from Doug and Lee (Founders) 

Podango is excited to bring you a complimentary ticket ($97 value) to the first ever Virtual Seminar Week.  The first 5000 people to register with the Podango code receive a free ticket. Go to www.podango.com/vsw for information on how to get your complimentary ticket. 
Virtual Seminar Week is next week, November 10-17 and includes over 49 top business leaders, trainers and inspirational luminaries that you can listen to all from the comfort of your living room.
Experts include:

• Jay Abraham –> Legendary $5000/hour marketing mastermind
• Carlos Marin –> Recruited & managed sales force of 600,000
• Dr. Joe Mercola –> Founder of the #1 natural-health site in the world
• Bill Bartmann –> Billionaire to bankruptcy & back again
• Bob Proctor –> Modern-day Napolean Hill (Discover The Secret)
• Bill Romanowski –> Secrets to peak performance (4 Superbowl wins)
• Tellman Knudson & Stephanie Frank –> Overcoming ADHD at home & work
• Miriam Adler-MacWilliams –> Discover the truth about options trading
• Paul Colligan –> How to use podcasts for profit (One of our own Station Directors: Internet Marketing Podcast Network)
• Gay & Katie Hendricks –> Creating love & harmony in relationships

We are excited to bring you this unique opportunity.

By Doug Smith – Podango President

Podango have been in Beta 1 release for one week now and we have made good progress. We are not without issues, but for our first beta we are very pleased. We have six stations opens for business and another 17 approved and building out their content. More requests to become station directors are coming in daily. We reject some and accept some. We are holding to a standard in order to establish a professional environment with great niche focused content. I continue to be amazed at the applications from all over the world about some very interest niches. I love the “long-tail� and I love talking to experts in niche markets. I love their passion and desire to share, listen and create online conversations.

In addition to our content and stations we also have make progress in other areas. Our transcriptions are starting to roll in and our traffic is picking up. We have a Google page rank of 6/10 after a week and our Alexa rating is improving each day.

Included in those six live stations are industry leaders in Paul Colligan (Internet Marketing), John Jantsch (Small Business Marketing), Roger Merrill (Leadership), a great world news station, old time music and an Italian station.  We love our station directors and know they are creating huge value for their audiences. Some argue that a station director model takes away from the democratic process of web-wide voting for favorites. Though that might be true to an extent, it is my experience that a few in the minority tend to strongly influence the ranking of content popularity in the fully open web and the station directors add some sanity to audience rankings and more importantly, they don’t stand on the sidelines and point fingers, they take responsibility to listen and produce great station content that will create loyalty in those they serve. It is really about the conversations and some of the best conversations are moderated by leaders in a field. They don’t know it all, but they know enough to find the answers people are looking for. We love our station directors. In the end, their success is our success.

And if you think this week was fun. Wait until next week at the Podcasting and Portable Media Expo where we are sponsoring the Podcasting Unconference 2006 in our booth. #301 come and visit. We will have 18 sessions/conversations moderated by podcasting industry leaders. Sound familiar.  So for us it is not just about giving “voice�, it is also about having “ears�. It is about the conversation.

by Doug Smith - Podango, President 

I had the privilege of attending and presenting at The Super Saturday Network Marketing Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida this past Saturday. I am a foreigner to the Network Marketing industry but this was a fun and enlightening event.  The event was sponsored by The Network Marketing Magazine whose editor George Madiou asked Leroy Maughan and me to present podcasting and the Podango Station model to the conference. The reception of this new means of communicating to a diverse, geographically dispersed, yet networked group of people was very exciting. Leroy and George are jointly managing a Podango Station called the Network Marketing World where by using George’s contacts with the training arm of this industry will provide great content on both the market and the skills necessary to be successful in this home based business industry.

We presented with 6 highly popular and successful trainers and leaders of this industry. It was a pleasure to learn from them and feel their enthusiasm for their topics. These six include:

 

Kathy Robbins who has reached the top position with four network-marketing companies, helped in the expansion of four of those companies to Europe. She is known as one of the best trainers in the industry.  

Having been successful, both corporately and in the network-marketing arena, it seemed natural for Kathy to consult with network marketing companies in the areas of operations, sales and marketing and expansion.

 

Sandy Botkin who is a CPA, attorney and former trainer of IRS attorneys nationwide. Sandy’s book, Lower Your Taxes Big Time!, is the best-selling tax book at Amazon.com. He lectures all over the nation on tax planning for self-employed and corporate taxpayers… he’s been written up in Newsweek and many other magazines.He is also a syndicated writer and noted author of this famed tape series “Tax Strategies for Business Professionals” and “Tax and Financial Strategies for Residential Real Estate.”

 Doug Firebaugh, an Expert in M.L.M. and Network Marketing, is CEO of PassionFire International. He is a successful entrepreneur who has spent the last 25 years in the sales and Direct marketing field, and has been blessed to help multitudes of others break numerous records in performance by training people on how to “Maximize their Human Success Capital” that lies within them.
 

Dale Calvert who started his first business from his parents home at the age of 14. For the past 25 years he has been supporting entrepreneurs and marketing professionals with some of the most powerful training programs in the industry. A directory of Dale’s websites can be found at DaleCalvert.com. His new course will teach you 21 Ways to create leads in your local market.
 

 

Max Steingart, Money Magazine called him “The Matchmaker” in 1983. He was named “The Success Story of the Year” by INC Magazine five years later. AT&T called him a visionary of the computer industry. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush congratulated Max for his innovative efforts helping people meet the right people.

Since 1996, Max has devoted his time to researching, studying, understanding and teaching people the secrets of online relationship building through the use of Instant Messaging.
 

Paula Pritchard, As one of the most consistent top performers in network marketing, Paula has proven time and time again that her business building methods work. Her techniques for building large successful organizations have created many successful leaders in the industry and have been well documented in her book Owning Yourself and the CD audio training series “What You Need to Know to Build a Profitable Network Marketing Business.” Today Paula is known worldwide as one of the top network marketers, trainers and leadership developers.
 

These are great leaders and they have much to share. They are not tech geeks, but could quickly see the advantages of podcasting in reaching larger numbers of people. We will have a few of their presentations on the Network Marketing World station soon. We also have the reaction of the audience to the conference. It is an enjoyable audio segment. I encourage you to have a listen.

I continue to be amazed at how readily people are seeing the advantages of time-shifted content consumption. Thank you Tivo.  Stay tuned for a ton of great content for this market from Leroy, George and friends.

 

by Lee Gibbons, CEO

In real estate, they say, “location, location, location!” when citing the key element of success. The web entrepreneur’s equivalent element would be, “differentiation, differentiation, differentiation!”� � When I first wrote Podango’s 10 Rules, and in particular Rule #8, the thing that was standing out for me was the importance of letting each Podango Station Listener customize their Podango feed to meet their precise needs. This gives them the best podcasts coming to them by way of the sifting sorting and prioritizing provided by their Station Director, AND they can opt out of and re-arrange the priority of the podcasts to� match their tastes.

More recently, with the launch of PodShow Plus, I have become convinced that Podango’s uniqueness is its model with Station Directors at its core. Rather than having people create a glorified MySpace playlist of their favorite podcasts and calling that a channel, which is really no better than just subscribing to the various RSS feeds that comprize the channel, but for the ability to share the lists and see the lists put together by others (I am not knocking PodShow, here, just expressing a belief that there is a deeper contribution model that enables a richer set of benefits to those served by it.), Podango’s Station Model, with Station Directors who own their stations provides a truly differentiated set of benefits for listeners.

Podango Stations reflect the wisdom of passionate Station Directors whose proven expertise� guides their ongoing sifting, sorting and prioritizing of the best podcasts that serve the needs of their listeners. Station Directors are explorers, critics, infectors, organizers, combiners, refiners, and creators. They provide an invaluable service to a deliberate mass of people with a focused, shared interest. The result is a very useful set of podcasts that contain the most important conversations going on in their field of interest. They also sit at the center of the community comprising the station listeners and� podcastsers as well as the community’s luminaries, key thinkers and leading vendors/sponsors. From this spot they can enable rich, on-going conversations that align important agendas and move the community forward. They bring forward the most compelling podcasts. They help introduce important new podcasts. They spotlight podcast episodes that truly matter that were created for other audiences. They monitor and highlight the best conversations happening within the community.

I now strongly believe that even as important as customization and giving users choice is to our success, giving users expert guidance and voice in the important conversations that define their areas of interest is of superior importance. Station Directors make that happen. Their passion and empassioned service of the communities served by their Podango Stations will continue to be the key differentiator for Podango. This is what Podango will work to empower and enable with the highest priority going forward.

It is what will separate Podango stations from ordinary podcast feeds.

It is what will keep listeners and sponsors coming back for more, and more and more.

By Doug Smith – Podango President
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Unlike most podcast networks, Podango stations target specific audiences with multiple podcasts to make advertising dollars perform better, so advertisers and sponsors spend more with Podango.

Podango Stations are popping up in all types of niche markets including snow skiing, family matters, event planning, automotive tools, mountain biking, business leadership and more.  The profile of Podango Stations will clearly follow the “long tailâ€� distribution curve.  Stations will focus on highly targeted niches where niche savvy Station Directors will coordinate the “conversationâ€� with likeminded listeners. We are beginning to talk more about the “conversationâ€� that will evolve as selected podcasts are delivered to these niches with simple mechanisms allowing the listener to join in and provide their own insights, questions, and answers. Each episode becomes the catalyst for a deeper conversation. Â

By subscribing to the Station, the listeners self-select themselves for these conversations. What a perfect target for relevant advertising and sponsorships.  As Dixie has become the perfect sponsor for the MommyCast show, we will see the likes of Shimano, Sram or Trek for the Mountain Biking Station, or Marriott for the Event Planning Station, or Salamon, Atomic, Fischer or K2 for PodSki Station and FranklinCovey for Business Leadership Station.  Sponsors are loving the results, but it is yet very early. Major ad buyers are moving to take advantage of the targeting opportunities of this “new mediaâ€�. Greg Stuart, CEO, IAB recently said: “The steady growth of online advertising is a clear indication that marketers continue to believe in the opportunities and effectiveness that this medium delivers in reaching and engaging their consumers,” He also reported that: “Online spending for advertising is on a pace to reach $15 billion in revenue for all of 2006.â€� Take a look at the graph.

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The attractive relevance of these niche-oriented stations is only part of the appeal to sponsors. The mix of advertising elements is also appealing. These elements include sponsor impressions (audio, video , text and image), product mentions and discussions, spot ads before or after podcasts, banner ads, infomercial podcasts, video ads, surveys, polls and more. Also the consolidation of multiple high quality podcasts into a single station will bring larger audiences and this focused variety (strange combination of words) will hold the attention of the audience.  To top it off the community features will bring the audience into the conversations about the products and services of the sponsors yielding great feedback and great testimonials.

I listened to a Mommycast episode (#105) this week, (I am a Dad however) to see how they support their sponsors. They took their children the new Atlanta Aquarium, an affiliate of Georgia Pacific, the parent of Dixie, Mommycast primary sponsor. Their description of the experience and awesome nature of the exhibits had me wanting to jump a plane for a visit. My next trip to Atlanta will include a visit to this new site. What a great way to advertise.

Podango go!Stations will become wonderful revenue opportunities for Station Directors and Podcasters. As Directors add more podcasts to the station, there will be incremental ad spots. And Podcaster will love to join a station with an existing and growing audience getting instance exposure.  Podango is about teamwork, strength in numbers, relevance in advertising and creating deep conversations about product, services and especially about life. Come and join us, the train is leaving the station.

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by Lee Gibbons, Podango CEO

One of the core notions Podango is being built around is that of enabling a richer conversation between podcastsers and the communities served by their podcasts. Secondly, Podango is working hard to make the Podcast Station model appealing to those who already have large audiences, whether they be bloggers, newsletter publishers, corporate podcasters, etc., allowing them to better serve their communities through the richness of Podango’s Podcast Station infrastructure. Rather than one, single podcastser, Podango’s stations will bring together multiple podcasters who have topically-related podcasts. Together they will provide stronger content offerings, superior community interaction, and more indepth conversations within the community they serve.

Today, I came across a TechCrunch post that spotlights a company with a product solution very different from Podango’s, but which helps me make an important point. Here is an excerpt:

[Begin Excerpt from TechCrunch]

BlogTalkRadio to turn bloggers into talk radio hosts

Podcasts are fun to listen to, but they’d be even cooler if you could listen live and IM your feedback to the host in real time. The soon to launch service BlogTalkRadio will make that possible.

BlogTalkRadio is targeting bloggers who want to hold a live telephone conversation with up to 3 guests at once. Anyone can listen live to the call on the phone or through Windows Media Player, like a live web radio show. Listeners can also download an archived copy of the conversation later. Revenue from contextual advertising is split 50/50 with show hosts.

[End of Excerpt]

Podango doesn’t enjoy a partnership relationship with BlogTalkRadio or anything like that, but we believe furvently that leaders and key contributors of various communities will feel the need to expand their reach and enrich their relationships with their communities of interest. Podango will provide them with such a model and infrastructure. I have highlighted BlogTalkRadio because they ave an illustration of another company that is working toward a similar means. They get that the conversation is what matters, and that it takes multiple means of enabling that conversation for it so adequately serve the community.

We are looking forward to launching our beta of Podango soon, and showing off our variation on this important theme!

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technorati tags:TechCrunch, BlogTalkRadio, Podango, Podcast+Stations

Blogged with Flock

by Lee Gibbons, Podango CEOÂ

Continuing our quest to blog about all ten of the rules that govern Podango’s culture, this post is about Rule #6: “Get Listeners!”

We have talked to dozens of podcasters about what we might offer to be of greatest benefit to them, and with rare exception, the thing they would value most from Podango is getting more listeners. It comes well ahead of monetizing their podcasting efforts, podcasting tools, or our nifty go!Station infrastructure.

Podango has found that the best ways to get more listeners all have one thing in common: making it easy to find the podcast. We have also found that the growth of Podango go!Stations mostly comes from people who first simply wish to find out more about a given topic. They Google it, they ask their friends, and they listen to key influencers within their fields of endeavor and communities of interest. In other words, they are looking for you already. Or, at least, they are looking for what you know that can help them.

Another way to look at it is, “Getting listeners” is really a misnomer. It is 180 degrees out of phase of your real goal. Your real goal is to give to listeners. The more abundantly you achieve this goal, the more quickly your listenership will grow. Here are six steps that will lead to increasing your listening audience.

Step One: “Don’t just do something, stand there!” In other words, before jumping in and randomly praddling on about your own musings on the universe and its contents, put some thought into your podcast and figure out what you have to talk about that is sustainable, interesting, and worth invesing a consistent effort to produce. In their book Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, Rob Walch (PodCast411) and Mur Lafferty (www.geekfuactiongrip.com) suggest that you first “make sure you create a show that you would want to listen to.” Tim and Emile Borquin (The Podcast Brothers Podcast) suggest that in their podcast they simply, “Have something to say, or don’t say anything.”

Step Two: Truly connect with your audience. Again, quoting Rob and Mur, “A key reason we have heard from listeners about why they enjoy podcasting so much is the interactive nature of podcasting, Many podcasters go out of their way to communicate with their listeners, to include listeners in the show and to build a community around their show.” (Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, Chapter 12, page 199)

Step Three: Serve a Community. The reality is that a community already exists that your podcast serves. If that seems a strange notion, you might want to consider another theme for your podcast. Our most successful station owners (Station Directors) are those who come to us with very ready answers about the community they serve. Often, they have already been integral parts of their communities of interest and have simply elected to grab a Podango go!Station as a better means of serving their community of interest. So, your job is to really to tap into your community and serve them with the information you provide. Are you a fanatic pet owner? How do you normally connect with the other pet owners out there? How do you find more information about your particular breed? Who are the experts, service providers, and vendors who participate in the value network already? How are they reaching you? The same methods may be available to you. Along with that, these people and organizations make great advocates. Enlist them as sponsors, partners, and interviewees. You may be able to help them produce their own podcast, and they may have wide coat-tales you can ride on as you help them meet their unique–and probably compatible–objectives in serving your community.

Step Four: Serve the Underserved. As you think about the content for your podcast, consider the relative importance of your podcast to those whom you aim to serve. Gretchen Vogelzang and Paige Heninger created MommyCast out of their awareness that moms are an underserved market as regards their ability to communicate with other moms in a massive conversation about all things of concern and interest to moms. They recognized that moms are often on the go, with their eyes and hands busy, or waiting, perhaps for a child to finish a ballet class, and that a podcast to fulfill their need was a perfect fit for their lifestyles. Similary, Tim Borquin of Endurance Planet and TNC New Media produce programming for endurance atheletes, having recognized that these folks have a pattern of being out, running and training and are hungry for more information about increasing their performance and endurance. They have created a variety of podcasts as extensions of that need that are delivered every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Step Five: Be Easy to Find. Registering on the major podcasting directories is an obvious first step. Tools like PodSubmitter.com allow you to submit your podcast to 55 podcast directories from a single form. Additionally, providing detailed show notes and even transcriptions will drive up your natural search engine trafic. Podango employs every method we know to promote the actual content of the podcast, as well as providing blogging, forums, wikis, etc. All of these information sources are designed to get more natural search trafic to the content provided in podcasts. And while these methods are automated and convenient within the Podango infrastructure, they are by no means exclusive to Podango and can be employed by nearly anyone.

Step Six: Particpate in the conversation, wherever it is taking place. Woody Allen once said “Ninety percent of success is showing up.â€� On its face that sounds simple, but to really show up within your community of interest, you have to “Care, Be There, Be Aware, and Share!” meaning you have to be where the community is. Are they having weekly meetings? Do they have a common website in which they have a community forum such as the kind you can form at Yahoo Groups, or something dedicated to a particular niche such as Deviant Art? Are there leading blogs with open commenting where great information is exchanged? Your presence in these venues will lend credibility to your offering both because you will be known by key players in your community of interest and because you will have access to key information and a working knowledge of the art or science that will help you better serve the community at large.

This is not an exhaustive list of all you can do, but these are key elements of growing your listener base. What else have you found useful or helpful? Leave your comments!

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by Lee Gibbons, CEO

The week in San Francisco attending the Corporate Podcasting Summit and Supernova2006 was all I could have asked for and more.

I wrote in my last post that I looked forward to learning of people and learning of things. My hopes were absolutely fulfilled in this regard. I have blogged about some of the absolutely amazing web 2.0 companies I have become familiar with in my private blog (The Web Immigrant Blog). Here, I will highlight two things I took away form the events that have particular importance to Podango and to Podcasting in general. (Later I will muse over a few more, but for this morning –now 1:30 a.m.—I will keep it relatively brief.)

The first key learning I took away from Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems) through a combination of points he made.

Point #1: “100% of companies want the tech that will let them connect with their customers.” In podcasting that means that 100% podcasters want the tech that will let them connect with their listeners and the communities of interest which they serve.

Point #2: “If you are not in front of the next wave of consumer demand, you will miss out on the market.â€�

The key learning here for podcasting is that we, too, are about serving this need and helping people connect with their communities of interest. I think Jonathan probably had a more literal connection (as in fiber optics and big hardware) in mind, but I think the driving point is that people want to connect to other people. This is why I view Podango as so much more than just a podcast delivery network. Delivery is important, but then what? How do people truly leverage the knowledge conveyed by the audio of video that has just entered their realm of understanding. We must help them Aggregate, Encode, Process, and Apply (see Tim Sanders’s Love is the Killer App) the information they receive so that it becomes an advantage to them– so that they can take it and put it to work to improve their communities of interest.

My second key learning comes from Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and two points he made.

Point #1: He said that the only way the site (Craigsllist.com) can run is by counting on people policing the site as much as possible themselves, stating that, “people are overwhelmingly trustworthy.� As a result of self-policing, trust develops.

Point #2: He introspectively shared that in his little world, one of the thing’s that has worked is remembering what it’s like to be left out, and then include people, making some mention of pocket protectors in there somewhere.

The key learning is two fold: A) that Podango and podcasting will flourish most abundantly as we learn to put cultural norms in place that attract people to our media properties. And, B) that Podango must, in order to adequately provide an experience that allows maximum contribution from podcasters and listeners, interacting within communities that exist both inside and outside Podango, provide them with frameworks for their interactions and contributions. To the degree we actually succeed at that, we will be fulfilling our mission.

by Doug Smith - Podango President

Rule #3 builds on Rule #1: Put the Listener First and Rule #2: Don’t Be Evil by enabling “Service to the Community� or “Engagement with the Community�. Online social networks are springing up everywhere and they are working because of the involvement of the users with user contributed  comments, content, opinions, tagging, etc. all which adds value to the community in a sense of service. I love the book “Love is the Killer App� by Tim Sanders. “The books premise is that you will find your success in business through helping others grow by sharing your intangibles—your knowledge, network and compassion.� Learn, grow, and share are the keys to this type of service. The benefits to this “giving attitude� are generally not measurable, but they are real. The appropriate approach in this service is one where the giving has “no strings� attached. Well, at least not too many strings. And those that are attached should generally be WIN/WIN where our contribution to the community improves the community for all, including ourselves.  A recent article on Skype’s “Word of Mouth� success claimed that “friends who persistently insist that their friends do something not only do so for their own self-benefit, but also benefit all members of the social network because expansion makes it stronger.�
Podango Stations will work if the community of listeners becomes involved in sharing their desires, thoughts, comments, tags and ratings. We encourage the Station Directors to engage their community and the community members to engage each other. To enable this approach to sharing Podango will provide Web 2.0 community features like “CastBacks� (audio feedback), blogs, full transcripts of podcasts, polls, forums and other tools. We also encourage engaging the larger community outside of a Podango Station which includes station to station engagement and cross-Web engagement. It is all about conversations, relationships of trust, service to each other. The role of the Station Director is to serve their audience by contributing the time to sift, sort and prioritize the best podcasts for specific niches. The audience assists by confirming and assisting in the sifting, sorting and prioritizing through feedback, suggestions, ratings and “word of mouth� audience building, so more can share and be engaged.

by Doug SmithÂ

A few weeks back my partner, Lee Gibbons, posted the 10 rules that Podango is following to help redefine the “Podcasting Game�. “Changing the Rules�  We hope this doesn’t sound arrogant. We don’t mean it to be. But we think there is a better way for podcasters to have influence and make money. It is not all about having “voice�, it starts with having “ears�.
 Rule #1 is about understanding the user’s perspective and solving their problems. Stephen Covey calls this “Seek First to Understand�, Habit #5. To serve a market, a podcaster must be in touch with the needs and desires of the audience. He/she must listen to the market and the audience feedback, build community involvement and garner the wealth of the audience’s knowledge to enhance the content being provided. A cornerstone of the Podango model is “Listening to the Market� even when the feedback is painful. Someone recently said: “A complaint is a gift�. If so, then bring the gifts forward so we can learn and grow.
 We are also listening to our users, the podcast listener audience, and what we are hearing is: It is too hard to find and too hard to consume great podcasts. We continue to hear and see the problem. It is discussed openly in various podcasts and blogs. Thus, we are recruiting Station Directors that will own their on Podcast Stations. And with their high passion an area of expertise, they will sift sort and prioritize the best content for a market niche and provide it to an audience over a single RSS feed. Our tagline is: Simple, Tailored, Targeted. We think it will catch on, because as a speaker said at the Syndicate conference last week, “We all have enough shirts. What is scarce is time.�
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Rule #1: Put the Listener First and provide a simple, familiar station format for uses to subscribe to, instead of one podcast at a time.

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