I had a really great time talking with Amanda Watlington after her presentation about Podcasting and RSS Feeds (which was the subject of Webmaster world Pubcon session that I reported on here in part 1, part 2, or part 3).
Amanda’s laptop had just gotten the blue screen of death right after the Podcasting session but Arron Wall of SeoBook saved the day and finally she was able to reboot.
Amanda started out doing SEO but found herself focusing more and more on Podcasting and RSS feeds. One thing both Podcasts, RSS XML feeds and SEO Site Optimization share is metadata and metatag optimization. Amanda is very concise on what metadata needs to be optimized in order for your feeds to be picked and ranked well by search engines.
Amanda also knew all about the Podcasting group whose meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago and I do plan to go to the next one. Amanda was also interested in our KMM network which has the best set of bloggers I’ve ever seen - we’re certainly among the most enthusiastic.
The big issue around Podcasting is how to make money from it - I think that still is an issue that’s been brought up in today’s session at Webmaster world Pubcon and at the SESNY06 session I attended last month in NY. Interestingly, an article came out today about Podcast advertising on blogs:
Podcast advertising is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 154.4 percent to $327 million in 2010, while blog ad spending will rise 78.4 percent to $300.4 million in the same time frame. Key factors driving the growth of podcast over blog advertising are the medium’s audio and visual components, as well as the reluctance of some marketers to advertise near non-favorable content. Meanwhile, RSS advertising, non-existent until mid-2005, generated $650,000 in 2005 and is projected to grow to $129.6 million in 2010.
"Blog, podcast and RSS advertising are being driven by some of the same factors boosting the growth of the overall alternative media sector: continued audience fragmentation, the perceived ineffectiveness of traditional advertising, and the elusive but coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic," says Patrick Quinn, president of PQ Media. "Blog, podcast and RSS advertising have demonstrated an ability to reach younger demographics as well as influentials, and the media tend to be highly engaging. These are attractive trends to brand marketers that are focused on return on investment."
Amanda Watlingon is probably one of the top authorities on blogs and RSS feeds as a social phenomenon and it was quite interesting to have Malcolm Gladwell here, as well, today speaking about the Tipping Point.
In a way, the people at Pubcon today were speaking more about the Tipping Point than Malcolm Gladwell did - and it was in the theme of a lot of the sessions, in one way or another.
