I have a Ph.D in engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the field of computational statistical thermodynamics (CST). It’s a mouthful, but essentially it means using computers (‘computational’) and math (‘statistical’) to study problems related to phase transitions, chemical physics, power-law behaviors, rare-event statistics, and so on.

I found The Search Agency through a Google Maps search. Most people go to Maps and type in things like “sushi restaurant” or “movie theater”. I type in things like “stochastic optimization” and “Shannon entropy”. A result popped up for a Craiglist listing for The Search Agency, which hires a lot of people with strong technical backgrounds.

Search engine marketing was (and still is) a rapidly growing field and also rapidly growing in technological sophistication. I looked into PageRank and learned that it’s just an iterated, matrix-based alternative to a Markov simulation. I looked into the work by Barabasi and Bianconi on modeling link formation in a growing web of homepages and they openly acknowledge taking equations, and even notation, from CST.

Then, I looked into the systems used by search marketing firms and they were all dirt-simple or rather naive: rules bidding, position bidding, modern portfolio theory.  I thought, there’s a real contribution that physics can make to online marketing. When you look at the companies that really “get it”, The Search Agency (TSA), Rimm-Kaufmann Group, Marin Software and Rocket Fuel, they are all full of people with engineering and science backgrounds.

2.  What is your role at The Search Agency?  What new projects are you most excited about?

My job title is ‘Manager of AdMax Research and Development’, where AdMax is TSA’s proprietary online marketing platform which handles paid search, SEO, display advertising and so on across publishers.

I’m excited about TSA’s project to re-vamp AdMax’s conversion attribution functionality. I obviously can’t reveal much about it, but I think that much of the industry has been thinking about the problem of properly attributing conversion events throughout the entire conversion path in a way that’s fundamentally orthogonal to a proper attribution methodology.

I’m intrigued by Google’s Bid Simulator (BS) feature and the wealth of information it is providing on identifying non-equilibrium bid landscapes, transitory dynamics and profit-maximizing vs. relative benefit-maximizing bidding. Frankly I don’t understand why there isn’t orders of magnitude more interest in the industry in this tool.

I’ve been working with some graduate students at Brown University on simulating model paid search environments and identifying optimal account management strategies as part of the Trading Agent Competition I’ve blogged about before.

Finally, as I just said, I’m always excited about sharing my perspective on search marketing through my writings at The Search Agents’ blog, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal. TSA is very supportive of any ‘over and above the call of duty’ activities that employees engage in and I’m very lucky to be able to devote as much effort to it as I have been.

3.  The Search Agency just published a white paper on the various approaches to bid optimization.  What are some of the key takeaways for marketers trying to learn more about this area of paid search?

The single biggest lesson, I think, is that even though many firms sell themselves as the single right solution to bid management, there no “Holy Grail” in paid search. Depending on the situation, there are better ways and worse ways. For firms with large campaigns and high spending levels, people with spreadsheets simply can’t hand the volume and complexity of the data. But, smaller, lower-volume accounts face uncertainty due to fundamental limits in the ability to determine conversion rates, value-per-conversion and so forth.

At TSA, we tend to be what I call ‘algorithmic agnostics’ – we use the most appropriate solution for the given problem. That leads to what I call the ‘hybrid approach’ to bidding. It incorporates a statistics-based approach founded in physics and network theory when that is most appropriate, steps down to a rules-based or portfolio theory-based approach when those are most appropriate, and finally to a position-based or fixed-bidding approach when those are best.

In the end, though, you can’t outfox math. I always find it comical when those without any technology make irrational anti-technology arguments. So leave the math up to the statistical algorithms and let the people add value in areas where the technology has not yet surpassed human brainpower and judgment.

4.  What are some of your interests outside of the office?

I help to do online marketing for OMGbabycards, a company that sells gorgeous, traditional-style birth announcement cards.

A couple of years ago I bought an old farmhouse and have been slowly renovating it since. I’m pasture-raising rabbits and helping a neighbor (and fellow dirtworker) with his organic, grass-fed beef business. So, I spend a lot of time doing typical small farm things: woodworking, composting, tweaking multidimensional simulation routines, caring for animals.

And the past few months I’ve been publishing my  eponymous personal blog, where I write about things that are not quite right for The Search Agents, like using Gompertz’s equation to model the growth rate of my chickens and things like that.

Facebook reached the 500 million user mark this week, making Facebook’s population just a bit smaller than that of North America. PC World published a witty posting this week to commemorate Facebook’s milestone, check it out.

Dell to Pay $100 Million Settlement

Michael S. Dell and several former executives of the software company have agreed to pay more than $100 million for fraud charges brought on by the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the claims, Dell misled investors by spending investments they received from Intel to pay their quarterly earning statements. According to Christopher Conte, associate director of the S.E.C.’s enforcement division, “Dell manipulated its accounting over an extended period to project financial results that the company wished it had achieved but could not. Dell was only able to meet Wall Street targets consistently during this period by breaking the rules.”

Yahoo! Reports Disappointing Quarterly Profits

Yahoo! reported a second quarter net revenue of $1.13 billion, falling short of analysts’ expectations of $1.16. The company reported that the reports reflected a decrease in  advertising spending in June.

Microsoft Reports Healthy Increase in Profits

Microsoft reported a 48% in profits in their fourth fiscal quarter with help from Windows and Office operating systems. The company reported on Thursday a net income of $4.5 billion, at 52 cents a share and a year to year revenue improvement of 22% from $13.1 billion to $16.04 billion. Despite these optimistic numbers, shares of Microsoft stock fell immediately after the announcement. To read more on the growing doubt behind Microsoft’s abilities to compete with the likes of Apple, check out John C Abell’s article on Wired.com.

This Week’s Must Read Blog Articles

“If you’re happy and you know it, and you really want to show it, send a tweet.”

Resident tech writer at the New York Times, Nick Bilton, reported this week on an interesting research project, conducted by Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Sciences and the Harvard Medical School that uses tweets to gauge America’s happiness levels at different times of the day and week.  The paper, entitled “Pulse of the Nation: U.S. Mood Through the Day Inferred From Twitter,” is based on more than 300 million tweets collected between September 2006 and August 2009.

The State of the Android Ecosystem

This is a great article for anyone whose been following the Google Android project. Christ Head’s article takes an in depth look into the state the Android platform, probing at the challenges manufactures, carriers and Google face with the smartphone.

Skype Finally Breaks Free on the iPhone

Eliot Van Buskirk authored an article this week on Wired.com’s Epicenter blog, announcing that iPhone users will now be able to use the call feature of the app on their phones. This is a big announcement, as the application has been limited to messaging for years. Buskirk’s article discusses what this announcement actually means for users and weighs in on the recent Fring break up.

Google announced on Monday its new tool, the App Inventor for Android, which is designed to enable non-programmers to create apps that will run on Google’s smartphone operating system. Although many bloggers are claiming that this could be a massive game changer for Google’s struggling Android and the mobile realm at large, I suggest checking out Eric Lai’s blog on ZDNet, in which he questions the promise of DIY programming tools and takes a hard look at Android’s future.

Google Tops Revenue Expectations, but Profits Fall Short

Google grew both revenue and profits in the second quarter, surpassing revenue forecasts, but falling just short of profit predictions. Google generated $6.82 billion in the quarter up 24% year-on-year. Net income was at $1.84 billion, at $5.71 per share, while on a pro-forma basis, net income was at $2.08 billion, or $6.45 per share, falling short of the $6.52 predictions set by financial analysts.

Microsoft Improves Facebook Integration with Outlook

Microsoft’s Social Connector plug-in was updated this week, now allowing users to access messages, photos, wall posts and more from Facebook within Outlook. Microsoft has been steadily adding social media platforms to its Social Connector plug-in, starting with LinkedIn, MySpace and Twinbox for Twitter.

Facebook’s Mobile Usage Increases by 50% Since April 2010

Facebook’s mobile user base has reached an astonishing 150 million users, up 50% from April. Increasing their mobile base is an integral part of Facebook’s growth  strategy. As Eric Tseng stated in a presentation at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco. “We want to turn this whole mobile platform into a Facebook. Mobile is fast becoming our growth lever. As we begin to continue to expand, we’re starting to go into geographies where phones are the predominant way you access the web. Mobile is a way we can get users to be aware of and engage with social services.”

Google’s New Matchtype Goes Global

Google announced on Wednesday that its new broad match modifier will be implemented globally across most languages. The global launch was approved after a successful open beta test in the U.K. and Canada that began in May 2010. To read more on how this could impact your PPC campaign, check out Alex’s Campbell’s article Adwords+ New+ Matchtype.

Must Read Blog Articles:

Google’s Latest Move Toward Social Shopping

Paul Burani authored an article this week on SearchEngineWatch that discusses the new emphasis Google is placing on seller ratings in their advertisements. These ad extensions, Burani argues, not only give incentive to advertisers to adhere to Google’s best practices , but will also provide Google’s engineers with a better understanding of user search behavior.

Apple Snapping up Small Tech Firms

As Ryan Kim notes in his article, Apple does not have, unlike Google, a track record of aggressively collecting small tech firms, that is, until recently. Only six months into 2010, Apple has already purchased it’s sixth company. Although they haven’t revealed the overall strategy behind these acquisitions, Kim points out in his article the one consistent theme: mobile.

Twitters Early Bird Ploy Takes Flight

In an article published on the Wall Street Journal tech blog, Amir Efrati reviews Twitter’s @earlybird’s first week out in the advertising world and takes a closer look into the advertisers that have already jumped on board.

According to Google’s official blog:

The broad match modifier is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.

To implement the modifier, just put a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words** in a broad match keyword. Each word preceded by a + has to appear in your potential customer’s search exactly or as a close variant. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren’t considered close variants.

For more on how this announcement could impact your PPC campaigns, check out Alex Campbell’s blog on the topic, entitled “AdWords +New +Matchtype.” In the post, Alex discusses how Google’s new matchtype may help PPC-ers improve their spending efforts, by “filling the gap between the oh-so-broad Broad match and the nitpicking Phrase match. A gap which anyone working in PPC will be excited to see filled.”

What are your thoughts on this new matchtype?  How will you be applying it to your AdWords campaigns?

The Hamburg data protection agency has launched a formal investigation into Facebook’s data policy. The agency claims that Facebook keeps information about non-users without their permission, which is assumed to be gathered through Facebook’s ‘invite’ feature. Johannes Caspar, who runs the privacy agency in Hamubrg, issued an official letter to Facebook on Wednesday. Facebook has yet to respond.

Twitter Launches @earlybird

Twitter launched its new @earlybird account this week, dedicated to serving followers with special deals and ‘earlybird’ coupons. Here’s how it works: Twitter will serve followers of the @earlybird account with special, timely offers from businesses that pay to be in the stream. The account currently has 13,000 or so followers, but that number is bound to grow in time.

What’s interesting about the prospect of the @earlybird is that it may be the first real opportunity for Twitter to capitalize on its growing search base. If the first @earlybird account works as imagined, it could lead to more specific accounts for competitive verticals, like flights, auto insurance, technology offers and so on.

Twitter’s the World’s Fastest Growing Search Engine

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone revealed that Twitter serves more than 24 billion search a month, making it the fastest growing search engine, ahead of Bing’s approximate 4.1 Billion and Yahoo’s 9.4 billion searches.

Apple and Google Fight on the App Front

Google improved the mobile version of the YouTube website this week. The upgrade to m.youtube.com is, according to Google’s blog post on the topic, really fast and incorporates “larger, more touch-friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go,” as well as, “the features and functionality you’ve come to expect from the .com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists, the ability to designate “favorite,” “like” or “unlike” videos directly from your device.” If the new mobile interface proves to be as good as it sounds, it could make Apple’s YouTube iPhone app obsolete.

YouTube Introduces Leanback

On Wednesday, YouTube announced the beta launch of their new YouTube Leanback service. According to the YouTube’s blog, the new service is more specifically tailored to the interests, tastes of individual users. According to the blog, “YouTube Leanback is all about letting you sit back, relax and be entertained. Videos tailored to your interests play as soon as you visit the site and they play in full screen and high definition, continuously. There’s no need to click, search, or browse, unless you want to, of course. Watching YouTube becomes as easy as watching TV.”

Facebook’s User Growth Plateaus

Facebook’s growth seems to have lost a bit of steam in the last month. According to the monthly growth data published by Inside Facebook, Facebook only gained 320,000 new U.S. users in June 2010 — a dramatic drop from the 7.8 the site accumulated last month. Ryan Singel, from Wired.com, takes a closer look at the causes behind this drop, asking if Facebook’s privacy problems have played a role, or whether Facebook’s U.S. population is simply saturated.

Search Market Share Number: June 2010

Hitwise, a British search marketing analytics firm, released their search market numbers for June 2010. According to their report, Bing gained 7 percent last month, stealing 1 percent from Google’s market share. Google, however, still accounted for 71.7% of U.S. searches conducted last month.

Google News’s Makeover

Google News got its first real makeover in eight years this week. The service, which was previously categorized into Top Stories, World Science/Technology, Health & Sports, now caters towards “News for you,” which encourages users to edit, add, personalize and socialize their news options. As of Wednesday, users now have the option to choose the news channels they want to view first, add additional sites and delete others. Most importantly, Google’s new news service encourages users to share articles via email, Google Buzz, Twitter and Facebook.

Google Me Rumors

There is an interesting rumor floating around the tech blogosphere this week that suggests that Google maybe cooking up a Facebook-like social media service. The rumor started with a deleted tweet from Digg CEO Kevin Rose,”Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon “Google Me”, very credible source,” which has lead to some serious speculation from industry chatter boxes, who all point out that Google has tried its hand at social media several times- with Orkut, Buzz and Google Profiles- with little success.

Their main problem is obviously Facebook and Twitter’s overwhelming dominance in the social media realm. In order for Google to succeed, they will have to come up with a master social network that enables users to integrate their social experience across the web, rather than confining them to individual channels, like Facebook or Twitter.  As Ryan Singel, a staff writer at Wired.com, speculates, “The only way Google could put a dent into Facebook is to go after it the same way it’s gone after Microsoft — open and free with no centralized data collection and a decision that it doesn’t have to own your data. Sure, Google will closely tie in a bunch of its own products, but it can’t go the Buzz way and require you to have a Google ID or Gmail address.” Google did start off the New Year with social media as one of their main goals. Do you think its possible to ‘put a dent’ into Facebook? What are your thoughts on how Google could best attack the likes of Twitter and Facebook?

ReputationDefender Secures Venture Capital

Based out of Redwood City, ReputationDefender sets out to help individuals and small businesses take control of their online identities. This week the company secured $15 million in venture capital, with which the company plans to expand its management team and develop new products. The security savvy start-up is a subscription based business, charging its customers $9.95 a month to manage their online identities and protect their privacy.  Such security measures include removing customers from marketer databases and deleting unfavorable online content.

Foursquare Raises $20 Million in Venture Capital

One of the most talked about location-based social media platforms, Foursquare, raised $20 million in venture capital this week from Andreessen Horowitz, which valued the company at $95 million. To read more about the growing significance of location-based social media platforms, check out Kate Shaw’s article and corresponding white paper on The Search Agent’s blog.

Facebook Tightens Security on App Developers

After months of pressure to improve their privacy setting and grant more control to users, Facebook launched a new service that forces third-party app developers to request and receive users’ permission to access their data. According to Bret Taylor, CTO at Facebook,  ”With this new authorization process, when you log into an application with your Facebook account, the application will only be able to access the public parts of your profile by default. To access the private sections of your profile, the application has to explicitly ask for your permission.”

Whether this will be enough to claim the nerves of the ACLU, Consumer Watchdog, Consumer Action, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and more remains to be seen.

ComScore released its May 2010 research on online video viewing on Wednesday, revealing that YouTube continues to dominate the growing arena of online viewership. According to the report, YouTube showed 14.6 billion videos in the month of May, accounting for 43.1% of the 34 billion total videos viewed this month by 183 million Web users. Hulu ranked second with 1.2 billion videos, followed by Microsoft, Vevo and Viacom.

Facebook Introduces New VP of Global Policy

Facebook announced this week its hiring of Marne Levine, former chief of staff of the National Economic Council, as its new VP of Global Policy. Levine, who will be based out of Washington D.C., will oversee Facebook’s relationships with international governments and organizations, representing the social network’s interests on copyright, children’s security and privacy issues.

Twitter to Experience More Outages During FIFA World Cup

Since the start of the FIFA World Cup two weeks ago, Twitter has experienced several system outages due to increased traffic from soccer fanatics across the globe. Users are warned to expect several outages during this weekend’s biggest games- Germany vs. England,  U.S.A. vs. Ghana, and Argentina vs. Mexico.

Google’s Android Winning Traction in App Development

According to a report in BusinessWeek on Wednesday, Google’s Android system is winning in the ongoing battle over app developers. According to a survey conducted by Appcelerator, the Android is experiencing the most promising long-term potential among smartphone operating systems. Although Apple’s iOS system continues to dominate the smartphone sector, Android operated devices acquires 100,000 users daily and, according to researcher Garnter Inc., the Android will surpass iOS as the world’s second most popular operating system by 2010.

Google to Enter Music Business (Rumored)

This week rumors emerged that the search giant Google may enter the music industry and produce a subscription based service to compete with Apple’s iTunes. According to Scott Morrison from the Wall Street Journal, “Google Inc. is preparing to roll out a music download service tied to its search engine later this year, followed by an online subscription service in 2011, according to people familiar with the Internet giant’s discussions with the music industry.” According to an article published in Rolling Stone, Google’s music service is rumored to focus heavily on a shift to the ‘cloud’ computing system. Rather than accessing music through services like Rhapsody or Spotify, Google’s service may enable users to access music via remote servers in an open, search-like environment.

Twitter Settles with FTC

Twitter reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week in a case over Twitter’s privacy policy. Charges were brought against the micro-blogging site last year, when Twitter allowed hackers to view private “tweets” and send fake messages from the then-President elect Obama’s, Fox news’ and others’ accounts.

Suggested Blogs/Articles/Podcasts:

• On this week’s NYTimes Tech Talk Podcast, Bettina Edelstein sits down with Nancy Spector, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation, and Ed Sanders, senior marketing manager for YouTube, to discuss their most recent collaboration to bring Art videos to YouTube through a project called “YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video.”
• Kevin Kelleher authored a witty post this week on gigiacom.com entitled “App Creep and the Case for the Mobile Browser,” in which he discusses the overwhelming number of available mobile apps and the need for a functional mobile browser.
• Dan Tynan poses the question of whether Facebook would be able to offer a better privacy policy if they charged for their services.

This week, the green monster of jealously reared its ugly head with Google’s homepage design looking suspiciously similar to another search engine’s – Bing. Google’s typically white background exploded with vivid photographs this week, as Google attempted to spruce up its typically minimalist style. The style apparently confused, and even outraged, several users prompting Google to drop the switch.

No More ‘Tweets’ in The New York Times

The New York Times standards editor Phil Corbett banned the term “tweet” from articles in the publication. According to Corbett, “Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.”

Twitter Acquires Analytics Company

Twitter acquired the analytics company Smallthought Systems’ Trendy this week. Smallthought System’s technology enables website owners to access information from their Google Analytics account. Their technology will be integrated into Twitter’s own analytics system and will be used to develop new products.

Yahoo Expands Facebook Integration

On Monday Yahoo announced further Facebook integration features that will enable users to link their accounts across networks. The integration also includes a new “privacy dashboard,” called Yahoo Pulse, that will make it easier for users to control how and with whom they share their data across both platforms. To read more about Yahoo and Facebook’s latest integration, check out Ryan Singel’s article on Wired.com.

Twitter Outage

Twitter experienced several outages this week on Wednesday and Thursday. Users were served an automated message from Twitter’s whale mascot stating, “We are experiencing site availability issues — additional latency and errors — this morning. We’re working to address these issues.”

Facebook Continues to Receive Criticism Regarding Privacy Policy

For weeks now Mark Zuckerberg has been heavily criticized for his apparent apathy regarding users’ privacy rights and the flaws in the social media network’s privacy policy. Although nothing new happened this week on the Facebook privacy front, the blogosphere has been erupting with new criticism.

Here’s is some of the must-read commentaries on Facebook’s policy and Mark Zuckerberg’s public image:

1. Rich Jaroslovsky authored an article this week on Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek website entitled Facebook Founder Has Nothing to Hide Except Privacy Blind Spot, in which he poses the question, “Just what is it with Mark Zuckerberg and privacy?”
2. National Public Radio’s book review of David Kirkpatrick’s newly published book The Facebook Effect that investigates, among other things, the impact of Facebook on internet privacy norms.
3. Nicholas Carlson takes a look at all the ‘stupid things’ Mark Zuckerberg has said to date regarding Facebook’s privacy.

In an interview with New York Times reporter Nick Bilton this week, David Marcus, Zong’s chief executive officer, reported that the software company has developed a new payment solution that “will make it easier for developers who design applications specifically for the Android platform to charge mobile customers and will make quick purchases possible without having to go through the painful process of entering credit-card numbers or billing information on a mobile phone.”

Marcus also explains in the article that a payment solution option for Android phones could boost their popularity, particularly in comparison with Apple’s iPhone. On the topic of smartphone competition, Marcus adds, “The Android platform is going to surpass the iPhone in market share over the next five years.”

Yelp and OpenTable Team Up

According to a press release issued by the popular review site Yelp, users will now be able to make a dinner reservation while visiting a restaurant’s Yelp profile using OpenTable.com. Yelp users won’t need an OpenTable account to make reservations, which works with more than 13,000 resturants in the US.

Mark Zuckerberg Fuels Privacy Concerns

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook now infamous chief executive officer, made another public blunder this week. After weeks of criticism regarding their privacy policy, things were just starting to looking good for the social networking site. Last week they released their latest privacy update, which was met with limited criticism. Unfortunately for their corporate image, Zuckerberg did not handle the topic well in conversation this week at The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Conference. According to the tweets and blog posts from audience members, Zuckerberg struggled to give definitive answers regarding Facebook’s privacy policy. Instead, he sidestepped questions and broke into a heavy sweat. John Paczkowski, who blogged lived from the conference on the All Things Digital web site, wrote, “My God, Zuckerberg is literally dissolving in a lake of his own sweat. He is visibly flushed, and you can see the beads of sweat rolling down his face. Could this be his Nixon moment?” Nixon moment or not, Zuckerberg’s latest PR fail could further irritate those concerned with Facebook’s privacy policy.

Apple vs. Microsoft- A Corporate Drama

Last week Apple surpassed Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company. Since then, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, has been gloating about his massive win against Microsoft, which has prompted Steven Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, to defend his company’s honor. At the D8 conference this week, Jobs predicted that the PC would die out and be replaced by tablets and smartphones. Ballmer defended Microsoft’s technology saying, “I think people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come.”

Twitter Adds “You Both Follow” Feature

Twitter added a “You Both Follow” feature to its site this week, enabling users to check common followers they share with other users.

They have enabled us to have virtual conversations with the editors of The Economist on world politics, discuss psychology with the writers of Scientific America and keep up to date on the latest online marketing news with This Week In Google. The best part? We get to have these discussions while brushing our teeth, taking a jog or driving to work. Podcasts have become an ideal form of acquiring information in an age when newspapers seem archaic and the majority of us don’t have the time to sit down to have breakfast. They are efficient, free and informational.

As subscribers, podcasts are convenient, but as marketers they present us with the opportunity to speak directly to an engaged, curious audience that has self-identified themselves as interested in what we have to say.

What is podcasting exactly and how can it be used for marketing?

Podcasts resulted from the proliferation of social media and the iPod, and the relatively low costs of creating audio content. As Annalee Newitz wrote back in 2005 for Wired magazine, the podcast, “is the bastard offspring of the blog and the Apple MP3 player. It combines the hyperactive talkiness of blogs and the hipness of iPods into something utterly new: the podcast.” Back in 2005 podcasts were primarily used by tech geeks, looking for a cheap means of broadcasting their opinions. Today, several leading corporations, such as American Airlines, Disney, McDonalds and the New York Times, have caught on to the power of the podcast, producing their own original content. Other companies, like Whirlpool and Georgia-Pacific Corps., have begun sponsoring podcasts directed towards their targeted demographics.

These marketers have figured out how to leverage podcasting as a marketing tool.

Here are a couple of ways they are achieving this:

• Invitation Marketing – The basic theory behind online marketing is that customers invite you into their space, rather having you invade it with traditional forms of analogue marketing. Podcasts follow this same principle. Listeners invite you to share with them your company’s message and, in doing so, they identify themselves as pre-qualified leads, generating higher conversion rates and saving time and money.
• Building a Relationship – One of the benefits of podcasting is that the listeners tend to keep coming back. Because listeners can choose to subscribe to your podcast, they act  like regular customers who come into your shop for a quick chat. Good podcasts take this relationship seriously and ask their listeners for feedback on what they enjoy about the podcast and what they want to hear more or less of.

• Brand Building – Brand building has become a more nuanced practice since the advent of online marketing. Rather than relying on ad layouts and witty creative, online marketers now have to strategically position themselves as industry thought leaders. Podcasting present an opportunity, in conjunction with blogging and social media, to position your brand as progressive and an authority in your industry.

• Public Relations- While it shouldn’t be the only thing companies use podcasts for, they are a great way to report important developments and allow marketers to include audio interviews and commentary.

What do you need to know?

Creating a podcast can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it. The basics are very basic, but there is a whole world of jargon and advice on how to properly produce a podcast.

Here’s the foundation of what you need to know in terms of the technology:

• Creating the file - In order to create a podcast, you first have to create an audio file. Here’s what you need:
  • Microphone- There are a range of microphones available on the market. Some sources will tell you that you can use the microphone built into your computer, but in reality the quality won’t be great. Others say that you have to go as far as buying a recorder/mixer, but if you aren’t planning to go out in the field with your podcast you can save the money and just invest in the microphone.
  • Audio Software- Producing your podcast can done either on a Mac or a PC with the recording/editing software the computer came with, for Macs that’s GarageBand and PC users you can use Window’s Media Player. Both systems can be used to edit your podcasts, which can help delete awkward silences, tangential conversations or edit together snippets recorded at different times. If you aren’t comfortable working with GarageBand or Window’s Media Player, there is a free audio program available for both Macs and PCs called Audacity.
  • Saving the file – You should save the podcast as an MP3 file. Keep in mind that the higher the encoded bit rate, the better the sound quality will be.

• Hosting/archiving your podcast- Your podcast has to be stored somewhere in cyberspace. There are two options for storing your podcast, either on your website or using a third party hosting service.
  • You can store your podcast on your website, but you run the risk of exceeding the bandwidth maximum set by your internet provider, which will cost you a pretty penny.
  • The other option is to outsource your hosting to a company that specializes in podcast hosting. (Check out PodBean, Podcast Revolution, or Dream Host)
• Getting your podcast out there- Assuming that you already have a blog, (if you don’t, check out this website on how to start one), you have to create an RSS feed, which your listeners will subscribe to to receive automated updates for future podcasts. The easiest way to generate an RSS feed is to use Google’s Feedburner. To note: an RSS feed for a podcast is basically the same as it is for your blog. The only difference is that it also includes information about the content of your MP3 files (size, content, location, etc.).
  • Obviously, you want to make your podcast available through iTunes. For all the details on how to submit your podcast and the terms of conditions required by Apple, check out their website.
• Tracking technology- PodTractor is the most sophisticated tracking technology available. Their tracking technology is extremely comprehensive, tracking every download, the keywords used to find your podcast on iTunes, and more.

The benefit of producing a podcast is that is can support and help unify your other online marketing efforts. Successful podcasts often work in conjunction with corporate blogs and social media campaigns to discuss relevant topics and current events in your industry, which can help distinguish your organization as an industry thought leader.