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I’m assuming most of you already know what podcasting is, but just in case one of you has been living under a rock, podcasting is essentially your own downloadable radio talk show. You can do everything from talking about the hottest industry news to interviewing experts in your field. You can promote your podcast through your blog, website, iTunes, and other places.

A number of businesses have jumped on the podcasting bandwagon, and those who do it well are reaping several benefits. Here are just a few of the biggest podcasting benefits.

1.    Increase your authority—Just like blogging or writing an e-book, podcasting is another way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. The best way to build your authority is to give your unique insight on relevant industry topics without sounding like a constant advertisement for your services. By providing quality discussions to your listeners, your words will start to carry more weight, and over time, people will begin to trust you.

2.    Connect with a new audience—With the ability to place your podcast on iTunes and other websites, you have an excellent opportunity to reach an entirely new audience. Some of your listeners will be people who would have never found your blog or website. And once you have them listening to your podcast, you can direct them to your website, thus increasing your traffic in the process.
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Writing a great sales letter isn’t rocket science. It’s a simple process that can be accomplished by following these 6 steps.

Step #1: Identify your target audience

Before you even think about writing your sales letter, you need to figure out who your target audience is. Write down their general characteristics (age, sex, income level, etc.), and then move toward getting as specific as possible (what are their wants/needs?, what do they like?, how do they talk?, where do they hang out? And so on.) The point is this: you need to have a clear image of exactly who you are communicating with so you can come up with the best approach to connecting with them.

Here are a few ways you can learn your target audience’s language:

• Follow them on Twitter
• Read the magazines they read
• Look at the ad copy of the products they buy

Step #2: Create a benefit-driven subject line

Your first challenge with e-mail marketing is getting your readers to actually open your e-mail. Creating a powerful subject line can be a challenge because you want it to be compelling enough to open but believable enough to not reek of spam. The key to your subject line is to pick a single benefit to focus on. In a recent post, I used an example of someone promoting an SAT e-book. Let’s continue with that example.

First let’s choose a benefit. We’ll choose “Increasing your SAT score by 200 points.”

Now, let’s create a powerful subject line that delivers that benefit. You have many different choices here.

• The Question Headline: Do You Know the Secret to IncreasingYour SAT Score by 200 Points?
• The Straight-Forward Headline: Increase Your SAT Score by 200 Points Today
• The Numbers Headline: 5 Easy Steps to Increasing Your SAT Score by 200 Points
• The Personalized Headline: Chad, Would You Like to Increase Your SAT Score by 200 Points?

There are several other subject-line formats you can use, but the main goal is to intrigue the reader by including an irresistible benefit.

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A great blog design can go a long way to catching your readers’ eyes and making you appear credible. If you don’t have the cash to pay a professional to create a custom Wordpress theme for you, don’t worry, there are plenty of excellent free themes available online. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Gridlock—This grid-based design can be used for anything from an online magazine website to a clean design for your business’ main website.

2. Blues Theme –A simple, clean 2- column design.

3. Scarlett–I honestly couldn’t believe this magazine theme was free. It’s better than most premium themes out there.

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We’ve talked a little about the sizes of social media networks in Part One and the types of social media networks in Part Two, so now we’ll take a look at some tools that can make managing your social media empire a little easier. You know about the types of social networks and why they’re important, so here are some must-have tools to keep you profiting from your social media experience.

TweetMeme – If you’re looking for an easy way to see “what’s hot” on Twitter, this website will easily show you what’s popular amongst Twitterers all over the world. This can be really useful information for a lot of reason. Unlike Google Trends and some other websites, Twitter usually allows for a feeling of the pulse of the world “right now” not a few hours ago. If you’re ready to tap into the interests of the world at the moment, this online tool is going to help you.

BackType – This is a really useful online tool that will let you “follow” your comments on multiple social media sites easily. From Blogger to Wordpress to Friendster to Myspace and more, BackType will let you follow comments tied to a keyword or phrase as well. Want to know when your company is mentioned in a comment? No problem.

TweetDeck – While this is still in ‘beta,’ that isn’t necessarily a bad thing in today’s world. This tool allows you to do a lot more with Twitter – which is quickly gaining relevance as one of the main “titanic” social media networks. From creating Twitter groups to previewing those sometimes annoying (but necessary) ’short URLs,’ TweetDeck can make your Twitter life a lot easier.

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While in Part One we talked a little about MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks, we didn’t really differentiate between them. In Part Two of this series on social media and building a smart network, we’ll take a look at the types of property in the social media landscape.

Titanic(s)

When it comes to social media, there are the big three; MySpace, Facebook, and newcomer Twitter. While there are other really large social media networks out there, these are the ones that get the most press and are talked about because they attract very large numbers of visitors on a daily and monthly basis – tens of millions. This is a lot of people with varied interests, but is there a viable future for big social media networks?

Are these big types of social media networks headed for an iceberg they can’t see? It’s a possibility. While there’s a good chance these big networks are going to be around for a long while to come, as more and more micro niche social networks open up, more and more people are going to flock to smaller sites of people that more closely fit them. They’ll still most likely have accounts on the big social media networks, but for the most part, their participation is going to be on the micro-sites with people who have very similar interests.

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