Learn about Streaming Online Audio/Video

It’s okay to learn from screen captures but even better to put a face with the instructions. Grab one of our blue shirted X-trained people and they will tell you all the benefits of training with an instructor who looks you in the eye. Streaming Online Audio/Radio Part One For Social Media Workshops http://TheSocialMediaWorkshop.com So we are back, were talking about social media and how social media can help you with your online marketing initiatives and we have moved into a class now where we are talking about audio, and there is a few different ways that we can use audio when we are talking about social media and marketing. The first one we are going to talk about is going to be audio streaming or online radio. There is nothing particularly new about internet radio when it comes to the internet and on its surface it would seem that internet radio is not necessarily a social media platform. If you had thought about internet radio a few years back then in most cases it wasn’t the reason why I bring it up is because most internet radio stations now and internet radio websites have a lot of social media aspects to them and you also find that in most cases the listener based with crossover real nicely between a social media and an internet radio. In a lot of cases internet radio is doing a lot to take market share away from terrestrial radio so something we do want to pay attention to it is something that is at a minimum. A great user base and a great target audience if you’ve got, you know, products or services that you want to particularly push towards a younger age audience. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the details of internet radio. Basically all we are talking about here is broadcasting that is transmitted through the internet via a streaming or a continuous audio stream. One of the differentiators here between some of the other stuff we are going to talks about is the fact that radio, much like satellite or much like terrestrial radio doesn’t allow the user control to say fast forward or stop or listen to a song anytime they want to or program. It is the same as any other radio station you might have in your home or in your car where you essentially select the station and whatever is on is what you are going to listen to that is what you get. Now there are streaming audio websites and stations available on the internet where you can select songs or you can mix your own music. That is a little bit different on what we are talking about here and for the most parts the tactics that we are going to look at are going to crossover to all these nicely but, you know, we want to know from a marketing perspective what we are targeting and it is important to know what some of these details are because it could have an impact on your marketing plans. So let’s talk about the users a little bit then we will visit a couple of internet radio sites. 40% of the U.S. population, this is very interesting, 40% of the U.S. population that’s on the internet listens to internet audio and that can include podcast, it include all kinds of different audio programs but it is a huge part of the user base on the internet. You breakdown is basically 73% of 18 to 34 years old that are on the internet are listening to audio or radio on the net. 67% of 35 to 54 years old, and 53% of 54 and over are listening to audio on the internet so, when you breakdown that two billion people all around the world that are on the internet and you breakdown the huge percentage of the U.S. population that is on the internet, you are talking about a large part of the audience that is going to this side. So this is one place where you’ve got this different people from different channels crossing in to partaken this one service that is going to have a lot broader appeal than if your going towards say a social network that is geared toward, you know, mommy blogs or you do it your focusing on sports or something like that so if you’ve got a product or a service that has a wider appeal, internet audio maybe something you might want to look at when it comes to advertising or when it comes to using some social networking tactics. As far as males and females, 73% of males in the United States that are on the internet listen to audio and over 50% of females do. Let us go have a look at a couple of sites, I’ve got a screen shot here of webmaster radio. Now webmaster radio is a website that caters towards high-tech marketing. I guess is the genre they focus on its— they’ve been around for a while and they’ve got over a dozen shows that they produced themselves. Now there is a lot of different opportunities on webmaster radio and they span different genres and internet audio. They do live streaming just like I mentioned but they also make their shows available via download for Podcast and different files formats. So if you come to webmaster radio you are going to see that obviously on the website itself, they make advertising available in several different spots. They’ve got large banner ads going across the top of the page. They’ve got smaller badges on the side and then they also offer opportunities to do promos before and after shows and even during shows. They have several shows that are over an hour long. Most of them are about half an hour and typically what they will do is start the show, they’ll do a couple of internal ads promoting other shows. They do some cross promotion and they’ll have one spot typically for an advertiser at the beginning, they’ll have one or two spots at about the fifth, you know, 12 to 15 mark point in the middle of the show and then they will drop one at the very ends so you typically got four opportunities for this shows to be able to put audio ads inside of them. So when you are thinking about a model when it comes to streaming audio on the net, it is very similar to radio except that I would assume the business practices are much different than they are in radio. So webmaster radio is one place to go to the website, and most websites that your are going to see in the genre are going to have the ability to contact folks on the show and things to that nature. A couple of other ones I want to point out to you really quick, live365 is a website that does more syndication of other shows. They’ve got some original concept and they also syndicate stuff and as you see on the front we’ve got an ad for TiVo again, we’ve got an ad for AT&T, they are off to the right. So there’s opportunities here on the sight and then they as well you log in and you can create a profile and they have a lot of social networking features and functionality of the site so you can come through here also or the community are participating in existing communities and if you have a product or service that is relevant, you can focus in on a specific group of folks. So you’ve got fans for every particular artist then you can integrate yourself into that community and see what you can do to add value to them and then possibly, you know, sell some services or products in the folks within that community when the time is right and if you find if it is appropriate. And then there’s all kinds of sites like this that are just, these are just raw contents syndication sites that are just going out there and grabbing streams and content and pushing them out there. Radio towers is a site that you have site on scene and I haven’t done any background so I don’t what kind of traffic they get but there’s a lot of low hanging fruit or in search marketing what we call the long tail that you could probably go out there and get advertising spots on some of this individual shows or through the streams at a pretty in-expensive price Giovanni Gallucci Social Marketing Consulting Services 469.682.6978 www.gallucci.net | giovanni@galluci.net