Radio Free Enterprise

One of my favorite podcasts is TWiT, This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte.

Leo has a great radio voice (and years of “real” radio experience) and his ever-changing panel of thoughtful, funny guests makes for a very enjoyable listening experience. Frequent contributors include John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton, and Jason Calacanis. He also often has surprisingly famous one-time guests like Steve Wozniak and Roger McGuinn.

Leo is constantly pushing the edge of the envelope when it comes to distributing audio and video content and frequently shares tidbits on how he does what he does. For example, he uses Skype to connect his panel from across the country and around the world in a real-time, relatively high quality production. He has also recently added live streaming video.

If you ever wonder how I stay on top of all the cool new tech products and services that I blog about, give a listen to TWiT. Every week you’ll learn about the latest happenings in digital video, social networking, blogging and podcasting - you name it.

You can subscribe via iTunes or just listen online via the TWiT website.

Hope you enjoy it - and don’t say I never gave you anything!

In this 7:30 video Aaron Wall discusses why new internet marketers are best off starting marketing by creating a blog.

Just two weeks ago I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte.

Leo was interviewing a young man named Justin Kan, star of his own lifelong version of The Truman Show on Justin.tv. Justin’s claim to fame? He’s made a commitment to LifeStreaming - providing live Internet video of everything that happens in his life 24/7 from a camera mounted on his head. Sound like fun?

Beyond the obvious privacy and logistical issues, the technology Justin had to cobble together was nothing short of daunting - and expensive. But that was two weeks ago, an ice age in Internet time. Today anyone can do the same thing Justin is (if they care to), with no hassle, at no charge and in no time.

UStream.tv allows anyone with a digital video camera (webcam on up) and a high-speed Internet connection to stream their images live to hundreds of viewers worldwide at no charge.

Just like YouTube and other sites which allow the free posting of pre-recorded videos, UStream.tv will no doubt be filled without a great deal of dubious content. But the opportunity for business owners, sales professionals and business groups to broadcast their live events to the world via streaming video is profound.

And the potential to leverage UStream.tv as an Education-Based Marketing medium is also enormous. I’ll be very interested to see where this new channel takes us in the coming months and years.

Ted Turner’s father made his fortune in billboards - the widely despised and widely dispersed giant canvasses of commercialism dotting the highways and bi-ways of this fair land.

Ted took over the firm - then worth approximately $1 million - upon his father’s suicide in 1963. The rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, Turner Outdoor is still a huge cash cow, churning out millions of profits for Time Warner every year - and getting progressively more profitable due to the latest in digital signage technology which allows a single billboard to display multiple ad images every minute.

But that ain’t all. Through wired and wireless Internet connections, hundreds of signs of all sizes in locations ranging from roadsides to retail points of sale, can be controlled and monitored from a single location. Awesome!

This article explains how an advertising medium which had been written off for dead just ten years ago is making a huge comeback thanks to the creative application of digital technology.

Several years ago I had an idea about posting educational videos on the Internet on arcane but interesting topics like, how to build a roaring fire in your fireplace, how to parallel park, the basic rules of football and baseball, how to bake bread, change a diaper, set a table, make a bed, plant a flower garden, etc.

Each video would be only five minutes or shorter, offering just the essential information you needed along with links to resources for more details. Kind of like a video instruction manual for life. My idea was that users would generate the content and vote on each video’s value. The best videos and producers would rise to the top, attracting the most eyeballs and creating the most advertising revenue. I registered the domain name FiveMinutesOn.com but did nothing further.

Over the past couple of years, multiple companies have come forward with various flavors of this same concept, with greater or lesser degrees of marketplace success. The most recent one I am aware of, is being created nearby to me in Great Falls, Virginia.

Knowlera Media’s approach is to locate subject matter experts of every stripe and then send professional videographers to do 2-camera shoots of them in HD (high definition video). Knowlera pays for the production and editing and posts the video online. The expert gets free video exposure and the ability to post the content on their web site. But Knowlera owns the rights to the content and receives all revenue derived from it.

Their site has not yet gone live but they are already shooting and editing content. My friend Wes Crawford, who is a master musician and music teacher, has contributed his knowledge to a couple of drum instructional videos for Knowlera.

If you are a coach, consultant or other type of subject matter expert who would like to share your knowledge with the world under the terms outlined above, drop by MonkeySee.com and fill-out the form on the Experts page. Then stop back here and let us know what you think.

This is a great way for any business person with specialized knowledge which brings unique value to an engaged audience to do some high-quality Education-Based Marketing - at no charge!

When Dr. Ivan Misner founded BNI in 1985, he may have never dreamed that it would one day grow into the world’s largest business networking organization. Today, with nearly 100,000 members in 37 countries around the world, it has become exactly that.

With that level of success come many challenges, not the least of which is communication between a single founder and tens of thousands of members and directors across the globe.

As a new member to BNI, it occurred to me that the production of a weekly podcast could go a long way to solve that problem. And when I approached Dr. Misner with the idea, he saw the potential and quickly gave the go-ahead.

The result is The Official BNI Podcast, a weekly 5-10 minute audio message from Dr. Misner to the world of BNI, which I produce and co-host from my home studio.

Just as important as his regular outbound communication is the opportunity for his audience to respond through comments, questions and suggestions they can post on the podcast’s web site. From my perspective, this is the essential power of what is being called Web 2.0: the creation of a community through 2-way communication.

The production format allows Dr. Misner and his guests to call-in from anywhere in the world, which is an important consideration for a man with a packed calendar and a global travel itinerary. Nonetheless, I congratulate Dr. Misner for making the commitment of adding this project to his weekly agenda. I don’t believe he would do it if he didn’t see the overwhelming value in it.

Rather than spend too much time explaining what The Official BNI Podcast is all about, I invite you to listen to the first episode where Dr. Misner explains it himself.

I am very pleased and proud to be a part of this new production and I encourage anyone with a far-flung base of offices, employees, salespeople, franchisees, customers, members, readers - you name it - to consider adding a weekly podcast to your communication menu. It’s easier and less expensive than you might think. Give me a call if you’d like to discuss the possibilites.

How can a small Brooklyn jewelry design firm with no marketing budget capture worldwide attention for their innovative products? By posting a fascinating video on YouTube.

Clearly a big success factor here is the uniqueness and camera appeal of their product. This video contains no words, music or special effects and yet has been viewed over 2 million times. The product literally speaks for itself.

Nonetheless, this marketing channel was not available prior to the explosion and adoption of video sharing sites. Anyone can tap into this. And an increasing number of small business owners are. Call me for ideas on how your company can connect with this incredible marketing opportunity.

I’ve never heard of Todd Brown before. Now that I have, I’m not sure that I’ll buy what he’s selling when he gets around to trying to sell it to me.

But there’s one thing that I know Todd Brown and I agree on: giving away free information is a great way to build your book of business. He and I both believe in and are practitioners of Education-Based Marketing.

Todd has put together a page full of nine free informational videos entitled Habits Of The Top Internet Marketers. I watched the first and second - and half of the third - before I decided I had had enough.

But that’s okay because a great maxim of Education-Based Marketing is that you want your audience to either turn up the volume or change the channel. I chose to do the latter for a number of reasons including the green-screen background effect he’s using, the tone, volume and tempo of his speaking voice, and because I didn’t find myself learning anything new or interesting.

Others will find great value in his message and turn up the volume to 11 by opting into his email list.

The primary point I want to drive home is that Todd is reaching a huge new audience of potential customers by casting his bread upon the waters in the form of potentially valuable information available for the asking. If you’ve watched or listened to any of my information on Education-Based Marketing, you’ll know that I believe he’s onto something.

Google is one of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories of all time.

Starting in their 20s - and now in their early 30s - Larry Page and Sergey Brin have gone from scratch to a $146 billion market cap. In less than ten years they have created a company whose stock is worth almost ten times more than General Motors - still the world’s largest auto maker. Not bad.

Well, I got my first piece of the Google Bonanza yesterday when I found a check for $103.81 in my mailbox. It was from Google! And payable to yours truly.

Don’t worry, I won’t go spending my new found fortune foolishly. Probably spend 95% of it on wine, women and song - and just blow the rest!

The money came from visitors clicking on the text ads found in the right-hand column of this site. Not a lot of dough but better than a kick in the butt with golf shoes.

If you’d like to learn how to place Google ads on your web site, visit AdSense. And tell ‘em your rich Uncle Frankie sent ya!

A couple of nights ago I sat through 2-hour webinar to learn how to distribute audio and video via WordPress blogs.

You might wonder why I would invest the time, inasmuch as that’s what I’ve been doing with Radio Free Enterprise all along - distributing audio and video (and text) on a WordPress blog.

The fact is that I’m always on the lookout for new information, new tidbits to learn and share. And this time I came away with a doozie.

Radio Free Enterprise - and all other audio and video distributed via RSS feeds - is available right now on your living room TV, via your Tivo box. Don’t have Tivo? No problem. It’s also available via the latest Microsoft Media Center as well as the new AppleTV box via iTunes. More channels are coming.

In short, the new media revolution has quietly made a huge leap - from the computer monitor to the television screen, from your home office to your living room. And the impact that move will have on information, education and entertainment production and consumption in the coming years cannot be overstated.

As a producer of specialized information (entrepreneurial education) to a large niche audience, I am excited. As a consumer of this and other niche information offerings, you may be a little overwhelmed in the short term but will be grandly served in the long run, with choices and value never before available.

Once the initial brush fire settles down and we all figure how best to make use of these incredible opportunities, a brave new world of media production, distribution and consumption will present itself in all its splendor.

Are you ready?

(If you have any of the boxes listed above and you’d like to “watch” Radio Free Enterprise on your TV, just type http://feeds.feedburner.com/RadioFreeEnterprisePodcasts into the appropriate box on the screen. That’s a lot to type now but easier access points are coming soon.)