Podcast

Podcast: SEMPO Institute – Advanced SEO Courses

April 25, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with Terry Plank, Dean of the SEMPO Institute, regarding the Advanced SEO Courses offered by SEMPO. Terry was very imressed with the response the SEMPO Insitute courses have been recieving and is proud of the content and material covered in the courses. During the end of our conversation Terry pointed out he is looking for even more feedback so that SEMPO could further enhance the courses.

Below is the list of questions I asked Terry, you can also listen to the podcast:

Can you talk a little bit about the success of the Fundamentals of Search Marketing?
Who is the the target market for the advanced SEO Classes?
What are the major changes from the Fundamentals of Search Marketing?
What can a student in the advanced course expect to get out of the class? Are the ready for a full time search marketing position?
Do you have any thoughts of creating anymore category specific tracks, ie: Web Analytics, Social Media, etc…?
In what areas can the SEMPO Institute improve?

If you are interested in finding out more about the advanced courses visit: http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/training/

Also, checkout these screenshots of the interface for the advanced courses as well as this powerpoint presentation which discusses the courses in more detail.

Filed Under: Industry News, Podcast

Podcast: Salesforce.com's Sr. Director on Marketing in the Google Era

April 13, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Kraig Swensrud is the Sr. Director of Marketing Products at Salesforce.com. Recently he developed 7 best practices to help marketers adapt to “Marketing in the Google Era.” I was very fortunate in being able to talk to Kraig about his best practices, listen to the podcast here:

Here is the overview of my questions/topics during the converation with Kraig Swensrud:

I started by asking Kraig’s motivation’s for developing these best practices

1) Invest in your web properties: Are you referring to leveraging your business’s website to its full potential through the understanding of what’s happening on it?

2) The second tip is to Invest in Search Marketing and being in this Industry makes it a no brainer for me, yet not everyone takes advantage of it.

3) Tip 3 is to Make your Message Relevant. I can’t stress the importance of this practice with personalization in the forefront.

4) Create Landing Pages for Each Program is the next practice. Matching content to the intent of the user will definitely lead to stronger conversion rates.

5) Tip 5 is to Measure Everything, in Real Time. Can you explain the advantage of measuring real time versus measure yesterday’s data?

6) Use the Web for PR is tip 6 and in your PDF you discuss the power of Blogging and Syndication.

7) The Final tip is to engage your community and in a consumer driven market this concept becomes very important.

Here is the link to Kraig’s webinar on the 7 best practices: Webinar Slides

Also see the Sales Force Marketing Blog

Filed Under: Industry News, Interviews, Podcast

How to setup a Podcast and Embed Audio

February 14, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

I have done a fair bit of interviews over the last year and have started using audio and podcasts in order to share the content with my readers. My process is quite simple and I’d like to share my procedure for publishing an audio interview. Thanks to my colleague Cory Bates for helping me with my first podcast.

If you don’t have a FeedBurner account get one, and make sure you’ve declared yourself as a podcaster. FeedBurner recognizes media files which allows other people to subscribe and download your media via Itunes or Juice.
Before your interview make sure you have a decent quality phone which produces minimal static. Remember you’ll be using the speaker phone option in order to record the audio.
Purchase a Digital Recorder, I suggest something with at least 128 mb of memory so that you can store more than one interview on it if needed. I have been using an Olympus recorder: http://www.audio-discounters.com/vn-3100-pc.html, it’s relatively in expensive and works well.
I always try to move the recorder back and forth to whomever is speaking in order to pick up their voice more clearly.
Once you have finished the interview, download a copy of Audacity. Audacity will convert your audio track to mp3 (which is required for FeedBurner) and will also help in fine tuning the audio track for noise and normalization.
Once you convert your audio track to mp3 make sure to fill in the required information for: Author, Title, Genre (select speech).
Upload the mp3 to a location on the Internet, copy the URL of the mp3′s location.
When you’re posting the interview onto your blog make sure you specify the link to your mp3 somewhere in the post. This will allow FeedBurner to recognize the podcast and make it subscribable.
If you want to embed a copy of the audio track I suggest using a service such as Odeo. Odeo generates the code for embedding a music player within your post and also helps promote your interview through its own site.
Before you publish, make sure to specify some content for your audio (it always helps to keep SEO in mind).