Cherry Hill-based Social Media Consultant Offering Training Workshops for Businesses and Organizations

[Steven L. Lubetkin]

CHERRY HILL, NJ July 13, 2009 Cherry Hill-based Professional Podcasts' managing partner, Steve Lubetkin, is now available to conduct one- or two-day training workshops for clients in effective use of social media for business marketing and public relations.

Professional Podcasts has pioneered the use of audio podcasts as a business visibility tool, and Lubetkin is invited to speak frequently about social media before organizations including the NJ Bankers Association, the US State Department, PRSA chapters, and other groups.

“We have been encouraging businesses to understand and embrace social media tools for nearly five years now," Lubetkin said. "We strongly believe that audio and video programs distributed as podcasts work hand in hand with social media like blogs, online networks and microblogging tools like Twitter as valuable tools in the corporate communications professional's arsenal of distribution channels for business information, so it's a logical next step to offer our expertise to organizations that want to train their personnel to understand and employ these tools."

Professional Podcasts training workshop program is offered in a one-day or a two-day format tailored to the needs of your organization. More information is available on request to [e-mail].

About Steve Lubetkin

Steven L. Lubetkin, APR, Fellow, PRSA, is the managing partner of Lubetkin & Co. LLC, a diversified public relations, Internet broadcasting, and communications consulting practice, and its Professional Podcasts LLC subsidiary, which produces audio and video podcasts.

Steve is a seasoned technology futurist who, as a music reviewer, first used computer technology to cover a Grateful Dead rock concert in 1977, the first concert ever covered digitally in New Jersey. He has included an email address on his business card since 1988. Since 1996, Steve has also been the author of "CompuSchmooze," a monthly column about technology (frequently with a Jewish focus), in the Jewish Community Voice of Southern New Jersey, a 20,000+ circulation biweekly publication of the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey.

Steve is a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research, a global nonprofit think tank dedicated to the advanced study of new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society. The Society's Fellows include more than three dozen futurists, scholars, business leaders, professional communicators, members of the media and technologists from around the globe. He is also a member of the Society's advisory board.

Professional Podcasts LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lubetkin Communications, is an award-winning provider of podcasting services for corporations and professional organizations. Since 2005, Professional Podcasts has been counseling clients about the effective use of social media, like podcasts and blogs (online journals) as tools that facilitate two-way communications with customers, employees, and others. In 2008, Professional Podcasts received a JASPER Award for podcasting from the Jersey Shore Public Relations & Advertising Association.

Professional Podcasts produces high-quality audio and video podcasts for The National Association of Realtors Realtors Commercial Alliance; CCIM Institute; the American Cancer Society; the American Institute of CPCU/Insurance Institute of America; Sun National Bank; the Rutgers University School of Business Administration's popular Quarterly Business Outlook Seminar; NAPL, a graphic communications trade association; Leadership NJ; and for the Public Relations Society of America. The firm also produces its own podcasts focusing on public relations, computer technology, bond ratings, and interviews with book authors.

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Editors, Note: Mr. Lubetkin is available to discuss how podcasting and other social media technology can help organizations communicate effectively with their audiences. Copies of programs produced by Professional Podcasts LLC are available on request. Please call Steve Lubetkin at [phone] or email [e-mail].

[Steven L. Lubetkin]

It's common for companies to spend a lot on site design that does very little to help their visibility in the one place that ought to be of interest to them - search engine results. What we're finding increasingly is that production of high quality rich media such as video news wrappers give a significant lift in search results and they do it organically, with less need for SEO that attempts to "game" the system.

Don't misunderstand, there are important things that SEO can do, but companies should not depend on efforts to predict keyword effectiveness for any given client. The production of good quality, properly metatagged, fresh content in video and audio form is just a more useful and cost-effective way to connect and engage with audiences online.

[Stephanie Noble]

Great service. Training is overlooked. People figure they can just jump in but the landscape is constantly evolving. I'd think it'd be even more difficult for companies to make the leap to video though its effectiveness can't be doubted. They need to understand the power social media has to shape their brand reputation and it may not be best left to an intern. Do you recommend social media measurement vendors? A new client of mine used Brink Media to design their site but we're handling their social media measurement and optimization alon.... When speaking with the developers at Brink to have our code installed on the site, I was somewhat surprised that their most common analytics tool is still Google. Google analytics is great and it's really great for being free. But it doesn't cover social media or brand reputation.

Do you find that it's common for companies to spend thousands on their site and online marketing and then install some free tool to track the effectiveness?