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Although podcasting is trendy, it’s vital to remember that when you use a podcast for Internet marketing, your podcast is really just another delivery mechanism - a way to get your marketing message across.

Because it is a new delivery mechanism, there’s a chance you’ll get so wrapped in the technology that you’ll forget the basics, the AIDA formula. You need to give people something that they want to listen to, and you can’t go wrong with the AIDA formula. AIDA is used in copywriting, and is an acronym: AIDA means Attract/ Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

You need to get people’s attention, arouse their interest in your product, get them to want it, and finally take action to buy it.

Using AIDA In Your Podcasts

You can use the AIDA formula to market your products via podcasts in several ways.

Firstly, you can use the podcast to attract people to a Web site where you’re selling products related to the podcast theme. The podcast is the attention-getter. You can have ads on your site selling your products, and include mention of them in the podcast too.

Next, include valuable information or entertainment in your podcasts to make sure that people subscribe. When they subscribe, you can market to them over and over again. This is the Interest factor.

You arouse Desire by mentioning your products and their benefits in your podcasts.

Finally, you need a call to Action, to ensure that people take action. “Buy before midnight on Thursday, and receive _________”

Making Your First Podcast

Making a podcast (it’s really just making an MP3 file) couldn’t be simpler. Here are the steps:

1. Plug a microphone into your computer;

2. Record your podcast using a program like Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (it’s free);

3. Create an RSS feed - more information on that here http://www.ipodder.org/whatIsPodcasting (don’t let the technical jargon make you nervous, the RSS Feed is just a reference enclosure that lets listeners know when you’ve put a new podcast online);

4. Upload the podcast to your Web site, and then upload the podcast’s RSS Feed to a destination like Podcast Alley at http://www.podcastalley.com/ so that you can start getting a mass of happy subscribers.

Get Interviewed On a Podcast

If you don’t want to make your own podcasts, offer yourself as an interviewee on other people’s podcasts. This saves you the trouble of recording your own material and putting it online, and you can promote your products on someone else’s show as easily as you can on your own.

When you create your own podcasts, you’ll want to ask people to join you for an interview too. You can even ask people to send you MP3 files of questions or tips, that you can include in your podcast.

So there you have it: podcasting, another tool to add to your Internet marketing toolbox. If the idea appeals, give podcasting a try.

Copyright 2005 Michael Murray

Michael Murray is a 22-year old full-time Internet marketer and college student with Cerebral Palsy who lives in sunny Orlando Florida. Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? “Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for driving thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links… without spending a dime on advertising:
http://www.marketlikeapro.com/words.html

Propertycasting is the filming of audio and video tours of real estate properties, for distribution over the internet or to portable devices such as cellphones, ipods, and other multimedia devices.

These tours are the next step in real estate marketing.

Real estate firms are always marketing their property listings. It started with text letters, and lead to brochures with pictures. Then websites were integrated and pictures along with 360 degree showings were available.

Now full scale audio and video tours are able to be shown, through numerous mediums.

In addition, propertycasting uses RSS subscriptions, which allows viewers to click a subscribe button once, and they will receive the new property listing updates from the agency, as soon as they make them public every time after. It is the exact opposite of spam, and it is perfect for brokers with lots of contacts.

Here is an example of how propertycasting can benefit your firm. This video example was shot at a commercial property in Miami. Propertycasting can be used in all areas of the real estate industry, Residential, Industrial , Commercial, etc..

Another great thing about propertycasting is its economic value. Whether you are a single agent or nationwide firm, you can have a propertycast produced cost effectively.

If you’re unable to hire a professional firm to do your propertycasts, you can borrow or buy a digital video camera, spend a couple hundred dollars on some editing software, and use a $50 feed program to upload your podcasts to the web. While this may take some technical savvy, and the quality may not be that great, it can be done relatively inexpensively. This makes it accessible to all agencies, regardless of size.

On the other hand, if you are a firm who has tens, hundreds or thousands of properties, it is not cost effective to do in house at all.

So utilizing a full service agency , allows a firm to produce a high quality production, that brands a firms image cost efficiently, and compliments their marketing activities.

Ryan Hoback is CEO of What I Want Podcasting. A full service business podcasting firm.

305-670-0998

What I Want Podcasting,LLC

http://www.WhatIWantPodcasting.com

a subsidiary of

Motivated Entrepreneur, LLC.

http://www.MotivatedEntrepreneur.com

Although podcasting is trendy, it’s vital to remember that when you use a podcast for Internet marketing, your podcast is really just another delivery mechanism – a way to get your marketing message across.

Because it is a new delivery mechanism, there’s a chance you’ll get so wrapped in the technology that you’ll forget the basics, the AIDA formula. You need to give people something that they want to listen to, and you can’t go wrong with the AIDA formula. AIDA is used in copywriting, and is an acronym: AIDA means Attract/ Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

You need to get people’s attention, arouse their interest in your product, get them to want it, and finally take action to buy it.

Using AIDA In Your Podcasts

You can use the AIDA formula to market your products via podcasts in several ways.

Firstly, you can use the podcast to attract people to a Web site where you’re selling products related to the podcast theme. The podcast is the attention-getter. You can have ads on your site selling your products, and include mention of them in the podcast too.

Next, include valuable information or entertainment in your podcasts to make sure that people subscribe. When they subscribe, you can market to them over and over again. This is the Interest factor.

You arouse Desire by mentioning your products and their benefits in your podcasts.

Finally, you need a call to Action, to ensure that people take action. “Buy before midnight on Thursday, and receive _________”

Making Your First Podcast

Making a podcast (it’s really just making an MP3 file) couldn’t be simpler. Here are the steps:

1. Plug a microphone into your computer;

2. Record your podcast using a program like Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (it’s free);

3. Create an RSS feed – more information on that here http://www.ipodder.org/whatIsPodcasting (don’t let the technical jargon make you nervous, the RSS Feed is just a reference enclosure that lets listeners know when you’ve put a new podcast online);

4. Upload the podcast to your Web site, and then upload the podcast’s RSS Feed to a destination like Podcast Alley at http://www.podcastalley.com/ so that you can start getting a mass of happy subscribers.

Get Interviewed On a Podcast

If you don’t want to make your own podcasts, offer yourself as an interviewee on other people’s podcasts. This saves you the trouble of recording your own material and putting it online, and you can promote your products on someone else’s show as easily as you can on your own.

When you create your own podcasts, you’ll want to ask people to join you for an interview too. You can even ask people to send you MP3 files of questions or tips, that you can include in your podcast.

So there you have it: podcasting, another tool to add to your Internet marketing toolbox. If the idea appeals, give podcasting a try.

Copyright 2005 Michael Murray

Michael Murray is a 22-year old full-time Internet marketer and college student with Cerebral Palsy who lives in sunny Orlando Florida. Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? “Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for driving thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links… without spending a dime on advertising:
http://www.marketlikeapro.com/words.html

Is the podcasting vs. radio’ showdown finally about to take center stage?

It looks like podcasting and other alternative sources of entertainment have finally caused traditional corporate radio to react.

In November of 2004, Bridge Ratings & Research released a report that indicated that the terrestrial radio audience was slowly slipping away.

During the last few months of 2005, the reports show that for the most part, that ‘slippage’ has either stopped or slowed down.

The youngest group – 12 – 24 years of age – showed the most interest in alternative media and the least interest in traditional radio.

The older groups showed slight increases in their use of radio, even though many are still spending a lot of time with what’s considered alternative media: TV, Internet, Recorded Music, Books and Magazines.

The report doesn’t break out the impact of podcasting, but it does mention iPods and MP3 listening as having an effect, especially on the younger demographics.

To me this makes sense. Younger audiences are more drawn to new technologies. They’ll glom on to MP3 players and podcasts and reject a lot of the tradition time-wasters of their parents like books and TV, in favor of downloading songs online, browsing the internet and sticking those earbuds into their head and tuning out any local radio station.

Coming from two-plus decades in radio, I know how hard it is to get and maintain an audience when you DON’T have all of the competition of 2006. In 1976, you might have had a local paper and a few TV channels and a handful of local competing radio stations.

So a radio programmer today now has to compete with 500 channels of cable TV, satellite radio, podcasting, not to mention the other traditional media sources, such as local and national newspapers and magazines, etc.

Where does that leave radio and podcasting?

From a personal standpoint, I don’t have much interest in local radio. Sure it comes up on occasion in my car, but only because I’ve gone through all my CDs and would rather have a local station fill in the space instead of silence.

As I go to sleep, I have my clock radio playing a local classic rock station. Unfortunately, the station is owned by a big media corporation that owns hundreds, if not thousands of radio stations across America. So their announcers are directed to not say a whole lot and as a result are allowed to have very little personality. And ‘after hours’ – when there is no live person behind the microphone – we get automation, which means no live person, no voice tracking (which would at least sound sort of like a live person); just song – song – song – commercial – station promo liner – song – song, etc…

Bo-ring.

On the other hand, when I fire up a podcast, I am suddenly invited into the world of an actual person – someone who talks, eats, breathes and is passionate about their subject, whether its folk music, cult movies, hardcore alternative rock or wine-making.

Podcasting is REAL. It may not hold the production value of a professional radio station, but really, who the heck cares? You don’t listen to podcasting to get the highest quality. You listen to a podcast to get a real person.

And that’s what will continue to draw more and more people to podcasts, whether listening or getting in front of the microphone and creating their own podcast.

I believe as humans we need the personal interaction, and if it means listening to a guy sit in front of a campfire, playing his ukulele and whispering about the stars above, then a lot of us are in; we’re there!

Radio is not going away. The smart programmers are going to let their air staff become more real, especially when they see the inroads that podcasting will continue to make into their audience. Oddly enough, local radio stations have an advantage. In the city I live, there are a couple of local stations. One plays a lot of syndicated programming and very little local programming. They survive because they offer a good lineup of national talk programming.

The other station is completely local: everything you hear is done from their studio, from playing the weird mix of songs which make you want to laugh, cry, shout, cringe and turn the damn thing off – all within a 30 minutes span – to the local announcers who are at various stages talented, untalented, polished, raw, goofy, tender, idiotic, passionate and uncaring.

Above all, they’re REAL. And that’s the ultimate attraction - and repellent.

It’s like the locally owned radio stations are already doing what podcasters are doing – being human.

It’s just that podcasters still have extreme latitude, and the local radio folks must stay within certain boundaries.

So if it’s the limitless boundaries you’re looking for in your world, find a podcast that speaks to you, listen to them support them, and let them know you’re out there!

Tim ‘Gonzo’ Gordon shows you how to create professional, high-quality audio on your home computer. With 25+ years of radio production, writing and voice talent, Tim can show you how to set up a small pro studio and create audio for fun and profit. Subscribe to his free newsletter Digital Audio Bits at Digital Audio World. Learn how to podcast with Podcasting Adventures Online.