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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Podcast and Audio Optimization

Amanda Wallington, Searching for Profit
Podcasting is more than time shifted media.

Optimizing is using only a few steps.

Do some front end homework:
– Make sure the name of your show is not already in use
– Not as easy to check as a domain name
– Get art radio
– Review iTunes categories for where you fit
– Be prepared to edit audio tags yourself for each audio file

Steps for success:
– Optimize the sound by Optimizing the ID3 Tags
– Optimize Your Podcast Landing Pages – show,  abstract, etc.
– Build accurate, effective RSS files
– Track and monitor your feeds
– Track and Monitor Submissions, watch for changes
Daron Babin, Webmaster Radio
Production Time
Cost of Production
Equipment (Recording, Compression, etc)
Encoding can be a pain
Analytics
Bandwith

They are listening…if you are compelling!

Lilsteners do not want to know your dietary strengths or weaknesses.

They don’t want to know about the dog needing be neutered.

Without someone who can handle load, then distribution will be an issue

Tools to Measure Growth – you need them

Become a Pioneer – transcribe everything, Leave no word unspoken…text equity.

Originality and passion equals downloads.

Get to your numbers. 
Rick Klau, VP Publisher Services, Feedburner

Not everyone uses iTunes
Metadata is essential for discovery

The subscription process blows

Get your feeds out there

Ping, ping, ping…

Feedburner now manages 70,000+ podcasts

Consumption is happening everywhere, not just iTunes

Directories – both publicity and consumption

– Create a feed…
– Add iTunes/Media RSS extensions (Smartcast)
– Show notes are criminally underused (60% find a higher traffic through show notes)
– Enable “Pingshot”
– Ensure Auto-delivery is enabled (important)

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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Ads in a Quality Score World

How do you do better in a quality score world?

Joshua Stylman, Reprise Media

– Quality score is determined by a number of factors
– Google Adwords =  CPC x CTR (more relevant copy)
– Why make these changes – control over #1 position
– 2005 – Black Box – CPC, CTR, Landing Page, Ad Copy, others that aren’t transparent
– CTR not a good proxy for relevance, irrelevant landing pages, etc.
– Example of dramatic lowering of CPC once ad had a quality score
– Unintended impacts – artificial CPC inflation, Engine define “quality”, changes affect quality score
– Death of bid management, not really.
– How do you solve for an equation that you don’t understand

Andrew Goodman, Zero Page Media

– Two quality scores – one affects minimum bid, the other affects ad rank
– “Other relevancy factors” – tightness of relationship keyword – ad – landing page
– Relevant ads, ad keyword are critical
– How it works – see the public guidelines, human codes used to train algorithm
– Principles for ad quality raters are derived from user feedback on a large scale
– Adbots crawls landing pages looking for ”markers” a formula will determine score
– QS  Ad Rank – CTR still key
– You can fix some of these issues – Advertiser (A sports training facility) using separate page to test response on different domain
– Don’t be foolish
– Cheesy Landing Pages + Deceptive Offers – “There is No Sanctuary”
– Try country variance

Jonathan Mendez, Otto Digital

– Strategic services arm of Offermatica
– What is relevance? Contextual relevance.
– Segmentation + Targeting = Relevance
– Engagment
– Ad needs to be relevant to the keyword and the landing page
– Geotargeting – important to news growth

Brian Boland, Microsoft

– Was there for the question and answer session – Google was invited to the panel but declined to participate

SESChicago2006

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An Example of the World’s Data Crisis

The World Trade Center had one zip code, 10048. Five years later after their destruction, mail of all kinds arrives there daily! It’s an all too sad and vivid reminder of the crisis in our society with businesses not putting priority on cleaning data. This happens every day with catalogs sent to people who have moved or are now deceased.

In this case it’s inexcusable because it’s all one zip code that would be easy to surpress: 10048.

Whether it’s mail, e-mail, web pages, web 2.0 social networks and/or social media, the value creation foundation starts with data integrity. To build the superior ideas of the future, this area will play a pivotal role. Unfortunately, all too many people do not properly value data integrity or value not been blessed enough to be immersed in a culture who is obsessed with it as I have been in the past.

Consider whether you have a good enterprise data strategy before you launch your next project!   

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SMF 1.1 released

In summary, the changes/fixes since SMF 1.1 RC3 include:

  • Option to require visual verification when sending a personal message
  • Adjusted readability of visual verification system
  • Added option to limit number of personal messages that can be sent per hour
  • Fixed several javascript errors
  • Fixed time offset bug
  • Disallowed multiple failures with visual verification
  • Made several UTF8 fixes
  • Fixed various undefined index errors

SMF is great, well documented software that works well and took seconds to install. It also has a great and helpful user community. Beta like software leadership, like WordPress, could learn much about releasing professional and software that fixes any glitches on a reinstall. I’d strongly urge both Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider to reverse engineer the success that is Simple Machines, it would be great to have fully functioning WordPress software again that makes trackbacks and works flawlessly. Hopefully, WordPress will do the right thing and seriously address these issues.  

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Was Hertz Targeting OJ Simpson Keywords on Monday?

I saw Hertz ads numerous times on Monday with related Simpson coverage. Was it a blanket ad or was it targeted on Simpson as a keyword? Certainly is an interesting question. For you Gen Y folks out there who may not know, I should explain that Simpson was once a spokesperson for Hertz back when he played NFL football. What do people think about this?

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New Yahoo! Maps Release

I *loved* the old Yahoo! Maps product. Late last week it was replaced with a very “Google looking” map that has a small fraction of the restaurant listings that the old maps product did.

Stated simply, I prefer the old release much, much better. The new release was rolled back once before in favor of the old one and I still find the other one to meet my needs better and I would prefer to use that one.

Fellow blog readers what do you use for maps and why do use that particular one?