There are likely better ways to engage your supporters

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, independent sites, educators.

By Kyria Abrahams
Socialbrite staff

The human-interest work done by nonprofit organizations naturally presents a rich trove of compelling topics for the world of social media. In addition to Twitter and Facebook, podcasts may appear to be an effective way to push a good story to the public and generate interest for your cause.

The issue is this: Few people listen to podcasts anymore. And if they do, it’s nearly impossible to measure.

“Podcasts were a moment in time,” said Matthew C., who works as the global marketing specialist for an international nonprofit in New York. “iTunes automatically downloads everything [you subscribe to]. So we see you downloading. The question is: Are people listening? We have no way of knowing if the public is actually engaging with the content.”

Perhaps this is why the top five results for the search term “Top nonprofit podcasts” brought up links from as far back as 2006. Or why when I told Matthew that I was writing an article on podcasts, his immediate response was: “Choose another topic.”

Where did podcasts go? Should your organization should destroy all existing podcasts and never utter the words mp3 and iTunes again?

The eight-tracks of the Internet?

At the 2009 Blogworld and New Media Expo conference, podcasting pioneer Leo Laporte famously declared, “Podcasting is dead.” That’s a bit of hyperbole, considering that Laporte’s 23 podcasts are downloaded more than 5 million times a month. But Laporte has an established brand in tech circles, and it’s a challenge for newcomers to match those stats.

If there’s no way to measure who is interacting with your podcast, why do websites like NPR and UNICEF.org still have popular podcast sections that are updated on a regular basis? You may be asking yourself: if they’re doing it, why shouldn’t we?

The answer is simple. Those podcasts are just another way to publicize a brand’s deeply embedded radio presence.

“If you have existing radio programs, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t podcast them,” said Matthew, who preferred that we not disclose his full name. “It takes five seconds.”

UNICEF, for example, augments existing news stories on their high-traffic website with radio reports, which, in turn, also go out as podcast episodes.

The difference between podcasting today and podcasting in 2006 is that podcasts are no longer thought of as a means to an end. Now, they’re just another way to get your story heard, like linking to an existing story on Twitter. Launching a podcast as a means to an end in 2011 is like starting a blog in the hopes of getting a book deal.

“A few years ago, it was thought that people would wake up in the morning and download their favorite podcasts onto their iPod for the morning commute,” Matthew continued. “Turns out no one actually uses their phones that way.”

That’s overstating it — certainly many podcasts have a dedicated listenership and fan base. But the real question is: In a resource-strapped organization, is this the best way to allocate your time?

There’s a lot of work that goes into creating something that looks so simple. The shorter the final piece is, the more work probably went into making it. That’s why it’s all the more important to make sure your podcast is part of a bigger social media campaign or program. If you do launch a podcast, some good podcasting hosting services include Libsyn, PodBean and SoundCloud.

So, bottom line, podcasts aren’t dead, but you probably shouldn’t start one with the hopes of going viral.

What happened to podcasts?

• People generally don’t use their media devices that way.

• No one can measure if people are listening to the downloaded podcast.

• The time and cost of creating one generally outweighs the benefits.

What’s your view? Disagree? Agree? Tell us in the comments!

Image at top on Flickr by Luis Villa del Campo

The post Should your organization launch a podcast? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Meighan Berberich
BlogTalkRadio

One of the biggest challenges as a nonprofit is how to cost-effectively build awareness for your cause and extend the reach of the messages that matter most to your organization. An innovative and easy-to-use social-media solution to help meet this challenge is BlogTalkRadio.

BlogTalkRadio can help you share your nonprofit’s story widely online and create a compelling, ongoing conversation with your community and contributors. All you need to get started is a phone and computer.

BlogTalkRadio is the world’s largest social radio network, enabling anyone to host an interactive audio broadcast and syndicate it with one click to Facebook, Twitter, iTunes and across the Web. BlogTalkRadio’s network of podcasters is made up of tens of thousands of hosts who have produced more than 500,000 episodes since its launch in late 2006, now attracting more than 4 million visitors every month. It has featured conversations with countless notable guests, from President Obama to Maya Angelou to Brad Pitt.

Individuals and organizations that want to join the community can simply sign up on the BlogTalkRadio website to create a show. Once a member is registered, BlogTalkRadio provides all the tools, resources and training you need to get started. It offers a mix of free and premium services to meet the broadcasting needs of the casual broadcaster, in addition to those looking for more content control and exposure.

Here are a few ideas about how BlogTalkRadio can help promote your efforts and engage your members and contributors:

• Keep the community up to date on your good work, via regular broadcasts from people within your organization.
• Feature compelling conversations with the people you are helping. Because people can call in from anywhere to participate, it makes it easy to feature guests from around the world.
• Share interviews with thought leaders on the issues that matter most to your organization or cause.
• Provide a “town hall” forum where the community can join the conversation on the issues that matter most to them.
• Easily share all of the above content to your website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, iTunes account and more.

‘I’m Too Young For This!’ and other programs

A great example of a nonprofit using BlogTalkRadio as a platform to extend the reach and impact of its cause is the I’m Too Young For This! (i[2]y) Cancer Foundation. They launched The Stupid Cancer Show in 2007 to highlight and share the voices of young adults affected by cancer.

The show streams live and is archived on both BlogTalkRadio and the i[2]y website. It features celebrity cancer survivors, young-adult advocates, notable oncologists, distinguished public-health officials, scientists and nutritionists, along with scores of award-winning filmmakers, authors, actors and musicians. On a weekly basis, listeners can stream the show online, call in to ask questions or connect with others in the integrated chat room during the broadcast.

If you want to leverage the power of social media to extend the reach and impact of your efforts, BlogTalkRadio can be a great place to start. It makes creating and sharing compelling, interactive content really easy.

To create a free show for your nonprofit on BlogTalkRadio, visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/register.aspx?type=host.

To learn more about BlogTalkRadio’s free and premium services, visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/premium.aspx.

Other nonprofit programs on BlogTalkRadio include:

• Social Actions

• All Nonprofits Considered

• Veronica Robbins on grant writing

The post BlogTalkRadio: Extend the reach of your nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Matt May

ASCAP has updated its Internet licensing to reference podcasts — oh, excuse me, pod-casts. The move may have been intended to answer some questions as to the legality of using music in podcasts, but, as with the webcasting era, it left a lot of people scratching their heads. Is this all we need, just a $288 license to this agency, to be covered through the end of the year?

Well, there’s some bad news. The truth is that, no, that’s not everything. In fact, the landscape for music licensing is even more confusing than most people would imagine, and it at times consists of entities who may not even want to sell you a license. Here, I try to break them down. Know that I am not a lawyer, and as such am not going to know much more detail than is absolutely necessary.

Songwriters

ASCAP is essentially a middleman for songwriters’ royalties. Authors join ASCAP knowing they have agreements with others for capturing and redistributing royalties as they accrue from various sources (radio, TV, commercials, etc.).

But ASCAP is only one of these middlemen. BMI and SESAC are also in the same business, and they have their own licensing policies. In order to check compliance, you’ll need to verify that all of the music you’re playing is by artists that are ASCAP members — or, like radio stations do, license all of them. For the calendar year 2005, BMI wants $283 for what appears to be the same license as ASCAP’s, and SESAC wants $168.

So that $300 bill has turned into a $750 bill to license your music. The bad news for the non-profit podcaster is that you’re not done. Not by a long shot.

Content owners

You’ve paid the songwriters, which gives you the rights to the music being performed.

But that doesn’t give you the right to the performance of the music — that is, the stuff represented in bits or grooves or magnetic forces. Nor does it give you the right to make copies of it, but more on that later. Let’s talk to the people who own the recordings. Which is…

the record label, of course! You wouldn’t think that the artist would own their own recordings, would you? That would be silly. Record labels exist to extract the most revenue possible from the recordings they have made, and to that end, they don’t seem to publish their licensing terms, or be interested in offering blanket coverage for sound recordings.

I had originally thought this step is subsumed by the mechanical rights I mention below, but in the comments on my blog, Craig Patchett points to a SoundExchange licensing primer (now removed) that lists a “master use license” which you will need to negotiate with the content owner. That’s something you’ll have to seek out from each record label, and not only can they charge you whatever they can get, they may also see fit to refuse to license the track you’re seeking.

There is a statutory license that went into effect in 2002 for the purposes of webcasting. For .07¢ — that’s seven hundredths of a penny — per stream per performance, you can play what you like. (FYI: the minimum fee for 2005 is $500.) But podcasting isn’t webcasting: it’s a download, not a stream-based system. And since a download is copying an original, you need to pay the labels for the master use license, skip this step, and go straight to mechanical rights.

Mechanical rights

These rights, so named because of a history dating back to player piano scrolls, entitle you to make copies of music recordings. The Harry Fox Agency administers these licenses. Through the end of 2005, mechanical rights cost 8.5¢ for each track up to 5 minutes, or 1.65¢ for each track over 5 minutes in length. SongFile.com lets you buy as few as 500 of these at a time (that’s $42.50, to save you time on the calculator). Mind you, you’ll have to license each track separately, so if you’re making a music-oriented show, that’s $42.50 times every song you’re playing, minimum, per show.

What to do

And that’s most of it. Once you have paid the $750 minimum to the performing rights organizations, $42.50 per track to Harry Fox, and whatever is behind Door Number 3 to the labels, you’re covered, at least until more than 500 people download any given song. I am purposefully avoiding the discussion of other countries’ royalty systems, because I don’t know anything about any of them, and what I’ve written is probably already enough to make a few heads explode.

It is important to know this stuff now, to avoid a meltdown later. Should you decide not to go the licensing route, and your show becomes popular, you may be in for a rude awakening down the road. Remember the filesharing lawsuits? Of course you do. That’s just a publicity stunt compared to what people could be facing if they ignore these rights wholesale. All of these agencies sue infringers like it’s their job. Because it is. And the law is on their side.

I can hear it already: “But I’m a non-profit! I’m not making any money on this at all!” Yes, we know. But there’s no provision for that in the law. You’re broadcasting, as far as they and the law are concerned, and that means keep records, report playlists, and pay up.

What can you do about this? In the future, if podcasting catches on broadly, it’s going to be best to ask all of the owners of all of these rights to offer a license that reflects the reality of the situation: lots of people are making shows, and lots more are listening. Therefore, give us a licensing regime that doesn’t require a lawyer, an accountant, and a traffic department just to make a 21st-century mixtape.

The alternative to this is to separate yourself from the entire system. Creative Commons-licensed music explicitly waives the author’s right to the royalties I’ve mentioned here. A large number of artists are using Creative Commons licenses, either out of pure altruism, or cognizant of the fact that offering a defined set of rights to users means there are no questions for people like podcasters. In other words, Staccato is in the clear. And I’m keeping good track of the licenses I find, just to avoid a nasty surprise down the road. I’m not looking forward to what I expect will happen sometime in the future, but I expect to be ready in case it does.

Please comment on, correct or expand upon this article.

The post Podcasting, music and the law appeared first on Socialbrite.