During last night’s Open Source Marketer Wednesday Member’s Webinar we talked about how you can use the Odiogo Listen Button to create a Text Content Factory that adds text-to-speech audio player to your blog. Odiogo provides a free services that turns your text blog posts into spoken audio. Website visitors can either click the play button on the built in audio player or they can download an MP3 version of your article.

We talked about a lot of other useful tools on the webinar, but here’s a quick video to show you how the Odiogo Listen Button works.

You can watch the full webinar recording inside the member’s area, along with all the other previously recorded weekly webinars.

Enjoy,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Accelerate your business online using social media.

Here is a sample recording that was put together before the event.

Listen Now

As you can hear, the format is extremely simple. This sample was recorded over Skype using Audio Hijack Pro, but we could have just as easily used a free service like FreeConferenceCall.com. Conducting a phone interview is what most people are familiar with and just about everyone has a phone in their pockets these days so that’s the solution we recommended to the Meetup group.

If you’re in the Dallas area, be sure to check the Meetup calendar and stop by for one of the meetings.

Charles McKeever

OpenSourceMarketer.com

But with all these positive numbers showing growing support for podcasting, there’s still one major problem with the technology. There are just to many steps for podcast listeners to get content.

The listener has to find the podcast, subscribe to a feed, download the podcast files to their computer, and then transfer those files to an MP3 player before they can actually listen to a podcast. That’s just to many steps.

But there is a solution that’s going to replace all that by streaming the podcast directly to an iPhone much the same way Internet radio is streamed today. Instead of downloading and managing files, the listener “tunes in” and listens, creating their own personalized radio station that delivers content when they want it without all the extra steps.

Think about the power of this for just a moment. Don’t rush past this point. The iPhone has truly put a useful version of the Internet in people’s pockets while at the same time giving them an interface that is both familiar and easy to use.

If content is delivered directly to those listening devices without the need for wifi (using the iPhone), or multi-step downloads, or much effort from the listener, then podcasters can truly have direct access to their audience. This is what is commonly known as a “game changer”.

Here’s the solution I’ve come across and I think it is the perfect model example of what’s to come in the future.

While listening to end of The Public Speaker Podcast, an excellent podcast with tips on becoming a better public speaker, Lisa B. Marshall suggested that her podcast could be streamed to the iPhone using the Stitcher App.

After checking out the iPhone App I found that Stitcher enables podcast listeners to build their own radio stations by simply starring their favorite podcasts. I quickly found some of my favorite podcasts were already listed in the Stitcher category listings, and some I simply had to search for the podcast name. Podcast starred as favorites automatically became part of the personalized line up of podcasts that get streamed to the iPhone.

Podcasts can be arranged in any listening order and there are no files to manage or rss feed to subscribe to. Individual podcast shows can be bookmarked for later reference, and podcasts can be shared with friends on Twitter, Facebook, or email.

This is the future of podcast delivery. It has all the ease of radio but customizes the content to the listeners preferences and puts podcasters directly into the pocket of the podcast listener. As soon as new content is published, it is available to be streamed directly to the listener without the steps and delay of downloading and synchronizing a device.

Granted, until cellular coverage includes every square inch of the planet, there may still be cases where downloading a file makes more sense for offline listening. But in most cases iPhone users are always connected to the Internet so this is a very real solution for them. As other devices join the rush for mobile expansion, this type of content delivery is certainly the future for delivering podcasts.

Don’t believe me? Go try it out and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

P.S. Half of this article was written on my iPhone using the WordPress App and all the screen shots were taken on my iPhone while using the Stitcher App.

Can being a Love Kung Fu artist help you increase your customer base and make you more efficient too? Well, I can guarantee anything, but it has certainly worked for Mark Berry of LoveKungFu.com.

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark and he told me about several creative ideas he’s used to build up his online life coaching business. Using word of mouth advertising, teleconferencing tools, and his own organizational skills he has increased his customer conversions and freed himself to focus on the success of his clients.

In the interview, Mark shares with us how he increased his conversions by screening prospects in just 20 minutes and how he used the self publishing of his own book to open up new opportunities. All throughout the interview he offers some extremely creative insight that I know you will find valuable.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Listen to the Love Kung Fu interview now

Read the full Love Kung Fu interview transcript

Charles McKeever: Hi, welcome back to another edition of the Open Source Marketer Podcast. I am Charles McKeever and I am the Open Source Marketer. And today I am here with Mark Berry. Mark Berry runs and operates Little Love Coach, and he is going to be sharing with us today a little bit about how he does his business online and offline.

Just to give you a little background on Mark, he is 5’3″ and he is known as “the little love coach.” He has coaching clients all around the world. And in 2002 he started Love Kung Fu, which is a life coaching company that’s dedicated to helping people improve their dating and relationships. Mark, thank you for being on the show here with us.

Mark Berry: Thanks, Charles.

Charles: Well, let’s just — let’s just jump right into it, because I am really interested in what you’ve got going on here. I have been to your website, I have been to littlelovecoach.com and then I have also been to Kung Fu Love. And I have to tell you that you’re doing a great job of working things online and offline. So tell us a little bit about…what is Love Kung Fu, and how did you come up with that concept?

Mark: Well, it’s the name of my company and I called it Love Kung Fu because, Kung Fu means skilled. And a friend of mine and I were brainstorming on what we were going to call this thing, because before the company started, I was just giving love advice, and I started charging for it and people started paying for it. So once I was giving this love advice out and selling it, then I had to come up with the company name.

And we looked around and we brainstormed and lovekungfu.com was one of the only ones not taken of everything we came up with. So — and what’s funny is, the further I got into the company and the further I got into helping people find love and help them in dating and relationships, the more Kung Fu started to apply, because Kung Fu, as you know, it means work, and sometimes it means struggle, and love is hard, love is work. So that’s the basis behind Love Kung Fu.

Charles: So you say that you were giving out free — I guess giving out free advice in the beginning?

Mark: Well, I’ve been giving free advice my whole life. [laughs]

Charles: OK, yes, welcome to the world.

Mark: Right. But around 2002 was when I started charging people and I just said, “Hey, I’m offering this program where I work with you one-on-one, week after week for a five-week period, four to five weeks, and we help you accomplish very specific goals.”

Case in point, my first client ever, her name was Grace, and she wanted to meet some new guys. She wanted to meet guys that were at her financial worth. And she kept finding losers. So she started talking to me, we started working every week and I helped her to find better places to find these guys. I helped her brainstorm and seek out places that these guys could be at her level.

And sure enough, by the end of those five weeks, she was going on all these different dates with guys that were really up to par, like really at the level she wanted.

Charles: Was it obvious then that there was a market? I mean, beyond this one person, did you know that there was a market for you to do this?

Mark: No, I didn’t know there was a bigger market when I — back when I started that, I had not even heard of life coaching at all, which is basically what I do. All I knew is that people kept asking for it, and so I kept offering it. And now over the last six years or so, I have started to discover there actually is the really big market for people who want life coaches and that market is only just beginning.

Charles: Really. So there wasn’t like a — did you do any kind of research, or, I mean, was there a place where you could go to find out that this was happening, or you just paid attention?

Mark: No, I just followed demand. And you know, as a business coach as well, that’s really what I recommend to people too, like, listen to the demand. And as a result of listening to the demand, I’ve coached people in their — I’ve written their online dating profiles for them, I’ve given dating advice, I’ve given sex advice, I’ve helped people write their first book.

And I’ve done all of that because I kept listening for what they wanted. And only much, much later, circumstantially did I find that there actually is a market. But yes, everything I found… all of my business I found, I found just through listening to people and listening to what they wanted.

Charles: So was this your first online business, then, or your first business at all, or what’s the story there?

Mark: I got into real estate investing in about 2000-2001, and started this right after that — just coincided with it. My first client was first my real estate investor mentor, and then she thought, “Oh, your advice is good,” and she hired me. So, it’s my second business. But it’s really the first time I have ever built anything online because real estate investing is not online at all. You know, it’s not anything I did that wasn’t –

Charles: So you didn’t start out with a website then, I guess you just added that later?

Mark: Yes, we had a website, but it was mostly just kind of a motivation, it was like a business card, which kind of put us out there. But it certainly was not really a marketing tool, especially the way you see websites as marketing tools today. It was more to create a brand for us and a motivation. But all of my first business was all word of mouth and people I met in person who wanted to hire me.

Charles: Do you find yourself doing more online business today, or more offline business?

Mark: Well, you know, the online business that… the sales are almost always online because that’s the only way that I take a credit card is over the computer. But what I use is, I use the online websites like LinkedIn and Facebook, and I connect with people. And then through those connections online, people I never would have met, email lists, however I meet people online.

Then I funnel all those people into one-on-one conversations on the phone. And from those phone conversations they get excited, they get interested, they want to hire me, and then I redirect them to the website and have them sign up where we’re talking.

Charles: You use the model of a funnel, where you have a large general population and then as the prospects get more and more refined, they get closer and closer to the buying process?

Mark: Yes, and the funnel that I have created is a 20-minute strategy call, and I actually modeled that from Laurel Ingmar’s Live Out Loud program. And what I do is, if you’re interested, then you get a taste test of the coaching. What — how can I help you in 20 minutes? And if that helps you enough that you like what you hear, from there you sign up for the five-week program, four weekly calls.

Charles: That’s pretty sharp. I like that, because most people will be willing to give up 20 minutes, you know, to find out if something is going to work for them or not.

Mark: Well, yeah, and I found that because this is a relationship-oriented business, like any service business, about 50 percent of your investment is in the relationship itself. So what I found is that there was no way for me to sell myself without actually having a conversation.

Charles: [laughs]

Mark: Yes, right. So when I first started I had 45 minutes, like they got a full call to try me out. What I found was I was helping people so much, so fast, that I actually was giving them more than they could even handle in the first 45-minute call, and they would be all full and all done, and then not hiring me.

So I found that in a 20-minute call, I could actually help them enough so that we formed a relationship, but not so much that they’re all full up and ready to go.

Charles: That’s pretty sharp. I guess you just noticed that over time, is that it?

Mark: Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Everything I notice is the hard way, yeah.

[laughter]

Charles: That’s good though, because a lot of times I think people kind of get a certain result and then they feel maybe discouraged. They don’t think to refine what they’re doing, and see what else works. So that sounds like that’s what you’ve done, you’ve just over time tried different things until you got the result that you wanted.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, I’ve had to try a million times, it’s a never ending process of experimentation and refinement and personal growth.

Charles: So you said you’ve built relationships, you have to have the conversations with them and things like that. Have you in your marketing efforts… I mean, have you tried buying traffic or cross-promoting between sites, or do you rely any on search engine traffic, or anything like that?

Mark: I’ve done quite a bit of experimenting with online search engine traffic, online advertising to the general public. The service I have provided with life coaching, I’ve found, is still so new and so cutting-edge, the ads are not targeted enough that I am able to pick up anybody.

I am really not able to pick up any clients with any sort of positive return from those marketing ventures. Couple that with the fact that it’s a service job, and it’s really a personality-matching kind of business, and what happens is they never actually come through. So I have actually found that search engine marketing, and even a lot of online advertising is not working for me.

Now, the one thing I have not done yet is online advertising specifically on dating sites, which is a gold mine, I hope. I trust that will actually work, since I am a love coach, and that will complement those businesses. So, that’s really the next online advertising venture that I’ll try, is just focus on those dating companies.

Charles: Now, do you consider your business to be strictly an Internet marketing venture? I mean, you have an offline component, right?

Mark: It’s a real blend, it’s a real blend. Again, because it’s a relationship business, I’ve found that I’ve had to blend. All of the coaching I do is on the phone, so I don’t meet with anybody in person.

Charles: How interesting.

Mark: So most of my clients are actually not in Dallas where I live: they’re in New York and Toronto and San Francisco. I’m on various newsletters, various email lists, and forums. Sometimes when I travel I go to classes all over the country, and I’ll meet different people through various networking events and educational classes, and then from there they’ll hire me, or they’ll tell a friend and the friend will hire me.

So, most of my business comes from networking, but that networking is probably split about half offline and about half online. For example, one woman in New York was on an email list with me, a Yahoo! Group, and she saw what I was doing and got to know me better and better. We had met once before, but really we knew each other through the Yahoo! Group.

So she hired me, and as a result of her, three friends of her hired me, and then three friends of a friend of one of those friends hired me. They’re all doctors in New York, female doctors in New York, researchers and doctors in New York. I’ve never met anyone except the one girl, the first girl.

Charles: Oh, that’s fantastic, yeah! That’s a stronger piece of marketing for you then anything that you could pay for really. I mean because you’re piggybacking a little bit — well, a lot really, on their personal recommendations.

Mark: That’s right, that’s right. They’re all single women in their late 50s, and so finding love is on a ticking clock, and they were very, very interested in me. What I was able to provide with the coaching helped, because it helped the first girl and then they just kept telling people because it kept helping.

Even though I never met any of them, I was able to provide a lot of value just through phone conversation. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t been providing value to people on the Yahoo! Group as well, which is where we really got to know each other.

Charles: Right. So yeah, that’s not a “set it and forget it” kind of thing then. It’s more of an interactive, always on, always looking to be of value to other people.

Mark: Yeah, it’s definitely a business that requires my presence, it’s not a product. At the same time, I like that, because it’s more valuable to me. I can actually see the results, as I talk to people, I know it is working.

Charles: So, things like Facebook and all the different social networks and stuff, those must be a pretty good place for you to hang out.

Mark: They are, and I’ve learned a lot about networking over the years. The big thing about networking, I used to go to networking events, and then if I got 10 business cards, I would be so mad at myself if I didn’t follow up with all 10 of those people, right?

What I found about networking online and offline is, that there is only 10% of those people that are really, really going to turn into a great relationship. Well, multiply that times all of your friends on MySpace and Facebook, right? All of a sudden if you tried to follow up with everybody that you meet on there, mostly you’re wasting your time, right?

Charles: [laughs]

Mark: I mean it’s like, too much!

Charles: Sure.

Mark: If you follow that 10% rule and you say, “10% of these people are going to be interested in somehow partnering with me or hiring me,” if you get good at figuring out which those 10% are, then you can really take advantage of sites like that, and that’s a skill I’m still mastering. You know, we met on the Internet.

Charles: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, that’s the only way we’ve known each other, is exactly through all those networking sites.

Charles: Yeah, exactly. We connected online, and then I went and looked at what you were doing. You did a very good job of presenting yourself and what you did, and from there it was just like, “OK, I want to talk to this guy. I want to find out what he’s doing now. I want to pick his brain and see what kind of experience that you’ve had.”

I know that everybody has a story, and yours was one that was compelling. I mean, you did a good job of laying it out. So yeah, I can just imagine that would be the same net effect over and over again, as you interact with more and more people.

Now tell me, talk about interacting with people. Tell me, how often do you speak at events? Because I notice that you talk about your speaking engagements.

Mark: Yeah, right now it’s about once a month. I’ve only just started getting really serious about being a speaker, and it feels like a big open frontier for me, there are all these opportunities. I’m kind of sorting through them and just now starting to really speak.

I’m a writer, and as a writer I have more ideas than I have time in the day to write them down. So, as a speaker, one of the first challenges I was facing was what do I think about because there’s way too much in my brain to actually say it all at once. [laughs]

So I created this speech called “The Four Arts of Love.” It’s based on a concept I created early on in the creation of Love Kung Fu. And what “The Four Arts of Love” is about is, it’s the idea of that any skill you are trying to learn, any goal you have, can be achieved by learning a sequence of skills. And that sequence of skills usually falls in one of four arts of love.

The four arts of love are the art of being single, the art of dating, the art of relationships, and the art of teamwork. So, in the speech now, what I do is I talk about those four arts of love, and I start to help people really identify what they’re learning and how those four arts of love can help facilitate them learning the right skills in the right order.

Charles: Is there a circuit for this kind of thing? Or I mean, do you set these events up yourself, or is there something that you can sort of piggyback on an event that needs speakers?

Mark: Well, I was doing a singles event, a monthly singles event, and then we morphed that into a book club. And now we are actually going to focus entirely on getting it out into these singles groups that already exist. So, there is a circuit for love. There’s a circuit for singles groups, and those sometimes bring speakers in, and then really anybody who is interested in hearing someone speak about love, it’s a really interesting topic.

And as we all grow as people and in society, we’re starting to have more people wanting to learn about love. You know, love has been always seen as this kind of “have or have not” view in life that’s kind of like — oh, well, he’s just got lucky, that’s why he found someone. Or she was just born pretty. But more and more people are starting to approach love the same way they approach money or business, it’s actually a series of skills that you can learn over time.

As people start to figure that out, they’ve started actually wondering, “Well, who is the expert, how do we learn about learning about love?” And that’s where I’ve started to come in and speak to those groups. Then those ideas affect you, you know, for the rest of the week you will be thinking about everything we talked about, and if I did my job right it will affect how you interact with people, how you talk to singles, how you act in a Starbucks or a bar or a club or a networking event.

Charles: Yes, it’s hard not to be affected by ideas. So, tell me how — you told us a little bit about the coaching services and how you got into it — you know, kind of one person at a time and things like that, but tell me more about the life coaching part of what you do. I mean is that something that you do in groups, or something that you do on an individual basis? You talked about doing phone calls, I mean, how do you normally do that?

Mark: Well, the life coaching is set up almost exactly like a personal trainer, except it’s on the phone. And just like a personal trainer, you set a goal of what you want to accomplish. So, all of my programs are five weeks long, with the exception of couples coaching, which is 10 weeks. But pretty much in increments of five weeks, we set a goal.

And the first — the goal-setting call, the strategy session, is the free 20-minute session. If you don’t have your goal in mind already, that’s what that call is for, is to really figure out what your goal is. So, I’ve had clients who have goals like, “I want to meet more girls.” I have some clients who say, “I want to find true love by the end of the year. I want to be married by Valentine’s Day next year.”

Charles: Oh, wow.

Mark: Yeah, you know, I mean, people have goals in their love lives. I had one client who wanted to have his first book written and published in 15 weeks, and he accomplished that goal.

Charles: Oh, wow.

Mark Berry: Yeah. So, whatever that goal is, that’s the first requirement. And as a life coach, for me, that’s — sometimes I see a lot of people in different industries, either coaching or counseling, who don’t clarify the goal before they start. And to me, I have found that if they don’t have that goal really set in stone, that I might as well just give them their money back and coach them for free, because the goal is everything.

Once you set that goal, then you can look for ways to measure it. Like, you can measure true love by measuring the number of dates that someone goes on, because if they don’t go on any dates, zero times infinity is still zero. [laughs] So they have to go on dates, right, in order to find somebody. So, that’s a way to measure it. So, then over the five weeks you measure the number of dates they’re going on.

And then, “Well, I’m not finding anybody.” Well that’s what the coach is for. That’s what I’m for, is to help you figure out how to find the right people, in the right places in the right situations, in the right time in order to accomplish your goal.

I’ve had couples who were arguing about sex issues, which is a huge issue, money and sex, right? So, they would have a goal that they wanted this resolved, that they wanted this issue to be — they wanted peace of mind around this issue. That’s a goal, because you can measure that. You can count the number of fights, for example.

So, then what they do with me is once they set that goal, then we talk every week and I shed insight on their issue. Because having an outside observer, having an expert on the topic, look at what you’re doing, and look at what you’re saying and actually shed some insight on the issue, is going to help a whole lot more than all the bad advice from all your friends and family.

Because, you know, most of us are not doing it right. And I wasn’t, you know, I had to learn the hard way and I did a lot of reading and a lot of research in order to become an expert on this topic. But when I started, heck no, I was doing it all wrong. And most of the advice that people give out or people get is bad, is really bad advice. There is a lot of research to back that up.

Charles: So, we tend to turn our friends into guinea pigs. We give them advice, and then they’re the ones who have to go off and live with whether or not it works or not.

Mark: Right. [laughs] You know, there’s actually a lot of data and research and statistics that will back up almost anything that anybody says or does in a relationship. So, why not rely on the expert to guide you?

So then, what I do on these calls is just like a personal trainer, that I motivate, you know, one part cheerleader, one part, you know, football coach, and one part expert. So, each week we talk about where you’re at and the progress you’re making. And then I give you homework based on those conversations that will actually propel you forward.

So, for example, with Grace, she was meeting all these crappy guys, but that’s because she wasn’t going anywhere that rich people go. So, with Grace, her first assignment was to spend the weekend and list out 20 places that wealthy guys and powerful guys go and hang out. Where do they hang? And make that list and then go to one of those places this week. That was her homework.

For the guy writing his book, his homework was to — well, his first homework was to write, because when you are writing a book, your first job is just, you write the first book, get the first draft done, right? [laughs] So, that was his homework for five weeks.

But you know, whatever your goal is, there is homework that will have you in action. And that’s the other reason why I like the name “Love Kung Fu,” because Kung Fu really implies action. Kung Fu your love life.

Charles: [laughs] Yes, do you make them — do you require that they make noises when they do that. They have to do — [makes kung fu noise]

Mark: [laughs] Only if it helps.

Charles: You don’t try to make sure of that?

Mark: Right, no.

Charles: On Kung Fu Love, you talk about a Hottie Boot Camp. So, what is a Hottie Boot Camp, because it sounds interesting?

Mark: Well, Hottie Boot Camp is one of the programs that I offer, and you know you’ve got your five-week program, right, and right now it’s $250 for five weeks. But, then, within that five-week program, there are a whole lot of different options you can take.

So Hottie Boot Camp is one name that we use, and it did refer to an in-person Hottie Boot Camp we did, but now it actually refers to an individual five-week program that you can take. So, what people that take the Hottie Boot Camp love is that it actually — the goal of Hottie Boot Camp is to make you hot, inside and out.

So, we spend those five weeks looking at your wardrobe, looking at what clothes make you feel hot, and you go through your wardrobe, and you throw some stuff away. And then from there, you start to look in the mirror, and every day you start to see something different about yourself that you think is hot.

One of the premises of Love Kung Fu is that if you can figure out what to learn and what to do, you can really, really change how you feel and what you can accomplish. So the Hottie Boot Camp is one of the five-week coaching programs over the phone, just like everything else, it’s one-on-one with me, and you learn how to be hot! How to see yourself as hot.

Charles: So, a little bit of self-image self-exploration, where you can then have the confidence to go out and connect with the people who you want to connect with.

Mark: Yeah. One of my top Hottie Boot Camp clients, he was so down on his looks that he absolutely could not even — he’s gay and he wouldn’t ask any guys out. Even though — I’d met the guy, and the guy’s hot. And that’s the funny thing about Hottie Boot Camp, that actually a lot of hotties take Hottie Boot Camp, because they don’t see themselves as attractive as everybody else does. So, at the end of that five weeks, he started to see it.

You know, there’s a lot of things that we do in the program that have you really open up to that. A lot of it is introspective, but I believe the best introspective comes from life experience, and the best life experience comes from someone holding you accountable to actually do it.

Charles: Yeah, and a lot of times we tell ourselves things and then we wind up acting out those thoughts, don’t we?

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Charles: And then we need somebody else to help us break that pattern.

Mark: Yes.

Charles: All right. Well then, tell me more about the social club, and the forum and the meet-ups and stuff like that. I know you talked about those on lovekungfu.com, so… tell me about the social club, first of all.

Mark: Well, the social club right now is a book club, and it’s a weekly book club. We’re putting it on hold for the holidays, but it’s a weekly book club in which people can get educated. And because there’s so many networking sites out there on the web and stuff, the social club also extends out to meeting people on all of the online communities that we’re all part of, and that the Love Kung Fu team is a part of.

So, the YouTube page, the Facebook page, the MySpace page, so that people can start to really chat. The online forum is just waiting to take off. [laughs] You know, it’s just kind of hanging out for a while, because nobody gets on there. You know, a bunch of people kind of gel on there…I don’t know if you’ve ever tried starting a forum before, but until there’s some sort of critical mass, it just kind of hems and haws along, so…

Charles: Yeah, I’ve actually been involved in the starting of a forum, and you’re absolutely right, it’s one of those things that you constantly… it’s like a newborn child. I mean, you really have to watch it night and day, or you know, it falls face-first on the carpet and suffocates. [laughs] It’s not something that you just turn on and it goes.

Mark: Yeah, and what’s funny about forums is that I have a set of college buddies, and there’s probably 10 of us, but it started out with maybe about six of them who created this online forum just for catching up. And that forum is more active than forums I’ve seen with hundreds of members. And there’s only 10 of them.

Because it’s pretty much a place that they go where they know the people, because they went to school with those people. And so even though it’s only 10 people, it’s a huge forum with thousands and thousands of posts. So, again, that ties the online world to the offline world, because I know for a fact that the only reason that forum is so strong and works so well is because all those people know each other in person. They know each other offline.

Charles: Right. I would venture to bet that even on the huge forums, the really active, large, thousands of people forums, I mean, those are just a collection of very small cells of people. You know, it’s hard to have more than 20 people, having a conversation with 10 to 20 people that you really know. Otherwise it’s a surface-level conversation, it’s just sort of a hit and run. And it seems like that’s another part of managing the forum, which seems to be, you know, how to keep the thing from imploding. [laughter]

Mark: Right, right.

Charles: But what about the meetups? I mean, Meetup, of course, meetup.com, does local group meetings. So the idea there was, at least according to their website, to get people off their computers and into coffee houses and real-life settings. So how has that worked out for you?

Mark: Meetup is great, I love Meetup, and I’ve even heard there are several other sites like Meetup. I’m not sure, but I would wager Meetup is probably the biggest, and it’s continuing to get bigger and bigger every day.

And what happens with Meetup is that all the people in Meetup, not all, but a lot of, like… the meetup I did was called Smart Singles, and of course the idea, as we said, was to have singles meet up for more than just drinking, but actually to learn something. And I created the meetup and discovered this whole world of singles who were really connected both through the Meetup website and through these events. As a matter of fact, one of these girls, she was going to six to eight Meetup events a week.

Charles: Wow.

Mark: I was convinced for the longest time that she worked for Meetup.

Charles: [laughs]

Mark: Because she was a shameless promoter of not just one but dozens of meetups that she belonged to, all serving their own groups and having their own missions and goals and everything and she was just everywhere.

So Meetup has really been really neat. As for our own meetup, I’ve met so many people through Meetup and some of those people have become clients. So, they see the website, they come to the event because they like the idea, and from there became clients. I actually have several clients from Meetup.

But it wasn’t just that they saw me online. I think part of the problem with advertising online is that if you’re not already known, then you’re not real, you’re not a real face, you’re not a real person. Which is why video helps a lot with advertising: people start to feel like they actually know you when they see a video of you.

So in Meetup, they met me, and that’s when they bought. Nobody found me through Meetup and bought without first talking to me on the phone or meeting me.

Charles: Now, have you done any video?

Mark: Yeah. I have a YouTube profile. All my profiles are MarkBerry555, so that’s a great way to find me all over the place. [laughs] And I have done a lot of YouTube videos, and I have experimented with YouTube a lot. And the videos are great when they add to your website. When they are embedded in your website, and the whole purpose of the video is for that page.

Like, I have an Action Dating kit, it’s a $67, two-CD workbook guide to dating, to finding love in 28 days. And I put a video on YouTube and then I embedded that YouTube video on my website, and it really helped. It really helped the believability of the product. Because they felt like they were buying it from a person, not a generic web page.

Charles: Right. That’s an interesting point to make there, that just doing one thing can improve, you know, the sales or the conversions or whatever it is you’re trying to do on your side. But, you know, it’s not always that obvious to people that that one thing needs to be done. And I think that’s a good example of it.

So, when did you decide to create the books and the audio materials, then? I mean, what was — I mean, you went from doing the, you know, getting into the coaching end of it and things like that. When did you say “Hey, I need to turn these into something that I can sell?”

Mark: Well, it was — it became a personal journey, and a lot of it, my author coaching clients, my writing coaching clients, it’s the same way. It becomes personal. Like, just to be able to say that you are a published author is one of the most proudest moments of my life. You know, I don’t have kids, so those books are my kids.

And so, being able to say I’m an author was…slowly over time, that kind of crept on me, became very personal. And I had these ideas, these concepts in my head since years. So I have so many — I actually wrote an entire book proposal to propose it as a self-help book and sent it out, didn’t get any response.

But that book proposal writing process in into itself was incredibly enriching and complicated, actually. It’s as hard as writing a book. And once I wrote that book proposal, then I started to see another opportunity to really use book writing as a marketing tool for the coaching.

And since I had all these concepts just lying around in my head gathering dust, that’s when I decided to go ahead and just write and self-publish the first book rather than trying to find a publisher. So that first book was “Splatter Dating.” And I read splatterdating.com and…

Charles: Did you come up with that name?

Mark: Yes.

Charles: Wow. That’s…I mean, it just sounds like it will get your attention immediately.

Mark: Well then, and I — I seem to keep attracting names that get attention. [laughs] So that’s good, you know, it’s good. It wakes people up.

And the concept behind splatter dating is that you want to just throw yourself out there. You just want to, you know, don’t be so picky, don’t be so stressed out about a date. Just go, get a lot of coffee dates and just throw it all out there, just throw yourself out there, just splat, right? And so then “Splatter Dating” was born out of that idea.

And so that book led me to realize how much I loved writing. And so I wrote the second book, which is the workbook that belongs inside the Action Dating kit, and that’s the workbook and CD kit. So then I wrote that book as more of a fiction self-help blend. So you actually follow these three students as they learn about dating, and they actually have their own little boot camp with this Chinese guru guy and learn about love on the journey, and then meanwhile you’re actually learning concepts along the way.

And now, my next project, I think it’s actually going to be a hybrid of Hottie Boot Camp combined with a script I wrote like 10 years ago called “The Beautiful People,” about a model who gets sucked into this world of beautiful people, except that as he gets to know the more beautiful people, then all the unattractive people in his life start vanishing. And so that’s going to track a concept I have called “The Seven Stages of Hotness,” which is a presentation I do, one of my speeches about how to be hotter, how to be more attractive.

Charles: Well, you know, I want to kind of bring back around one of the things that you said there that I thought was interesting, was that you did self-publishing on your first book. And there’s a certain element of credibility that goes along with being a published author, you know, being able to say that you’re a published author, whether it’s in a magazine or, you know, picked up by a publisher, or if it’s self-published.

Because once people feel like there’s something that you had to say that’s been printed, then there’s this credibility that goes along with it. So, sounds like that was kind of a great way for you to get your ideas down and get that credibility, was by doing self-publishing.

Mark: Yeah. And self-publishing is now something that you can do… I have self-published each of my books for less than $1,000 after all costs. And I did that with some decent creativity. But self-publishing now is so affordable that it’s really worth it. And you said that it lends credibility. And although it did not put a lot of money directly into my pocket, which is, of course what I expected, but that didn’t happen.

But what it did do is it did open a lot of doors. I would pick up the phone and call my local coffee shop and say, “You know, I’d like to do a seminar there,” or something like that, and they kind of go, “That’s nice, who are you? No, I’m not interested.” Once I was published, I recall, if I went and said, “I want to do a book signing at your coffee shop,” and they would jump all over it.

Charles: [laughs] Now, that’s interesting.

Mark: Yes. And that happened in a lot of different forms and fashions. People that were never paying attention to me, immediately would perk up and start paying attention when they knew I was an author.

Charles: Huh.

Mark: Yeah. So self-publishing was one of the best, most personally rewarding experiences I have ever had. It was really powerful.

Charles: That’s pretty smart. I would never have thought to set up my own book signing, you know. I mean –

Mark: Yeah. [laughing]

Charles: We all get ideas, I guess of, you know, that’s what the publicist does. There is something that somebody else takes care of when you reach that point, you know. But yes, it makes complete sense that you could do that.

So what, did you just show up with a table and a bunch of books and — I mean, how did you pull that off?

Mark: A table, a bunch of books, and balloons, and you know, a pen, and name tags, maybe. And really what we did is we just had fun. We had fun. If I had to do it again, which I plan to, because I plan to write more books, I would do a whole lot of them, and all over the city, and just cram them into like a two- or three- or four-week period.

Charles: Yeah.

Mark: And just run the gamut. Because, you know, because my business is still growing and still developing. So a lot of the marketing, it’s still relationship marketing. It’s still people I know or friends of friends. So if you have 20 book signings that they can pick from, then really, nobody can really say no, unless they’re really not interested.

Charles: [laughs]

Mark: Right?

So then you send out the glass… The other thing I have seen Michael Piore and Elizabeth Marshall do — they are some great marketers. They create a list of people that will email, all on the same day, an announcement about the book. This is actually how a lot of really successful authors got pushed up on Amazon, was that they had… Everybody would buy their book all on the same day.

So then Amazon records that as a record number of sales, and it pushes you way up. So you get like number one in self-help for this day. So you’re number one for a day. Well, that gets you notoriety, that gets you something you can put on the book or on wherever. And they did that by building up a list of people who were interested in emailing it out all on the same day — a launch, if you will.

Charles: So, that’s a very good strategy. I like the aspect of that because it’s smart. It’s just a smart way of doing it.

Mark: Yeah. Book sales is its own universe.

[laughter]

Charles: Yeah, I can imagine… Well, you know I have this picture in my head. I don’t know if it is the way that it happened or not, but I have this picture in my head of it being something that would be a great conversation starter. You would probably pick up new relationships and new prospects out of that alone.

Mark: Yeah.

Charles: Sounds like a great way to go into the market.

Mark: Well, yeah. My last writing coaching client, he wanted to publish a book and he went to me because I was an author. [laughs]

Charles: [laughs] There you go. It builds on it. It builds on itself.

Mark: Well, that’s right. Ivan Misner, founder of BNI International…it’s the largest networking company in the world and they have hundreds of chapters in every major city, and he told me that he…What did he say? That he started the largest international networking company in the world, but nobody would put him on TV until he had written a book. Yes, and he wrote a book, and now they will put him on TV.

Charles: Wow.

Mark: So, the power — yes, the power of being an author, it’s great.

Charles: Yes. That’s very fascinating. I have to try that out to see what kind of… I know there are bloggers within the blogosphere there that have published their own books, whether it be just a downloadable PDF or an actual physical product. And that’s been a big marketing piece for them, just to be able to say that they’re a published author. Even though their blog is what they do.

Mark: Right, yeah.

Charles: They’re writing every day, but it’s not the same as saying, “I wrote a book.”

Mark: Yeah, right. Writing feels like childbirth. It’s a process, and it really does change you. There is a reason why people respect authors so much, and that’s because writing a book is really hard. It’s a very big challenge and it’s something that really takes a lot of personal fortitude to achieve.

Charles: Yes, sometimes putting together a grocery list is hard.

Mark: Right. [laughs]

Charles: So, where do you think that — you probably didn’t expect to be where you are today, so where do you see your business going in a year? Where do you see the future for you?

Mark: Well, it’s funny, because the probably the biggest expectation I had — I certainly didn’t expect to be a love coach, but once I did start to give love advice, I expected to be a millionaire from this thing. And in fact, it’s grown a lot more organically. It’s grown slower, and along the way I’ve learned so, so, so much. So, where do I see myself headed?

Really, the next goal is to master the art of sales and marketing and really develop a larger marketing campaign, above and beyond guerrilla marketing. The trick for Love Kung Fu, and for life coaching as an industry, has been, how do we overcome the lack of understanding about what the heck this industry is.

So, that’s one of the first hurdles I really see, is learning how to speak about coaching so that the everyday average person who has never heard of it before understands it, and immediately sees the value. Much like the personal trainer industry or the massage therapy industry must have built itself 20 years ago.

Now, people that have personal trainers love personal trainers, and there is a whole segment of people and a whole group of millionaires and billionaires that developed themselves… they got rich off of those developing industries. So that’s really where I see myself, is becoming one of those icons of the life coaching industry and developing myself accordingly.

Charles: Yes, definitely I think that people instantly identify with the term “personal trainer,” whether we get an idea of someone in the gym, a physical personal trainer, or we get the sort of mental image of, like, Tony Robbins or something like that. It’s a connecting point where you say, “This is my personal trainer,” most people will go, “Oh, OK.” Yes, life coaches may be so new or so little defined that people aren’t clear as to what that really means.

Mark: Exactly, and 20 years ago when you would say to someone, “I’m a personal trainer,” they would say, “What? What is that? What do you do?” So, that industry has really taken some leaps and bounds, and that’s really where the coaching industry is headed, is through those same hoops and into those same leaps and bounds.

Charles: Well, excellent, excellent. Well, it sounds like you’re definitely on track to do all that, and you are having your goal set. Everything that you have going on, like I said, it was blindingly apparent to me when I went upside that you are organized and that you have plenty of things to offer people, no matter what level they were at — whether they wanted to do something one-on-one, or whether they wanted to pick up some materials and do something self-paced.

It really seemed like you were working all angles of it. So, kudos to you, definitely. So now, where — we talked about lovekungfu.com, and we talked about Little Love Coach, but tell me, if I have listened to this entire program, where can I find more information about you and what you do?

Mark: Well, the best thing, if they want to hire me as their coach or if they’re even considering it, is to get into a strategy session with me, get into an action strategy call, which is that 20-minute call. My phone number and my email are spattered all over the Internet. They can go to littlelovecoach.com and sign up for the newsletter, or they can go to lovekungfu.com, track down my phone number, and just call me.

To get that phone call started, scheduled this week, scheduled today, because the thing I care about most is that people take action, that they do something about their love life, and they do something about that book they always wanted to write. If that’s something that they’re interested in, they need to get a hold of me. My cell is 972 — can I give my cell out?

[laughter]

Charles: Your cell phone — you go ahead, my friend.

Mark: All right. 972-365-8084. The people I’m looking for are people that are not going to mess around, people that are serious about what they want to accomplish. And that’s who I work with.

Charles: Well, all right, Mark. It’s Mark Berry from Love Kung Fu, and thanks for being on the call with us. It has been really informative. I have enjoyed it, just to talk.

Mark: Thank you, Charles. You were great. Thank you.

Contact Mark Berry at Love Kung Fu today!

What can we learn as Internet Marketers from the 2008 Presidential race for the White House?

Before we answer that, let’s look at how John McCain failed to leverage the Internet to promote his campaign.

Was John McCain the victim of a biased news media during the 2008 Presidential race to the White House? Maybe so. But, what ultimately hurt John McCain’s campaign was how his message was constructed and how it was distributed.

There were clearly times when it seemed twitter-to-follow/”>Barack Obama could do no wrong and John McCain could do no right. But what Senator McCain failed to realize was that he had the same access to the Internet that you and I have and a lot of people were paying attention.

John McCain didn’t understand, or rather his campaign managers didn’t understand that the face of media has changed. When Hollywood screenwriters went on strike a year ago, it wasn’t about working conditions. It was about how the Internet and new media has changed traditional media.

Yes, there are 24 hour cable news channels where you can get news from all around the world with a click of the TV remote. But that’s not where people are turning to get information that they trust.

John McCain thought if he ran traditional political TV ads he was following a formula that had worked in the past. But people have come to be skeptical of traditional media and with TIVO they can watch what they want, when they want and that rarely includes paid political ads attacking your opponent.

John McCain didn’t understand that people talk outside his rallys and that what happens at a town hall rally can and will be rebroadcast around the world with the click of a mouse button. He thought he could control his message by limiting it to only a few distribution channels, but he didn’t understand the culture of new media and the influence it is having on people.

To illustrate, do a search on YouTube for Barack Obama Videos and John McCain Videos. What you will find is that Obama has videos that show him speaking in town squares and making statements that promise hope for the future. For McCain you will find a list of all his political ads against Obama.

So, what can we learn as Internet Marketers?

• Recognize that social media is strong and here to stay
• Understand that you can control you, but you can’t control everyone else
• Focus on the positive aspects of your product or service and leave the negative alone
• Make sure your product is what customers want
• Lean into multiple commication methods like video, podcasts, blogs, Facebook pages, etc.
• Test different communication channels before picking just one
• Don’t avoid what you don’t understand
• Seek out partnerships with those who are strong where you’re not

The landscape of media is changing and no one has a monopoly on how things are going to turn out. But, for those who pay attention, there is a world of possibilities in front of them.

What opportunities are staring you in the face?

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Online social networking is still a very young industry and because of that there is still a ton of room for new ideas that can stretch and grow the current social landscape.

BrightKite is a new social networking player that’s bringing fresh ideas to the table. BrightKite combines a Twitter like social update service with mobile technologies to create a better networking experience.

Through BrightKite you can update your followers similar to how you update followers on Twitter. But BrightKite adds the ability to update followers on your physical location as well as your activities. Knowing someone’s location can easily open up opportunities for meetings and it adds a real option for creating solid offline social interactions and not just online connections.

According to the BrightKit website:

“Brightkite is a location-based social network that enables people to take their online profiles with them into the real-world and make real-world friends. Users can see where their friends are and what they’re up to all while maintaining comprehensive degrees of privacy to non-friends. Depending on a user’s privacy setting they can also be open to meeting others nearby.“

By Invitation Only

The service is currently in beta and they’re only accepting new accounts by invitation. Anyone can sign up to receive an invitation, but there’s a waiting list, so be aware. You can get an account early if you can find someone who’ll give you an invite.

This viral way of building a user base is absolutely genius. Google did this same thing when they originally launched Gmail and it created a powerful sense of exclusiveness that made people want to get in even more.

Now BrightKite’s “by invitation only” beta program is doing the same thing. By limiting how many people can get in they are effectively increasing interest in the service and raising demand for membership.

In fact, some people have started giving out BrightKite invitations as promotional items. Technosailor has been giving out ten invitations at a time as part of his efforts to promote his District of Corruption podcast. This shows that restricting the supply on digital goods creates demand and promotes a truly digital economy.

Searching Google

As of this writing, if you search for BrightKite in Google you’ll find that there’s quite a conversation happening on Twitter. According to TwitterStat results for the keyword BrightKite, the buzz around the service has increased sharply over the last month.

A side note here is that Google is indexing Twitter posts on a regular basis and people are using Twitter as a tool for getting into the search index. The search result for BrightKite is a good example of how Google is pulling in Twitter posts as part of the search index.

By Invitation Only

One interesting point about BrightKite is that even though membership is limited to invitations during their beta program, their overall system is still open for viewing and search. You can search for people by name, or geographic location and get back results complete with Google maps and comments.

This is another fantastic move by BrightKite because it lets people to see what their missing by not being on the inside. This increases desire for membership without increasing the supported size of your user base until your ready to open the doors to everyone.

Perspective

BrightKite promises to offer a better networking option than Twitter by adding location mapping which should help everyone create better connections. Twitter is good, but 140 characters can only go so far.

BrightKite is also showing their creativity and social awareness by generating buzz and interest in their service before they even open the doors to the public.

And no, I don’t have an invite. So, if you want to share the love, contact me and I’ll be sure to give you plug in my next update.

At home in my pajamas,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

I’m not going to list all 45 tips in this update, but here are a few interesting ones for you.

1. Use English Names for Images
2. Descriptive and accurate titles are essential
3. Use title elements on every hypertext link
4. Pick the right theme (SEO over Eye Candy)
5. Web hosting affects your traffic – google traffic is affected by site performance (google could flood a slow server). StumbeUpon stops sending traffic to slow sites
6. Serve images from your own server and not Flickr or risk sending traffic to Flickr and not your own site. Images searches will go to where the site is stored.
7. Use a sitemap to tell Google where everything is on your site. Get the WordPress Site Map Plugin.
8. Post regularly, no less than 2-3 days. Post in advance. Keep 2-3 post buffer at all times, a week or two is even better if you can.
9. Always show related posts.
10. Use Print style sheets to make it easy for people to print your content.
11. Use deep linking by using keywords in the link text.
12. Have your own domain name. Don’t use typepad, blogger, or other sub-domain.
13. Create a podcast and/or publish a video to connect with your audience and make yourself real.
14. Pick a theme that loads quickly
15. Use wp super cache plugin to survive a digg front page appearance.
16. Use the link attraction factors plugin to find out if your post title is digg worthy.
17. Always include at least one image per post, period.

These are all great tips, but the grand finale was the best tickler and that was the Layered Technologies real-time analytics reporting tool from Woopra.com. I’m getting a beta account today as part of being an attendee of WordCamp Dallas 2008, so I’ll update you on all the yummy coolness once I have a chance to get in and use the tool.

Updating from WordCamp Dallas 2008

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Okay, I bet you’re thinking. Why on earth would I ever use a cell phone to create content for my blog? And, even if I wanted to, how could I possibly do such a thing? Well the answer is simple on both points.

The logic is simple really. We all want to get more done in the day and we are all looking for ways to make better use of the time we do have. But, during the course of the day you probably still have some dead time that could be better utilized. This is probably while you are in the car traveling to work, traveling to lunch, traveling back from lunch, or on your travel time back from work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like to space out during drive time as much as the next guy, but I bet you’ve thought to yourself at least once that it would be good if there was a way to make better use of your travel time.

Well, what if you could use that time to create content for your blog? Actually, you can using your cell phone and a call in recording service. You see, the cell phone is an extremely familiar tool to most people these days. Unlike most unfriendly recording software and hardware, the cell phone carries little to no learning curve for us to use it as a recording device.

So, if you can think of the cell phone as a recording tool and combine it with a service that records your voice for playback using a Flash based web player then you can have a powerful way to create audio content for your blog that can be used anytime you have dead time in your day.

The service I am talking about is called BYOAudio.com and it provides you the ability to call into a type of voice mail box and record long running messages. Those messages or audio clips are then made available to you as MP3 files that can be downloaded directly, downloaded as a podcast, or streamed on a blog (or standard website) through an embedded Flash player. You can embed your messages into blog posts, or use them as bonus download materials for other promotions. BYOAudio lets you record audio whenever you have spare time by simply using a familiar device and their call in service. By making use of that dead time you are creating value for your blog that will continue to bring you benefit long after you’ve spent the effort.

In addition to using the phone to record audio, BYOAudio has two other ways that you can capture audio for use on your blog. They offer a web recorder that allows you to record audio using a microphone connected to your computer. This means you can record straight from your computer into an MP3 format that can then be embedded on your blog. That relieves you of having to operate recording software, save down or convert audio to MP3 format, upload it to a public server, and then create the code to place on your blog.

The other option is a little more hands on. For anyone who does want to record their audio locally, you can upload existing MP3s that BYOAudio will then host and deliver via their Flash player on your blog. This is a good option for anyone who is getting audio from an external source, mixing down multiple tracks with a background loop and intro music, or for anyone who already has a library of content they want to put on their blog.

Customizable Player Code

One of the helpful features about the service is they offer a fully customizable Flash player so you can seamlessly integrate your audio player into your blog design. Some bloggers and website owners work very hard to get a certain look and feel and they don’t want to just slap an ugly player on the page.

Player statistics

One of the things you’ll want to understand is how many times your audio has been played. This is valuable information because you want to know if your efforts are being put into the right areas of your blog. BYOAudio provides individual file reporting so you can tell how many times a file has been played, what the total play time has been for a file, how many times the files has been played to completion, the completion percentage per file, the number of downloads per file, and whether the file has been downloaded directly, from a podcast RSS feed, or through a web player.

These are great statistics to have because you can tell if a particular audio is more popular or less popular than others and you can also tell if people are listening to the entire audio. This might be helpful to know if your call to action is at the end of the audio, but no one is making it to the end. Or if you are including advertisers in your audio then you will be able to provide them stats on how many times their advertisements were potentially heard because you will be able to point to completion percentages as a metric.

Conference Call Recording

In addition to being able to create content via a call in number, you also have the ability to record conference calls which can be helpful for interviewing experts in their field of study or rebroadcasting hosted conference calls. You could use this feature to capture product calls, sales training, or other events that you might want to offer to your audience as premium content or content that is packaged as bonus materials for other products you offer.

It is important to note that as of the time of this writing, the conference call recording feature does not actually allow you to host the call on the BYOAudio lines. You can simply use the service to record an externally hosted conference call. Essentially, if you already have a way of hosting a conference call, but not a way to record the call then the BYOAudio service can help. But if you are looking for a conference call service, then this is outside of what BYOAudio offers at the moment.

Multiple Call-In Lines and Comment Lines

A strong feature that BYOAudio offers is the option to create multiple call in lines or comment lines. These call in lines can be used to encourage members of your audience to call in to leave their comments, testimonials, questions, answers, segment pieces, etc. You can also use these custom call in numbers to track campaign success rates by monitoring which promotions get call ins and which don’t. The more creative you are with this feature the more value you will get out of the service. And, just like the audio that you record on your main call in number each of the recorded audios from the call in lines can be embedded into your blog using the Flash web player, downloaded directly, or included as a podcast download.

Podcast Feeds

BYOAudio offers podcast feeds for your audio so that you can deliver your content to your audience in a way that they are expecting to consume it. If you have not looked into using a podcast feed to offer your audio content to your blog visitors then I highly recommend you start researching it. Like a standard RSS feed, you will be “pushing” your content to your audience instead of hoping that they will come back to you for updated materials.

Video Streaming

BYOAudio even offers video hosting and streaming deliver via an embedded player. You have all the same tools and reporting available to you as with the audio side of the service. Again, if you want to measure play through rates then this is a great feature to have.

Comparable services

Just as a side note, if you’ve looked into these solutions before you might be wondering about whether you should use BYOAudio, Audioacrobat.com, or Hipcast.com. The simple answer comes straight from the Hipcast support blog which states, “BYOAudio and AudioAcrobat are sister products with different markets– focusing on non-blog systems and conference calling, along with podcasting and functionality not in the Hipcast system– at a different price point.” With that in mind it is probably best to research the pricing and features of each and choose the one that best fits your budget and project requirements.

For the most part all three services offer support for podcasting, video blogging, RSS feeds, phone recording, web recording, file uploading, and play through reporting. So it really comes down to features and price if you are going to use one of the three. Hipcast has been used by several well known bloggers and podcasters. In fact Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff of the BlogSquad used it when they recorded their Conversations With Experts series, http://www.conversationswithexperts.com/, which was very popular.

BYOAudio Samples (Using My Cell Phone)

Here are two samples of the BYOAudio service. I recorded these two audios from my cell phone while I was on my way to the bank. There are two files provided because I lost the signal on my cell. The recording quality is pretty good considering it was recorded using a cell phone. However, a land line recording would probably be better. A better quality recording could probably be made using BYOAudio’s web recorder. At the time of this writing I have not used the web recorder.

Blog Audio – Part One (6:07)

MP3 File

Blog Audio – Part Two (10:01)

MP3 File

The initial idea for this entire article series was outlined in those recordings and because I was able to capture them for later playback I am able to include them here as additional content. This audio could’ve been recorded in my home recording studio. I do have a full recording setup a mixer, microphones, and recording software, but that takes dedicated time and effort in a studio setting to sit down and make a recording. But, these sample recordings were made on the fly while I was out taking care of other business.

Free Conference Calls

Before we end this article, let’s look at a similar service with a focus on conference call recording. As I mentioned before, if you’re interested in hosting and recording conference calls then BYOAudio only offers a partial solution. However, a free and simple way to do this is using the FreeConferenceCall.com service. FreeConferenceCall.com offers a great service which is totally free except for any long distance charge you and your call participants might generate while you are on the conference call. Each participant pays their own long distance charges. I’m not certain, but I would imagine that FreeConferenceCall has a deal with the phone companies and that is how they get paid for the service. But that small cost aside the service is extremely simple and easy to use.

When you sign up for your free account you get a call in number and an access code that is good for 120 days. All you have to do is give the call in number and the access code to your call participants and then schedule a call in date and time. From there everyone calls in and you simply moderate the call. Be sure to read my article,
How To Conduct A Successful Phone Interview, for tips on how to get the most out of your phone interviews.

Once you have recorded a conference call, you can download it in .wav format, add some intro music, background audio, and exit music, save it all to MP3 and then upload it to your BYOAudio account to embed on your blog.

Large Call Participant Capacity

The service offers a call in capacity for just under 100 participants. Which is great because that means you can include a large number of people in the original call to help spread the word about your project.

Conference recording with FreeConferenceCall.com is very simple and instructions are provided with a step by step explanation of how to host the call, start the recording, and end the recording. Instructions are also provided for putting the call on lecture mode so you can cut out the background noise from all the participants on the call. Then when you are ready for a question and answers section of your call, you can open the line back up for questions.

At the end of every call you automatically get a report emailed to you that details the number and duration of your conference call participants. This is a great resource because it tells you how strong of an interest there was in the call and how many people listened to the entire session. The report gives duration details for each unique number that dialed into the call so you can really tell how many people heard the entire message, how many dropped out mid way through, and how many didn’t listen to the meat of the call at all. This is good information to have when you are trying to promote the call later or if you are trying to gauge the popularity of a particular topic.

After each conference call you have the opportunity to download your call in .wav format that you can then convert to mp3 format. The service also provides an RSS feed that you can use to let other people know that a new conference call is available for download.

So, if you are looking for creative ways to generate content for your blog that will add value for your audience and you would like to make good use of dead time, then BYOAudio is a great solution. Also, if you are wanting to leverage the knowledge and value of others, then the FreeConferenceCall.com service is a low cost, high value option you can explore. Signup for an account and test it out for yourself. See if you can use it for your blog. FreeConferenceCall.com call in numbers are good for 120 days and BYOAudio offers a 30 day trial for $1. So either way you can’t lose. So get out there and start creating.

Keep those eyes wide,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

For more information about BYOAudio, OpenSourceMarketer.com/recommends/byoaudio

But, before we get into the how of podcasting, let’s take a quick look at why you might want to add podcast audio to your blog in the first place.

To start, podcasting is the “in demand” thing. It offers portable content to busy people who are on the move. Today’s mobile lifestyle is all about doing things when you want and not when “the schedule” says it can be done. In this way podcasting has transformed the way people take in information online. They download it and stick it on their MP3 players. They listen to it in their cars and at their desks, while they exercise and while they clean the house. If you want your audience to take your content with them wherever they go, then podcasting can help you do that.

Podcasting also lets your audience listen to your content over and over again. When something is valuable to them they may listen to it several times before they delete it. If it’s particularly valuable to the people they know they might share it with their friends. If you want your content listened to again and again, and possibly distributed for you for free, then podcasting can help you do that.

Podcasting adds a level of value to your content that isn’t available otherwise. This value is offered to your audience in the form of portable content and to you as rich reusable content. Valuable audio content on a particular topic can be bundled with printed materials, video content, software, or other audio to create a custom package that people will pay for. The ability to re-purpose audio content is a great way to leverage your past efforts and increase value to your audience. If you want to increase the value of your content, then podcasting can help you do that too.

How Do I Add Podcasts To My Blog Posts?

So what is podcasting and how do I add it to my blog posts? Simply put podcasting is nothing more than “attaching” an MP3 file to an existing RSS feed. The MP3 file is attached to the RSS feed by adding a special tag called an Enclosure tag to the RSS feed. The Enclosure tag tells blog aggregators and podcatchers that there is an MP3 associated with your blog post and it provides the download location of the file. The aggregator or podcatcher can then download that MP3 to the listener’s computer. From there the listeners can put the file on their iPod or MP3 player of choice.

We won’t examine how to create the enclosure tag in this article, but if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, then you already have support for enclosures built in. WordPress looks for links in your blog post that point to MP3 files. If it finds one when you publish your post, then it will automatically creates the enclosure tag for you. This means all you have to do is create your MP3, upload it to your public download space, and link to it in your blog post. WordPress will do the rest of the work for you.

How Do I Create MP3 Files?

So now that we know what a podcast is, how it benefits us, and how we can attach it to our blog posts, now we need to talk about how to create an MP3 file for uploading to our download site.

A free and simple solution that I recommend to everyone is Audacity. Audacity is open source audio recording software that lets you easily record audio using your computer and an attached microphone. The software is easy to operate and has very few buttons. The look and feel is very similar to a CD player or tape deck so you will immediately know what to do. This means the learning curve to operate the software is almost non-existent. This is good news for anyone who just wants to record audio but doesn’t want to become a sound engineer.

Audacity will let you save your audio in several different formats. For the purpose of podcasting you should save your finished audio in MP3 format. This is the most popular format due its small file size.

What Kind Of Microphone Do I Need?

You can pick up a decent headset microphone from your local office supply house, or major retailer. Don’t get the cheap hand held stick microphone. The sound quality is poor on these and you will end up with rustling and hand noise when you use it to record. A headset microphone works the best and it will leave your hands free to do other things. The average cost of a headset microphone is only $15 USD and it is worth it. You don’t have to get fancy or spend a lot of money to create a podcast.

Where Should I Store My Podcast Files?

There are three main factors to consider when choosing a storage solution for your podcast files. Those three factors are storage space, bandwidth, and download speed. These days it’s easy to find solutions that cover the first two, storage space and bandwidth, but finding a provider that offers fast download speeds is the trick.

Storage space refers to the amount of space that you get to store your files. An MP3 file can vary in size from an average of 3MB to 20MB or more. You need enough space to store your files so you won’t be limited in what you can upload. These days 2GB to 5GB of space is a comfortable size. Remember, video is right around the corner so you might as well get an account that can handle your needs now.

Bandwidth refers to the total amount of file transfer that you are allowed each month without being charged extra for usage. In terms of bandwidth, the same criteria applies. You want to have enough available bandwidth that you are not constricted. These days a minimum of 5GB of transfer a month is a good place to start. Depending on your traffic, your topic, and your audience, 5GB might be enough, or you might want to look for more robust solutions. Remember, each time someone downloads your podcast, the size of that file is deducted from your alloted bandwidth for the month. How much you can get out of this will be determined by the size of your files and the number of times they are downloaded.

Storage space and bandwidth are two very important factors, but file transfer speed is probably the most important factor of them all and here is why. How fast your files can be downloaded translates into the listener’s total overall experience. If it takes an hour for a 10MB file to download on the readers DSL or Cable connection, then they are going to have a poor experience at your site. On the other hand, if it takes 60 seconds, then the listener will have a much better experience. You want to make the process of getting your content as easy as possible. Removing any friction from the process will encourage participation which will increase usage.

Here are a few of the solutions that I have tried and currently use for my own podcasts sites. These solutions provide ample storage space, bandwidth, and download speed. I had to do a lot of trial and error research before I came to these solutions so hopefully they will save you some of the pain and cost of searching out a proven solution on your own.

The first solutions is Box.net. Box is strictly an online storage service so they are very good at what they do.

The Box Individual plan offers 5GB of storage space and unlimited file transfer. Their Business plan offers 15GB of storage space and unlimited file transfer. Their service is exceptionally fast and it’s easy to use. They also offer password protected download solutions so you can offer access to protected download, but that’s another article all together.

The other solution I often recommend is HostMonster.com because of it’s low cost, large storage space, large bandwidth (allowed file transfer), and fast download speeds. This option definitely nails all three requirements.

HostMonster offers full website hosting services where Box.net only focuses on file storage. However, you can choose to ignore the website hosting portions of the service and just use them as a file storage service.

Just as a side note I recommend all their website hosting services because they are fast, affordable, reliable, and they have a control panel that lets you have complete control of your hosting without having to be a server administrator.

HostMonster offers a whopping 300GB of storage space and 3,000 GB of file transfer. As with Box.net, HostMonster’s service is extremely fast so large file downloads are not a problem. Both Box and HostMonster have download reporting so that you can see how many times your files have been downloaded. These two services are the absolute best services that I have found in terms of prices, performance, and ease of use.

How Can I Get Exposure For My Podcast?

Once you have audio creation, blog attachment, and online storage covered you will want to focus on how to promote your podcast. There are several ways to do this using your blogs, podcast directories, and iTunes. To start off you will want to advertise the fact that you have a podcast on your own blog. You can do this by including text in your blog posts, next to your RSS subscription link, or with a separate graphic that links to your existing RSS feed. Letting your audience know that you have added audio to your blog posts is a great way to tap into an existing user base.

Podcast directories are also a way to distribute your content and add RSS subscribers. People who like to listen to podcasts visit podcast directories to try and find new content. It’s a good idea to get listed with as many podcast directories as possible. That will get you as much exposure as possible.

One of the most popular podcast directories of course is iTunes. iTunes allows podcasters to publish their podcasts through their iTunes store. iTunes has millions of users and they are always looking for something new to listen to. Adding your podcast to iTunes can mean a lot exposure for your blog.

There is one special note about iTunes though. Unlike the other podcast directories, iTunes requires proprietary tags within your RSS feed to be fully compliant with their service. These additional tags are for things like album art, podcast summary, and keywords for searching, just to name a few. By default your RSS feed will probably not have these additional tags. So, to accommodate iTunes and not have to modify your existing blog feed you will want to use a service like FeedBurner.com to enhance your feed and make it iTunes compliant.

The FeedBurner service basically reads in your existing RSS feed, adds the iTunes tags to the feed, and republishes a feed that is iTunes friendly. You can control the values of the tags from within your FeedBurner account. This gives you full control over your podcast listing in iTunes without having to reprogram your RSS feed. In addition FeedBurner offers reporting on how many subscribers you have to your FeedBurner feed, but we will have to discuss that in another article.

Once you have an iTunes friendly RSS feed you can submit it to the iTunes service for review. According to the iTunes website, it can take up to five days for your podcast feed to be approved. My experience has been that it usually takes about 24 hours if you submit it on a week day. But, your experience may vary depending on what type of load the reviewers are under.

Listening To Audio From Your Blog?

If you want readers to be able to listen to your audio right from your blog, then there is a WordPress Audio Player Plugin to help you with that. The plugin adds a convenient Flash player at the bottom of each post when it sees that you have linked to an audio file in your blog post. The player streams the audio through the browser and the reader does not have to wait for anything to download. The plugin even allows you to control the color and size of the player so you can seamlessly integrate it into your blog.

This approach to content delivery is very similar to the Talkr.com text to speech solution except that in this case you will be publishing audio content with a real human voice and you can include any mixture of audio content you need to increase value to your audience and make the audio rich with content. As discussed in the last article you can easily include advertising in your podcast as a way to monetize your blog content. We will reserve this discussion for another article where we can fully explore the available opportunities for making money from a podcast. If you are interested in monetizing a podcast then take a look at my podcasting eBook on this topic. You can also signup for seven free lessons on podcasting that go more in-depth into the recording and setup process of recording a podcast.

One Last Note

One important note in all of this talk about podcasting is that how you publish your audio is totally up to you and your intended purpose for creating the audio. If you simply want to publish audio on your blog for one or more articles, then the podcast option might be a little over kill. In that case you can just make use of the WordPress Audio Player Plugin to publish audio on your individual posts. In fact it is best not to advertise you have a podcast if you don’t intend to publish an audio file on a regular basis. Podcast listeners tend to stay subscribed to podcasts that put out content on a regular basis. If you are putting out at least one file every couple of days then it would be a benefit to announce that you have a podcast. If you are only putting out one or two files a month, then it would be better to offer the audio download as an added value to your blog, but don’t promote it as a full podcast.

So there you have it. Adding audio to your blog is as simple as adding a picture to your posts. Once you have been through the process a few times you will be completely comfortable with the concept. Adding audio to your blog post, either using a streamed player or as a full podcast can add great value to your blog and give readers a new way to take your content with them. Remember to focus on providing real value for your audience and they will gladly share your materials with friends. Ultimately this is the balance we should all be shooting for and your readers will love you for it.

In the next article we will discuss how to use the telephone to record and publish audio on your blog. Until then, be sure to check out the first article in this series, How To Create Text To Speech Blog Posts.

Keep reaching for success,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Resources:

HostMonster.com
Box.net
iTunes Podcasting Specification
FeedBurner.com
WordPress Audio Player Plugin
Podcast Pickle
Podcast Alley

Here is the original Talkr article for reference:

If you want to put audio on your blog but don’t know where to start then the next few articles in this series will introduce you to some of the available solutions for adding audio to your blog. In this article we’ll start by looking at a text to speech option. Then in the next few articles we’ll look at podcasting, paid services, and a free conference call solution. When we’re done you should have enough information to mix and match to get what you want.

Text To Speech

If you just want to add audio to your blog without the need to record audio files, convert them to MP3, upload them to your server, and include the code in your post for playing and downloading the file, then using Talkr.com to convert your text to speech is probably your best option.

Talkr.com offers a free text to speech conversion service that let’s you turn your text blog posts into an almost human quality voice recording. The service uses your existing RSS feed to read in your text content, which is then converted to audio.

They even offer statistics on the number of downloads for each audio file, a podcast RSS feed that supports the podcast enclosures tag, and an opportunity to revenue share if you opt into their inline advertising program. Let’s talk about the advertising for just a moment and then we’ll take a look at the statistics.

Using In-line Advertising

The advertising is voluntary and they state that they don’t allow adult content or profanity. But don’t worry, if you still want to opt-out of the advertising the service is still free and you still get the reporting services and the podcast RSS feed.

Using Your Own Advertising

If you’re interested in generating revenue from audio versions of your blog posts then I recommend you place affiliate links in your posts with some form of text that says something like “This post is sponsored by xyz product, for more information visit xyz.com”. The web address you give in the sponsor text can be your easy to remember web address that redirects the listener to your affiliate link. You may have to work a little harder to get them where you want them to go, but if you include the advertisement in a series of articles then the listener will hear the web address multiple times which is a good start. If you want a direct payment for the playing of your audio, then you might consider using the inline advertising that the service supplies.

Tracking Audio Listens

If you want to know how many times your blog post audio has been downloaded, then Talkr supplies reporting on that too. You can report on the number of downloads by date range. The report shows the individual audio downloads that way you can tell which article is most popular as an audio download. This information could be useful as a way to tell which audio should be converted into a PDF as a bonus download in future promotions.

Using The WordPress Plugin

To make the whole process really simple Talkr provides a WordPress plugin that automatically puts a download link at the bottom of each of your blog posts. So, essentially all you have to do is post your text content like you always do and you automatically get the benefit of offering a downloadable audio version of your blog posts for free. Take a look at the podcast link at the bottom of this post for a good example of how the download link looks and functions.

In the next article we’ll look at how to use podcasting as a way to add audio to your blog and we’ll look at how to use a popular WordPress plugin to allow readers to play your audio files right from your blog post.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Be sure to catch the second article in this three part series, How To Add Podcast Audio To Blog Posts