So you want to get into podcasting do you?  Well, it’s not that complex once you have a good framework to follow. I decided about a month ago, to start podcasting on a regular basis, and eventually sell or give away for free my podcasts on iTunes.  I was looking for a simple, easy guide to sell my podcast on the iTunes Store but I couldn’t find anything online so I wrote this post instead. Hopefully what I learned here will help you   If it does, leave a comment and let me know!

Overview

1. Create a compatible audio file (like MP3)
2. Host or upload your MP3 file somewhere that will host this file for you and provide an RSS feed to your podcast
3. Submit your feed on iTunes and sell your Podcasts

Detailed Steps

1. Create Your audio file with a compatible audio recorder (like Audacity).  Make sure it’s converted to an MP3 file which you can do in Audacity with some extra add-ons.
2. Create a free account at Switchpod or Podbean and ensure your profile has all optional information added like feed description, title, etc.  This metadata will be very helpful once you submit your podcast to iTunes for sale.
3. Upload your newly created audio MP3 file and also make sure your file has metadata as well.
4. Get the RSS link for your feed.  It will end in something like “feed.xml”
5. Submit your new feed to iTunes for acceptance into the marketplace (open iTunes, click iTunes Store, click Podcasts, click middle image "Submit a Podcast")
6. Wait for Apple to approve your Podcast and then set your price
7. Send your customers your iTunes link and distribute your iTunes link on Facebook, Twitter, and in your email signature!

Common Questions

1. Can you make money? Yes.  Once it’s on iTunes, you can set a price per podcast and then send your client’s to purchase via the iTunes link
2. Where do I host my Podcast? I used Switchpod, but there are many like Archive.org, Podbean, or Libsyn.  Just Google "podcast hosting" and you will see many listed.
3. Can I prevent my podcast feed from access outside iTunes? Not that I know of, but then again, I’m just starting out. I think the only way to ensure you collect payment for your podcast is to go through iTunes only or use something like Podbean.
4. How do I get subscribers?  It helps if you already have a healthy email subscriber list but if you don’t, you can create a blog or landing page and seed your page with the appropriate keywords you expect users to look for.

Good luck with podcasting.  Let me know if this article was helpful!

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Are you standing out?  Are you marketing just like everyone else or are you taking the extra steps to stand out against the competition?  Good companies market themselves like everyone else and most of the time, that’s ok.  The problem, however, is that in a democratized market online where the barriers to competition are neutralized, it’s not enough.  It’s too easy for potential customers to view your competition and make their own decision about working with you.  All of your competitors have a web site just like yours.

Example: searching for a dentist

Take for example, searching for a dentist online.  You arrive in a new city, and you need a dentist. Assuming you search online first – and studies show 60% of consumers today search for vendors online first – you can very quickly come up with a short list of 10 or 20 dental clinics you might want to become a patient at.  So how do you decide which one to call?  Maybe a list of testimonials? dental certification?  reviews by patients?  a well designed list of services? pictures of staff?  But wait, does that sound familiar?  That’s because it is. You see, your competition is doing the same thing and providing everything I just listed.  In fact, they probably all are.  So what do you do then?

The Purple Cow

The key in getting that extra edge on your competition is standing out, being different, and doing something memorable.  Seth Godin calls it “The Purple Cow” in his book by the same name.  Seth says that being different is what works – just like if you were to see a purple cow in a field of brown cows – and being different is what you should be working at doing. 

Take the dental clinic example. What if the clinic owner takes that extra step to stand out?  Maybe with weekly videos on dental health management or with a “best smile” rating application on their web site.  Or maybe with giving new patients a personal makeover kit, or holding a monthly running and health improvement clinic. How about creating a web site called 1000smiles.com and inviting users from all over the web to add their smiles and featuring smiles from your clinic’s patients.  Being different, going that extra mile is all about standing out.  Whatever business you are in, come up with a list of 10 or 20 ideas that help you stand out, that help you become the “Purple Cow”. 

I’m not special right?

Now, you are probably thinking to yourself

• I don’t do anything special
• I don’t have a business that’s different than everyone else
• It’s too risky.  I don’t want to be different
• My customers want me to be like everyone else
• Why bother?  I have enough customers
• Being different is dangerous and I could alienate some customers
• My customers are reserved and don’t take risks
• It’s a waste of time and money and a gamble

Well, that’s might be true.  Yes, you don’t HAVE to be different, and you don’t HAVE to be special.  But online, that’s the only way to stand out.  You see when someone searches online, they have certain expectations on what they want to see online and you need to provide at least that much information on your web site.  But what if you go the extra mile, and have something memorable like the ideas I mentioned above?  Is it possible that your customers will remember your uniqueness?  Is it possible your idea was so juicy your customers tell others about it?  Is it possible the blogosphere gets wind of your idea and your idea goes viral?

Checklist: Just ask your customers

If you are still unconvinced that standing out is essential to your marketing efforts, try on this checklist with some of your customers.  Go ahead, print out this list and see what your customers say.

1. What do I/we do differently than my competitors that you noticed?
2. Why did you choose our/my business?
3. What was the one thing I/we had different than anyone else?
4. Would you recommend me/us, and if so, what would be one thing you would mention?
5. What was one product or service we/i had, that nobody else had?
6. Did you view our/my website before deciding to call?

The answers to these questions will very quickly give you something to sink your teeth (pardon the pun) into.  Continuing with the dental clinic idea, let’s say a customer mentioned your extended business hours, and that you had a laser whitening system.  These are two big advantages you had compared to your competitors and these were big factors in deciding to visit your dental clinic. Now that you know, leverage this uniqueness and ways you were able to stand out in your online marketing and branding.  Mention your extended business hours and laser whitening system in your marketing copy and on your web site.

Now, here is where the real ideas start

So you have already taken the time and made the effort to be different.  You know how you are different and you market this in your marketing copy.  Great.  But what about going the extra mile to be different.  What about doing something extra-ordinary.  Something way outside the norm?

10 ideas for making you stand out online

It’s not that hard to stand out, truth be told.  Very few of your competitors are reading articles like this one, and even fewer are implementing outstanding marketing ideas. Here are 10 cheap, free, and easy ideas you could launch right away, with minimal effort

1. Give away ebooks (start with a checklist style book and make a bunch of them)
2. Show a video on your home page (use tubemogul to distribute it).  Look at 136words.com for a great example of online video
3. Do a weekly podcast and distribute it through the Apple.com store.
4. Give away an iPod each week to online subscribers
5. Write a monthly newsletter (use campaignmonitor for awesome e-newsletters)
6. Implement a ratings web site for pictures/sounds/ideas related to your product (for example 1000smiles.com if you are a dental clinic)
7. Interview celebrities, dignitaries, or notable authors in your industry and post the results on your web site
8. Show your real photograph (professionally done of course).  Yes, you would be truly shocked how few of your competitors are doing this!
9. Record a 2 minute audio clip for each page of your web site (easily done with a good publishing system like Wordpress – it’s what I use for all my clients).
10. Interview your past customers on video and feature them in case studies on your web site.  Even though potential customers know it’s a marketing ploy, it still works!

Hopefully you get some indication about why standing out is essential and how you can go about discovering your own uniqueness.  If you still need help, feel free to give me a call.  I’m always ready to consult and coach businesses on business marketing.

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I’m learning a lot about SEO lately and how search engines index content.  One idea I stumbled upon reading about SEO optimization for your blog is the idea of using lots of Categories almost to the point of over-using it.   I’m convinced now that having lots of Categories in your blog is beneficial to both your reading audience and your search engine ranking.  Here’s why:

1. Reason #1: Lots of relevant keywords helps searchers.  I’m not suggesting you use every category in your blog for each blog post, but that you think of as many keywords as you can when blogging.  Consider all the possible keywords a person might be searching
2. Reason #2: Reduces Misinterpretation for visitors. By having all your categories listed on your blog (as I do here), someone looking for other content about a given topic will be able to find it easily.  If I only used 5 or so categories on this blog, it would be necessary for visitors to interpret what kinds of content would be in each category and that means work.  Nobody likes to work.  Reading and enjoying your blog should be an effortless and enjoyable experience.  Lot’s of blog categories and listing them all in your site helps readers and let’s them find other relevant content.
3. Reason #3: Visitors get to form a picture.  As you scan my list of categories you get an idea of the kinds of content you can expect to find on my blog, and that helps you form a picture of what this blog is about.  Just like a picture speaks a thousand words, lots of categories helps you understand what this blog is about.  One thing you know for sure: this blog isn’t about dog training.
4. Reason #5: Every category means a separate indexed page in Google.  Assuming you are using the category template in your Wordpress blog, each category page means a separate page in the Google index which CAN help your ranking.

Got more reasons to use lots of categories?  Leave a comment and share with other readers!

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About 7 minutes.  That’s all the time I took to write this blog post.  I didn’t login to the Wordpress admin pages, and I didn’t visit my blog to post this blog entry.  How did I do it?  Read on for more.

1. Tip #1: Write about anything.  You think you need to write about something you just learned?  Well yes, but also write anything you already know, especially the knowledge you take for granted.  Newbie’s just starting to learn what you already know will appreciate what you see as common sense knowledge.  This blog post for example, highlights knowledge I already take for granted but it’s entirely possible someone out there doesn’t know it.
2. Tip #2: Get yourself a desktop blogging tool.  Windows Live Writer is my personal favourite and it’s a huge timesaver.  I’m writing this blog entry with this software now.  What I like most about using it is that I can copy/paste from other programs (like Photoshop) and image insertion is dead easy.  The Wordpress admin screens just don’t make the cut when compared to a desktop blogging tool
3. Tip #3: Go nuts with keywords and categories.  With a blog like this one, I’m able to get away with lots of categories. It’s a well designed theme and the layout lends well to many extra categories.  The additional time spent with categories and tags also let’s you get some good Google Juice too.
4. Tip #4: DON’T BE PERFECT!  I put this in caps because perfection will kill you.  You don’t need to be perfect, just post often.  I have a few customers that sit on a single post for days and that’s just time wasted.  Unless your audience are book publishers, you don’t need grammatical perfection.  Quantity is great but not without substance.  For example, it’s senseless to break this blog post into 10 individual blog posts with one item each.  It’s not going to get your Google Juice doing that.  Don’t sacrifice readability for quantity but also don’t worry about perfection. 
5. Tip #5: Use spell-check and revise at least once.  I use Windows Live Writer which has spell checker built in.  Spelling mistakes are bad and show a lack of care and attention.  I also revise the post once just to see if it’s readable.
6. Tip #6: Post a link in Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.  Blogging is great, but if nobody reads it, it’s energy spent for nothing.  Let your network know about your blog by posting links in your social networks.
7. Tip #7: Provide at least one image.  At least one, and perhaps even 2 or 3 if your post is long. Images help readers by breaking up long posts into sections that are scannable and easy to read.  Take a minute and visit Google Image search to find relevant imagery. Besides, images also just look purdy. 
8. Tip #8: Provide links.  The web is a hyperlinked world and links are what people like to see. Take the time to find one or two useful links to other sites if that’s called for but don’t overdue it.  For example in this post, I have linked to “Windows Live Writer” above, but only because it’s relevant to this blog topic and someone might find the link useful.  Sometimes, links to relevant content are appreciated and a nice blogger will leave a comment behind.
9. Tip #9: Use short paragraphs, bullets, and lists.  Online content is easier to read when you employ creative use of lists, bullet points, and short paragraphs.  Studies show people tend to scan screens rather than read in full.  As well, use bold/italics and colors to break up long text into readable snippets, as I have done here using bold and numbering the tips.
10. Tip #10: Write for a target audience.  If you have a blog about dog training, don’t put in blog entries about your recent vacation to Mexico.  Keep your blog content specific to a certain business, a service you provide, or one of your “personas” (I talked about personas in a blog entry about branding. Read that entry). I find that personal blogs about every single thing happening in a person’s life tend to get polluted with irrelevant content.  This blog for example is about my business, technology, and online marketing ideas and I will create a separate one about my vacations and non-business affairs if I intend to blog about those activities.

Enjoyed reading this post?  Leave a comment!

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Being Creative is a Curse and a Blessing

As a designer, I’m looking at other designers for inspiration all the time.  That creative spirit, however, is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I’m looking at new designs all the time and am curious about how other creatives look at branding.  I like design and I enjoy the creative process and that’s definitely a feather in my cap.  Being curious about design is also a curse, however, because I’m never satisfied with my own brand.   It always feel’s a bit incomplete, and as I learn more about design, branding, and standing out, I feel like I need to do something different.

My Brand History over the last 10 years

Take my own brand and how I market myself which I started doing in 2001 with bcbold.com:

• 1998 – Launched bcbold.com as my first exercise into online marketing.  View this version at archive.org.
• 2001 – After several revisions, I relaunched with a new design and also started using Active Server Pages to manage the content.  View this version at archive.org
• 2003 – I changed from bcbold.com to redprimary.com.  View this version at archive.org
• 2003 – 2008 – I changed the design of redprimary.com over that 5 year period many times and have at least 12 verifiable revisions of the site.  Every time I learned something new about design, I tweaked my own online presence.
• 2009 – I changed from using redprimary.com to fullmotiongroup.com which is my online portfolio because I felt redprimary.com didn’t really represent what I do.
• 2010 – I’m going to launch WebMarketingMasterPlan.com which is where all of my web marketing articles and expertise will eventually go.

At the moment, I’m leaning towards Minimalism and the idea that less can be more.  Take the latest version of fullmotiongroup.com.  It’s a dead simple design and all fits on one page.  No frills, no marketing, no lengthy blog posts, no sales pitches, no lengthy content, and no ebooks.  It’s a portfolio site that stands alone and if someone wants to read more about me, they can contact me or visit this blog.

The Rise of “Jack of All Trades”

I don’t know if it’s becoming more common globally, but certainly with IT Professionals such as myself, being multi-talented and a jack of all trades is commonplace.  Nearly everyone I know in IT has multiple skills and abilities.  I have decided that having multiple domains for each of my “personas” is a good thing too, and I’m going down that route now.

• fullmotiongroup.com – my simple portfolio site for my web design work
• webmarketingmasterplan.com – an educational resource I’m launching in 2010 with articles and best practices on web marketing and design or maybe as an ebook (I haven’t decided which will bring greater profits).  I might also do video with each blog post.
• mayurj.com – this blog and dumping ground for everything that doesn’t fit into the above two sites
• mayurj.org – A launching pad or lifestream page I have no plans on launching for now. I expect it to look something like Gina Trapani’s site and it might be the one domain I hand out to people looking to hire me.

My other domains, redprimary.com and bcbold.com I expect to keep for the forseeable future and won’t let them go (the Pagerank and domain history can’t be replaced).

5 reasons to have multiple domains

1. Reason 1: You have multiple skills and all together they don’t fit in one site
2. Reason 2: Thin-slice yourself and represent each skill/ability with it’s own brand
3. Reason 3: When customers visit one of your domains, they get what they want quickly and without fuss.  They don’t have to wade through hundreds of categories or a series of menus.
4. Reason 4: Experiment with a brand idea or marketing angle like MRPWebmedia did with 136words.com
5. Reason 5: Expand a series of blog posts or skills you develop into it’s own site.  If you have too much on one site, designers will tell you that your original brand becomes polluted.

10 places I get design inspiration

1. Wired Magazine – there are some great ad and article designs in this magazine and I get a copy every month.  I keep copies around and flip through them before I start a design project.
2. Television Ads – Sure shows are great, but ads during primetime or major sport events are great places get new “memes”, themes, and angles on marketing.
3. Vandelay Design Inspiration – Definitely one of the best resources for web design ideas, the author sends out an email each month which I always look forward to reading.  If you are a web designer, definitely subscribe to the author’s emails.
4. Twitter – Recently I’m getting a lot of people adding me to Twitter.  Sometimes, I look at their twitter accounts and visit their site to see what they do.
5. Local Mall – You would be surprised what you can see at the local mall (besides all the pretty eye candy) when you pay attention to the poster boards and in-store marketing
6. Books – I’m into personal development these days and have a big collection of about 3000 hours from guys like Rohn, Tracy, Robbins, Waitley, Covey and more.  Often, I get inspired to think differently about marketing and branding and that has definitely influenced my work.  In particular, Blink and Purple Cow from Seth Godin are outstanding examples of thinking outside the box.
7. MRPWebmedia – I just found this one recently.  It’s a great collection of articles about branding and marketing and the authors have gone down the path that marketing is about being like a Purple Cow (a reference to Seth Godin’s book on the subject) – ie that marketing is about doing something outstanding that people talk about.
8. Lifehacker, Engadget and ZdNet.com – These sites together offer links to vendors, articles, and tonnes of in-site content.  All of it together helps me to see design differently and sometimes in a fresh way. Often I will click the sidebar ads to see what other new ventures are coming out the woodworks.  I found some of my favorite services like MediaTemple (web hosting) and Basecamp (project management) this way.
9. Sitepoint.com – This is a large site focused on design and online marketing and they have several different email newsletters they send.  I subscribe to all of them which often feature ads from related businesses.  Flippa.com is one site I found this morning while looking at the Sitepoint email newsletter.
10. Supermarkets – Surprisingly, this is a great place for design ideas.  The food business is highly competitive and retailers have to make every square inch on product packaging count.  Web design can benefit from the same requirements – to make every square inch of a design count for something.  Next time you visit the supermarket, pay attention to product packaging that catches your eye and ask yourself what made it standout.

5 Reasons Why you MUST stand out

Having read most of the articles at MRPWebMedia.com, I’m convinced that doing something extraordinary is crucial in marketing. Actually, it’s an idea I always knew, but reading the articles helped refresh my memory. Online, it’s even more critical.  Here’s why:

1. Reason 1: With the rise of web sites, everyone skims pages and rarely reads a page in full.  You have about 10 seconds and you might as well make it count with something extra-ordinary.  Seth Godin talks about this in a book called Blink if you’re curious about how to stand out and why
2. Reason 2: With easy access to Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, a great idea can go viral very quickly.  Do something different and people will talk about you.  This is good for your business, and it’s also good for your Pagerank
3. Reason 3: People don’t remember “Just like Everyone Else” .  They remember the guy with the red mohawk, or the girl with the long platinum blonde hair and grey eyes.  People’s emotions are triggered when they see something different, and hopefully, if you did a good job, they remember it for good reasons.  If people see something different, they are more likely to do business with you when their need arises.
4. Reason 4: People buy emotional states, not features and facts.  Nearly everything you buy you do so for the emotional state you hope to feel.  Good branders and marketers know this and don’t try to sell features and facts about a product or service.  They sell the emotional state and that alone is all you need.  If you don’t stand out, it’s probably cause you didn’t sell an emotional state in your branding and marketing.
5. Reason 5: Competition is fierce and the Internet levels the playing field.  In less than a minute on Google you can find a list of 20 potential businesses you might want to do business.  If 18 of them all look the same and have the same boring features and facts listed on their site, they all look the same in the customer’s eyes.  But if one or two of them stand out and have something unique or create an emotional response worth buying, they win.  Online, standing out is a must, and if you don’t, you lose.

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