Category: New Media

Strategic Health Care Podcasting Audioconference

During the noon hour today we listened to an audioconference presentation sponsored by Strategic Health Care Communications, which outlined several ways health care organizations are using video and audio podcasting to communicate with employees, patients and potential patients, or for continuing medical education classes.

One interesting point I heard from the Arizona cardiology group was that they found video was about nine times more popular than audio, based on a year of podcast delivery.

It was good to hear some practical experiences from some other groups using podcasting, and I also thought the idea of hosting podcasts within a blog made sense, to make the segments easier for search engines to find.

The listing of online podcast directories and search engines also was helpful. In addition to using a blog, it would be good to get podcasts listed on iTunes, Yahoo! Podcasts, Podcast.net, Podcast Alley, Pod Feeder, Podcasting News, Podnova, All Podcasts, Loomia, iPodder.org, Odeo, Podcast Directory, Digital Podcast, Podcast Bunker, Pod Feed, Podcast Pickle, Pod Tower, and Podscope.

A CD of this audioconference is available on the web, and for my fellow Mayo Clinic listeners, let me know if you want a copy of the presentation materials.

I would welcome any thoughts from others who attended this audioconference, in terms of what would be most applicable and actionable.

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Weird Al: Nerdy Hit Machine

Thanks to Steve Rubel for pointing out this story about “Weird Al” Yankovic having his first-ever top 10 hit and top 10 album, 22 years after his Michael Jackson parody, “Eat it!” peaked at number 12 on the Billboard charts.

Weird Al

Steve correctly points out that Weird Al has used a variety of creative promotion methods, including YouTube. The article Steve references also highlights Al’s use of MySpace and his release of some free downloads from his website as important to his success.

I would only take issue a bit with Steve’s characterization of this as a Long Tail example. I understand the essence of the Long Tail as niche marketing, or as the subtitle of the book says, “Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” In his recent use of internet technology along with exposure in traditional media (CNN, etc.), Weird Al has his biggest hit ever. He’ll be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Nov. 2. Al’s in the head now, not the tail.

The Long Tail is about making it economically viable for non-hits (or oldies) to still see the light of day, because inventory and delivery costs have essentially reached zero, and search helps us find even obscure titles. Weird Al has lots of songs that are truly part of the Long Tail: “Addicted to Spuds” can be available on iTunes even though it would never find shelf space at Tower Records. (Come to think of it, even the big hits aren’t getting shelf space at Tower anymore.)

Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with most of the new songs Al is parodying. I probably don’t “get” his jokes quite as well as I would have two decades ago. When he did “I Lost on Jeopardy,” “Girls Just Want to Have Lunch,” and “Like a Surgeon” they were songs from my high school days. Part of the humor was knowing what the next line in the original song was supposed to be, and seeing how Al would change it. Or how he would arrange the preceding lines of his parody so that the original song’s concluding lyrics would become the joke’s punch-line.

I listen more to spoken word podcasts and non-hit music these days, which are part of The Long Tail.
But I did download one of his new freebies, “Don’t Download This Song,” and even though I don’t know the original, I thought it was pretty good. Maybe someone can’t clue me in on the part of the joke I don’t yet get.

It’s interesting that in an age in which software companies and web sites (like WordPress.com) are giving away free services (or at least samples) to build an audience or community of users, most of the recording industry is still in 1980s mode. It’s cool that at age 47, Weird Al gets the new marketing methods of the digital age, even if I don’t fully “get” his songs.

Weird Al was an inspiration to me about 10 years ago, when I was working in politics, and for fun I was involved in a parody band that used to play for some parties. We even recorded some cassettes. Unfortunately it was five years before the iPod and widespread mp3 distribution.

Congratulations to Weird Al on his latest and biggest hit!

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Bob Dylan and Media Convergence

Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune (registration required) has an article on Bob Dylan’s concert tour and his appeal to youth. It highlights the powerful team of new media and traditional media:

At 65, Dylan is drawing a broad audience partly because of his iconic status and historical importance, but also because he has been exploring new media — via a weekly show on XM satellite radio and a commercial for iTunes. He’s also opened up about his life, with a best-selling memoir, “Chronicles Vol. 1,” and the PBS documentary “No Direction Home,” while granting interviews to the likes of “60 Minutes” and Newsweek magazine.

Combine that kind of exposure with a surprising willingness to demystify himself and it’s no surprise that his new CD, “Modern Times,” released in late August, became his first No. 1 album in 30 years.

And iTunes made a difference: about 10 percent of the opening-week sales came from digital downloads — twice the industry average, according to Billboard.

“He has newfound respect,” said Lee Abrams, XM radio’s chief creative officer. “Five years ago, he was lumped in with stars of the ’60s. Now, he’s gone from being a classic-rock artist to somebody beyond definition — like the Beatles.”

The traditional media are unsurpassed at creating broad awareness. The new media enable users to get exactly what they want immediately. Instant gratification. Put them together, and they’re a powerful combination.

And, in keeping with Debbie Weil’s advice about using lists in blogs, here’s the Star Tribune’s 7 reasons kids still dig Dylan.

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Demographics Don’t Matter

Of course, for traditional media, demographics are extremely important. If you want to reach a particular kind of audience through TV ads, for example, you need to pick programs that are watched by a sufficiently large group of your audience of likely consumers (probably not advertising Flomax on the Cartoon Network, for instance.)

New media, particularly podcasts, blogs and vlogs, are different entirely. Here’s why:

Search. With over 80 percent of internet users using search engines (scores of millions of users, if not more than 100 million) to find what they need on the web, if your content is out there and searchable, many of your potential customers will find it, wherever you are housing the video or audio files.

In other words, it doesn’t matter if a particular niche within the web is mostly inhabited by people outside your target demographic. For example, if YouTube’s audience is mostly younger, and your target audience is mostly older, that doesn’t stop your audience from finding your content…particularly if you have included it within your own web site or blog.

You can take advantage of the free service to add your video clip to the 100 million or more in the YouTube inventory. The teenagers won’t be looking for it and won’t find it. But by embedding it in your web site or blog and tagging appropriately, people who are looking for your kind of product or service can find it. And since you paid nothing (beyond the time to upload the clip) to add it, your cost per thousand impressions is….? And how does that compare to the TV ad?

The audience may not be large enough to carry your business, and you may still need to use traditional media, too. But if you’re paying for TV, why would you not take advantage of distribution that is essentially free? Especially since those people who have searched for a term that leads them to your content are likely your best potential customers?

New Media Growth. With 67 million iPods sold to date (and likely another 20-25 million hard-drive based mp3 players of all other brands), the audience is getting sufficiently large that it can’t be just the teenagers anymore. And of course the files can be played or viewed on computers as well, which makes for an even broader audience.

For media that are walled off from the broader internet (e.g. cell phones and cable VOD), my first point above is less relevant. You still need to consider the audience for that channel and whether it is large enough and has enough of “your” kind of people to be viable.

I discussed the underlying concept of the Economics of Abundance and linked to some other relevant articles here.

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The Long Tail and the Economics of Abundance

Chris Anderson’s best-selling book, The Long Tail, is predicated in large part on the assumption that as inventory and delivery costs approach zero, and with highly sophisticated search able to help people find what people want, choice becomes practically unlimited and niche content becomes economically viable.

He goes into this concept in more depth in a new post on his blog entitled “The Economics of Abundance,” in which he reviews (and links to reviews of) a presentation he made on the topic. The review by David Hornik has a particularly appropriate paragraph:

The same businesses that are the poster children for the Long Tail, are the poster children for the Economy of Abundance. And the same businesses that are the victims of the Long Tail are the poster children for the Economy of Scarcity. With bandwidth and storage approaching free, iTunes can offer three million songs (P2P offers nine million). In contrast, with limited shelf space, Tower Records can only offer fifty- or sixty-thousand tracks. The end result, consumer choose abundance over scarcity (something for everyone) — Tower Records gets liquidated while iTunes grows dramatically. Television is undergoing a similar transformation, from scarcity to abundance. TV initially consisted of only the major networks. Consumers were limited to 3 choices in any given time slot. With cable the number of channels was dramatically increased and a broader range of content became available (Food Channel, Discovery Channel, ESPN, CNN, etc.). To many, 250 channels may constitute sufficient abundance as to approach infinite choice in their minds. But the true television of abundance is YouTube. With unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage, television is subject to microprogramming — millions of shows, viewable on demand at any time. Now not only should NBC be worried, so too should be Comcast.

I highly recommend both the post by Chris and those to which he links. I also would add that there is a point at which content creation costs (not just storage and distribution) approach zero. When content is being created for TV, for instance, putting it on YouTube, or creating a video Podcast, is almost free. And instead of being time-bound and limited to scarce airwaves and cable channels, it can be available as long as you want it to be…and as long as potential viewers want to see it.

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