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Journalists want to profile new and interesting stories and podcasters are constantly looking for publicity. Then why aren’t more podcasters being profiled in magazines, newspapers and radio or television programs? It has everything to do with what podcasters determine is newsworthy.

Here are just a few announcements that some podcasters claim is newsworthy:

• Releasing a podcast
• Releasing a new episode of a podcast that hasn’t been updated in months
• Releasing the 20th episode of a podcast
• Being listed in iTunes
• Saying that some unknown (or even known) person appeared as a guest on a podcast
• Going from 30-minutes to 15-minutes
• Getting some celebrity to produce your bumper
• Moving from a mono to stereo output
• Using a high definition microphone instead of just a mic

Just because your podcast is now shorter, sounds better, features someone and is listed somewhere isn’t newsworthy. All this hype about the frequency, sound and format of your podcast is just adding noise to the eternal clutter that permeates cyberspace.

Instead, tie in the launch of your podcast to a special event, holiday or current news item. For example:

1. A chiropractor can launch a series of episodes that focus on common back problems children experience due to oversize backpacks. This chiropractor can time the launch with the back to school season. This is an example of tying in the launch of your podcast with a special event.
2. A career coach can launch a few episodes focusing on work-at-home strategies during a city wide transit strike. This is an example of tying in the launch of your podcast with a current news item.
3. A company that produces paper cups can launch a few episodes that gives tips on how to prepare for the Christmas holiday. This is an example of tying in the launch of your podcast with a holiday.

If you time the launch of your podcast with a special event, holiday or current news items, you’ll find that you’ll attract the media interview effortlessly. Let your competitors make the mistake of releasing press releases that announce their use of a new microphone. Instead, go beyond your format, frequency and sound and make your podcast relevant to journalists so they will write a story about it.

Author: Leesa Barnes
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

The magic’s in the medium and podcasting is hot – molten hot. It wasn’t long ago a simple search for podcasting in Google turned up about 600,000 results. Now, in less than a year’s time, the search boils over with 36,400,000!

And… the numbers are rapidly growing!

Wake up call. Podcasting is exploding. This is the Internet powerhouse to watch in 2006.

Exactly how is podcasting turning customer service into gold? Let’s take a look inside Merlin’s cave and see what going on with this phenomenon…

First of all, relatively speaking, podcasting provides a powerful bang for the buck. It’s your show, your way, to your audience… who is looking to you as their subject matter expert. They want to hear you and through the miracle of RSS, they simply subscribe once and automatically, each week you have their attention.

Unlike the splatter of radio ads, podcasting audiences want to hear what you have to say. And because the focus is on niche content tailored specifically to your audience, compared to radio advertising costs, podcasting stomps the competition in overall cost-effectiveness.

Studies have proven that we retain more of what we hear than what we see or read. You talk to your customers and they grow to know you. Tom K., a loyal listener of a popular podcast about digital camcorders had this to say, “With podcasting it’s personal. It’s one-on-one. I feel like I get to know the host and I grow to trust what they’re saying. You can tell if someone’s on the level when you spend time with them each week.”

Little wonder customers are feeling loyal to their podcast programs. This is beyond branding… this is alchemy turning the relationship into familiarity and trust.

What else is it but pure gold when you earn the loyalty of your customers? Earn… well yes, indeed… the old fashioned way… as the once popular commercial stated, “we earn it”.

The more you shine the light on the benefits to your customer, the more you gain position and value in your customer’s mind.

Here’s a few ideas:

• Technical Support: Make your support folks into customer superstars. Providing detailed technical support for your product ensures a positive customer experience and loyalty. Bring your support staff into your show and teach your customers how to use your product or service and most importantly, how to correct any problems that may arise. Plus, this saves you money in human capital and costs of customer support.
• Preview of New Features or Services: What better way to get market research than to ask your customers what they want and what they think about proposed new products. Podcasting opens the door to two-way communications as your customers post comments and send emails providing you valuable insights.
• Share Best Practices: How are your customers using your product or service? Have you heard of an innovative way to get additional value from your product? Many times you’ll hear from a customer how they have developed a new or more efficient way to use your product and podcasting gives you the forum to share these tips.

That’s just a few of the creative ways podcasting is opening new possibilities each day. The sky’s the limit so now is the time to bring your company into the podcasting revolution.

Get a MP3 player or simply listen from your computer and explore the myriad of podcasting shows out there. You’re going to be amazed, enthused, and eager to get involved.

Go for it! Turn your customer service into gold!

Author: Mark Orion
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

Podcasting is a great way to get your message to the masses and extend your reach.

Here are seven ways you can profit from your podcast.

1. Paid Podcast - The simplest way is to charge your prospect a small fee for your podcast. Keep the bar low so your prospect and get in and consume your information and offers.

2. Episode Sponsor - Have other marketers and entrepreneurs sponsor an episode of your podcast in exchange for being able to advertise their product or service on your podcast.

3. Sell Your Own Products - Just like in a teleseminar, you can have a featured product on each podcast.

4. CDs – You can create a single CD or a CD series with your podcasts. While some still may not be familiar with podcasting, by now everyone knows how to slip in a disc.

5. Pre-Loaded Media Player Sales – You can preload your podcast into a media player, have it branded with your information, and either sell it separately or as part of a package.

6. Transcripts – The more modalities in which you deliver your information the more customers you will reach. Podcasting is an audio experience. Have your podcasts transcribed and then sell them separately or as part of a package.

7. Ebooks – Another way to repurpose the audio from your podcast is as an ebook. This makes a great package to sell, as the podcast is in audio and the ebook is in text.

And when you take just one podcast and use these strategies you can create a massive web presence with your podcasts.

Author: Alex Mandossian
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable pressure cooker

Effective online search has previously relied upon the positioning of a Web site in the search engine result pages (SERPs), based mainly upon how many links were pointing to the site, thus indicating popularity, and how high of a page rank (PR) the site had been crowned by Google. Now, with the steady increase of the social media phenomenon, we can foresee this unstoppable force anchoring itself mightily and building a sturdy home. Page rank is quickly being replaced by friend rank.

Social media is not only the here and now; it’s also the wave of the future that is here to stay. It will continue to grow and enlarge at rapid speed. Social media is by far a trend. According to Nielsen Online, social media networks and blogs are now the forth most popular online activity ahead of personal email. Member communities are visited by 67 percent of the global online population. The time spent in social media Web sites is growing at three times the overall Internet use rate, accounting for almost 10 percent of all Internet time.

Social Media’s Effect on Google, Bing and Yahoo

Although the SEO ship has not sailed and should definitely be a part of your online marketing campaign, social media marketing is the alpha male in the online jungle and he brings many changes. Google used to separate “social” content. Remember the separate Google search bar you had to download for blogs? And another one for video and yet another for images, while nothing from the social media sites showed up at all? Now Google streams ALL platforms into one system called Universal Search. This means blogs, videos, images, news and user profiles and comments from social media sites are now integrated into the natural SERPs, shoving many previously placed Web sites right out of those coveted top spots. Bing and Yahoo both have incorporated very similar systems.

With that said, you now understand how critical SMO is to your online marketing campaign. By using social media sites such as facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can actually capture a greater number of organic search positions. Did you know facebook alone has about 350,000,000 members from across the globe? Talk about having your audience right at your fingertips! Once you learn how to identify and connect to your target audience, you can definitely take your business to the next level and the next.

Intertwining Social Media Optimization and SEO

When properly executed, social media optimization can seamlessly dovetail SEO efforts. The ongoing, fresh content creation, social bookmarking, engaging and conversing directly with your audience, attracting inbound links by being a resource for your audience, etc. – these methodologies are essential for pushing your Web site higher in the SERPs, increasing Web traffic and reaping the rewards of conversion and overall ROI. SMO leverages an additional, effective set of online tools to accomplish the same goal as SEO: more exposure and better positioning for your Web site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The challenge lies in knowing how to use those tools effectively and without spending all of your waking hours in vain.

The bottom line is this: The days of launching a basic SEO campaign alone within such a competitive online space and joyfully watching your site rise to the top of SERPs are long gone. Not only has SEO become far more complex than it was just a few short years ago, but SMO has transformed SEO from a relatively straightforward strategy into an intricate discipline that is confusing and frustrating to most.

While social media optimization is a must for any business seeking to boost exposure in the search engines, most companies are not up for the task at hand. Turning to someone with social media expertise and experience to successfully go head to head with the alpha male of the jungle is the key reaping rewards from your online efforts.

Author: Natalie A. Revell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: PCB Prototype & Manufacturing

If you are like me, you have become fascinated with the popularity of social media and the diversity of its involvement into the mainstream of our lives.

All you have to do for social proof is to take a look at the Alexa ranking of the Top 20 most visited websites on the Internet and you will see that 5 of these sites are social media sites (#2 Facebook, #4 YouTube, #12 MySpace, #15 Twitter, #20 Bing)

So I think it is comfortable to say that social media is here to stay and if we are waiting to see if it is a fad or a force, I am here to help, it is a FORCE.

Now if your thought is to get involved in ALL the social media sites, you are biting off more than perhaps you can chew. Why? Because there is literally hundreds of social media/bookmarking sites available to us that offer similar and in some cases distinct options.

My recommendation would be to join three to four at the beginning and really master the use of the site before moving on to the next one and the next one.

One of my observations as I virtually travel through these sites is the lack of “social” etiquette used by some users within these communities.

What I mean by this is that each and every social media site is a community within itself. It has its basic structure and rules and regulations. The community as a whole will help others stay within those guidelines using various methods such as; gentle hints in posts, deleting of comments and in some cases pretty nasty communication.

So if we are interested in joining a community, then it is my recommendation to learn the dos and don’ts of that community.

The first thing I recommend that you do when you join a social media site is to fully complete a profile and upload an appropriate picture of yourself.

I don’t know how many people on a daily basis try and offer me, sell me, connect with me, etc… within a social media community and do not even have a picture uploaded.

This actually boggles my mind.

Why would I want to connect or do business with anyone that does not have the decency or credibility to upload an appropriate picture of them? Answer: I wouldn’t. For me any communication I receive from another member of the social media site that I am a member of that does not have an appropriate picture uploaded is immediately deleted.

Now let’s talk about what an appropriate picture is within a social media site. Well that depends on what you are using that site for. If you are using the site strictly for social interaction and non-business connecting than any picture that you choose to represent you is of course at your discretion. In some examples that I have come across, some people do not necessarily use any discretion.

So, the question that remains is what is an appropriate picture for one to use within a social media site if one is choosing to conduct business? Answer: A picture of you that your grandmother would be proud of.

We have all seen the examples of pictures used on a social media site that are at best questionable and yet the individual is expecting to have credibility with their audience.

Personally, when I coach someone about personal branding, the first two things that I review are the picture and the information being used in a profile.

It starts with your picture. That is the first thing that people see of you. It should represent you in a positive manner. Now, I am not suggesting that it shouldn’t be fun, what I am suggesting is the “one” picture that you choose to represent yourself in that social media site should be appropriate for your chosen use for that site. Hint: I recommend putting the fun pictures within the appropriate sections of the profile.

In closing, the most important part of social media is to be “social.” Think of it as you walking into a room of people that you have never met, but want to get to know. Ask yourself this question, “How should I present myself if I want to attract people to me?”

Author: Kevin D. McNabb
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Smart cooker

There is no denying that the popularity of social media is increasing by the day. For sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (herein known as “The Big Three”), the fastest growing demographic consists of users 35 years and older. Though social media was once considered a fad for kids, it has evolved into a viable marketing opportunity for business.

For the casual user, social media is a way to connect with friends and family. For the business user, social media works by sharing compelling content to capture the attention of your target audience. When you do this well, you can count on generating website traffic, client leads and even media attention.

“The Big Three” revolve around the concept of a status update. When you update your status, everyone in your network can view what you have to say. This is where the real opportunity lies. Instead of updating your status to report what you’re having for dinner or that it’s time to pick up your kids, share interesting content and watch the magic of social media unfold.

Type of Content to Share on Social Media Channels

1. Your new blog posts
2. Someone else’s blog post
3. An article you’ve written
4. An article from somewhere else
5. A video demonstration
6. A funny or controversial video
7. Before and after photos of work you’ve done
8. Humorous or inspiring photos
9. Client success stories/case studies
10. Free e-book
11. Special report
12. White paper
13. Upcoming event announcement
14. Live reports from an event you are currently attending
15. Book reviews/recommendations
16. Recommended products
17. Recommended services
18. Tips for doing something better
19. How-to suggestions
20. A series of related posts
21. Recent media coverage you have received
22. Inspirational advice (preferably your own, motivational quotes are over-used online)
23. Forward someone else’s update (with proper credit attribution)
24. Breaking news alerts
25. Leads for opportunities (media, clients, etc.)
26. Requests for participation (guest posts on your blog, speaker for an event you’re hosting, etc.)
27. Interesting photo from a recent event
28. Teleseminar/Webinar invitation
29. Contest announcements
30. Special sales, offers and discounts (delivered sparingly)
31. Request for audience feedback
32. A compelling question you want answered
33. Anything offered for free
34. Insider tips that people won’t find anywhere else
35. Your opinion on just about anything with target audience appeal

Secrets to Success

1. Content should appeal to your target audience and provide value.
Also, it doesn’t always have to be directly related to what you do. For example, a mortgage broker might share community resources, local event announcements and family-related tips. This type of information would likely be more appealing to the broker’s target audience than current interest rates and articles about mortgage insurance (though you can occasionally include those too). The point is to become a valued resource.

2. Follow the 90/10 rule.
Avoid selling online and you will achieve more sales. That’s right; we’re all tired of being sold to. When you provide value, you build loyalty and trust. It’s fine to include sales offers up to 10% of the time, but make sure you are primarily serving up useful content.

3. Use compelling titles and descriptions.
You only have a limited amount of space to share information which means that a good title can make the difference between a reader who clicks through or completely ignores your post.

4. Track your results.
Pay attention to user response. If you’re receiving comments and your content is being forwarded to others (for example, retweeting on Twitter), that is evidence that your efforts are working. Also, your network should be growing steadily as a result of the value you’re providing.

5. Use links wisely.
When you share compelling content, it provides an opportunity to link back to your website or blog. This is great for building website traffic. However, not every post needs to have a link. Mix up your posts so that some simply offer something short and sweet. You can also shorten links and track the number of click-throughs with a service like http://bit.ly.

6. Be consistent.
You will get the best results from marketing content through social media by participating on a regular basis. Ideally you should share something every day, even multiple times per day, to stay visible. You can automate some of your updates with services like ping, socialoomph, and hootsuite. But don’t automate everything! Keep reading…

7. Engage with your audience.
Social media involves a two-way conversation. It’s not just about shoving data out into your network and waiting to reap the rewards. Reply to people who comment, forward and share useful content from others and make sure you have a human presence in social media land.

8. Build a social media plan.
You can venture into social media haphazardly or you can form a plan that makes sense for your business. A plan should identify your target audience, include a strategy for ongoing content generation, should identify frequency of updates and indicate the amount of time and resources you are going to allocate to managing your social media strategy.

9. Implement a 30-day challenge.
Use the suggestions outlined here and focus your efforts for 30 days. The results should be obvious. If they aren’t, then there is something amiss with your strategy. Ask others for input or solicit the help of a social media expert. There is opportunity for every kind of business to benefit from social media. You simply need to find the strategy that works for you.

Author: Stephanie Chandler
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker

At one point or another most businesses find themselves looking for PHP programmers for hire. The reasons may be various from building a website from scratch to enhancing the code or updating an existing website. PHP is one of the most popular programming and web development languages used for a number of purposes and first of all for creating dynamic, feature rich website with incorporated browser-based applications.

There are certain organizations (such as small charity funds or amateur clubs) that would rather look for unqualified beginners, who would work for free in order to gain experience and build a portfolio needed for future career. However, the majority of businesses, especially mature ones, are looking for experienced PHP programmers for hire. They need a professional with a long track of successfully accomplished projects. There are a number of questions you should concern yourself with, if you want to be able to tell a complete starter from a professional programmer. How long have they been in the industry? What other skills apart from PHP do they have? Have they been previously involved in a project similar to yours? And so on.

For instance, an experienced PHP programmer should have profound knowledge of security issues, multi-browser compatibility, be able to create and modify JavaScript and have at least basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). The last but not least two issues are extremely important for websites that will be primarily engaged in e-commerce, since search engine traffic is the major contributor to online sales. Unfortunately, not many PHP programmers have in-depth knowledge of search engine optimization, and some don’t even acknowledge its importance. Therefore you need to make sure that the programmer creating your website at least won’t harm your search engine rankings (naturally it would be great if they could help your website get better placement in search results).

Most PHP-based web applications require a hosting database such as MySql. A professional PHP programmer should by all means be able to use database technology. JavaScript and CSS (cascading style sheets) are equally important while they greatly affect the visual appeal and functionality of a website facilitating the creation of interactive web applications and customizing the fonts, layouts and overall style and look of your website. Thus, MySql database (or its alternative), JavaScript and CSS belong to a must-have tool set of any PHP developer.

Another important thing you should understand is that not all Internet surfers utilize Internet Explorer. There are other popular web browsers that can read the CSS and JavaScript code in a slightly different way. Thus if a programmer neglects cross-browser compatibility issues and builds an entire website with just one browser in mind, some of the features might not be available to the users of other browsers.

There are many PHP programmers for hire out there, and you need to find the one who will do the job right for you.

Author: Ivan Artimovich
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Make PCB Assembly

Everyone has heard that content is king when it comes to search engine optimization and just good old plain web site marketing smarts. But how you present that content on your site can also make a world of difference.

PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language that lets you create dynamic web pages. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages.

Now here is were it gets interesting. Search engines like Google Yahoo and MSN love fresh new content that is changing on a daily basis. But if you are using a java script snippet the search engines will not be able to read the content. If however you are using a PHP type script the content will automatically be transformed into HTML and the search engines will be able to pick it up and read it.

The first thing you will need to do before you jump onto the PHP bandwagon is to make sure your web host provider has PHP support. Most do but if you are only paying for basic services or using a free host you may have to pay for an upgrade. It’s well worth it trust me.

One of the best PHP based scripts you can add to any web site is the forum or bulletin board. Forums will take on a life of their own after several 100 members have joined and are posting threads on a daily basis. If 100 members seems like a lot think again. I have one work from home internet business forum and after just 2 month I already have over 70 members. Each time someone posts to the forum the HTML changes and the search engines treat it as new content.

Another great PHP script you can add is the link directory. You can actually set up a categorized reciprocal link directory with 20 links on each page and the process is completely automated. I have mine set up so that I have to approve each link first but if you want you could by pass this so that once your script is set up the directory will just start to grow all on its own with no additional work on your part. Again each time someone adds a new link you HTML page is changing. Make sure you add categories that are relative to your main theme. My directory for example has categories for work from home , internet business and business opportunities because that’s what my web site is all about. Also make sure you have added instructions on how they can link back to you. This is the reason why I like to approve all my liks first. No reciprocal link back to my site NO directory listing.

PHP can also be used for blogging. Wordpress is one of the most popular PHP script based blogging tools. I have not used Wordpress but I do use blogger for all my blogging. A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of “blogging”. With a blog or web log you can make daily posts on almost any subject matter creating new content for the search engines to crawl. To date Yahoo seems to be giving a bit of an edge to all my blogs incuding my work form home internet business news site. Ironically most of the post on that blog come from yahoo and or Google news. This is a great way to get free content on a daily basis for your blog. Just go to Google news or yahoo news and type in the keywords you are using for your blog. Each day there will be a new news article that you can legally use on your blog.

There are many more PHP scripts that you can use on your website to automatically create fresh new content with. The ones listed above are the ones I have downloaded for free and installed to my web host. If you are not using PHP now is a good time to get started.

Author: Tom Worsley
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin Guest Blogger

So you have decided to start blogging. Good for you! The first decision is which blogging platform to use. The two most popular are Blogger and WordPress. For anyone wanting to build a professional website rather than just a blog, WordPress is the one to use.

1. WordPress is your personality. It is all about you. You have hundreds of themes available that can be used to make your blog personal. This will give you an Internet presence that represents you as a writer. WordPress themes are very flexible and can be customized to your niche. However, if you tire of it you can change it with a simple click of your mouse.

2. PLUGINS! Plugins are an easy way to really customize your blog. You can add contact forms, SEO, photo resources, ad boxes and banners, site statistics, and so much more. Most WordPress plugins are free. The list is long and growing every day.

3. Performance is the best. As you know, not every blogger is an expert at creating websites. In fact, it can be overwhelming. WordPress has changed all of that by making it super simple to create a site. On top of that, they offer forums, references, and support that can help get you where you want to be.

4. Permalinks will help get you found. WordPress creates a unique and permanent link to each specific blog. In addition, you can create a Permalink to each page and/or each post. In other words, you can really drill it down to get recognition.

5. Pagination allows you to create pages that separate your material in order to provide additional information. You can create Contact Me, Privacy Policy, or About Me pages to give your readers a bit of info about you.

6. Pathways Back is a way for you to leave a comment on another blog and Wordpress will then automatically provide a link to your blog for everyone to see. This is great for growing traffic.

7. Ping Back is a tool that notifies search engines that you have a new post on your blog. All you need to do is add a plugin and adjust your settings and you will get more searches.

These are just a few reasons bloggers prefer WordPress. You will need to look at both Blogger and WordPress to determine which platform is best for you. WordPress prides itself on being very user friendly and is always working on improving what they have created.

Author: Jeanene Fisher
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger

Are you having difficulty getting your article to look the way you want in WordPress? Do you spend time adding special characters and then see them disappear when you copy and paste into WordPress as your post?

WordPress has made it very easy to type information for your blog so that does not happen. Through the Administration Panel (Dashboard), you simply click on “posts” and then “new” and a blank post comes up on your screen. From this point you can begin typing using the Visual mode for a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) article.

The problem with using MS Word is that it actually embeds coding within your text so that what you see is NOT always what you get. For example, you may have formatted your Word document to create a list separated at the right line spacing and then used the indent just enough with a flushed indentation for overflow. When you paste this into WordPress, all your formatting will disappear and you will end up with something that does not look like you expected.

One way around using MS Word is to use the “paste as plain text” icon in WordPress. Posting your article through this application strips the embedded codes from your inserted text. Then you can use the icons and features available on WordPress to create the right look for your document.

But why would you waste time doing that? The easiest way is to simply type directly into WordPress. If you do not finish your article or want to work on several at one time, you can easily save them in “draft” form. You can then access them from the “posts,” “edit” on your Dashboard. This will really save you time in the end.

WordPress offers a preview key so that you are able to see what your document will look like when it actually posts to your site. This is a great tool so that you can check your document to make sure it is just right before it publishes to the public. Just make sure you click the “Update Post” button before you go to the Preview.

The best way to avoid formatting errors is to create your post directly into WordPress on the “add new post” page. Second is to write your post on a text editor or notepad that uses txt. files. This will easily paste into WordPress. You can also use the icon to paste as plain text. Stay away from creating your documents in a word processing program. The embedded text changes what you see when you enter it as a post and adds time to your writing.

Author: Jeanene Fisher
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Bumper guardian