Edison Media – Podcasting 2010

Tom Webster, VP of Strategy & Marketing for Edison Research, recently presented the renowned company’s fifth annual study of American podcasting consumers at the Blogworld New Media Expo.  The presentation contained previously unreleased data from The American Youth Study 2010 conducted by Edison Research & Arbitron as well as the Edison/ADM Consumer Attitudes to Podcast Advertising Study 2010.
| Watch Presentation (63m) | Download Slides |

Here’s what you need to know:

• Podcast consumers are highly engaged with social media
• A majority listen to podcasts in their vehicles (through iPod or other MP3 connectivity)
• Mobile Phone Media consumption is rising quickly, although most podcast consumers still prefer to get content on their desktop computers than dedicated media players
• About 70-million Americans 12+ have listened to a podcast in the past year, that’s up slightly from last year to 45% of the population

The most important takeaway point Webster makes is the podcast audience is no longer just an “early adopter,” but now more closely resembles mainstream media consumers.

Dave & Geri in Grand Rapids are a great example of a highly successful morning show which has made the transition from traditional radio to on demand content.  Their daily “FunCast” now averages more than 40-thousand downloads per week and continues to grow.  Paul Poteet & Tom Davis in Indianapolis are another example with their “Off The Cuff” podcast in Indianapolis.

Related Articles

• FIR Interview: Edison Research VP Tom Webster on the state of podcasting (nevillehobson.com)
• The State of Podcasting [Data] (hubspot.com)
• 70 million Americans agree: podcasting is still cool (heidi-miller.com)

Easy Foursquare Promotion for Radio

I’ve touched on the need for radio brands and personalities to discover creative ways location based marketing can be utilized for self-promotion in recent posts.  Well, I just saw a very easy – although somewhat painstaking and time consuming – idea from New York & Miami morning star Paul “Cubby” Bryant. 

Basically, he’s taken some effort to promote his own show as a “Recommended Tip” when a Foursquare user “checks in” from certain landmarks.  It’s easy to add your own tips for any venue when you check-in from a location and really does not take much additional time if you’re already playing along.  Simply add a tip from major venues like he did saying “Since you’re so close to LOCATION, YOURNAME says Listen to YOURSHOW on STATION at TIME.“

Kudos on the simple, obvious, yet overlooked way to keep your name in front of the socially immersed consumer.  You could also use this concept to promote your station’s “Half Priced Deals” and upcoming bar promotions, concerts, and other events.  Let me know how it works for you, or if you have other ideas to leverage Foursquare and social networking platforms into your marketing strategy – leave a comment below.

Related Articles

• Location Based Marketing for Radio (ScottSands.com)
• Team Coco promotes Conan O’Brien via Foursquare (ScottSands.com)
• Foursquare Puts A Big Emphasis On Badges, Partner Badges With New Trophy Case (techcrunch.com)
• Foursquare opens up a new Trophy Case for badges [TNW Location] (thenextweb.com)
• Foursquare Launches New Vanity URLs for Profiles (nonprofitorgs.wordpress.com)
• Facebook launches ‘Deals’ – a version of Foursquare with offers (tengoldenrulesblog.blogspot.com)
• How to Add the New Foursquare Button to Your Web Properties (ghdialogue.posterous.com)
• Louis Gray: Foursquare now lets venue managers impeach their mayors (aboutfoursquare.com)

Guster Turns Video Production Over To Fans

Pop/Rock band Guster are helping promote the October 5 release of their new CD Easy Wonderful with a fan-produced video contest.  The band is producing a video for all 12 songs on this release and posting to the video page of their website … well, except for the video for Track #6, “Bad Bad World,” which they’re leaving up to their fans. 

This is a great way to get their fanbase interested and involved with their new music; however, by instructing would-be-music-producers to just email their video for the band to privately judge, Guster has missed out on a fantastic marketing opportunity with potential exposure to a new audience previously unfamiliar with the band..  User Generated Content such as this can be a very powerful marketing tool, and great additional content to drive web traffic.  In the case of Guster, simply by allowing fans to determine the contest winner instead of behind closed doors …

Would you abandon 3.7-million people in your audience?

Well, that’s exactly what John Mayer has done by deactivating his Twitter account.  Now, to be fair, his ”[my] Stupid Mouth” in both interviews (i.e. Playboy) and online (i.e. Twitter-feud with Perez Hilton) have sent publicists scrambling … but, still, that’s an awful lot of people – mostly loyal fans – to leave so abruptly.  Mayer’s spokesman claims the end of his Battle Studies tour and more in-house recording are the reason.  At last count, Mayer had approximately 3.7-million following his Tweets (written by him personally, and often quite frequently).  Mayer plans to continue direct communication with fans through his blog.

Obviously, the first question you have to ask:  Is Twitter beginning to lose it’s cool, at least with the celebrity crowd?  Mayer joins Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Leeann Rimes, and Ricky Gervais in deactivating their accounts this year.  Or, perhaps like with Miley & Leeann, maybe John is finally keeping some of his personal life … personal.  He did launch a Tumblr account last week to keep his blog active in the social world (50,000 connections in his first week).  The social media strategy crowd will also start asking how to convert those Followers to his blog and speculate about how much such a big Twitter following is really worth. 

But, the point of my blog is to start a conversation about what such trends mean to our world.  So, let’s talk about it this way …

Delivering Happiness – Have you read it yet?

I’ve got some time on my hands while I search for my next great opportunity (by the way, if you’re hiring – click here for my resume); so, I wanted to compile a Fall reading list of great books I hope to read before settling in to a new office.  Have you read any of these?  Which do you recommend most?  Take my poll on the right and share your comments here on the blog. 

Poll Time

We all know we’re supposed to be engaging our audience through social media platforms.  It’s part of our marketing mix and a great tool for PPM … as I’ll discuss in a future blog.  But, let’s be honest, it’s a lot of work.  With that in mind, here’s a poll for this week: