14. Social Media Monitoring: This one is no joke. It’s step one for social media. You’ve got to listen before you can take part in a conversation. There are lots of tools to do this, depending on exactly what you’re trying to do. Basically free things like Google Reader or Bloglines let you track certain feeds. Services like Terraminds let you search Twitter. More advanced tools such as Radian6 and BuzzLogic cost money but let you do more analysis than you otherwise can. You’ve got to monitor to know what to say and monitor to know how you’re doing.

15. User-Generated Content: Hopefully this one is obvious, but instead of a company or organization generating content for a website you can have your users-generate content. Think broadly on this one. Sure it’s “Submit a video”, but that’s hard. It’s also comments left on a site, reviews, etc. More content on your site is great. Imagine if you can get others to do it! Some extra cool folks use acronyms for this buzzword, like UGC or CGC (for consumer generated content). Try that at your next meeting!

16. Web 2.0: This phrase was coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2003. In December 2006, even he was still trying to define it. I like to think of this way: Web 2.0 is the transition of websites from static holders of information to sources of content. Picture Web 1.0 websites as half-filled buckets, sitting upright, while Web 2.0 websites are three-quarter filled buckets, pouring slowly out to fill other buckets. Some like to say it’s the transition of the web as a platform. It’s also, importantly, a change in philosophy as to how information is generated and shared. Some people are already trying to define Web 3.0, but I won’t dignify any of that nonsense with a link.

17. Social Networks. You know this one. Facebook. MySpace. Easy, right? Sure. Just don’t forget the niche social networks that abound when you’re doing social media marketing. For our clients, we’ve often found far more engaged communities in places other than Facebook and MySpace.

18. Blogosphere: The blogosphere is an imaginary atmosphere in which all the nattering bloggers chatter floats around. People say things like, “the blogosphere was abuzz with talk of the Elliot Spitzer scandal.” While it’s a buzzword, you’ll find as you follow a group of people on a certain subject that the blogosphere starts to take on a certain personality.

19. Viral Marketing: The definition is simple. It’s a marketing campaign that is so compelling that people share it, so it spreads, like a virus. But the reason we chuckle at it is because people frequently ask us to make something “go viral.” Or make a “viral video.” Two problems with that. #1) Viral is impossible to predict. (Could you have guessed before you saw the video below that it would take off? It did. Like crazy.) #2) Doing something “wacky” enough to go viral can hurt a brand. Yeah, yeah, I know all about Dove Evolution, and I can tell you why that’s actually NOT a good example of social media marketing, as brilliant as it is.

20. Ruby on Rails. Oh yeah, using this one in a conversation scores you big points. Through in the term 37signals while you do it for bonus points. Here’s what it is. Ruby is a programming language. The guys at 37signals made it really easy to use it quickly. (Get it? They put it “on rails”.) It really was brilliant what they did. Very robust platform. We use it here sometimes. Gene’s a big fan. If you can compare it to CakePHP, then you shouldn’t be reading this post at all!

21. Social Media Press Release. The merits of the social media press release have been pretty heavily debated since Shift Communications came out with a template for it. Basically, the idea is to make your release easy for anyone, including bloggers, to pull from. Extract key points. Embed your photos and videos on their site, etc. An interesting idea. I personally think there’s work to do to make it practical, but the idea that the traditional press release could be improved is no doubt true.

22. Vlogging. Not to be confused with “flogs“, which are fake blogs. Vlogging is short for video blogging. Instead of writing all this stuff, why not do a video about it. Here’s a quick video that I did explaining why I started Ignite Social Media. It’s an example of a vlog post, although some folks only do video on their blogs. (There are search engine problems with having no words, though.)

23. Microblogging. Microblogging is, as you might guess, really short blog posts. Twitter is a good example. Some say that Tumblr is, too. If you don’t know what Twitter or Tumblr are, go back to Part I from yesterday.

24. Transparency and Authenticity. If you’ve been looking at social media for more than 10 minutes, you’ve come across these words a lot. That’s because all the companies who have gotten in trouble trying to do social media marketing got in trouble because they tried to be too clever for their own good. Just read this post if you want to know what I mean. Sometimes the best marketing is to just say what you know. The only time Wal-mart has gotten credit in social media is when they decided to just be honest.

25. White Label. White label means that someone built a program and they’ll let you have it (sometimes free, sometimes at great expense) so that you can put your design around it and make it your own. You get all the brand benefits, and all the functionality of a great tool, without the expense of building it. Often you can choose which elements you want, move them around, etc., to make something truly unique. KickApps is white label social network building. Clicky is white label analytics. White label can be a great option for quick, cost effective deployment, as long as you still think about strategy and user experience as you implement it.

So that’s it. You’re up to speed. I’ve even created a social media buzzword bingo sheet generator for your next meeting, or impress your friends at the next “Web 2.0″ internal meeting you have to suffer through.

Remember, tell me how I did. Any definitions that missed the mark? Leave me a comment with your two cents, or your favorite social media buzzwords.

Comments

As such, the vlog that launched the career of Amanda Congdon is looking for other revenue streams, according to Market Watch‘s Frank Barnako.

Baron wowed the audience at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo last October, speaking about monetization strategies and announcing he’d just closed a deal for $80,000 for a week’s worth of ads.

But that was when Rocketboom was peaking at 300,000-plus downloads. In the past six months, downloads have dwindled to 200,000. That’s still a hefty audience, but as Baron mentions at Market Watch, advertisers are seeking millions, rather than hundreds of thousands.

If dealing in text, an audience the size of Lexington, KY may be more than enough to attract certain advertisers on traditional terms. The cost of online video, however, means higher ad prices to pay for it, and advertisers start wincing.

So now the pioneer in the industry is forced to redirect, focus on merchandizing and consider a subscription model. This is interesting mostly because of Baron’s openness – the world (well, the small world that’s paying attention) is watching as this young man struggles with a model.

In the meantime, Baron is taking consulting jobs and speaking gigs to fund his outfit.

"What he’s finding out is that it’s a new medium that advertisers are willing to experiment with but its not a standard practice in their marketing," said iEntry Inc. CEO and WebProNews publisher Rich Ord.

"Metrics are difficult with online video. Marketers still aren’t using the Internet for branding, they’re using it for direct response."

Perhaps the issue here is tallying up the value of a 3-minute daily broadcast that is incredibly niche – but is also incredibly limited. What News Corp. is proving with MySpace, and what Google is proving with YouTube, is that the value is in community building.

A community, with its various topics, provides various audiences in their own niches. But their collective value will be stunning.

Download Video:  Real | Win | MP4 | Quicktime

Podcasting, vlogging, and other incarnations of the new e-business world cannot focus on the way things have been done since mass communication began – which is focus on general content for the lowest common denominator, controlled by advertisers.

Baron referred to LetsKnit2gether.com, a vlog focused on knitting, as a model for this type of niche production. True, there will be a smaller audience, but the audience is so targeted that advertisers should recognize the value of reaching it.

The point podcasters and others have missed, in his estimation is the value of niche content that we’ve learned from blogs like Engadget, the most popular blog: highly focused content serves the audience best, because it is findable by the audience that desires that content most.

Podcasting, then, should follow that model, targeting “very, very, very, very specific” groups, and find a way to engage the audience at a high level.

He said the biggest disadvantage most podcasters have is that the audience is so far away from the access point. Once they’ve downloaded the program to a portable device, which is kind of the point, they are away from their computers while consuming the content. Podcasters and vloggers need to find a way to bring them back to their computer seats.

One way he suggests to this is through the use of wikis. A wiki can be made to match the format of the site, and can have some pages where the public cannot edit them. But, if there are topics created that the audience may have sufficient knowledge about, like video cameras, for instance, then the audience becomes a key stakeholder in the content.

Plus, search engine spiders can find that content, and site operators can spend less time creating text.

“Think about it from the audience perspective,” he said.

For promotional reasons, Baron said not to be afraid to let users use your content and distribute it for you. “As long as people aren’t making money off it, allow it to go wherever it can.” Chasing it down and trying to control is, in his opinion, a waste of resources, as it is free promotion, and more could be done with money spent trying to leverage that control.

Baron said that Rocketboom’s approach to advertising was different than many might expect. When other video sites are including their advertising in a pre-roll situation, Rocketboom ads are post-roll. Andrew is sensitive to his viewers, and imagines them waiting to download and waiting through a 30-second spot just to get to the content they want. And in today’s hectic Internet world, that just won’t do. You don’t want your audience saying “I hate this commercial…I hate Mop and Glo.”

Though a post-roll advertisement may get fewer views, at least he can tell advertisers (though it is a harder sell) that this many people were definitely interested in the commercial.

Other ways to monetize:

Merchandizing

Premium subscriptions

Licensing

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“You don’t need to go out and get venture capital,” said Baron. “It is so cheap to produce. You should really focus on building a big audience. Then, later, you can sell advertising and sponsorships.”

Baron does his own ad sales for Rocketboom, which garners up to 350,000 page views per day. A short while ago, the show’s host, Amanda Congdon shocked him and everyone else by leaving abruptly – from the anchor chair.

Rocketboom 2.0 came back online with former MTV host Joanne Colan. Baron said page views dropped a bit at first, but have since returned to previous levels.

Baron attributes the success of Rocketboom to a blend of entertainment and information (as the media academics call it, “infotainment”), but also there was a third factor, he says: interactivity.

“If you can combine those two and add a third component via an online collaborative audience – getting people involved – this can be very powerful. We report like a blog, in a snarky way, and people leave comments immediately.”

About 25 percent of Rocketboom’s content comes from audience suggestion and participation. “As a result of Web 2.0there’s no one controlling content anymore,” said Baron.

The panel, which also included Alex Clive of WorldTV.com, enumerated the ways to promote your vlog, which for the most part match how you would promote any media content on the Net. Clive said his company focused on traditional SEO and AdWords.

Baron is a believer in the power of link building and social networking. “I always say ‘target bloggers,’” he said. “Make them your first niche with Web video. Focusing on top-level bloggers will lead to many bloggers linking and discussing your content.”

Speaking of content, Clive reiterates the Truth of the SEO Ages: content is king – and provides the quote writers everywhere will scribble down and remember.

“Writing is underrated. We have flashy websites, but often a really good writer who can engage is more important.”

Cheers to that.

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