Just had lunch with Mike Moran at my IBM office little more than a month ago - and Mike Moran has been a good friend to me, fellow Web Analytics Association Member, and a member of my Social Media Committee at the WAA. Oh yes, he was also my first real boss at IBM, almost 5 years ago.

I just found out, according to Lee Odden that there's an Internet Marketing Podcast with Mike Moran & Lee Odden:

"…There are 8 podcasts in the series and they cover a range of Internet marketing and new media marketing topics applicable to any business that’s trying to understand online marketing. For most of the podcasts, we use Mike’s books, “Search Engine Marketing Inc” written with Bill Hunt and Mike’s new book, “Do It Wrong Quickly” as starting points for discussing a range of topics related to how Internet marketing is changing and what organizations can do to take advantage."

Mike Moran's new book Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules  was just published by IBM Press last month.

I have to admit, I like the "Search Inside" feature and found myself mentioned 3 times (a reference to the 50,000th visit to my blog, Webmetricsguru.com is on page 38 - I like that - right now, 700,000 visits later, i'm remembering the momement when 50,000 visits seem an awful lot).

Have to admit, I read the book in Manuscript - I was reading each chapter and weighed in, with a few others on what I thought - how much of that got into the final version of Doing it Wrong Quickly, I don't yet know.

Mike Moran's book is quite good, and I sincerely say that - not because he's a friend, not because I once worked for him, not because he's on my Social Media Committee at the WAA - I really think Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules was better than most marketing books I've have come across - and Mike put a whole lot of information you'd have to search for in other books into this one book - so I suggest buying a copy or two copies (give the other to a friend).

I like a feature the Washington Times just enabled according to a post on Smartmobs by Emily Turretini titled:‘Wash Times’ Site Translates Most Articles Into Downloadable Audio Clips.

I think these kinds of enhancements to site content add value to the site and make it more likely that some will just download a whole section, or set of articles as podcasts and listen to them while moving around.

I know this is not a new idea, others have tried it, and I don't know, offhand, of any metrics around visitor satisfaction over having this feature enabled (podcasting of articles) but I think it's a good idea. 

Perhaps the only improvement would have someone reciting it that would have better quality than an automated voice…but the automated voices are getting better, and sometimes, the robotic quality in the voice transcription is almost absent.

Now the Web Analytics Association has a Social Media and Communications Committee - and part of what we're doing is coming up with standard definations of Social Media events - I'm seeing all kinds of situations where measurements standards are needed such as Podcast Downloads, Podcast Advertising, etc.

For about 2 years I was reporting on IBM Investor's Podcasts, did some research and found there was no standards for Podcast downloads then, plus few Web Analytics tools to measure it.  

Since then, Podcast Measurement has continued to improve and now Susan Bratton (who used to be the Ad-Tech Chair), helped form the Association for Downloadable Media, or ADM.

"..Among other things, Ms. Bratton said that technology companies, marketers and publishers need to agree on standard methods for packaging and delivering advertisements, and tracking the number of times an advertisement is heard. Also, there is no consensus on how best to design an advertisement within a podcast. As a result, marketers, advertising agencies and publishers cannot efficiently implement big campaigns across multiple sites."

"..Ms. Bratton, who is an online advertising industry veteran, said she believes she has found at least one good format for running advertisements within podcasts. In addition to placing a sponsor’s advertisements at both ends of a show, she also inserts an advertisement in the middle. "

I hope she uses a different ad in the middle of the Podcast than the beginning or end (and adds something unique that tells you how much of the Podcast was listened to - in fact I'd use a unique ad in every spot of the Podcast if it were up to me).

"…“Say you’re listening,” Ms. Bratton said. “You’ll hear an ad about sponsoring the show from the Omega Institute at the start. Then you get into the show, and halfway through there’s a commercial break, where you have more detail on Omega’s summer programs. Then at the end of the show the final commercial says, ‘Find out more at eomega.org.’ ”

Definitely something I'll post for the Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association to discuss at our next meeting.

BTW, it looks like the Association for Downloadable Media has a Board of Directors, much as the Web Analytics Association does.  Now that I'm on the Board of Directors of the WAA, I have a sense of what the WAA does, and what the Board of Directors do for the organization.  

I would say, based on what I'm reading in the New York Times Article on Podcasters Unite to Figure Out a Role for Ads and the ADM site, the Association for Downloadable Media is more focused on Advertisers than the WAA is - but as far as measuring downloads, measuring advertising - I think there's overlaps between our two organizations.

And Jim Sterne said as much in his latest newsletter, Sterne Measures:

"…Where in the world is Susan Bratton? After making Ad-Tech the amazing success it was, Susan started up Personal Life Media, "Juicy lifestyle content for people at the leading edge of culture." It's a podcast explosion. She just got written up in the NY Times: http://tinyurl.com/2b92ld

In one of those podcasts, Meredith Medland explained the 3Outcomes session we did at the last eMetrics Summit. She and I did a lot of work to make it an even more valuable session in Washington D.C. in October.

  Take a listen from about minute 22:30 to 34:00 to understand
  what 3Outcomes is all about. http://tinyurl.com/37z9h4"

I meant to go to that session but missed it when I was at the SF Emetrics a couple of months ago…oh well, next Emetrics I'll make a point of attending.

I was at a NYC Podcasting meetup last night and it was pretty good. Ben (Bendrix) Williams spoke about creating videos and how that plays into Podcasting.  One thing he pointed out, not general knowledge, if you are going to create both a video and podcast of the same information, the audio part of the Video should be mono rather than stereo to shorten the size of the file for downloading/bandwidth purposes.

The meetup took place at Ariel Publicity, on West 38th Street; I was there once before last year.  My goal for going this time was to get some ideas about using Video for my trip to France at the end of the month.

People that I spoke to last nigh included Hollis and a lady that runs The Wine Scout, a website dedicated to wine events and wine tasting travel shows.  Liz Camps also came by, my friend that owns and runs Green Media LLC and who I co-write BigGreenBlog with.  Also, Lisa Greenberg, an Apple Sales executive was present.

My sense is that it's possible to have everything you need to record great video (minus the talent) in one bag, a backpack for between 1000 - 2000 dollars - that includes everything minus the software and workstation to edit the videos.

One thing I noticed - it's helpful to be able to relax people as you put a microphone and camera in front of them; I think Ben Williams did a good job of making you want to talk into a microphone - not everyone does that well.

I'm going to Podcamp NYC this weekend and there's actually an Unofficial Guide to PodCamp NYC (Download the PDF - 2.6 MB) you can download if you want to follow the conference proceedings.

Podcamp NYC is being held at the New Yorker Hotel, the same place as New Life Expo is held, and I have been to several conferences at the New Yorker.

And the nice thing, above it all, about PodCamp NYC is it's free and it's called the "Un-Conference".

If anyone is going to Podcamp that reads Webmetricsguru.com, please post a comment to this post - perhaps we'll get a chance to meet.

Akamai is now measuring online music downloads according to Adotas.

"….The Akamai Net Usage Index for Digital Music tracks more than 40 digital music sites including XM Satellite Radio, Clear Channel, Rediff.com and Napster, giving a comprehensive view of total visitors per minute. The system is updated every five minutes and serves as a benchmark for businesses and web publishers, also notifying readers if traffic is above or below the average for that time of year. Music usage over the last 24 hours can be viewed separately by continent."

If music can be tracked, eventually so will Online Videos and Podcasts.  Right now - this is the first I have heard of this but I know it's wanted and needed by many marketers and advertisers.

I'm glad to be able to help Jason Van Orden with a Podcast Metric - I came up with the method about two years ago when I was asked to track IBM Investor Podcasts - the Future of……..

It's pretty simple - but at the time I actually worked to come up with it.  Jason explains it the podcasting metric very well:

"…

For example:

2 TB transfer per month / 4 shows per month = 0.5 TB per show
0.5 TB per show / 20 MB avg file size per episode = 25,000 avg downloads per episode

A more accurate method is to take the amount of bandwidth data transfer (bandwidth used) for a specific file over a given period of time and divide it by the size of that file to calculate the number of downloads.

For example:

Given a 10MB file downloaded over a month…

300 GB of transfer over one month / 25 MB = 12,000 downloads

This method averages out the partial downloads and give you an estimated number of complete downloads. This is another method used by Marshall Sponder to track the podcasting metrics for IBM.

Do you watch your bandwidth stats? How do you use bandwidth as a metric?"

I'll tell you …. it might have been simple - but I know that I got requests from all do pull all kinds of Podcasting numbers because I had come up with something that was, at that time - 2 years ago, better than anything else we had.

Now …. like anything else - it seems simple and almost easy to imagine coming up with the Podcasting Metric for bandwidth divided by size of file after the fact.

Jason Van Orden posted about last night's NYC Podcasting Meetup and also mentioned speaking with me.  Jason mentioned he did not take any photos - I did take one - so there is a record.

"..was hosted by Ariel Publicity allowing us to have it somewhere other than a diner or a pub for once. I’m a total dork because I failed to take pictures or record anything."

Here you go Jason - at least it's a photo. 

A couple of things Jason said last night.

If your a podcaster you should also write a blog

1. have a separate feed for the podcast and another for the blog
2. You need to post to your blog every day, or as often as you can - and it's much easier to post to your blog that create a podcast.
3. Posting textual content via a blog also makes it easier to drive traffic to your blog/podcasts via long tail searches
4. Social Media participation generates trust from your audience (my words, not his).

That's about it - Jason will write up the details of this talk on his own blog soon.

Probably the best meetup I attended so far, 2006 Holidays Event! - NYC Podcasting Meetup featuring a talk by Jason Van Orden at Ariel Publicity - had about 20 members attending.

Jason Van Orden, author of "Promoting Your Podcast", had a lot of good things to say ..and we were all listening. 

I spoke to several well known podcasters - meetups are great for that kind of meeting - will write up more about this meeting in a couple of days, when I have more time.

One take away - Social Media is about Trust; it's no longer about interruption - it's about engagement and leading people to want to look at your content.

Jason Van Orden brings up the error of using "hits" to measure the approximate number of times a  Podcast was Downloaded. 

"…Looking at the # of hits to a podcast file (MP3 or other) does not indicate how many times the entire file was downloaded. Some of those hits are the result of simple requests for information (such as the file size) or partial downloads. Further, if someone starts a streaming player, but stops listening ten seconds into the program, it still results in a hit to the file in the logs.

In Podcasting Metrics Series Part 2, I pointed out the problem with looking at the # of hits to a file for estimating the # of downloads. A single download can result in many hits. The hits stat will always be bigger than the actual number of downloads."

Most Analytics don't do much about RSS Feeds, Podcasts or Vidcasts and really ought to - and I've been suggesting this to every Web Analytics Vendor I talk to.

Right now, I gather the bytes downloaded of a file by the size of a file to get an approximate number of downloads for a file. Another possibility I found gets you close the first set of numbers is taking the number of Hits to a file and multiplying by .80 which seems to be consistent.  

Every podcast is usually downloaded a little more than 1x per visitor - same is true of transcripts of a podcast - that .80 multiplier seems to work but I can't tell  you why it's .80 except that I  observed this ratio works several times.