Social Media Bible, Chapter 11

Chapter 11 Got Audio? (Audio Sharing)

This chapter of The Social Media Bible is really an extension of the previous chapter. While Chapter 10 was more of the basics of how to produce a podcast, this chapter goes further into the distribution of those podcasts. New information here gives a little more background on iTunes and also discussing a variety of iPhone apps. Since the book was published, Apple has now introduced iCloud, allowing users to store downloaded files in “the cloud” rather than having to have them all on your computer. I was disappointed that the discussion of iPhone apps, specifically the “identify music” function, fails to mention that a similar app is also available from other providers, such as Verizon Wireless, on a variety of other phones.

I was intrigued by the discussion of Podbean, the online service that hosts and serves up the media file that is your podcast, also providing web traffic reports. Especially interesting is the idea that Podbean has revenue potential through paid advertising, paid subscriptions and merchandise sales. I’ll be checking out this service.

The ROI section about Nicole Walker Photography was especially good in bringing social media into focus. It’s a very smart social media expert indeed who says “Our strategy was to be active in a space where our customers already were.” (p. 220). However, as with the last chapter, I’m not sure what this ROI case study has to do with the specific chapter topic of audio sharing, since podcasting was not one of the tactics used by this company.

An additional example in this chapter of the author not providing quite enough information for the reader (as I complained about in Chapter 9) is in the conclusion when he suggests that you need to  “embed your podcasts on your web site and blog site,” without an explanation of how to accomplish this. (p. 223)