Reno and Its Discontents, a popular local Reno blog that discusses politics, development, culture, media and various other issues affecting the area, and was recently featured on CNN, gave us and our interviewee, Jim Litchfield a little proverbial ink yesterday regarding our podcast interview with him.In the interview, we talk with Jim about his involvement with the implementation of the $1.5 million Reno Whitewater Park, which has been a phenomenal improvement to the downtown core. It has stimulated new development consisting of condos, restaurants, bars and shops, and it has also garnered an impressive amount of PR for the region. Just Google Jim Litchfield or Reno River Festival, and you will see. Since its inception, there has been a river festival each May where professional kayakers from around the country come to compete in the Truckee River.While Reno is definitely still holding on to its roots in the gaming industry, there is a lot of change happening to the City, which is diversifying its image. With close access to 13 different world-class ski resorts, Lake Tahoe, whitewater kayaking, fishing, mountain biking, and more, it is truly “America’s Adventure Place.”I’ve got to say, it is also pretty awesome when your CEO let’s you go skiing on a work day. With a little bit of snow yesterday in the high elevations, I am beginning to feel the itch.

GigaVox Media, a company started by Doug Kaye of IT Conversations and long time podcaster, has released a free software application called the Levelator. This application will take a look at the entire wav file from your podcast and smooth out the sounds making them all close to the same level. This helps prevent those annoying dips in audio when the speaker either leans away from the Mic or decides to whisper (I am mostly speaking of myself). According to the website:

It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all
three. It’s much more than those tools, and it’s much simpler to use.

I briefly tested it on Episode #2 of Horse Power in which we interviewed David Archer. Since we were so new to the game, we had our audio tuned for the worst possible recording experience. The Levelator did a very good job of making the audio sound better - although you could tell where it really had to amplify bits and pieces. I think now that we are better and recording, it will just add a bit more polish to our podcasts.

There has been considerable attention applied to Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail, and rightfully so. It is a wonderful book that does an excellent job of encapsulating the shift in the traditional curve of available and purchased products. If you are a visual person, then check out this YouTube video that a Scottish studio put together to market the book.The infinite shelf space that the online realm provides us makes it much easier to satisfy, and drive, niche markets. From a statistical perspective, think of a bell shaped curve with a long tail that never reaches zero. While the most profit is realized within the bell, there is still substantial profit to be made down the length of the curve and out along the tail.As Anderson mentioned, Jeff Bezos figured this out a while back when he started Amazon. It is not a new practice, but no one prior to Anderson ever set out to explain this phenomenon that has caught many traditional brick and mortar stores like Blockbuster and Tower Records by surprise.The Long Tail also illustrates the importance and the power of search. Look at the bell shape curve as representative of traditional media - print, radio, TV. They capture mainstream customer attentions, provide brand recognition, and drive sales. But then you have other channels like email, web, mobile and also blogs and podcasts. Not only does traditional media cost more to implement, it is generally short lived - it can only sit on the proverbial shelf for so long.I don’t need to proselytize about email and web. Most people understand the increasing importance of these two channels. But when it comes to blogging and podcasting, many marketers are not so sure whether it will work for their business. They do not understand the potential these new emerging channels represent for targeting niche audiences with money to spend. If you convert just one lead from your blog or podcast, and that individual or business represents substantial revenue, then the effort was worth it. The reality is these channels represent the potential to reach much more than one lead. The trick: Content.Blogs and podcasts offer the ability to generate content quickly and effectively. Most websites can be updated with content management systems, but changes often have to be made by committee or need to be considered more carefully. If you are in business, and you or your employees have relevant, valuable experience and information to share, then blogs and podcasts represent a means of communicating this information in a personal, conversational form. Furthermore, you can accept comments, do trackbacks and links to further your exposure and leverage the power of search.Content is king, and the more valuable content you have, the better.Jakob Nielsen’s use of logarithmic charts helps to demonstrate that you cannot look at web traffic from such a linear perspective when predicting demand. The problem is that you eventually run out of content. But what it helps illustrate is that you can “wag the drooping tail” by creating more content as long as it makes economical sense to do so.In my analogy here, we as marketers should all be looking at ways of wagging the tail with new media like blogging and podcasting. They are not as expensive to implement as other forms of traditional media, and you can capitalize on existing resources to maintain them. Blogs and podcasts leverage the power of search by creating more content, and differentiate your business from the competition.Technorati : blog, chris anderson, podcast, search, the long tail, web traffic, youtube

Yesterday morning I attended a Roundtable discussion put on by the Sierra Nevada Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America focused on the relevancy of journalism in today’s public relations market. In fact, our Director of Business Development, Josh Kenzer was one of the speakers.Before arriving to the event I was a little puzzled by the title, “Is Journalism Relevant in Today’s PR Market?,” because I thought, of course it’s relevant. A better title would consist of something like, why is journalism relevant in light of social media, or how has its role changed or been impacted. But the discussion ended up focusing heavily on new channels of distribution, search, blogging, podcasting, and new online social mediums or medias. Of course, I was happy that it did. Social media is having significant effects. If you haven’t seen any recent examples of how it has played a role check out what AOL recently had to deal with, or Dell, or Jupiter Research.Other topics of the discussion included truth, relevancy, media fragmentation, how impossible it is for journalists to report on everything, whether or not a blogger can really be a journalist, and the fact that pr professionals, reporters, and media companies are motivated by money. I certainly believe that both reporters and media outlets have a passion for truth, breaking news, and getting the facts straight, but there is still an undeniable and underlying influence attributed to money. PR professionals get paid to generate exposure just as much as media companies depend on advertisers.That does not change the fact that I am a news junky. I have my RSS feeds setup, receive my email newsletters, read cnn.com, nytimes.com, my local newspaper, turn on the TV at night for more local and national news, PBS, and, you guessed it, the Daily Show. From a local perspective, I am often frustrated when I simply see AP stories regurgitated, or some TV reporter sitting on the side of the road telling me its raining or snowing when I can simply look outside and see that it is. Bring me more in depth reporting about social, economic and environmental subjects. Take those paid reporters and put their energies toward something more meaningful - but to who? Me? Maybe they aren’t so concerned with me. Maybe their target market is the person who wants to see someone in their slicks standing by the side of the road in the rain. Many people are pretty apathetic about what is going on outside of their little sphere. I have friends that are this way.I appreciate the power of social media and self-expression, but I want it to resonate more in main stream media. Traditional media, namely print publications, are struggling to discover new channels of communication. They are looking at email, mobile, rss, blogging, podcasting, myspace, and the like, but I think they are considering it as a way of distributing the same old story; or advertisement. Maybe we as a collective whole can dig a little deeper than that.My biggest takeaway from the Roundtable discussion was the emphasis on truth, transparency, and relationships. Send a press release to a reporter with misinformation, and you can kiss that relationship goodbye. Also, you could wind up getting blasted in the blogosphere or somewhere else, and the negative implications of that could be extremely harmful. As a company, we’ve got to continually get our name out there to generate awareness, but it has to be done with these ethical and sensible principles in mind. Once you’ve got that in place, hit every possible channel you can. Technorati : journalism, public relations, reno public relations, social media

Robert and I have started podcasting. The idea is to interview Nevada business professionals on how they ended up here and what they like, don’t like, issues facing their business and so on. If you listen to episode #2 with David Archer you will hear how 90% of Nevadan businesses are small businesses. We hope to utilize this new channel as an effective way to introduce listeners to the people behind these businesses as well as the local and state representatives that affect how these businesses operate. We also hope, from time to time, to interview people, like Toby Bloomberg (as in episode #3 coming soon), who can share information with businesses to help them be more successful at marketing.

Just like this blog, I expect this podcast to evolve over time as we refine our process and approach.

Robert, anything to add?

Technorati : marketing, podcast, relationship marketing, twelve horses, twelvehorses

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with Dean Cole Campbell of the Reynolds School of Journalism for the University of Nevada, Reno (of which I am an alumni). He was accompanied by Howard Goldbaum and Larry Dailey. They discussed how they are equipping students with the tools necessary to compete in a job market where online media is part of the job. They have some exciting things planned around their graduate program and wanted to discuss how Twelve Horses (my employer) might help or participate. It was great to hear how my alma mater is doing and get the opportunity to geek out a little about new and emerging technologies.

I hope I have exciting updates in the future about how Twelve Horses and the Reynolds School of Journalism can or will work together on various projects.

Technorati : College, Journalism, University of Nevada, Web 2.0