The Web Strategies Podcast

This past weekend I took a few days to travel to the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina to experience the fall foliage up there. That is truly God’s Country!

While I was away I got a call from a long time colleague of mine – Chandler Turner – who has been a guest more than once on this podcast. He let me know that the presenter of a scheduled seminar on LinkedIn had to cancel because of a family emergency and wanted to know if I could deliver this two hour master class. I knew I could come up with the material of course, but this is a fee based class – the folks attending had to pay to be there.

After considering it for a while I felt convinced I could deliver a value to the attendees even on that short notice… and well I guess I’ll let you be the judge of that … here is the unedited audio track from a video I recorded at the event. I intend to post an edited version with the slides I am referring to in the seminar in a few days here on the podcast companion website.

By the way if you would like to view my profile on linked in you may find it here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomanthonydotcom

LinkedIn - The Crash Course [ 59:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

How can it be two months since I made an entry??  I wanted to give a quick shout out to Rick Party and his very hip site voiceover universe. This is web 2.0 at its very best. Even if you have no clue what a voice over is you will see the business savvy Rick possesses by visiting this site. It is in the context of the Internet, a true social network – with some pretty cool bells and whistles.

While knocking around last night I was watching a voice guy out west doing some tracks in real time. I think you will find this site worth a few minutes of your time to see how every niche – including yours – can benefit by understanding a little bit about social networking.

To return to the podcast click here: WSP 06 Marrying Integrators

I use a program called Urchin, which is the same basic engine as Google Analytics. (Well – actually I admit I use both.) Google Analytics is free and Urchin comes with the server hosting service. They both do essentially the same thing; give you information about how many people are visiting your site and where they came from.

In the screen shot below you can see stats from launch to this posting.

This second snapshot shows traffic recorded in the current calendar month.

Thanks to your interest the number of folks visiting and downloading the program is rising steadily. On average the number of visitors per day continues to rise exponentially. Thank you!

On the Extra section of the Web Strategies Podcast show six I also talk about the difference between tags and tags. Last time we talked about add-ons, tools for your browser that make it easier to see Meta tag information. That would include Keywords, Descriptions, and Page Titles mostly.

You should also be aware that your customers and colleagues may use tags to define bookmarks for various web pages they use. Over time the number of useful pages has increased to the point that Web 2.0 developers saw and filled a need to easily categorize our interests and share them. That’s the “other” kind of tag – and is best demonstrated by the site we mentioned last week – del.icio.us .

You may have noticed it took a little extra time to get the Web Strategies Podcast show six edited and posted. We hope to be weekly, but as a friend put it recently – “sometimes life just gets in the way”! We appreciate your support. Please invite your friends and colleagues to review our podcast on iTunes – just type in “Web Strategies Podcast” and we should come right up. The more reviews – the higher we rank – the more people will subscribe. Thanks again for your interest!

The surge of you tube is not just a phenomenon; it is a fundamental change in how ordinary folks use the internet. Just about everybody I know across all age groups have at least watched a you tube video, a lot have posted video. The other day my stepdaughter posted one of the grandbaby doing sign language. Not only is that particular video truly amazing — the fact that grandmothers and great grandmothers all over the world are experiencing the best side of people — using technology — has put the technology in a whole new light. It is easy, it is fun, and it is not just limited to unsavory traffic.

If you accept this premise then the next logical conclusion is that business will follow suit.

There is an adoption acceptance curve for all technology. Everett M. Rogers in his 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovations, theorized that innovations would spread through society in an S curve, as the early adopters select the technology first, followed by the majority, until a technology or innovation is common. And while there are lots of exceptions, generally that theory holds up today.

• Innovators
• Early Adopters
• Early Majority
• Late Majority
• Laggards

I would like to think I fall into the first bucket. This is not a brag – just letting you have the context here. Video on the internet – more or less – was invented by Real Networks in February 1997. In 1997 I produced for the internet a video clip of Joe Cipriano doing a commercial for the Simpsons on Fox TV. As far as I know – and I truly believe – that was the first use of Video as a promotional vehicle for TV announcers on the internet. Back in 1997, I was using a low bandwidth version optimized for 14.4 modem that was essentially a slide show.

Joe still has video on his web site – but it’s now a much better quality. He also has plenty of video on You Tube. Here is one I edited from the off air recording for him.

Now come full circle and compare that with the home video of our granddaughter doing sign language on you tube for grandmother and great grandmother. The point is – that if Rogers theory on the Diffusion of Innovations has any validly, if you are not using video on the internet for your business you will soon become a minority. It is tough to catch up.

Another Example

Here is an industrial video I produced a little over a year ago for Landmark Communications. They are the company that owns the weather channel and weather dot com – although this video was for a much smaller division of the company, Continental Broadband. It is a product demonstration for geeks. Enjoy.

From time to time Tom Anthony, the host of the Web Strategies Podcast, uses video or discusses technology like You Tube. This is where that video generally lives.

If You’re Not Committed… Don’t Go All The Way.

Just one week passed between show one and two and the first show has been downloaded 72 times. I am just astounded and very, very grateful. Thank you for your interest! We had very positive feedback from the first podcast; with guest was Tom Walker, President of Web Teks. We brought Tom back for this show and hope to feature him often. Tom Walker is a very smart guy when it comes to understanding business and the role of technology.

This week Tom discusses how to begin a web initiative, or perhaps more importantly how not to.

WSP 02 If You’re Not Committed Don’t Go All The Way. [ 29:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

WSP 02 Podcast Extra

In our Web Strategy Podcast Extra we talk about a Web 2.0 social bookmarking site called Delicious. Actually it’s a clever URL that spells the word Delicious – like this http://del.icio.us. Now I love it, but I have to admit it’s a web site I used for many weeks before I actually had the ahh-haa moment.

After tracking 186 bookmarked web pages I found myself giving a link out to a particular tag. Oh – a TAG is a single word description of what the content relates to. Sort of like a keyword. That tag happened be web 2.0 – when I looked at the whole list it allowed me to view the subject in a much more organized way. Please take a few minutes to visit my Delicious page, where you’ll see tags relating to Marketing, Technology, and Pod Casting among others. The particular link I refer to in WSP 02 is http://del.icio.us/tomanthonydotcom/web2.0.

If you have questions or comments they are welcomed and will be responded to. Thanks for your interest!