Online Marketing Blog

I’ve had some back and forth with collegues recently about the popularity of podcasting, live audio streaming and also how podcasting fits within the social media category of communication channels.

eMarketer says podcasts are rising in popularity: “As a percentage of Internet users, podcast downloaders will grow from 9% in 2008 to 17% in 2013″.  The Pew Internet & American Life Project also indicates an uptick in podcast popularity, stating that 19% of all internet users have downloaded a podcast in 2008, up from 12% in 2006.

It seems to me that live streaming audio is likely more on the rise but I did not find any research at eMarketer or at Pew about the distinction between podcasts and streaming audio on the web. Hopefully you can help me out by taking this poll.

UPDATE 12/29/08: Voting is closed and the winner, Best Podcast Social Media, DishyMix by Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media. Congratulations Susan!

Congrats also to the runner up, User Friendly Thinking by Bizzuka’s John Munsell and Paul Chaney.

There are many ways to acquire information on the topic of social media ranging from blogs to books to Twitter. As part of our efforts to aggregate useful resources for Online Marketing Blog readers on topics related to digital PR, search and social marketing, we bring you this fine list of the best podcasts on social media.

Where did this list come from? I started out with a small list of my own and then reached out to the 5000+ people following @leeodden on Twitter as well as direct queries to some of the most respected social media marketing and public relations professionals on the web. The same podcasts were recommended repeatedly.

Traffic, everyone wants it and is trying really hard to get more people to their site. Good news, there are creative ways to bring people in without doing a lot of work.

1) Social Bookmarking. It’s been around long enough that some people know all about it and have a tendency to just search del.icio.us or Furl for what they want. Social sites are basically like a user defined search engine. Are you listed? Make sure to bookmark yourself every now and then and add social bookmark links to your blog posts and/or web pages so others can bookmark you too.