The Affari Blog

BusinessWeek Online posted an article in advance of the April 9th magazine with the title “Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Podcasters”.

So, once again, something we don’t understand we mock? The traditional media never takes the time to understand why the “little people” embrace a new voice in the wilderness.

The fact is, most podcasters do produce shows while maintaining a day job. Yours truly not only produces podcasts professionally, but I promote other companies using various web technologies, I service computers and networks, and currently writing a book and kit about podcasting for small businesses!

Quoting from their own article;

While there has been an explosion of shows over the past couple of years, offering everything from advice on how to manage your money to Italian lessons, podcasting’s business prospects are just developing. The share of Americans who listen to audio downloads from the Web has grown only slightly in the past year, to 13% from 11%, according to a survey released last month by Edison Media Research. Those listeners increasingly are crowding around the most popular podcasts. But a lack of standards for placing podcast ads or measuring audiences has hobbled ad spending, which only hit $80 million last year.”

So, in the same article where they slam the content, and the producers, they admit that a measly 2% growth resulted in $80 million in revenue, for a few thousand “indie” shows? Seems like someone should revisit 5th grade math! This is an amazing phenomenon! 2% growth shows revenue increase of over $30 million in one year?

A big factor in how revenue is tracked in podcasting is how many companies produce podcasts for advertising (like ESP and Affari Edge!) vs. how many shows are “indie” content, hobbiests, or, the larger slice, companies producing podcast content for self-promotion or training? Would it surprise you to learn that less than 5% of podcasts are produced with revenue from ads as their main reason for existence?

I can tell you that this is a labor of love for the vast majority of producers, myself included. However, the trend shows VAST growth in households who know what a podcast is, and have been exposed to one in the last year.

Even the author of the study from the Edison Media Research center, Tom Webster, author of “New Podcasting Statistics - Is The Glass Half-Full, or Half-Empty?” had this to say on their site:

Certainly, given the impressive growth in awareness of the term “podcast,” one might have expected more than a two percentage point increase in the behavior. On the other hand, this is 13% of America we are talking about–and while I am not…yet…at liberty to release the percentage of Americans this year who subscribe to Satellite Radio, it is pretty close. So, on the one hand, growth is relatively small, but on the other, podcasting has achieved a similar penetration to Satellite Radio, without the benefit of a honkin’ big marketing campaign, Howard Stern, or Oprah.”

I would think that BusinessWeek should look a little more closely at the numbers before snubbing 50,000 potential subscribers, audience members in the millions, and colleagues in the industry.

The fact is, those of us who produce podcasts for profit, also produce many more for fun, for free, or for a free voice in the new media.

The numbers are growing rapidly, as people learn they don’t need an mp3 player, or Ipod to hear a podcast, and will likely see a change in how they “timeshift” their entertainment, news, music, and yes, even their magazines. RSS changed the world, and shows little sign of slowing down.

The irony is, when I go to the article to read in full on BusinessWeek, they have a full-screen, intrusive pop-up style ad running on the page, blocking my view (which rotates between sponsors) and is more than a little annoying. Geesh, when will they learn?

For Immediate Release

Affari Edge Announces
Grant Program for Non-Profits:
$5,000 to Enter Social Media

TAMPA, Florida – Affari Edge, a local authority on using social media, announced today a grant for Tampa Bay area non-profit organizations, offering up to $5,000 in social media consulting and training services. “Giving back to the community is a core principle at Affari Edge,” said Dave Sizemore, one of two partners at Affari. “Because of our expertise with social media, we felt we could help a local organization explore this new technology.”

Social media is a name attributed to a collection of technologies including but not limited to blogs, podcasts, virtual communities, wikis, and virtual worlds that enable people to communicate with each other online in ways that mirror offline interpersonal interaction. Prominent examples of social media also include sites such as MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia, Digg, and many more.

“It’s a natural extension of any organization’s marketing and public relations efforts,” said Wendy Robbins, the second partner with Affari Edge. “By using these new technologies, we can help any organization build a close-knit community.”

Applications will be accepted until May 15, 2007 and will be judged based on a number of criteria.  More information is available on the Affari Blog on the Affari Edge website.

Affari Edge is a full-service advertising agency offering a comprehensive range of advertising and public relations services. Affari Edge is made up of creative gurus, with extensive business experience, from small business ownership to leading different aspects of some of the largest empires in corporate America. The mix of business background with creative expertise leads to superior results. Affari means business.

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Last week there was a nasty meme flowing through the blogosphere. There’s no need to go into a lot of detail here, as it was hashed and re-hashed ad maseum last week. However, it was centered around the personal attacks of another blogger. It led to cries of cyberbullying, and because the victim was a woman, there has been significant discussion of misogyny. (I am not making light of the situation, just trying to move past the talk of what happened).

One result of the brouhaha was a call for a code of conduct within the blogosphere.

The first I saw of this was a post by Jim Horton at Online Public Relations Thoughts. He was reacting to an article on the BBC website that quoted Tim O’Reilly (more on Horton’s reaction in a moment):

Among those calling for a bloggers’ code of conduct is Tim O’Reilly - one of the web’s most influential thinkers.

He told BBC Radio Five Live that it could be time to formalise blogging behaviour.

“I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn’t come through any kind of [legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation.”

He’s right that it should come through self-regulation. My first thought on this is to suggest that instead of a code of conduct, the leaders in the blogosphere should, instead, develop an international semi-professional association that could develop standards. Bloggers who join and adhere to these standards could then have the right to display a “seal of approval” on their blogs signifying their willingness to rise above the fray.†

You see, Horton is right. In his post, he said: “Codes of conduct are useless unless enforced — and they rarely are. Look at the Public Relations Society of America and its ethical code of conduct. Practitioners ignore it and the PRSA is helpless to enforce it. It means little, even as a guideline. Enforcement is fundamental. Those who call for codes without means of enforcement are naive.” His example of the PRSA notwithstanding - if an association has requirements for membership, it can and should expel members who fail to meet those requirements.

Tony Hung at The Blog Herald agrees with Horton. Hung writes:

A Code of Conduct for most bloggers doesn’t have much a point because the blogosphere is self-regulating. If you act like an ass, people will know, and for the most part, will readership will decline. If it doesn’t, that probably means they won’t care a whit about any rules of conduct anyway. Secondly, even if one did have an audience who might care, if you broke it what really happens? Nothing.

There are no real consequences that come of breaking an Official Blogger Code of Conduct.

Now, Hung also dismisses the idea of having a badge for the same reason. If there is no retribution for those who display their badge, but break the code for which it stands, the badge itself has no real meaning. (So I am all for having a mechanism to report abuse and to expel a member when the code is indeed broken).

Marianne Richmond of Resonance Partnership also agrees that there are really no punishments in cyberspace:

Addtionally, what is the consequence for violating the code? For Blogher, or any community with guidelines, violaters theoretically will not be allowed on the site. Thus if a member of the community violates the rules their membership ends. On our own blogs, we don’t have to permit behavior (comments) that offends us either. In either case, there are no “punishments” other than removal.

Okay, I will admit that an association is not perfect. But it’s a start. Of course, any list of standards needs to have a first draft - and O’Reilly included his list on his blog:

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.

This is a good list, and you can read his blog for a detailed explanation of each suggestion. John Cass at PR Communications has a post about how bloggers should take care in criticizing others (a take off from Jen McClure’s post here.): “I can certainly agree with Jen that is a good idea to act maturely. I do think it is okay to give your opinion and criticize other organizations and people. I think the way in which you should conduct criticism is through either positive or negative constructive criticism.”

In the end, we are each responsible for what we do. Marianne mentioned the Golden Rule. For me, it is a guiding principle off-line as well as in cyberspace. It’s probably the best place to start.

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† - The mechanism for displaying the badge should be through some function that could limit the ability of people to use the badge without permission. Perhaps a text-only badge linked through a javascript file (like Google AdSense) would work, allowing the association to police who actually displays the badge on their blog. But that’s a discussion for bigger geeks than me.

At the end of a recent blog post by Brett McMurphy, who covers the University of South Florida sports for the Tampa Tribune, was the following paragraph:

I’ve been told by the higher ups we’re doing away with the comments portion of the blog. Instead, you can go to the Forum: Talk Bulls link at the top of this page. We’ve created the Forum as a place for Bulls fans to gather and discuss various topics.

A quick peek a the TBO.com Bulls forum shows very little activity, except for recently. One poster asked why the switch to the forum. Brett posted the official reason:

“While we’ve generated a very good amount of traffic to the sports blogs, and have seen a spike in the number of comments being posted, we’ve begun to migrate the discussion away from the blogs and into our TBO Discussion Forums.

We encourage the interactivity, but this is a site-wide attempt (not just Sports) to make our Forums the gathering place for a lot of the back-and-forth discussion we’re seeing in the blogs. The hope is that the users themselves will initiate a lot of the discussion, rather than just reacting to your blog posts.”

Ah. Well, there is one problem. You see, USF fans have three major discussion forums already:

• The Bulls Pen - An independent website owned by USF alumn Brad Meyer.
• USFNation - Part of the Scout.com network.
• USFBullsEye.com - Part of the Rivals.com network.

These are in addition to the forums on media sites like ESPN, CBS, and CSTV

On many of these sites, fans talk about what Brett (and other Tampa Tribune reporters/columnists) write about USF. So why does TBO.com feel the need to create yet another message board?

Yes, I know - blogs and forums are both social media. By using forums, TBO.com is trying to fit into the new communications model. For this, they are to be commended. They are doing something that their main competitor, the St. Petersburg Times, is not doing.

However, I don’t believe substituting forums for blog comments is the right way to go.

Forums are great when there are a number of die-hard posters willing to engage in dialogue about a topic. That’s why the USF forums listed above do so well. They each have a siginificant number of Bulls fans postingon a large range of topics every day. The media-based forums don’t draw the same number or intensity of fans.

That being said, why not marry blog comments with forums? If a TBO.com blog generates a large response via comments, the blogger (be it McMurphy or any of the other Trib bloggers) should shift the discussion to the forum by starting and maintaining a thread there. Then s/he could simply post a blog entry that asks readers to join the discussion on the forum. TBO.com bloggers could even “break” stories on their forum, and drive traffic with a blog post indicating “breaking news on the … forum.” There are a number of ways that forums can be used that will work far better than saying “Want to comment? Go to our fourm and…”

TBO.com needs to understand that it’s not about forcing their readers into avenues that “Mother Trib” (as Steve Otto calls it) wants. It’s about giving the readers as many options to communicate as possible. It’s far easier to comment at the bottom of the post than to find a link to the forum, register for the forum (or log in), find the thread on which they want to share their thoughts (or start a new post), and then comment. One step is replaced by four.

As an avid reader of several TBO.com blogs, I hope they reconsider this decision.