In this podcast, we discuss:

1. Mainstream media's need to adopt social media, and Daniel Honigman's recognition of the touch points missing from traditional media and news organizations.

2. The Chicago Tribune's successful use of "Colonel Tribune" as the social media persona used to better reach people in the online social space.

3. The need for reporters to think of themselves as publishers as bloggers do, why news organizations who blog need to link to other bloggers and show thanks for links.

4. Success and strategy considerations with Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and social bookmarking in general (reference made to Brett Boarders from Copy Brighter.com)

5. A brief mention of top tools used to build reputation, including Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin (reference The Conversation diagram created by Brian Solis)

6. Daniel Honigman's new blog, OldMediaNewTricks.com

Note: Kudos to Tribune Interactive for employing a forward thinker in the social media space like Daniel Honigman. Check out Daniel's new blog or follow him on Twitter at dan360man

While people with more common names will have a harder time ranking for your own name as the first result, the tips below are helpful to everyone. First and foremost it is important to not be afraid to use your name on social websites. As Gary Vaynerchuk pointed out, your legacy, which starts with the name, is more important than money (currency) you currently make. You are your own brand in Social Media and New Media Marketing, so to rank high for your name on search engines you must not be afraid to use your name.

There is 2 main ways to get this accomplished. First goal is to get your profile and your name on as many high trust sites as possible, here is a list of must-haves:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pownce
• Flickr
• Digg

The big thing about these sites is they all allow you to link 1 or more sites, Pownce, Digg and LinkedIn being the best about cross linking your websites.

Second way to get the site ranked for your name is to simply comment on blog posts you find interesting. Best way to provide an insightful comment is to ask a question related to the post to initiate conversation. Check our our tutorial on how to post a blog comment. If you have troubles finding interesting blog posts, I suggest you check out reddit, digg or stumbleUpon, across those 3 sites, you have unlimited amount of fresh interesting content to read and ultimately comment on.

Keeping those 2 tips in mind, you should have no problem getting even the toughest names ranked well on search engines. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comments. We would love to hear how those tips help you rank well for your own name.

Podcasting
Now you can Digg your favorite podcast series and individual podcast episodes. Not only can you see a list of the most popular podcasts by section, you can also dive into any individual podcasts to see the most Dugg individual episodes. And don't forget - every time you Digg a podcast or podcast episode that is bookmarked in your profile and shared with your friends.

The Podcasts Section: what does it offer?

After we all had some time to play around with this section and get a feel for its popularity it is time to get down and dirty and figure out how to use it to promote your podcast. Instead of following the traditional "newest items first" scheme used in every other section, the digg team decided to sort podcasts by lifetime diggs. The basic idea is that each podcast is represented in order from highest diggs to lowest with the image, title and short description of each podcast as well as the good old Digg This button. Those curious enough to dig deeper have noticed that once you are on an individual podcast page, Digg proudly allows everyone to vote for individual shows within a podcast. While the diggs you get for individual shows do not reflect on the grand total for your show, they seem to play a significant role in the "Upcoming Podcasts" section featured on the main podcasting page.

The visibility of the Podcasting section is incredible, but after 2 long months, getting to that page is extremely difficult for an up-and-coming podcast. To make matters worse, and crush your hopes of getting recognized for your great podcasting talent, 6 out of 10 Revision3 (Digg's videocasting company) shows reside snugly on that front page without a chance of being pushed out. To gratify your work and challenge the front-page status quo you must not look to digg, but rather your own subscribers.

Tips on utilizing Podcast Feature to promote your Show.

The plan is simple. You need to utilize your listeners and subscribers to increase your visibility on digg, which in turn will drive more traffic to your podcast and get you more subscribers. To help you through this process, digg has some great tools for us to use. Recently they updated the embeddable "Digg This" buttons for your site in order to be smarter and less intrusive than ever. Here are a few tips on how to take advantage of them while promoting your podcast:

-Include digg button in your posts and on your site. With each blog post or in a designated location on your site there should be a "digg this" button embedded. After these tips there is a quick step-by-step guide explaining how to do it in more detail. You have 2 styles to choose from and you can change out the background color, but that's it, you cannot change the color of the link, nor use something other than yellow if its not your color. If the button does not work with your design or for personal reasons, you can just include a link to your podcast section on Digg with an encouraging and, possibly, a life-threatening message. Before you ask "Can I add the button to my iTunes podcast page?" the answer is "No," iTunes does not allow you to embed or link to anything other than your home page. Your best bet is to verbally ask your listeners to ether go to your site and digg your show, or direct them to your podcast page on digg.

-Include a link to the individual show page in your blog posts. This should be your number one priority because the diggs you get for individual podcasts directly determine if your podcast is worthy to be featured in the "Upcoming Podcasts" sidebar. There is no easy way to do this, and sadly the "smart" digg this button isn't smart enough to recognize the links pointing to the individual pages. To add insult to injury, there is no way to know the link to that page beforehand (although, they are all sequential and you can just +1 the number at the end of the link), so you are stuck with doing some mouse work after you get the URL and including it in your blog post that way. Some of you are beginning to wounder if you can just skip this step, but like I said earlier, the upcoming podcasts sidebar is a great way to promote your podcast. And the diggs that individual shows get seem to be a significant influence in getting featured there, so prompting your audience to digg the individual shows is very important.

-Promote your digg account and encourage your listeners to add you as a friend. Digg is becoming widespread and has accumulated a huge user base. Chances are some of your listeners are regulars on digg. If not, some will definitely like the idea of following what you digg and would love to share some of their interests with you. If you show some love and promote mutual friendships, with a bit of luck and depending on your demographic, you will have quite a few people digging every episode. This will only improve as you visibility on digg solidifies. Also do not forget to digg your own shows, there is no harm in that.

How to add a "digg this" button for your podcast to your site.

The process of this is quite simple. All of this is taken straight from Digg Tools:Integrate page.

1. Make sure your podcast is on digg and identify any mistakes it might have. If you have an iTunes feed, chances are all is well and digg is syndicating your content correctly.
2. Identify podcast URL. Navigate to Podcast Search and do a quick search for your podcast. Take a note of the URL. For these instructions I'll use our own Kris Smith's podcast, Croncast. The URL of the digg page for his podcast is http://www.digg.com/podcasts/Croncast_Kris_and_Betsy_Smith_2
3. Pick a button design you wish to use. You've got 2 to pick from: Plain Vanilla or Slim Peach


If you wish to use Plain Vanilla remember "normal" and for Slim Peach keep "compact" fresh in your mind.
4. Get to embedding! With all info collected, use the code below to embed Digg This Button in a post, or anywhere on your site. It is quite straight forward, just remember to replace bold, italicised parts with your own.

digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/podcasts/Croncast_Kris_and_Betsy_Smith_2';
digg_skin = 'compact';

That's it! You are done. Now comes the time to use the social media reactor and get your audience pumped up and participate in the promotion of your podcast. So that your mad ninja skills can finally be rewarded with some fame.

If you're not already using Digg, it's worth checking out to learn how it works. Even if you never become a regular Digg user, it's helpful to know what to do if some of your online content (or someone else's content that mentions or links to you) gets "Dugg," becomes popular, and sends a sudden spike of traffic your way.

I recently created a video tutorial called Digg Basics. If you're brand new to Digg, this 12-minute tutorial explains how Digg works and shows you how to register with Digg, how to Digg and get Dugg, and more.

Of course, there's much more to Digg -- and to all social media services (there are so many similar ones) -- than I could possibly fit into a short basic tutorial. So here are five tips to help you make the most out of Digg and avoid common pitfalls...

But how do you create the content that leads to a viral article, especially when your business is less than exciting?

Esoos Bobnar over at SearchEngineNews.com recently published a great article on how to create online article content that will build links and increase search engine rankings.

Web surfers today have very short attention spans and are looking for information that either solves a specific problem or entertains them. Esoos breaks down 3 common elements of successful articles that generate a large amount of incoming links:

Lists + Instructional + Catchy/Descriptive Title = Good chance for incoming links.

You can't turn on the TV or look at a magazine these days without seeing some sort of list - Top 50 this or Top 10 that - it only makes sense to use this same element in your online articles. Lists are short, easily digestible pieces of information that draw people in. Instructional lists are popular since they are offer a valuable learning experience (How to...). A good example of the is the the Make Magazine Blog which has made its way to the homepage of del.icio.us. Finally the title is key since most web surfers quickly scan article titles and quickly make a snap judgment. Your title is your 3 second audition to hook the reader, get them to spend some time with your article and then blog about it on their own site.

Getting started with some good content creation is only part of the equation, check out our Article Marketing Services to help guide your writing efforts and promote your articles through leading online article marketing networks (for RSS syndication) and user generated content sites (Digg, Del.icio.us)