Martin Koss – thinking out loud…

If you want to know if something can be done – tell a stubborn old sod like me that it can’t be done and wait a day or two. That is pretty much what happened the other day when I was told “no way could you have your podcast on Facebook”…

So I set to work to achieve ‘the impossible‘. Not to be able to say ‘told ya so’ but because I had a real desire to be able to actually do it. Do you ever get those times when you think to yourself “well, if that can be done like that - then surely it could do this, and be done like this, and surely I could do this with it“..?

I know of several reasons for bringing all the media types into the Facebook platform but the main one being that if your audience love being on Facebook – and if Facebook has the ability to present your content then Facebook is where your content should be – as well as everywhere else, of course.

I’m a big believer that the day of expecting your audience to ‘come to you’ is long gone and the only way to brand yourself is to spread the word – yourself – everywhere your potential audience could be and that, as we all know, is everywhere. It could be YouTube, it may be Twitter, it could be Google Buzz, Squidoo, Hubub, Bebo, or wherever – but one thing we all must accept is that the lion’s share of every brand’s audience is using Facebook. So the obvious fact is that, if you want to share your content with your potential market – you’ve got to take your message to them – not wait for them to come to you.

If you’ve got videos on YouTube – put them on Facebook too.

If you’ve got a blog – post links to it on Facebook.

Okay those two are pretty darn obvious and most of us already do that with vids and blog posts – many even do it with Tweets (I’m not in that school but that’s another topic)… But, a lot of us have a PodCast and the frustrating thing about PodCasting is that you can get it into iTunes and post the episodes on a blog (as I do here) but what about the 37 zillion Facebook users?

 My mission, and I chose to accept it:

• Create a CSS layout that would make my PodCast episode list look presentable in the confines of 520 pixels os screen real estate
• Find a small flash MP3 player (and by small I mean less than 10kb or close)
• Work out how to embed multiple instances of the MP3 player within the restrictions of Facebook Markup (FBML)
• Ensure that it all works on all the main browsers (IE, Firefox, Flock, Safari, Opera, Chrome).

Da da… Done. Bingo!

Check it out for yourself. I created the CSS controlled layout (the CSS is hosted on my domain of course) and embedded the 1PixelOut MP3 player… Job done.

http://www.facebook.com/kossuk?v=app_7146470109

Facebook – gotta love it.

 

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