Blogging

John Cass of IMO Wireless, my 12th interview and one of the first people to believe in my 1,000 podcast project enough to spend some time with me, has recently written a great book (

Most blogs have a fairly small readership, usually a handful of friends, peers or family members. But there are the occasional standouts that achieve 1,000s of readers through some combination of hard work, luck and the right niche. TechCrunch's 300,000 plus is the common example. Recently, I was lucky enough to interview a sharp entrepreneur named Collis Ta'eed who took his new blog/community (FreelanceSwitch) from 0 to 4,000 RSS subscribers in under 30 days.

There is certainly no shortage of media in this world. From the "old school" media channels of magazines, newspapers, books, TV & radio to the "new school" world of blogs, podcasts, vlogs & social networks, we're all drowning in content. Today, I was lucky enough to chat with a man who is seeking to span those two worlds with a new publication - Larry Genkin of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine.

Public relations is one of the fields that will certainly be most affected by social media. Rather than working with a handful of media outlets, PR pros now must also deal with the millions of blogs, forums, social networks, online videos and more. For this podcast, I connected with Phil Gomes, one of the sharp minds at Edelman focusing on the changing face of media.

Phil was nice enough to talk about the social media release, who's tackling social media right, the state of research in the space and more.

With all the buzz and hype, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that social media is young. And due to that relative youth, both leading practitioners and researchers are still just starting to sink their teeth into the subject. This morning I was lucky enough to interview a Phd student from the University of Maryland's ebiquity Research Group who has been researching social media longer than most (i.e. 2 years!).

For this interview, I hopped the pond (aka the Atlantic) via Skype to chat with an expert on new media, online marketing, and eBusiness named Chris Garrett. A web addict from the early days (1994!), recently part of the Performancing team until it was acquired, and now an independent consultant, Chris helps companies sell more online.

As blogging becomes more established, many a company is considering if/when/how to launch a blog of their own. Earthlink has been on the forefront of the corporate blogging for the last several years through initiatives like Earthling, their primary corporate blog. The blog, which features prominently on their homepage, is authored by Dave Coustan, an employee that was recruited for the task.

Podcasting is still a pretty immature trend compared to other forms of social media though some recent research shows awareness and knowledge slowly growing. Since the space is changing so fast, I was lucky enough to chat with Leesa Barnes, a podcaster, author, speaker and consultant who is "in the trenches" on a daily basis.

One the big questions in my mind about social media is how to large corporations can apply it. A few of the larger tech companies (Microsoft, HP, etc.) have taken a free-for-all approach. BMC Software, a $1.5 Billion publicly-traded company, has taken a slightly more controlled one with Talk BMC.

For my 75th podcast, I was lucky enough to sit down with Jeff Turner, the founder of Blogbeat. Blogbeat was one of the leading companies in blog analytics and was recently purchased by Feedburner.

Jeff was nice enough to take a few minutes away from his vacation to chat about how Blogbeat was founded, how the Feedburner acquisition came about, the future of blog analytics and more.

Enjoy!