Virtual Event Success

I had the pleasure of speaking at Blog World & New Media Expo this past week. It was the first time I was excited to go to Las Vegas because I knew that ALOT of my friends would be there.

Blog World & New Media Expo is the merging of two shows – Blog World Expo which started in 2007 and Podcast & New Media Expo which started in 2005. I’ve been involved with the latter as a speaker since the 2006 show. The founders of the Podcast & New Media Expo (PNME), Tim & Emile Bourquin, put on a fine event. Every year, it was top notch. So, I had high expectations for Rick Calvart and Blog World & New Media Expo. About 90% of my expectation were met.

Why I Liked Blog World

But first, let me speak about the show itself. Blog World & New Media Expo (BWE) was fabulous. I was surprised at the

Me, Leesa Barnes, Speaking

number of people who showed up. Given that most shows are experiencing a decline in attendees, it was nice to see that the exhibitors floor and each of the session rooms were FULL of people.

Quality of Exhibitors

The quality of the exhibitors was also top notch. One of the problems with the PNME is that the lower notch exhibitors started to take over. The exhibitor floor at the 2008 PNME looked shabby. I remember some of the exhibitors either didn’t bother to show up (hence empty booths) or if they did, they put up a cloth banner with their logo finger painted on (I’m not kidding) and gave out nick knacks that had NOTHING to do with their business.

BWE was vastly different. Every exhibitor put alot of work into their booths. Shiny lights, colorful backdrops and well staffed booths with amazing people. It was beautiful to see a mixture of big name companies, such as Ford who had a gorgeous Taurus on the floor to other companies I had never heard of.

Ford's New Taurus

Quality of People

And the people I met? Wow! I chatted at length with Coach Carter’s son, caught a glimpse of Jalen Rose & Don Lemon from CNN and met a fiery PR lady from New York whom I’m chatted with (something in the works).

And of course, everyone I’ve been networking with FOREVER online who I finally met in person. People like Warren Whitlock, Denise Wakeman (she and I spoke for an hour on a coach at the Tweetup I was co-hosting – whoops), Mari Smith (yes, she stands at least 2-inches taller than me), Jeff MacArthur (Amber’s brother), Andy Walker, Christina Hills, Connie Bennett, Sean Carruthers, Jason Van Orden, Paul Colligan, Mignon Forgarty (finally!), Paolo (and I can’t remember his last name), Mark Joyner, Bryan Person, Elizabeth PW, Sarah Robinson, Carla Young, Allison N, Jeff Hecht, Tee Morris, Brian Solis, CC Chapman, Shel Holtz, Maggie Fox, Coach Deb (sporting a gorgeous pink & white jacket, remember to send it to me), Rob Walch, Chris Brogan, Tim Street, Mark Evans, Adria Richards, Tracy C, and others whose names I’ll add as I remember them.
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I stumbled upon this video recording that Sanyika Colloway-Boyce did for me while we both attended Milana Leshinsky’s The Bliss Factor workshop back in April 2009.

I had a chance to share with the attendees how they can use social media to attract coaching leads to their business.

This is a small clip of the 60-minute presentation that I did. In it, I share with attendees how they can release their social media fears. As you view this, I invite you to follow the exercises to release your own fears about social media, podcasting, virtual events or any other online marketing tactic. I’d love to hear your fears in the comments section below.

In Part 2, I’ll share the part of the presentation where I show you how to shake those fears so you can tackle social media, podcasting, virtual events or any other online marketing tool with confidence.

I was flipping through the pages of my book, Podcasting for Profit recently and I was amazed at how many similarities there are between producing a podcast and producing a virtual event.

Looking through the pages of Podcasting for Profit made me more aware that the planning and producing that goes into a podcast are the same techniques you’d use to plan a virtual event.

Here’s what I discovered:

Whether you’re producing a podcast or a virtual event, you need to choose a titillating title. As I stated in my book, the title of your podcast can either create intrigue and interest or it can bore the person to tears. Your virtual event is no different. You need to choose the right name so that people feel compelled to attend.

A podcast and a virtual event both need to have compelling content. As a podcast or virtual event producer, taking some time to plan your podcast episodes or your virtual event sessions will help you identify the right experts to provide that content. By planning the content, you’ll be able to give your audience exactly what they’ve been asking for.

Both a podcast and a virtual event require intelligent, brilliant guests. Expert interviews are the fastest and most inexpensive way for you to build content for your podcast and virtual event. That’s why you need to decide which guests will give you the best information. You not only have to invite that person to participate in your podcast or virtual event, but you also have to ask engaging questions so that you get the desired content that will help your target market.

The outcome of a podcast and a virtual event results in multiple streams of income. Recording your content is essential to helping you leverage it for other uses. You can use a podcast to market your virtual event and then you can use the recordings from your virtual event as a podcast episode.

In my book Podcasting for Profit, I listed a dozen ways you can develop several income sources from your podcast recordings. Membership websites, training programs, e-books, CDs, DVDs, paid syndication and downloadable transcripts are just some of the ways you can leverage the recordings created from your podcast into many sources of income. Of course, this same model can be used for virtual events as well.

You can use a podcast and a virtual event to position yourself as an expert in your industry. People get to hear your voice, they get to witness you rubbing shoulders with some of the top names in your field, and they become familiar with your personality. All these are recipes for building your own following of fans, friends, and foes in way that text alone can’t do. Your podcast and virtual event helps you to connect with people in a dynamic way which then makes it easier for you to attract customers to your business.

If you’re writing articles, blog posts, and relying on text alone to market your business online, you’re missing out on a rich and lucrative way to build rapport with people. If your business has slowed down quite a bit, it may not be due to the economy. Instead, it may be a result of you not allowing people see and hear your unique personality.

Over the next 90 days, I encourage you to either launch a podcast or produce a virtual event to give your target market another way to experience you and your brand.

• If you need help launching a podcast, get my book Podcasting for Profit at Amazon or any other online bookseller. It contains exercises and activities that will help you launch a podcast with confidence.
• If you need help producing a virtual event, click here to join the Association of Virtual Event Managers, Organizers & Hosts. You’ll get access to many resources, including forums, where you can ask anything about producing a virtual event.

When people ask me about podcasting for profit, we always start off with a conversation about their marketing paln. Here are the questions I often ask:

• What types of products do you already have fulfill a specific need?
• How can your business use podcasting to generate a buzz?
• What’s your future website community going to look like?

It’s not long before they realize that the profiting part won’t happen overnight. Despite this, is there a way to make money quickly with a podcast? Absolutely. Expert interviews work great for this purpose.

There are so many reasons why conducting expert interviews are a smart idea:

• You don’t have to create the content from scratch.
• More experts will say to being interviewed because the content is based on what they already know.
• You can upsell the expert’s products or services and make money on all referrals.
• You get to meet celebrity experts and stars in your industry in a non-intrusive way.
• And you can generate multiple streams of income from just one interview.

Here’s how to set up and profit from expert interviews using a podcast:

First, find an expert and make sure their content is evergreen.

In other words, ensure that the interview topic won’t become dated in couple of months. Find experts that can speak on topics that have a long shelf life.

Check that the expert who you want to interview has an affiliate program.

You’ll want to sign up for it first thing, so you can get commissions. If the expert is the author of a book, become an Amazon Associate. Or, check out Clickbank for a list of possible products. You can also visit the expert’s website to see if she or he has their own independent affiliate program that you can join.

Contact the expert.

Those who are just about to launch a product or publish a book will more readily say yes to your invitation.

Conduct the interview.

The best combination of technology for this purpose is Skype and Pamela. These tools will enable you to speak to the expert without having the expert pay for long distance charges.

Mention your affiliate URL in the call to action.

At the end of the interview, tell your audience to go to your affiliate URL to purchase the expert’s product or service. If it’s a confusing URL, register a domain name and point it to your affiliate URL.

I think I broke my brain as a result of trying to make even more sense out of the podcasting patent issued to Volomedia, or to use the language of the patent, the “method for providing episodic media content.”

First, Volomedia is a member of the Association of Downloadable Media (ADM) and after my post (and a few others) pretty much questioning why Volomedia’s press release appeared as a post on the ADM blog, ADM added a disclaimer at the beginning of the post and wrote an additional post about its policy on company announcements on the ADM blog.

Another post followed in Q&A style with Murgesh Navar, founder of Volomedia, answering questions from ADM about the patent. You can read it in full here, but to sum up, Murgesh explained the goal of the patent:

1. to define standards and give consumers of episodic media options in how they consume the content.
2. to provide ways to measure episodic media in a synchronous way.

Okay, here’s where my brain started hurting, but one thing is clear – there’s a disconnect between what a patent is and what Volomedia is stating is his company’s intent with the patent.

According to Wikipedia, a patent is:

a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.

As I read the page further, I stumble upon this:

A patent is not a right to practice or use the invention. Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date subject to the payment of maintenance fees.

So, in my laywoman interpretation, Volomedia can exercise their right to exclude others from making, using, selling or offering for sale whatever measurement standard they plan on developing (according to Muresh’s Q&A with ADM, Volomedia wants to provide standards).

Now, I **could** support this patent if it weren’t so vague and generic. Stating that you want to provide a “method for providing episodic media content” is the language that’s making those who provide episodic content very nervous.

If the patent awarded was for a “method for providing measurement standards for episodic media content,” that would still make a few people nervous, more specifically, those who provide advertising in episodic media content (which I don’t). However, for someone like me who does NOT use advertising in any of my podcast episodes, this patent wouldn’t have bothered me one bit.

Yet, the way the patent reads right now, it states that Volomedia has “the right to exclude others from making, using, selling or offering for sale episodic media content.” And that’s what’s got most of the podcasting community miffed.

I still question the disconnect between what Muresh says is Volomedia’s intent with the patent and what it actually states, but for now, I’ll wait and see. What I will point out is that this won’t be the last time we’ll hear from Volomedia. It has 6 additional patents applications in the pipeline. Go to the US Patent Office Search page and type in Podbridge, the company that Volomedia was known under way back. All were filed in 2005.

Update: My friend Karin Hoegh tweeted a link to an interesting blog post about this topic on the unofficial Apple weblog. In the blog post by Steven Sande, he wrote that Skype (owned by eBay) may be one of the early losers due to the Volomedia patent.

I updated the title of this blog post based on a tweet I saw by Todd Cochrane which stated:

Yes, Todd, I guess I’ll have to rewrite my book, Podcasting for Profit, as well due to this news.

So, you may be wondering what’s the big deal? First, let me say that I’m trying to formulate my thoughts as I come to grips with this news that a company that filed a patent back in 2003 for the “method of providing episodic media” has now been approved, according to the company’s website.

I got wind of the patent’s approval through Darla Sycamore on Twitter who said:

Now, I’ve been aware of this patent ever since a podcaster raised the alarm about it in 2005 (I can’t remember who it was Dave Slusher or maybe Rob Walch – my memory escapes me), but I do remember the discussions that many podcasters had about this. Then it was forgotten until news of the patent’s approval was announced this week by the company that filed it, VoloMedia.

According to VoloMedia, they are not laying claim that they invented podcasting. In other words, episodic media distributed via RSS feeds is not the issue. However, they are laying claim to “the method of providing episodic media” as stated in the patent.

According to VoloMedia, the patent “was filed in November 2003, almost a year before the start of podcasting.” On the one hand, they’re correct in that the word “podcasting” wasn’t a word until a journalist created the term in an article published in the Guardian in 2004.

However, most podcasters know that Dave Winer and Adam Curry are credited with formalizing the process of delivering enclosed media files via RSS feeds. They didn’t call it a podcast, however, they did write a paper on it in 2001. Dave has also provided links on his blog to the posts that outline their research that predates the filing of the patent.

My head is spinning and I’m still not sure how to process this, but here’s my early observations:

Renewed Lines Drawn

Lines will be drawn that will separate the podcasting community, yet again. It happened early in the industry when the hobbyists didn’t want to hear from those who made a business out of podcasting. This will be yet another issue that will fracture the podcasting community and sadly, will prevent it from uniting to challenge and/or oppose this patent.

Response from ADM

The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), which got off to a rocky start because independent podcasters were unsure if ADM would represent their interests, has to be very careful not reignite those old wounds. So far, the person who published the press release on the VoloMedia copied and pasted it to the ADM blog. There has been no commentary from ADM aside from Murgesh Navar who authored both posts on the Volomedia and ADM websites. Based on the tweets I’m seeing on Twitter, this isn’t sitting right with some podcasters. ADM needs to make a statement, but be careful.

Lots of Talk, No Action

There will be alot of talk and no action. When ADM got off the ground, independent podcasters who were making quite a bit of money tried to start a competing association that, in theory, would represent the independent podcasters interests. Sadly, this band of brothers got as far as choosing a name and no one wanted to carry the fight on further. This situation will bring out those old alliances and they will rally podcasters behind them to challenge the patent, but it’ll be just talk.

Creators Need to Be More Business Minded

This is yet another clear example of why those who create need to take their creations much more seriously. Yes, there’s something to be said about “contributing to the community” and I’m all for that. However, while you sing kumbaya and have your tech lovefest, there’s someone with alot of money that will ruthlessly step in, lay claim to your work and have the legal stuff behind them to kill your joy. As 7 of 9 said in an episode of Star Trek Voyager “Not everyone wants to be part of your collective”. The reason? People have different motives.

How do you feel about this patent? Leave your comments below. Again, I’m trying to make my own thoughts about this make sense, so having your feedback will give me a different perspective.

Oh, and if you plan to tweet about this, use the hashtag #volomedia (thanks Todd Cochrane).

Update: ADM clarified that its members can post to the association blog and that it does not endorse what its members post. They have added a disclaimer at the top of the post made by the person from Volomedia. Michael Geoghegan talks about the go old days, focusing on when we (including Volomedia, formerly Podbridges) worked together to advance the field of podcasting. Eric Susch, who produces Let’s Knit 2gether with his wife CAT (whom I had breakfast with last year at the New Media Expo), posted a reaction as well. Adam Ostrow in his blog post says we’ll have to wait and see how this patent can be enforced. There are many tweets, too many to link to.

I was listening to the recording of my session from the New Media Expo and I was reminded about one of the BEST podcast names I heard while at the Expo.

During my session, I asked 5 people to share their monetization strategy based on the 3 personas I introduced. They had to tell me whether they’re a Big Bird, Hulk Hogan or Oprah (buy the Expo recordings so you can hear my session).

John Blue was one of the people who came to the microphone. He produces a podcast called the Swinecast. Apparently, there’s also the Beefcast, Poultrycast and a few others.

The lesson here? Make the name of your podcast memorable. Nothing can beat Swinecast in my book.

Just wanted to share a resource with you. I put together an audio recording of the 5 keys to creating a profitable podcast. It was done as a teleclass about 6 months ago and now, I’m offering it as a 5 part mini-audio course.

To get this recording, you actually have to subscribe to the feed. Just enter your first name and email address below, then click on your favorite feed reader button. When you do, a unique feed is generated that you can copy and paste into your feed reader.

Thanks to Paul Colligan’s awesome service called Premiumcast for powering this mini-course.