Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Blog and Podcast - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

In all of the fuss to rush to Twitter or fawn over some viral videos on YouTube, there's a subtle and ever-growing audio platform that seems to have lost some its lustre in terms of public excitement, but continues to grow in terms of loyal audience.

Podcasting continues to be one of the best ways to consume audio and video content. A good portion of this content is available free in places like iTunes, and it is staggering once you begin to deep-dive into the content just how rich, robust and fascinating the shows are.

Unlike streaming audio or video online or simply downloading an MP3 or WMV file onto your hard drive, the real power behind podcasting is in its subscription component. Without getting technical, podcasting is audio and video that is very similar to a blog in terms of how it is delivered to you. Once you subscribe (which is usually free - although there are some podcasts that charge a nominal fee), the minute the producer of the show publishes their content to the Web it is automatically delivered to your computer (in my case, this is done using Apple's iTunes). From there, you can sync it to your iPod and that's it: your choice of audio and video programming on your own schedule that you can pause, rewind, fast-forward or even delete.

Imagine being the program director of your own radio station, only you can also decide when the shows are "on the air." That's podcasting, and it will not only change the way you think about media, it will turn all of your downtime into a moment where you can learn, grow and expand or simply listen/watch some mindless entertainment. Podcasting truly is "as you like it."

Yes, you can get the latest in comedy and entertainment, sports and news and more. In fact, the true beauty of podcasting is how much more it is like narrowcasting vs. broadcasting. Interested in knitting? There's a podcast for that (multiple ones!). Interested in magic? Yup, there's more than a few for that subject matter, too. There are thousands of podcasts. Some are professionally produced by some of the more well-known mass-media outlets, while some are recorded on a Logitech headset with a microphone right into a laptop and edited using freeware like Audacity. Some are slick with high production values and others are more rugged and reminiscent of pirate radio.

There's something for everybody.

While many people listen to or watch podcasts on their laptops or desktops, make no mistake about it, as the iPhone and iPod continue to become an integral part of our day-to-day lives (in fact, the iPod is one of the best-selling consumer electronics devices in history), the portability of media is going to be an increasingly important component of how the mass public consumes media. So, instead of filtering the millions of blogs online or trying to make heads or tails of whether or not you should join FriendFeed, you can grab a handful of audio (or video) podcasts, sync them on to your iPod and head outside for the few months of summer we have in the city.

Here are six great podcasts that will get you excited about business, technology and new media (in alphabetical order):

1. For Immediate Release - The Hobson & Holtz Report - is hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. This twice-weekly podcast usually runs about an hour per episode and features conversations and news critique on the state of public relations, communications and technology. If you like FIR, you might also want to check out Inside PR, JaffeJuice, Managing the Gray, and Marketing Over Coffee.

2. Harvard Business IdeaCast - from the publishers of the Harvard Business Review, this podcast (which you can get in audio and video formats) features great commentary from the top thinkers on the topics of management and leadership.

3. On the Media - courtesy of the good folks at National Public Radio, On the Media points a critical eye on items in the news and in the public forum. It can be highly critical but always presents new ways of looking not just at the news, but at ourselves.

4. Spark - Nora Young from the CBC hosts this show about technology and culture. It boasts itself as an "online collaboration" as it includes the community's thoughts, comments and insights, which helps to drive and push the programming content.

5. TED Talks - usually reserved for the one thousand people invited to this exclusive annual conference that has been dubbed, "gymnastics for the brain," TED Talks features the now-famous 18-minute presentations from some of the world's smartest thinkers and brightest minds (you can get the as both audio or video).

6. This Week In Tech - Leo Laporte is best-known as host of multiple TV shows on TechTV (now G4TechTV). The likeable and passionate technology guy loves to break it all down, explaining technology and keeping it simple for the everyday person. This Week In Tech, is his star-studded show for geeks, nerds and closet techies. Laporte is always entertaining and consistently discusses new and emerging technologies (hardware, software and online) to keep you ahead of your peers and the curve.

So, take a dive down the rabbit-hole that is podcasting. You'll never watch or listen to traditional mass media the same way again.

Which Podcasts have helped you shape the way you think about business, technology and new media?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

- Montreal Gazette - Here's six podcasts you should listen to.
- Vancouver Sun - Podcasts can change the way you become informed.

There are those who write books that explain where the world is at. There are those who write books about where the world is going. If you do the latter, you have to be prepared for the disbelievers and haters.

Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired Magazine who also had a stellar best-selling business book called, The Long Tail. As you'll note in this excellent interview with Anderson (Managing The Gray – Chris Anderson Interview), he is quick to admit that his books take ideas that are already "out there" and packages the content together with data, stories and more (to be honest, he is being more than a little humble. Being able to coin a term or point out a new way of doing things is never so easy or obvious). His latest book is called, Free - The Future of a Radical Price, in which Anderson discusses an interesting new business model where giving something away for free is actually good (and smart) for business. It's not entirely radical if you check out the many common examples we have been seeing in the past few years that validate his thesis (think about Suze Orman, who gave her entire book away as a free download in conjunction with an appearance on Oprah and still had a #1 best-selling book). He even pre-tested the concept with this cover story in Wired Magazine back in February 2008: Free! Why $0.00 Is The Future Of Business.

The idea of giving your stuff away for free will shock and dismay many business people and popular thinkers.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, best-selling business book author and journalist, Malcolm Gladwell (he of Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers fame) takes exception to some of the concepts that Anderson published. You can read the full book review here: Priced To Sell – Is Free The Future? Anderson responds to Gladwell's criticism on his own Blog here: Dear Malcolm: Why so threatened?

This is what makes the Internet (and, more specifically, Blogs) so amazing. Almost instantaneous back and forth with additional comments from the community as well. It becomes one big and thoroughly engaging discussion, conversation and debate.

Even Seth Godin (another best-selling business book author – Purple Cow, Tribes, etc…) added his perspective here: Malcolm is wrong. Like all great debates, it's clear that there are (at least) three sides to this story, but Godin makes some very salient points: "Like all dying industries, the old perfect businesses will whine, criticize, demonize and most of all, lobby for relief. It won't work. The big reason is simple: In a world of free, everyone can play. This is huge. When there are thousands of people writing about something, many will be willing to do it for free (like poets) and some of them might even be really good (like some poets). There is no poetry shortage."

If Anderson, Gladwell and Godin are in the midst of this very fascinating debate, the least you can do is take a read-through of the links above, learn about the topic and – if you're interested – join the conversation.

Seth Godin even set-up a Squidoo lens to debate the topic right here: The FREE Debate.

Being creative is not easy. Being original is not easy. Reading books on how to be creative and how to be original is not something that many people do often enough (myself included).

There's also a huge difference in being creative for the sake of exploring some new unchartered personal territory (like taking a class in sculpting), but it's not so obvious what to do when it comes to being creative in business. Many of us have Blogs, Podcasts, Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles and more, but are often stumped with what – exactly – to create and publish. What is the secret sauce for people who consistently publish content? While some have tried, it's not something that is clearly definable (hence the term, "secret sauce"). That being said, there are some ways to look at things differently and inspire your more creative business side.

Here's how…

Six Ways To Find Business Inspiration:

1. Get A Clue(train) – If you have not read the book, The Cluetrain Manifesto (by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger), then that in and of itself should give you fodder for years to come. If you've dog-eared and post-it noted your book to death, then crack it open one more time to any random page, take a read and write out what you can do in your industry in relation to whatever topic you just consumed. Side note: Basic Books just released a special 10th Anniversary Edition hardcover edition with some new/additional content.
2. Follow The Ads – Every year there are multiple advertising industry trade magazines that highlight the "best of the year." The ads include everything from TV and radio to out-of-home and online advertising. You may think that the 30-second spot is dead, but these award winners are clever and inspiring. How well can you convey your story?
3. Never Eat Alone - Grab someone who inspires you and take them to lunch. You pay. Just enjoy the conversation and please don't have any set agenda or be thinking about how to create a deal. Just enjoy the conversation and company.
4. Listen And Learn – Head over to iTunes and subscribe to a Podcast that interests you. Listen to a few episodes and write out what you've learned on your Blog. If you don't have a Blog, ask someone who does have a Blog if they would be open to a guest post from you.
5. Learn about someone you hate - Read the biography of someone you never respected (in history or business). It might surprise you how they rose to power, what it meant to them and how it changed the world (for the better or for the worse). Sometimes we learn most by reading about people we would never want to act like. Learning what not to do is sometimes as important as learning what to do.
6. Read a comic book – Odds are the story won't exactly rock your world, but reflect on what goes into a single issue of a comic book: from the story and art to the pencilling and publishing. If you have seen the blockbuster movie, Iron Man, you have to be able to appreciate that someone came up with the concept for him in the early 1960s.

It was Albert Einstein who said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

How do you get inspired when it comes to new thinking for business?

Blogging is dead. Twitter is dead. MySpace is dead. Podcasting is dead. Dead is dead.

Let's trot out the "fill-in-the-blank is dead" horse and beat it one last time, shall we? Whether we're dumping MySpace for Facebook, Twitter for FriendFeed, Habbo Hotel for Club Penguin, or everything for Lifestreaming, we should all be able to step-away from and recognize that the mass population does not have a fighting chance anymore. We're taking it away from them. Our constant and consistent infatuation with the latest (and greatest) shiny object in a world where these objects are being created and popularized on the fly is going to cause so much confusion that we may start seeing people recoil simply because they can't keep pace and they are (rightfully) confused.

Is this Digital Darwinism at its finest?

Some might rightfully argue that the speed of change and rapid developments in technology are only going to increase and those that can't keep up (or keep ahead) are going to be left behind. It's fair to say that when you're on the bleeding edge, but there is a more practical and rational opportunity here. Marketers might be best served in helping their clients and partners understand that it's not about which platform is the newest, but rather which platforms will drive the overall business strategy furthest.

For some, the latest and greatest does this.

But, for most, it doesn't. Yes, we now have the ability to lifestream brands out to the world. From short and long copy to images, audio and video, everything is easy to produce, quick to publish and simple to maintain, but it's not for everybody. Don't believe me? Check out the article, Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review, from Ad Age today:

"…marketers are learning to listen. And for all the ink spilled on the importance of Twitter and Facebook as feedback and customer-service channels, there's another social-media tool marketers are increasingly finding useful, not just as an online-shopping tool but as an internal, culturally changing consumer-criticism channel: the humble product review. The feedback is altering not just how the marketing department works but also how companies design their products and work with suppliers. And it's not limited to small, nimble players; companies using product reviews range from niche retailers such as Oriental Trading Co. to big, broad-based behemoths such as Walmart."

While the main crux of the article focuses on the power of peer reviews (a topic near and dear to my heart), it forces Marketers to realize that sometimes, it is the simple things that can take you furthest (asking for, publishing and responding to real people's feedback) and sometimes those things may not be the media darlings du jour.

To really take advantage of all of the new platforms and channels to communicate, we're going to have to get better at understanding what they truly are (and what they represent to our consumers) before jumping ship to whatever next just showed up in our Web browser. To do that, we have to let these platforms mature over time and prove themselves.

Are we there yet?

Maybe we need to give things more of a fighting chance?

Following is the first print review of my forthcoming book, Six Pixels of Separation, courtesy of Publisher's Weekly. The real "first" review was a video review done by Chris Brogan (over here: Don’t Trust My Review of Six Pixels of Separation).

Six Pixels of Separation - Everyone is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone Mitch Joel. Grand Central/Business Plus, $26.99 (273p) ISBN 978-0-446-54823-6

A digital marketing maven who parlayed a podcast into a thriving career, Joel extends the notion of human interconnectedness by six degrees to the virtual world. With abundant Internet social networking sites and mobile texting, “we are all intrinsically connected," he argues in this accessible primer to capitalizing on connections to increase brand awareness. New breeds of entrepreneurs are being created daily, he asserts, using free publishing tools available on the Internet to create brands and develop audiences on a scale that rivals the biggest firms in the world. Joel cites such success stories as Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library, who transformed his parents' New Jersey liquor store from a $4 million business to a $45 million one in five years by connecting to Facebook and Twitter and creating a video podcast to lure customers. More than a mere collection of inspirational case studies, the book offers practical advice, from choosing a catchy blog name to tips on Web presentation. Joel has created an eminently readable guide to harnessing the various tools available across the virtual landscape. (Sept.)

If you're interested in buying a book (or a thousand), you can pre-order it now (top left-corner of this Blog).

You can find the original review publisher over here: Publisher's Weekly – Six Pixels of Separation.

Editors used to control the journalists and decided which words made it to which pages. Music companies used to control the musicians and decided which albums made it into the record stores. TV stations used to control the actors and decided who got to star in which programs. 

From luxury items to concert tickets, everything we've really known (and been successful with) in the Marketing industry was (to some extent) based on the scarcity model. Whether it was 20% more or 40% off, it was always for a "limited time". So, here's another shift that we don't talk about enough: the new media channels are not about scarcity, they are about abundance. It's not about deciding who gets access to who, it's about everybody having access to everybody.

Can we truly understand value without the scarcity?

Whether we're talking about comic books or an old bottle wine, we tend to place a higher value on the things that we can only have less of. Don't believe me? Look at the environment. Pushing this idea out further, notice how the most modern of new media mavens get all excited when they are featured on national television or score a book deal. The reality is that everyone has a Blog or Twitter account (just like them), but if they can get their content into a place that others cannot, then it's that much more exciting.

Those calling for the death of traditional mass media, don't really understand what is going to happen.

We (as a collective society) know no other way. If you take away the scarcity, we truly have no idea how to value it. In fact, I'd argue that we don't value it. Personal anecdote: I await - with bated breath - the latest issue of Wired Magazine but have no issue deleting 180 news items from the Wired Blog as "mark as read". Why? Simply put, the magazine comes out only once a month, it is scarce when compared to the twenty-four hour onslaught of digital content through my RSS reader. Once someone curates and edits the content in print versus simply filling the digital void, the value of the content in the magazine "seems" scarcer than a model where the funnel needs to constantly be filled.

How are Marketers really going to Market and connect with consumers if what they're Marketing is no longer scarce (or perceived that way) or if the channels in which they're Marketing are no longer perceived as valuable because anybody and everybody can publish?

Does something become more popular if you make it easier to do?

There used to be this running joke about how easy it is to Podcast. Instead of a full recording studio with expensive mixing boards and microphones, you could now record audio programs with a basic computer set-up, cheap microphone, some free audio editing software (like Audacity) and a Blogging platform. The truth is, it takes a little more than that to create a great program and even though it is inexpensive, it's still time-consuming to make it work.

Podfading (when someone starts a Podcast but quickly stops recording new episodes) is a very real syndrome.

For some, it seems like a good idea at the time but recording simply doesn't fit with their lifestyle, others were not seeing the mass numbers of people flocking to Podcasts (as they did with other platforms like Blogging and Twitter), and for others it was simply a matter of waiting until the technology advanced to the point where it was easier and more convenient. My guess is the latter is exactly what happened to Bryan Person (aka Bryper). In a sea of feeds, tweets and lifestreams, I thought Bryan had dropped Podcasting for a return to Blogging (and he's quite active on Twitter, etc…). On a recent episode of the For Immediate Release – The Hobson & Holtz Report audio Podcast, I learned that he has a new audio Podcast that he records (wait for it…) daily.

What changed in the world of audio technology to make it that much easier? 

Bryan Person's new daily audio Podcast is called, The Daily Boo, named after the iPhone app he is using to create it with. AudioBoo is a free iPhone audio blogging app that allows anyone to record straight into their iPhone (this doesn't work on the iPod Touch because it does not have a microphone built-in) and then posts it on-the-fly to the Web. The Daily Boo episodes are usually under five minutes in length and while the AudioBoo site features hundreds (maybe thousands) of other Podcasts on the AudioBoo platform, The Daily Boo covers "our" space: online communications, media and technology. It's highly entertaining, fresh and gives you just the right amount of snackable new media content on a daily basis.

Podcasting, streaming live video, Blogging, Tweeting and almost anything (and everything) else you can do with a laptop can now be done with an iPhone (and some other mobile devices).

If you don't think this access, ease-of-us, mobility and speed of delivery is going to change everything you know about Marketing, Advertising and Communications, you've got another thing coming.

Final thought: When I think about how Bryan records The Daily Boo, it makes how I record Six Pixels of Separation and Media Hacks seem almost as old and antiquated as using a full-fledged studio is when compared with my current set-up. Yes, technology is moving that fast.

If you use Twitter solely for personal use, this Blog post is not for you. If you use Twitter for your business or your brands, there has to be some kind of conversion at the end of the day.

How's that going for you?

There does seem to be some kind of race to get as many people following you on Twitter, and an equal pace to ensure that you can stay involved and engaged in the myriad of conversations. From the looks of it, people with tens of thousands of followers seem to be quickly realizing how unscalable that model is and how much time it does take to keep on top of it all. I recently heard Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV (he has close to 600,000 followers on Twitter) say something to the effect of, "people ask me all of the time how I can spend so much time on Twitter Search and still grow my business? Since when does caring and responding to what people say about you not your business?"

There has to be some kind of breaking point.

Here's a potential scenario: someone with a Vaynerchuk-like following is constantly tweeting. The amount of content is staggering (great links, tons of info, references to other great people to follow on Twitter). There's so much content flow that the average follower who checks their Twitter stream only a couple of times per day just sees a sea of content. On the other hand, someone with a more modest following (says a couple of hundred followers) has a different type of relationship with their online community because they're only tweeting a handful of times per day, so those who are connected pay close attention to each and every tweet.

Which one do you think converts more and most effectively?

I keep going back and forth. On one hand, it must be easier to get more people to take action when you have a heavy user base. On the other hand, the mass amount of content being pumped out to sustain that huge following might make each post have less value (or significance) to the audience.

What do you think is the ideal formula to have great conversion using Twitter?