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Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Andrew Tellijohn
October 2006

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WE ALL KNOW about Hollywood “It” actors — those young up-and-comers who preen on the covers of fashion magazines and cause a lot of buzz.

The business community gets excited in a similar manner about leading-edge communication technologies. Today’s “It” roster includes podcasts, wikis and Web logs, also known as blogs. Five years ago, webcasts and videoconferences were on that short list, proving how wave-of-the-future technology can quickly become commonplace.

Companies that use podcasts, wikis and blogs are regarded as savvy. But beyond the hip factor, advocates say those tools also serve a need and fulfill a practical purpose.

These technologies help organize and disseminate information quickly and efficiently on the Web. They may also add a level of intimacy and casualness that doesn’t come from traditional communications methods such as press releases, brochures and Web sites.

They’re especially catching the eye of small-business owners and officers because of their ease of use and small expense – and because of the competitive advantage they can provide.

“Small businesses don’t have all the checks and balances and necessary approvals in the publishing processes,” says Garrick Van Buren, owner of Working Pathways, a Minneapolis-based consulting firm. “They can actually leapfrog what the big guys are doing and react faster and more accurately” to customers and industry issues. He helps clients set up blogs and podcasts, and maintains his own personal blog.

The emergence of these technologies hasn't gone unnoticed by the marketing and public relations industry. Some firms are recommending their clients use them as part of their marketing mix. There's disagreement, however, whether these technologies should even be used to push products and services.

Blogs are oldest
A blog, the oldest of the technologies, is usually defined as an online journal, written in an informal voice in reverse chronological order. Companies that do blogs often post them right on their Web sites, or maintain a separate URL specifically for the blog. Software providers, such as Blogger.com and WordPress.org, help companies and individuals easily set them up. Experts in the industry estimate 37 million blogs exist, but only a fraction of those are maintained by businesses.

Blogs have also garnered a lot of attention in recent years for their role in politics. During the 2004 presidential election, candidates John Kerry and Howard Dean and their aides maintained blogs while on the campaign trail. In Minnesota, many politicians use blogs as a way to keep connected with their constituents.

Ray Cox is one of them. His 2002 entry into the political arena as a state representative coincided with his entry into cyberspace. “I wasn’t really thrilled with the electronic world … I was not computer savvy at all. I even hated e-mails.”

He had struggled to maintain a fresh Web site for his company, Northfield Construction Co., since he launched it in 1996. Intimidated, he would instead shuffle edits and additions to a local Web developer to upload. “My intentions were good,” he says, yet the 60-to-90-day window he gave himself to send data would inevitably get longer and longer.

Once he was elected, a friend introduced him to blogging. He discovered how easy it was to maintain, and appreciated that he could use a casual voice to get out his message. Cox launched www.raycox.net for his political career, and set up a blog on his company’s Web site, www.northfieldconstruction.net.

Cox, the sole author, mostly writes about construction projects his company has undertaken. “It’s a more personal and in-depth look at the kind of things we do,” he says.

He’s not certain whether the blog alone has generated business. He instead regards his blog as if it were one of his industry’s “home shows.”

“You set up a booth and pictures of your jobs, and talk to hundreds of people,” he says. “That same kind of browsing goes on privately in people's living rooms or dens with their computers.”

Often it’s that building of familiarity over many months and years that culminates in a business deal, he says. His company grosses between $7 million and $10 million annually.

Podcasts are audio versions of blogs, although some users, aided by marketers, are refining their production, incorporating bumper music, interviews and sponsors.

Experts estimate there are about 45,000 podcasts on the Web, up from 5,000 last year.

The meteoric growth goes hand in hand with the wide use of iTunes, an Internet audio software that allows users to download and then listen to podcasts on digital portable players, sometimes called MP3 players. Indeed, “podcast” derives its name from iPod, the most popular such player, from Macintosh.

Companies can hire a firm to produce podcasts, or use software, such as Audacity or GarageBand, to capture audio on their own.

Companies can set up a subscription – paid or free – for their podcasts, or simply put them on their Web sites for anyone to download. Most are designed so that they can be listened to at a computer desktop. Some experts suggest that a written summary accompany podcasts, so that search engines — most of which only read text — can easily locate them.

Companies should pay close attention to their blog readers and podcast listeners. After all, these people represent an engaged and motivated demographic, says Bruce Stasch, owner of Minneapolis-based Apex Marketing Group, and two golf e-commerce sites (one for wholesale, the other for retail). Stasch blogs and podcasts about golf topics, and consults with clients on how to use these technologies.

 “If you start to build momentum and consistent readership or listenership, all of a sudden you’ve got a relationship. And those are highly, highly targeted customers,” he says.

Time to collaborate
Wikis — collaborative Web sites or intranets that users can easily modify — are perhaps the least understood of the three technologies. While the others are gaining ground in the business world, “this is the land of geekhood, still,” Van Buren says.

Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia, is the best-known example. But some companies are unsure how they can apply wikis to their own data.

A wiki, however, turned out to be the perfect fit for Carter McNamara, owner of Authenticity Consulting, a Robbinsdale-based management consulting firm. He and his wife, Teri – also a consultant — run www.managementhelp.org, an online management consulting resource library.

It’s an extremely popular site, with 30,000 hits a day. Type in the key word “management” into Google’s search engine and it’s the third referenced Web site.

The site brims with data freely contributed by Carter and many other management consultants, and it’s organized – “not just stacks,” says Carter. This sophisticated look, however, leads most visitors to assume a small army of professional librarians maintains the site.

That's far from the truth, they say. The McNamaras, in fact, are the lone administrators. They've logged about 2,000 pro bono hours since launching the site 10 years ago, but now they're backlogged. And they’ve got the e-mail files – full of thousands of forwarded links, waiting to be uploaded – to prove it.

Some contributors, they say, were getting impatient with the long wait. The couple felt pressured to find a solution that would more efficiently move their mountains of data onto the Web site.

Carter had the epiphany to convert the site into a wiki when he read about the emerging technology in Time magazine. Here’s a way, he thought, to spread the labor around. Instead of him and Teri collecting and sitting on the data, he could allow contributors free access to the site to set up their links on their own.

Though the Web site "initially was just a gift of the heart" says Teri, "it accidentally turned into a promotional tool for our company," driving sales of their books and inquiries to their practice. The firm grosses about $250,000 a year.

The wiki, due out in fall 2006, should drive even more traffic to the library’s Web site. But the McNamaras forecast the wiki will ultimately reduce the visibility of their company. That’s a Catch-22 about wikis, they say. As more and more contributors add content, Carter’s articles will dwindle as a percentage. There are 5,300 links currently; they expect between 50 and 250 new links will be added each month once the wiki is rolled out.

But the McNamaras are also opting to scale down the number and size of their company’s logo on the site. They acknowledge other consultants might not want to submit their original material if they feel they’re only boosting a competitor.

And, they say, they believe in respecting the community, utopian spirit of the wiki.

“I’m kind of from the ‘60s,” says Carter. "I’m idealistic and give stuff away."

That notion of handing over ownership may turn off many companies from using wikis, say the McNamaras. Also disconcerting can be the loss of control.

To ensure some standards of quality and decency, the McNamaras plan to create a “delayed edit” function, so they can approve content before it’s added to the site. They also will set up a feature where people can report abuses.

The McNamaras chose SeedWiki.com to design their software. They've invested $5,000 in the project, with money they received from a nonprofit.

At least one local company, Minneapolis-based Internet service provider and Web host VISI, is offering a low-cost wiki product, called ViaWiki. It was rolled out in July 2006. The larger premium packages typically chosen by companies run for no more than $100 a month.

The genius behind wikis, says VISI CEO Mike Sowada, is that multiple users can manipulate and make changes to a file at the same time. A company designing a new product, for example, can document their progress on a wiki. Instead of convening in a conference room, collaboration among employees takes place online, and no one has to wait to take turns adding or editing data.

As a fail-safe, his company’s software automatically saves all old copies, so “if a fat finger wiped out a paragraph,” you can go back to the original copy, says Sowada.

Debate rages
As more and more companies embrace these technologies, a debate rages about how they should be used — if at all — for marketing and public relations.

Purists, such as Van Buren, feel companies should use them to expound about relevant and interesting topics in their industries. The message should be organic and authentic, as it was intended by early adopters — not processed through a professional, public relations filter, he says.

Last year he helped Minneapolis-based law firm Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg & Gotlieb produce a six-part podcast series about how the firm recognized employees' hobbies and special interests.

Van Buren, as host and interviewer, chatted with one partner about how the firm set him up, as a 50th birthday present, to throw out the first pitch of the St. Paul Saints season — a nod to his Major League Baseball tryouts as a youth.

Another employee spoke about how one of the founding partners lent her his Porsche Boxster for the weekend upon the firm's discovery of her passion for sports cars.

For Van Buren, his podcasts help showcase a lighter, more human side of a company — one that customers don't always get a chance to see, he says. And audience members are more likely to tune in if they’re going to hear something entertaining and educational, rather than a marketing campaign.

Van Buren says he wonders if marketers are jumping on the bandwagon to keep themselves relevant. Some “have realized that their traditional methods are no longer effective,” he says.

Marketing companies that are promoting the use of blogs and podcasts defend their use. Albert Maruggi, president of Provident Partners in St. Paul, says if the original intent of these technologies was free speech, then they're right in line.

One of his clients, Tim Morin, executive vice president of marketing, sales and business development at Eden Prairie-based Four51, uses podcasts to talk about his company's services and solutions.

About 250 people listen to an individual podcast over a two-week period, he says, some of which respond to e-mails sent by the company to alert them of each new weekly installment. Four51 provides online e-procurement services that link print material buyers to distributors and suppliers. It posted revenue of $3.2 million in 2005.

Morin says he's responding to customers' demands. “If the audience is saying, ‘this is how I prefer to capture information’, I'm not going to get in the way of that."

On his company’s Web site, he says the most visited section is Radio Four51, where the podcasts are.

[contact] Ray Cox, Northfield Construction Co.: 507.645.8975; www.northfieldconstruction.net. Albert Maruggi, Provident Partners: 651.695.0174; amaruggi@providentpartners.net; www.providentpartners.net. Carter McNamara, Teri McNamara: 763.971.8890; carter@authenticityconsulting.com, teri@authenticityconsulting.com; www.authenticityconsulting.com, www.managementhelp.org. Tim Morin, Four51: 952.294.0451; tmorin@four51.com; www.four51.com. Mike Sowada, VISI: 612.395.9000; msowada@visi.com; www.visi.com, www.viawiki.com. Bruce Stasch, Apex Marketing Group: 952.939.0458 ; bruce@apex-ideas.com www.apex-ideas.com. Garrick Van Buren, Working Pathways: 612.284.4148; vanburen@workingpathways.com; www.workingpathways.com.