a listen!

If you are a blogger, a business owner or a person interested in the business side of social media, you will enjoy this rambling podcast.

Thanks to Joseph Thornley and his crew for putting on a great meet-up.

Show Notes

1. Introduction to the Third Tuesday event
2. What we mean when talking about measuring social media
3. What this means for bloggers
4. Why it’s the conversation that matters most, not the influencer
5. No industry wide standards for measuring social media are available
6. Not many people are actively measuring, only monitoring
7. There is an opportunity to provide a database of influential sites ranked by social media analysis
8. Use social media to assess how your competition is perceived and use that information to compete
9. Consulting firms providing social media data mining services
10. What changes to ad budget spending at companies means for bloggers
11. Why being an influencer in any niche is so important

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]

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With all the talk of doing a product launch online thanks to Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 2.0 release, I thought I should talk a little bit about how blogging can be used to launch a product based on my experiences.

My list was built off the back of this blog and I have conducted a product launch process a couple of times. In this audio I go through some of the techniques, the mistakes and the successes I have experienced over my three years as a blogger, which led to the eventual successful launch of an information product, which I made over $150,000 from.

If you are thinking of doing a product launch online, or a relaunch or closing down sale or any kind of online promotion, and if you want to know my opinion of Product Launch Formula (and let me be frank - I did NOT plan on buying the product at first because I didn’t think I needed it), then this is a podcast you have to listen to.

There’s lots of good content in this audio and some behinds the scenes stuff too, plus at the end I’m offering a special bonus. You will just have to listen to the audio to find out what it is (okay, here’s a clue - the bonus includes a free one of these, the same MP3 player I use - the iRiver S10).

Note: To get the bonus you have to take action on Thursday 27th of March 2008 at 2PM EST (USA time) when Product Launch Formula 2.0 is released for 24 hours only, so listen to this audio before that date or you miss out!

Show Notes

1. How to build email lists
2. How I created my first list of 3,000 subscribers using blogging
3. Some key lessons from Jeff Walker about using surveys before releasing a product
4. The first million dollar launch day
5. The real reason I bought Product Launch Formula (nothing to do with the content itself)
6. Jeff teaches me the importance of list segmentation
7. What I did in the lead-up to my own launch
8. How I attracted top affiliates to my launch
9. The real reason you do a launch - to build a list (so you CAN start with no list and still succeed)
10. Who should and should not invest in products like product launch formula
11. A special bonus from me if you decide to join PLF 2.0

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 42 Minutes - 10 MB]

******

Success with No List and No Affiliates?

If you are still worried about conducting a launch without an email list, watch the latest free video from Jeff about the guy who started with no list, no web site and no joint venture partners and did over $7,000 in sales - impressive stuff!

Here’s the video - No List, No Web Site, No JV Partners

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Yesterday I was sitting at my computer facing a few too many emails and a rather large list of things to do and I could already feel my head start to hurt.

So what did I do? - I went to the park!

I decided if I was going to continue working I would probably be in considerable head pain by the end of the day, so I dropped everything and went to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at Mt-Cootha and hung out with the birds.

I had my iRiver MP3 player with me and was listening to some podcasts, which created a desire to make one of my own impromptu rambling podcasts. My little iRiver has a built-in microphone, so I was itching to see how good it was - and wow, I’m impressed. The audio quality is not bad I’m sure you will agree, though I hope you like the sound of birds in the background :-).

The podcast is a short one about a whole range of Internet business topics starting with social marketing, moving on to email lists and then finishing with a little note on keeping perspective.

Show Notes

1. Yaro talks about the recent Rich Schefren Attention Doctrine and StomperSMARTS launches
2. A look at how the Internet marketing focus is shifting to social marketing
3. How Yaro is using email lists with his blog to make money
4. Why it is important to focus on intrinsic values and not just money

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 19 Minutes - 5 MB]

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Steve Iser has been online since he was 9 years old. Now he’s 21 and makes money using social media sites like MySpace and Facebook as marketing tools to promote products.

I called Steve up to do an interview after I finished reading and listening to his Ready.Aim.Wired information product, which teaches how to use social marketing sites to drive leads, build a list and make sales. The book is solid and presents a system that I can actually see working in MySpace because it uses the same language and “model of interaction” as Steve calls it, to establish relationships.

Just like with email marketing or any form of online marketing, you have to build relationships in order to get a positive result and if you are using sites like MySpace to do so, then you have to use the same language and community behavior. Ready.Aim.Wired is a great introduction to how to execute this concept based on what Steve has done in the past.

In the call I wanted Steve to break things done for us because I still didn’t quite understand how his methods work. Steve explained things really well in this interview, so I expect after listening you will have a solid grasp of what it takes to successfully market using social networking sites. There’s a lot more to it than just broadcasting messages to as many people as you can - spamming MySpace, not surprisingly, won’t work.

Here is a breakdown of Steve talked about in the interview. I think you will enjoy the podcast, so make sure you slot in half an hour on your drive to work or when you go walking to have a listen.

Show Notes

1. How Steve first made money on the Internet
2. Why Steve entered into social media marketing
3. How to use MySpace as a direct response marketing tool
4. The importance of natural communication in a social networking site
5. Steve’s model of interaction for attracting targeted friends (leads) from MySpace
6. Outsourcing your MySpace marketing
7. Facebook as a marketing tool
8. What Steve is currently working on

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 37 Minutes - 9 MB]

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Download the MP3 [ 41 Minutes - 9 MB]

It’s time for podcast episode #40. It’s hard to believe I started podcasting more than two years ago now!

This episode features myself and Darren Rowse and our topic of discussion is blog design. Darren talked about his recent Problogger redesign and how he worked with his designer, Ben Bleikamp. Then we talked about the different professional blog designers currently available (listed below) and how you should work with a designer to minimize the risk of problems.

We went on to discuss how bloggers who have limited financial budgets can go about sourcing a unique blog look, including modifying free themes and why you would want to have a custom design for your blog. We also talked about what a new design can do for you in terms of blog traffic, demonstrating your professionalism and infusing yourself with new energy if you are feeling blogger burn out.

Here’s a list of the resources mentioned in the podcast.

Blog Designers

• The Blog Studio
• Chris Pearson [ pearsonified ]
• Ben Bleikamp
• Nate Whitehill [ Unique Blog Designs ]
• Michael Pollock [ Solostream ]
• Phil Hartle

Freelance Sites

• DesignOutpost.com
• Elance.com
• Guru.com
• Scriptlance.com
• Rentacoder.com

Darren’s Logo Designer

• Mike Rohde [ Makalumedia.com ]

Free WordPress Themes

• http://themes.wordpress.net/

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