Season three of the surprise hit Sci-Fi series remake Battlestar Galactica premiers tonight. Do you have your tasers set to “stun?” (I know, wrong show!) Battlestar’s production company does a lot of very creative things to make Battlestar fans feel incredibly connected with the show in every way possible.

A major tool in their quest to generate a real connection with fans is the BSG Podcast, which stars Battlestar Executive Producer Ron Moore. Ron recently spoke at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo about the value of podcasting.

clipped from webpronews.com

“You can sum up the show, what it’s about, what went wrong, what went right. It’s all very fresh. DVD commentaries are made months or years after. With podcasts, it’s still in the moment. You have no reaction before the audience sees it. It’s real and natural.”

“I could never imagine having this kind of connection with my audience a couple of years ago.”

Ron Moore on Podcasting

I agree that podcasting is a wonderful way to build a true connection with customers and fans. An honest podcast gives the customer a chance to really get to know you and your organization on a personal level.

What’s that worth?

Check out the entire webpronews interview of Ron here.

I do a lot of experimenting with ways to increase website traffic through some of the social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, reddit and the like. I’ve “stumbled upon” one that so far is giving me much more traffic than all the rest combined: StumbleUpon.

One of the main advantages of the social bookmarking model has been that sites are reviewed and submitted by real human beings who value the content. Any link submitted to the community is available for any and all members to bookmark it. Multiple bookmarks equates to multiple “votes” in the world of social bookmarking.

For example, I recently submitted a blog post to del.icio.us, and that link in turn was bookmarked by 60 Del.icio.us users. The post eventually found its way onto Digg and drove quite a bit of traffic our way. That’s the way these things work in a perfect world (usually easier said than done).

StumbleUpon has an interesting twist that adds an extra element of addictiveness to its approach. The “Stumble!” button in their provided toolbar delivers targeted website recommendations from other StumbleUpon users with interests similar to yours. One click of the button whisks you away to a quality site that you likely haven’t ever seen before.

I’ve heard a story or two about people who had to remove the Stumble toolbar because they couldn’t stop “Stumbling.”

What’s interesting to note about the following web traffic stats for greatbigpodcast.com is the fact that I’ve only submitted two or three blog posts to StumbleUpon almost as an afterthought. Here at Promethius, both for our own blog and for our business blog clients, we try to make sure that nearly every post is submitted to del.icio.us, reddit and a few others.

But with only minimal focus, StumbleUpon is currently beating basically all other social bookmarking services outright. This of course is just one snapshot of a week in the life of one blog, but it’s interesting to note.

If you want to try it out for yourself, follow these easy steps:

1. Go to the StumbleUpon site and sign up for their free account.
2. Download and install their toolbar.
3. Visit your favorite web pages or blog posts and tag them!

Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

When you click the “I like it” button, you will be prompted to fill out some information about your link:

That’s all there is to it. Now the rest of the StumbleUpon community can find your recommended links and enjoy. Neil Patel has a good study of traffic comparisons between StumbleUpon, digg and del.icio.us. It’s definitely worth a look.

Like it or not, those of us who make our living on the internet deal in so much jargon that an outsider might mistake our conversations for Portuguese or some such random language. I decided to put together this little Internet Buzzword IQ test to see how you rank.

How many of the terms (or products) below do you understand without following the link to find the answer? 1-5 correct = still using AOL | 6 - 10 correct = have your own MySpace page | 11 - 15 correct = seasoned Wordpress blogger | 15 - 20 correct = know your website’s IP address by heart.

1. RSS
2. Technorati
3. Ajax
4. Blinksale
5. Local Search
6. Click Fraud
7. SEO
8. Long Tail
9. Wiki
10. Digg
11. Favicon
12. Drupal
13. Net Neutrality
14. Vertical Search
15. Squirl
16. Tagworld
17. Crazy Egg
18. LiveJournal
19. StumbleUpon
20. Who created Podcasting?

James Clark over at the “Capture the Conversation” blog has a great post on syndicating your own press releases. Many of us forget that having a “press release” area on our websites is a great way to draw targeted traffic.

Making your own “press” area is a nice departure from the rat race of trying to get other media outlets to pick you up any way. Besides, many potential customers will go to our websites as a part of their research.

Why not make sure to have a copy of each press release right there on your website for potential customers to easily find and read?

Looking for help on the ins-and-outs of formatting your press releases? I would recommend the Duct Tape Marketing press release tool for starters.