I received a free copy of the book during Gary’s wine tasting at the Boston Wine Expo 2010 a few months ago. It was a great surprise as I was shopping around online to pickup the book anyway. Crush It is a great inspirational read for those looking to start their own “brand” now, using new media technologies and social networking. I quoted the word “brand” because this book isn’t a simple business book about starting a company, it’s more about building a reputation for yourself or your company.

I’ve given lectures myself at Keene State College about this very topic and I think it helps guide people to something more than a simple nine-to-five grunt job. However, this book isn’t going to equip you with the knowledge to quit your job tomorrow and start your own little venture into the world-wide-web, it’s going to motivate you and give you some guides to eventually getting to such a goal.

The book is much more valuable when you understand Gary’s perspective. He is teaching us his personal techniques to how he went from zero to one-hundred miles an hour using social media tools and new media in the video format. If you’re looking to start a blog that will someday make you money, this book will not get you any technical information. As a matter of fact, I’d start by learning more about blogging techniques, SEO and gathering an audience using other books or free online resources. Crush It, in this capacity, will mainly teach you how to react and understand your audience and encourage you to reach out and treat them as humans rather than just a statistics; this is still good information worth the USD $19 for serious bloggers looking to interact with their people.

The message within this book is simple: work hard and bust your ass. If you’re not ready to do that, seriously not mentally or physically prepared to work 14+ hours a day, then you’ll have a tough time putting his concepts to work for you. While it is mentioned a few times in this book, Gary doesn’t really care if you’ve got a typical 9-5 job, he wants you to come home and work on your own brand from 6PM to 2AM and bust your rump.

Crush It does not really talk to the technical aspects of building a brand outside of getting a content management system like WordPress or Tumblr and using social media tools like twitter and facebook. He does explain a bit about the theory behind buying/hiring a theme designer for your site but Gary is not a big technical guy, he’s really all about business and adapting to circumstances as they arrive. There are thousands of technical resources you can seek out if you’re looking to build up a website with all the tools needed to maximize your search results and track statistics and is beyond the scope of the book.

The premise of Crush It can be summed up by the word “people.” Gary Vaynerchuck documents ways to handle viewers and how to reach out and understand them. From big business to small startups, learning how to put yourself out there and act like a human with other humans can change a single statistic into a dedicated fan. You’ll learn to turn your passion for a topic into a conversation with like minded individuals (the audience/viewers) and build trust.

For Gary Vaynerchuck fans that follow his personal blog about building brands, you’ll find little new information within the Crush It pages. The book expands upon some of the information/rants he’s talked about in his video’s and can be used to re-enforce what you believe you took away from his 3-minute acts of brilliance. Should you still purchase the book? Of course fans should support his efforts, that’s a no brainer. I’m both a fan and a follower in his beliefs and I’d buy the book again (for real) because I’m seeking to learn all knowledge on the topic; even three pages of useful information is better than going without.

The only downside to Crush It is the fantasy world that I believe Gary sometimes lives in. He tells us to work until 2AM for the no-kids family or 3AM if you’ve got kids (since you’ve got to put family first). Unfortunately, this is not a realistic goal if you’ve got a job which requires you to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning because of a long commute. Many of his ideas work great if you’re working the program as a full-time job and speaks to the fact that almost all passions/topics can build your brand to a USD $40,000+/year job.

In today’s times, a  $40,000 a year job might as well be poverty. I know in my world, 40k was barely enough to cover child care during the day. How long must I struggle at 40-50k a year before I can feed my family and continue the life I lived before following my passion? One reason many of us work the “grind” of a boring day-to-day job is because it pays well and allows us the comfort of living life without financial strife. The reality is, if you cannot make at least what you’re making in your day job then your “passion” is going to require some angel investors or other funding to get you to the next level (and help pay for health insurance). Kids, health insurance, mortgage and all these expenses are not really brought up in Crush It–Gary assumes you’ll just figure all that out on your own.

While the concepts in this book are solid ways to build inspiration, the reality of the situation is often left on the cutting room floor. Gary built his video show while also working at Wine Library (the store). Where does he buy all the wine from his show? Does he “borrow” it from the store or does he buy 10+ bottles a week out of pocket? The reality of the situation is this: if you’re looking to do something similar where are you getting the product you’re using on your own shows? Probably out of pocket as an expense, not for free until you get the traffic to start receiving “review copies” from those in the industry.

Overall, while many of the theories seem to forget the reality of the situation, the inspiration and knowledge about how to handle people and build your personal brands is solid information. For myself, this is a nice boost of self-confidence as it re-enforces what I’m already doing each night. The biggest issue many casual readers are going to have is getting your ass off the couch and implementing even 30% of the ideas within the confines of this text.

You hear about sites that take off and get thousands of users overnight, before they know it the owners are getting millions of unique users hitting their site and the world is their oyster. Okay, now let’s talk about everyone else, the 99% of the population of bloggers, podcasters and video producers. Unless you own a successful brand or property with thousands of dedicated fans, you’re starting at ground zero like myself.

Prepare yourself for many nights and weekends working on your personal brand and website. Making money on advertising occurs when you can show advertisers “impressions” on your properties and your new property may be receiving under twenty visitors a day even if you’re pushing one to three daily pieces of content; it’s a slow process. Video bloggers are worse off because all their awesome content is unsearchable–it’s not textual. They’ve got to work hard, craft great headline articles and start supporting blogs and articles to support their effort to bring in organic searches. It’s possible but it takes time.

I’ve found very few working shortcuts to getting seen as a video podcaster and audio podcaster. There are no fast ways to be number-one in a search engine or ranking on the top podcasts in a podcast directory aside from paid advertising or getting a web celebrity to pimp your show. You can setup twitter accounts, facebook fan pages and accounts on all the trendy social network systems on the Internet and that won’t make your show popular until you understand how to use the tools most effectively. You can buy consulting for a hefty fee or do what I did: follow a few other brands that are doing it successfully and mimic their behavior, that’s not a shortcut, that’s an educational experience.

Spend less time looking for the shortest route to success and spend more time pumping out quality content, watching others performing social networking techniques and being an all-around normal guy or gal with the drive and passion for success. Let people know about what you’re doing and why you’re confident it’s a successful venture.

Trust In Yourself

When producing audio and video content, there is only one person you can trust to get the job done: yourself.

When most of your salary is being paid in blood, sweat and tears you’re going to find very few people want to work with you in the effort. Unless you can find co-hosts, guest audio speakers or a video crew of dedicated passionate individuals, you’re going to be doing most of your work alone. Creating a great audio show is only as good as the participants in the show. You may have the best idea in the world along with a great chemistry with your fellow podcasters but if they decided to leave, lose interest or “no show” for a few episodes, where does that leave yours how and your audience? Are they going to work those same nights and weekends to promote the production you’ve all been working so hard on?

I’ve found the most reliable thing to do is build a list of friends that are comfortable on camera (or on a mic) and get as many to show up to the shows as possible. Don’t trust any one individual to have the same drive and interests as yourself but, as a whole, you’ve got enough folks to always make the show. Having a pool of individuals to call upon (much like they do on This Week in Tech), then you can always have a successful broadcast.

Lessons of the day: Only trust yourself to get the job done and plan on working your ass off to get there. Don’t hire SEO experts, social media professionals and all that crap; learn the techniques yourself using articles and free editorials on the Net. Teach yourself how to be successful, don’t expect others to do it for you.

If you live near a big city, it’s usually easier to find some folks in the industry you’re trying to dominate with video and audio content. For instance, I’m working to build a cocktail show from the ground up and I’ve build a good roll of PR folks, industry leaders and distributors who are ready and willing to send me content in the form of spirit samples. They’re dedicated to your cause because they’re hoping you can show their products off in your content. This is a good give-and-take relationship but that’s about where the line is drawn and you’re still only a name.

A launch event last week in Boston gave me the opportunity to shake a few hands. I’m 45-minutes out of Boston but making the trip was well worth the time and effort. I met up with some folks I’ve talked with in the industry and build some new relationships with folks that I didn’t know existed before the event.

Meeting folks in person allows you to establish a stronger relationship. Hitting parties and industry gatherings will give you new exposure to journalists and bloggers to which you can swap “business cards.” Saying, “hi I’m Derrick from everydaydrinkers.tv” isn’t good enough; do you want them to remember you among all the other party gatherers? If so, you’ll want to toss them your card with contact information on it. After the event they’ll head home and toss all the business cards they gathered on the coffee table for later viewing. You want to be part of that list otherwise they’re not going to remember “that guy” they met at the show.

A week after the event the e-mails will start to come in saying, “nice meeting you last week, love your website.” Some folks may have never heard of you before while others could have seen you in passing while working in the industry. Of course, you’ll know a few people from “chatting” over e-mail or Twitter direct-messages but now there is a greater connection: you’re a real person. The experience of a five minute chat at an event is all that is needed to begin to grow a new contact. Next time you hit an event you may see them again and can shake with a familiar grasp.

During the event you may pickup a few new folks that have never heard of your show. This goes back to my preaching about building your relationships one person at a time. If you give away one business card at an event and they take a look at your website, you’ve established a new potential fan. Even public relations folks in the industry can become fans of your content for more than just pimping their products. I’ve got many PR agencies that watch every show I produce because they like the content, quality and it’s relevant to their industry. PR agents are typically passionate about the industry they’re in, this is what keeps them going to work each day and your content brings them closer to their own world.

Many folks may live far away from the big city and find it much more challenging to get out to launch parties, meet up and all the good human gathering that occurs in our social circles. For those folks (much like myself) plan to hit two events a year that have large gatherings where you can do a full year of meetings in a single day. Make yourself known, stand out, print up some business cards and spread the love with as many people as you can shake hands.

It may cost you $30 to head to staples to print out a few hundred basic business cards. If it has your domain, name and contact information on the card then you’ve done your job right for very little cash out of pocket. It is important to make those connections and let a small group of folks in your industry know you’re a human and not just a voice. Who knows, you may establish some great relationships beyond a simple ‘tweet’.

Screw the get rich quick method, I think you’ll be more valuable making some friendly contacts in the industry of your choice. Recently, I watched a video on how you can make money on twitter in a “fully automated” fashion selling who knows what to who knows who for whatever cost — really? There is no passion or challenge, it’s all about finding something exploitable and selling it to anyone your automated bots can find.

I’m not really jealous of the technique that “anyone can do” (so could I, right?) but I am blown away by those that will try the techniques. Most will fail and come out of the experience unchanged and lighter in pocket. The only person getting rich quick is the one taking your money to sell you the techniques that they say they’ve learned. Here is an idea, find an industry you’re passionate about and see if you can find a way to make your own techniques and money making systems.

Here is my modest little technique that seems to work okay: establish relationships with people in your industry. You’re no doubt smaller than most of them so you’re going to have to be ready to give some of your services away for free in order to show them you’re serious. In my video podcasting studio, I’ll record an episode of Common Man Cocktails with a product that I’ve been given (if it works as advertised) and give them free exposure to my viewers.

Why wouldn’t I take the aggressive route and ask them to pay me for the exposure? Because I’d like them to see the results of what I can do, show off my techniques and give them a taste for how successful their product can be in my own brand. No doubt I’ll ask them to sponsor an episode in the future, but what trust have I built if I started by asking for money up front? What trust have I built with my viewers if they find out I’m only pitching an item because they paid me to do so?

As the little guy, you’re going to have to admit to yourself that you’re a nobody with no influence outside of your own audience. You’re building your audience and your brand but you’re going to want others to help you along the way; those friends you establish will come back to reward you later.

Perhaps you show off a product on your audio/video show and send it off to the makers of the product. They may give you a nod and a big ol’ “thank you” or they might enjoy the work you did and spread your video to their friends in the industry along with their own customers. That free exposure you gave them can come back to you ten fold with new viewership and exposure.

Who knows, a few months later that new friendly brand may ask to work together no future partnerships. What’s the risk? Nothing but a bit of work on your side, for free, in hopes of establishing stronger relationships. Give it a try.

The Internet is not only a place to find information about products, it is a place to build information about yourself for others to learn about you. The trick to this seminar will be covering all the major disciplines by giving them relevant information that could potentially change their lives. The methods of promoting yourself with social media as a teacher entering the field is not the same as a student in broadcasting, geography or software development.

We’ve got to put reality first, students graduating from college this year are entering a market where extremely talented and experienced folks are being laid off due to budget cuts. How does a student walk into the “real world” and get a job in an economy where the unemployment rate is rising a percent at a time? For this, there is no clear answer, but there are other solutions to building your reputation and experience so you’ll be a valuable asset when hiring freezes thaw.

Students should create accounts on a few key social networks, such as Linkedin. For the Facebook and Myspace generation, this should be a fairly straight forward process, except, rather than showing people what your favorite music may be, you’re showing them where your focus and talents can be found. Students should be building their linkedin profile along side their resume and link up with all their friends on the social media site so that you can review each other and explain “why” your friends are worth looking into — you scratch their back and they’ll scratch yours.

Plenty of headhunters use Linkedin and like site to farm for new talent. Market yourself, build a profile that is both desirable to potential employers, headhunters and friends alike. Believe it or not, a potential new hire at a company may be inspected through a “background search” involving pulling up profiles on linkedin and/or google to see what you say you know and what others are saying about you.

Broadcast and communications major should be using twitter to build their fan base and audience, promote products you love (for free) to try your hand at building yourself and your personality. You’ll want to build a large quantity of followers so you can promote yourself to them when the time is right. You may use that audience to “crowd source” (ask them questions) when you do get your first job, or perhaps use it to ask folks if anyone is looking for your talents and, in general, make friends with folks of like interests – this can be a handy tool in your future.

Students who plan to become teachers or explore further avenues of education can start practicing now. How? Get yourself a microphone and computer and start podcasting your talents. If you’re looking to find a career in biology and you’re having problems getting that job, start by podcasting some educational shows about biology, this may be audio or video depending on your budget and willingness to promote your own brand.

Creating your own video or audio podcast will grow your experience along with give you real life technological advances over your competition. When going into an interview to get a job as a science teacher you can either say “I graduated six months ago but I’ve not found a job” or you can say “While looking for a job I’ve started an audio show teaching listeners about weather, cloud formations and natural disasters, I’ve got a thousand listeners interested in the content.” You can build niche markets quickly and get dedicated fans that are interested in learning about new topics and concepts. Use what you’ve learned for students in a classroom when teaching students remotely. Your potential employer will no doubt be impressed with your focus, effort and passion compared to that other kid that watches History Channel while eating nachos and waiting for call backs from schools.

There is a great deal of potential to get your name known, be found by potential hires and discover new experiences and technologies you never thought were possible. You’ll gain experience in across many fields including communications, networking, media recording and promotion regardless to your actual major. Who knows, you may find yourself interested in something completely unique and different, something you didn’t learn in school.

Those are just a few ideas that I’ll be talking about in the 45-minute presentation at Keene State College in the moutains of New Hampshire. I wish I had that knowledge when I graduated!

A few folks have been disgruntled at the effort of promoting yourself on every social media site and getting very little result. For instance, I’ll post my videos on digg.com and receive six hits for a specific show, only two to four “diggs” from those six leads. Then people will say, “well, it’s not worth my time to only get six hits for posting my shows on digg.”

It is worth your time.

People get too hung up watching internet celebrities pimp their shows on one site and get 10,000 hits from the exposure. Everyone else has to fight one person at a time, this is how you grow. If you’re not willing to put in the 2-minutes of effort to post your show on digg or other social media sites to get one or two referrals than you’re going to struggle with success. You might as well quit now.

One new user may find your content interesting. Why else did they click the link to go there? If you get no referrals than you have no chance to obtain an audience but if you get one, just one, you now have a chance to build a fan. Six users gives you six times the luck in building a fan. A single fan can tell their friends about the show, send the link to a buddy or sit down and listen/watch your content in the office with co-workers or at home with family and share the experience together.

It all starts with one person in your audience. After you get a few dedicated folks you’ll know if your content is something people are willing to return to view. If they are, it’s only a matter of time before you’re audience grows from one to one-hundred and beyond.

No matter what the effort, every single encounter is a chance to establish a relationship with a new fan.

I’ve received a few e-mails lately asking about how I handle some of my shows release schedules. In short, how often should a podcaster or video podcaster create a new episode? Every situation may be different but there are some obvious trends I’ve seen over the last few years.

Although a release schedule really depends on your shows content and purpose, the best possible scenario would be short episodes on a daily basis. This turns out to be a lot of work if you’re working alone or in a small group. This is most challenging if your content is time sensitive, such as daily news, industry news or the like. Large firms have benefited from daily shows like CNET Buzz Out Loud. Others, such as Wine Library TV grew from a retail store into a daily show by pushing out great content for 18+ months before making it big.

A daily show between five and ten minutes seems to be the sweet spot for video shows (and 20-minutes or so for audio shows.) Viewers will be able to watch your show during lunch, breakfast or sneak one in during work hours when the boss is not looking. You’ll find it’s fast to edit and produce a show that’s small and tight because there are few chances for major errors or interruptions and the post production is quick with very little render time required. Audio episodes requires less attentiveness so longer shows will be more acceptable.

A short video show will lend itself well in terms of disk storage, quick downloads and easy to post content on sites like Blip.tv. The downfall? You’ll have limited time to squeeze in all your content per episode. If your information isn’t time sensitive you can sit down and record five episodes in under 30 minutes of real time! You can edit each show individually (which could take an hour or so depending on how much post production you’re doing) and launch each one at the start of your day.

You may opt for a weekly show because it fits your schedule better while still working in about 20-30 minutes of great content. Nothing says you have to meet a 20-minute marker, a 10-minute weekly show is fine too. The downfall to a short weekly show comes down to keeping your audience attentive over the long term. A short show might leave less of an impression and they could forget to visit your site each week. If you provide great syndication methods, such as iTunes, you can help remind your audience to tune in each week.

There may be opportunity for a video show that runs only once or twice a month if you’re looking to test the waters, have a rough schedule or your show guests are hard to coordinate. The major downfall being the slow growth of your audience because there is less content to consume. You’re statistics will increase greatly as you have more shows for people to go back and watch after they’ve discovered your content. We’ve got plenty of people new to our shows that go back and re-discover old episodes and that greatly pushes up our download count.

Look at the release schedule over a single year. If you run a show once a month you’re going to end up with 12-episodes at the end of the year. If you run a show twice a week you’ll have 104 episodes after the year is through and, of course, a daily show will have upwards of 250 episodes (if you take weekends off). More shows means more statistics and a better chance to grab new listeners because you’ve always got something new to promote.

Now, let’s talk about statistics. Granted, many video podcast producers will tell you “it’s not about the numbers, its about the content” but we’re human and we love to categorize, organize and know what the heck is going on. What we’ve noticed, with trends in Common Man Cocktails, is that each episodes viewership peaks the first two days after its launch. Then, viewership declines as everyone has seen the latest show while a few new viewers are slowly keeping your numbers going throughout the dead-space between launches.

When we launched the show once a week on Wednesday we’d have big numbers from Thursday to Saturday and then they would fade nearly to nothing by the following Tuesday night. Then, we started pushing out an episode on Wednesday and Saturday, our numbers would pop from Sunday through Tuesday night, just as we prepared to launch the next show. This allows our viewership to maintain a constant rise throughout the week as we gain more momentum and new viewers.

The end result, each new episode peaks the day of launch by another twenty views or so, incremental growth each episode shows progress and interest in the brand. So, wouldn’t it be in our best interest to do a new show everyday? Sure! Except for the small issue with having a few other jobs to do and producing video podcasts as a hobby as this is not quite the best time to bring a brand to investors.

If you’ve got time and dedication to cut a new show every day, the other technique I’ve seen used quite a bit is to run four short episodes a week and one medium length show during the middle of the week. The small shorts can be used to keep your audience attentive, progress your shows content throughout the week and give them a large dose mid-week as something to look forward to viewing.

While a few techniques may work for you, knowing the different possiblities to work towards gives you a nice goal to achieve. Many people are looking to get into video podcasting and hopefully this gives them something to think about in their preparation.

Just remember, the most important part of creating your podcast is the content. You can produce a show nobody wants to watch each day if you want, but that’s not really worth your time.

We have to develop personal relationships to gain momentum. If you’re name is Tom Hanks you can find instant “friends” by walking out of your house, but are they really friends? No, they’re fans of your work and they’ll follow you, quite blindly, anywhere you want them to go. If you’re Joe Generic, you’ve probably developed some friendships but, let’s face it, you’re no Tom Hanks. While your friends are more dedicated and understand you better than a “fan,” they’re also in limited numbers and won’t make you an instant hit superstar on the Internet.

You’re going to need to expand your friendships using social media outlets and get to know people at a more personal level. You’ll need to understand their needs, their likes and their desires on, perhaps, a first-name basis and develop a connection with them. Once you’ve established this connection you’ll be able to share thoughts and ideas which, oddly enough, includes showing off your podcast and seeing what they think. You may meet them on a social media site but you can continue your conversation through e-mail, direct messaging and other means.

If you want them to respect your efforts you must first respect theirs. I’d like to call this, developing a personal relationship. We all do it in “real life” but when it comes to Internet marketing and promotion people seem to think we can just spam forums and blogs hoping someone will click over to our domain name and become a fan of our brand. This method of promotion annoys people and doesn’t create a dedicated listener. If you want that, buy ad space and go watch some TV; for everyone else, we want to work a bit harder and more cost effectively.

Unfortunately, developing personal relationships takes time and you want your numbers to grow quickly. If you’re a podcaster with no patients than you’re in the wrong business. First, you’ll want some creativity, quality and passion for your brand, than you’ll want to develop some personal relationships and see if those people agree with your passion and love your quality and respect your creativity.

Establishing yourself with people on a one-on-one basis is the cement that binds your foundation. Eventually, you’ll build momentum, and fans, through your effort. However, you’re going to first need to surround yourself with a large group of personal relationships outside of your close family and friends. Meeting people on Twitter, Facebook and through blogs and other social media is a great way to get started.

Don’t start a twitter account to simply blast your URL’s blindingly, that’s annoying. Use twitter to meet people with common interests in what you’re trying to build. If you’re podcasting about chicken than I suggest following people on twitter that have great chicken recipes, a love for chicken or a chicken-related blog. You can use search.twitter.com to search for the keywords “chicken” to find them. If they’ve got a blog, read it and comment about your thoughts on chicken. Read their “about” page to see why they love chicken and how they got into the chicken-loving business because you can use this to relate to them when they tweet on twitter or write editorials on the topic. You’ll be able to talk to them and ask them questions about what they like.

It’s not all about you. Other people on twitter are building their brands too, it’s a two way road and sometimes you’re going to have to share it. Pushing yourself on other people is annoying, would you do that in real life? If so, you’re probably the type of person I’m not hanging around with; you’re “that guy” or “that girl” people tend to avoid. Show people you’re a human by showing them they’re human and build a bond before you build a brand.

Along the way you’ll meet others building brands that may wish to work with you for advertising opportunities, cross promotions or simply “name dropping.” You won’t know who you’ll meet, where you’re going to meet or what you’re going to learn if you don’t start walking the road.

Podcasters track their downloads, watch for trends and do all they can to promote their show. That might be using SEO style techniques to get brand awareness in google to social networking with friends and strangers. If you google the keywords: gaming podcast you’ll notice my property: gamingpodcast.net arrives near first if not right at the top (depends on the day). Was that a coincidence? No, not really. Now google drinking podcast and you’ll have similar results: my properties arrive first.

That was key number one: free advertising via google for people looking for podcasts related to gaming and drinking (not always going hand-in-hand of course). Two years went by with almost no user feedback in my gaming podcast, but each episode was going from ten downloads a week to twenty, and thirty and fifty then one hundred and so one… but who was listening? Silence.

I was #1 on my google search terms which brought an expanding audience but still very little in terms of feedback. The first major barrier is finding a topic that elicits a lot of feedback. The drinking podcast receives very little feedback and I’m not expecting it to grow too much in the next year. The show is more for entertainment value and learning but doesn’t ask a lot of questions. In 20+ episodes we received, probably, three e-mails about the show. Not a stunning reception.

But, the audience continues to grow, the RSS feed statistics rise and we get more downloads minutes after posting than ever before. For this podcast I have relied on my instincts as to which direction to take each episode – a drinking podcast doesn’t bring a lot of feedback but if the audience rises instead of falls I know I’m doing it right. If you’re driving in the dark and never hit a tree than you know you’re doing some pretty awesome driving.

The gaming podcast was a personal challenge, how do I grow an audience of interactive gamers. A few guidelines that have worked well for me:

Build a Blog

If you don’t have a website as a landing page for your podcast audience than you need to get one yesterday! WordPress is a great launching point because you can get a blog up and running in under an hour with a comment system and spam protection. This will be where you’ll post your show notes with open community comments.

Initially, you’ll want to post content on your blog to build up content on the site and get google to start chewing on it. If your podcast is about cats, you’ll want to blog about cats, post silly cat images, link to cat related websites and click the links to hit their site and bump their referral logs (so the author sees you). “Work the room” with people and their cat interests and let them know you’ve got a website and audio/video podcast. Post on your blog three times a day for at least three weeks to build up a bankroll of content.

I used this post method on everydaydrinkers.com and started receiving alcohol from PR people to review along with accessories. Heck, I even got a portable beer pong table because, with all my editorials, I became an expert in the drinking industry. Not too shabby as a method to start a landing site for my audio show, eh?

Setup Forums

Setup some forums, if you’re using wordpress I suggest Simple:Press from YellowFish. They will link to the user accounting system within WordPress so commentors that sign up on your blog can post forum topics immediately. Post forum topics, get your friends to post some topics and populate the forums. Don’t expect to build a 1,000 user audience overnight or even in the first few years. But, if you make it available someone may use it and you can use that as feedback for your show.

Contact Us and E-Mail

Don’t post your e-mail address on your blog if you don’t want a lot of spam – but you can setup a contact us form using WordPress and the Secure and Accessible Contact Form module. This will give your audience another way to contact you. If you’re creating a podcast you can use your e-mail in the audio since spammers aren’t that smart.

Promote Your Podcast

You can promote your podcast in a number of easy and affordable ways. After you’ve got three episodes you can submit it to iTunes. You can google “podcast directories” and create an account on all the directories then submit your RSS feed. I suggest tying your RSS feed to Feedburner so you can track statistics in one of the more industry standard methods. Each directory that accepts your podcast will also automatically link back to your website because it’s part of the standard iTunes complaint RSS feed (which Feedburner will standardize for you). That increases the chances google will rank you well.

You can also use a very low cost advertising method as I have done for my shows at ProjectWonderful. For a few cents a day you can splash your podcast banners on all types of sites that focus on the demographic you want to capture. That might be personal blogs, business, food and drinks, lifestyle, home gardening and many others. Don’t expect people to find you, find them first and do it on the cheap.

Ask Questions

There are a few ways to get your listeners to submit feedback. You can ask questions in the podcast that you think people may have an opinion on or you can discuss things that people just cannot afford to let pass, usually dealing with politics, international affairs or anything you’ve had past heated discussions about on a personal level. Some folks will go out of their way to demand feedback by just being over the top controversial, you’ll get hate mail but it is, in fact, feedback.

Do It

Do setup a website, do keep the content fresh, do post consistent episodes on a regular schedule and give your audience many outlets to respond to your podcast you’ll get some traction. We received roughly four comments on our Gaming Podcast until we setup gamingpodcast.net and built out a forum. and comment system

Many people are shy and don’t want to compose an e-mail to a stranger. Others are paranoid and don’t want their email being spread around. Some folks post on forums on a daily bases and find that the natural way to comment while others will blindly and anonymously post in response to a blog entry. Feedback comes in many forms and everyone seems to use their own technique. This is why we choose to include forum posts, blog responses and e-mails in our “feedback” section of our gaming podcast. Some users may not have submitted it thinking it would make the show, but we pick and choose to make sure gamers realize they too can talk back.

At first, you may have your own friends write in or simply make up questions from people that don’t even exist. Perhaps that “imaginary” writer has something controversial to say and it could elicit more feedback from real users. Once you start a trend others will feed into it and chat on a normal bases.

Lastly, you may notice that every podcast has its own set of responders. From Buzz Out Loud form CNET to The Daily Giz Wiz by Leo Laporte to GameSpots podcasts and language learning podcasts, there is a set of “regulars” that write in constantly and keep the show interesting. Everybody needs a few regulars, just like a bar or a restaurant — you’ll know them by name and they’ll add a new dynamic personality to the show.

Once you’ve got a few regulars consider your job done. Most of your audience is listening to an audio podcast because its a nice passive way to get through their day. They don’t need to write in to show their support because their downloads and impressions are left on the show through the shows yearly growth.

Have you ever called into an FM radio show? Probably not.

Twitter is like a home to many individuals in the Internet. Folks visit to socialize, some visit to market themselves and their brands while yet others come to find people with like interests. I have nothing wrong with people pimping their websites, dropping in a link on their 140-character post or otherwise conversing with the work that is social media. Hell, I do it all the time.

But, please, at least try to be somewhat human when socializing on Twitter. Some key turn-offs for me, things that usually get me to NOT follow you on Twitter is filling in the Real Name field with your domain name. You know what? If I want to know your domain I’ll ask. Or, better yet, be subtle and hand me your domain equipped with useful information, pictures or a funny video once you get to know me a bit. I enjoy a direct message saying “hi” and explaining why you started following me so that we can open a dialog and talk.

I socialize on Twitter as I would as an individual at the worlds biggest Internet conference. There are thousands of potential friends, leads, colleagues and associates – how would you handle yourself at a conference? Would you lead off by saying “Hi, I’m Derrick Schommer from EverydayDrinkers.TV, I have a great website that can help you out!” and run off to yet another person and repeat the same promotion?

No. You’d introduce yourself, you’d open a dialog and a line of questioning and, eventually, you may drop your website and a bit about your job. You may even lead off with a business card and then sit down and socialize to see what you and the recipient(s) have in common. You may find you have a lot in common and could work with each other to some common goal. Observe how you handled yourself, you were personal and friendly all while treating the other person as an individual sentient being.

For instance, I’ve followed and “friended” many folks that run drinking websites, reviews and wine blogs. Why? I love wine, I like to read, I like to drink and I’ve got something in common with them. If I’m nice enough they may even tolerate when I tweet my latest video podcast episodes on a weekly basis because they know I’m a human with a life, problems and have gotten to know me over a few “tweets.”

If you simply want to follow me in hopes I’ll follow you back so you can spam me with diet pills, SEO benefits, lines of haircare products and everything else under the sun you’ll probably notice you’ve got very few followers. Nine times out of ten, if a twitter user is following 5,000 people and only 25 have followed them back there is a reason.

Some helpful tips I’ve learned from observing and growing my own small social network of friends:

• Be friendly and helpful. If a follower asks you to check something out, give them a few minutes and do it then send them back your thoughts.
• Be a good Internet citizen and be approachable and friendly as you would in real life. Twitter can be a tool but so can you.
• Post daily updates that can be useful or silly. Ponder a thought and send out a tweet with no other agenda.
• Post links to other people’s sites, perhaps those that are following you to share the love. It’s a back and forth relationship – it’s not all about you.
• Follow people you find have interesting things to say, don’t follow every single person just because the Twitter allows it.
• Pimp your site on occasion but be modest, ask for comments/suggestions on how you could make it better.
• Don’t be annoying, if you post every five minutes all day you’re going to lose followers (or at least me). Just because you don’t have anything to do doesn’t mean I don’t.
• Use your real name or at least something that people think is your real name. We want to interact with people, not domains. Put your domain in the “more info URL” because, if I want more info I’ll go there, don’t force it on me.
• PR people can be cool too. Lot’s of great PR folks are using twitter as a useful resource, such as Flying Dog Brewery, Comcast and Popcap Games. Many of them understand how to use the product the right way. Sometimes you can get to exclusive or less well known social events, parties and, if you’re lucky, free beer.

And, remember, you don’t have to have 20,000 followers to be a nice person. You probably have more useful information than some of the top-tier internet personalities anyway. Telling 20,000 people you had a steak and cheese for lunch is just darn silly.

Lastly, it wouldn’t be a good post if I didn’t ask for you to follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/everydaydrinker

That’s my shameless plug, but at least I gave you about 830 words before I pimped myself.