Dan Kennedy on Audio

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Feb 28, 2008 in Marketing, Podcasting | 0 comments

For those thinking about audio podcasting as an effective sales mechanism, master sales trainer Dan Kennedy has an interesting perspective on audio as a marketing tool. Granted, in his blog post, he’s talking about CDs and not digital delivery, but the points about why sales folks should be delivering audio as a sales mechanism are just as applicable.

Read Dan Kennedy’s list here.

If you’re looking for a sales podcast, check out the Sales Roundup Podcast, another one of our fellow New England Podcasters.

I’ve been following a lot of Dan Kennedy’s stuff since I was introduced to it by one of my teachers, Dennis Mahoney. Dan costs a LOT for any kind of materials, but he delivers a lot of useful, out-of-the-box templates that work incredibly well. I use his sales letter template an awful lot when I send out promotional emails for the Financial Aid Podcast or Matthew Ebel.

Combine it with systems like neurolinguistic programming and new media, and you’ve got a terrific combination.

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Tennessee Never Cried – new Matthew Ebel video

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Feb 26, 2008 in Music, Video | 0 comments

I had the opportunity to film Matthew Ebel playing live at AS220 in Providence at NewBCamp this past Saturday. After some uphill learning curves, I got the hang of the tricks I needed in order to make this video, and here’s the final result.

Enjoy it!

Please leave all comments on the video itself, and rate it – I’d love for more people to see Matthew at work.

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Reflections on NewBCamp 08

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Feb 24, 2008 in Conferences, Music, New media | 4 comments

For those who didn’t head out to PodCamp Toronto this weekend, another UnConference launched in New England – NewBCamp. Very closely aligned in concept (though no connection) to PodCamp Pittsburgh‘s BootCamp PGH, NewBCamp was created by Sara Streeter, a student at Johnson & Wales University, to achieve the dual goals of introducing new people to the various technologies available and to energize the Providence area technology scene with the power of new media.

I went to NewBCamp to share a little and see someone else’s take on the UnConference idea, and I’m pleased to say that NewBCamp is very much the same energy, enthusiasm, and excitement that embodies the PodCamp series of events. I think the Providence area has got its own UnConference series, and it’ll be interesting to see if NewBCamp and BootCamp can work together, since they’re so closely aligned.

Even a veteran can learn lots of new stuff, and I’m certainly no exception. Sara’s session, Speed Mentoring, is an absolute gem of a session that I would love to incorporate into PodCamps. It’s like Speed Dating, but instead of relationships, a few people self-designate as mentors in specific topics, and then folks in the room can cluster towards topics that they’re interested in or that they need help in. Those small, focused discussions were revelatory in their own right, but I think the Speed Mentoring concept is a nice twist to conversation.

I had the opportunity to fine-tune and present a more story-like version of my New Media 101 session. Matthew Ebel was kind enough to stream it on uStream.tv, and recorded part of it here:

A full version with better audio will be produced and released soon.

The day concluded with a concert at AS220 in Providence with Matthew Ebel. Over 90 minutes, Matthew took us all on a fantastic musical tour of his work, including a new version of probably my all time favorite song of his, I Will Wait For You.

NewBCamp was a fantastic experience, and I hope to see it flourish and accomplish its twin missions of introducing new people to technology and bringing a boost to the Providence technology and new media sectors.

“The sun’s coming up in the morning, and I’ll be there…”

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Unsponsored Review: SuperDuper

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Feb 22, 2008 in Technology | 15 comments

I wanted to take a moment to very publicly thank the developers at Shirt Pocket for making SuperDuper, the backup software for the Mac.

A few weeks ago, my MacBook Pro started making noise. A LOT of noise. One of the fans broke and made my Mac sound like it was harvesting grain or sanding plywood. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled at the idea of repairs, and Apple confirmed what I’d not wanted to hear – 3 to 5 days of repair time to get the machine fixed.

At the Student Loan Network, we have extra machines in case things like this happen, but as anyone who’s ever gone through the process knows, sitting in on a hot spare means operating in an environment that isn’t yours. Shortcuts and aliases, preferences, it’s literally like trying to drive someone else’s car, wearing someone else’s clothes, living in someone else’s house. It’s never pleasant, though usually tolerable.

Enter SuperDuper. I originally chose to use it because it uses half the disk footprint of Apple’s Time Machine, and unlike most users, I actually do backup my data regularly. In the manual for SuperDuper, it says it’s possible to boot from its backups. Unfortunately, I found out that if you back up to an image on disk rather than a disk partition, it’s not bootable.

Except…

… If you boot from the Mac OS X install/repair CD and fire up Disk Utility, you can load the disk image of a SuperDuper backup, mount it, and use it to restore your hard drive.

So when the AppleCare box came for me to ship my ailing MacBook Pro to Apple, I did a final incremental backup, shut down, booted the spare MacBook we have in stock, did a restore, hit reboot, and hoped.

If I believed in an external deity, I would have yelled that my prayers were answered. Not only did the MacBook boot, but it loaded in my environment, with all my Quicksilver hot keys,  iTunes, everything, exactly as I’d left it when I shut down the MacBook Pro. It was like my computer just decided to go on a hardware diet but otherwise was exactly the same, not a thing out of place.

Today, the MacBook Pro came back from Apple. I did the process in reverse – backed up the MacBook, Disk Utility, restore – and here I am, typing on my MacBook Pro, as if it had never left. Only now the fan is quiet.

SuperDuper not only saved my data, but it made a 3 day absence of my computer more than tolerable – it let me work uninterrupted, save for the hour to backup and the hour to restore. I can’t thank the folks at Shirt Pocket enough for making such a damn fine utility, and it has certainly paid for itself MANY times over in the past few days.

If you run Mac OS X, go buy SuperDuper and start backing up today.

Full disclosure: I paid money to Shirt Pocket, Inc., not the other way around.
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Don't be that guy… or gal… doing blogger outreach.

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Feb 22, 2008 in Blogging, Marketing, Music, New media | 0 comments

I got a promotional email from Big Machine Media today cc’ed to a list of 340 podcasters and bloggers, promoting their musicians.

Good try, gang.

Look, a lot has already been said about blogger outreach by better minds than mine.

Here’s where this campaign really fell flat.

First, please, please, please if you’re going to do outreach, at least BCC your list. I’d actually prefer that you “go pro” and use a mailing list service like Blue Sky Factory to manage your mailings, so that you have comprehensive blacklist and other filtering at your fingertips. On those occasions when I need to do outreach, I set up a segmentation that says, “Never, ever send this email to the same address twice”.

Second, put an obvious, functional opt-out in the email.

Third, if you’re going to pitch me, PITCH me. Show me why you deserve an ounce of my time or attention. The email I got had a relatively decent subject line, but a really poor payload. This company wants to promote their musicians to me. Fine and good, I love promoting musicians (like Rich Palmer, Matthew Ebel, Anji Bee, Rebecca Loebe, Black Lab, Natalie Gelman, Rayko KRB, and countless others) and I love hearing new, independent music, but the pitch in this message was about as exciting as getting my grocery bill via email, which is to say not at all. (perhaps you have exciting groceries? I do not)

What would make an effective pitch to me? Well, you could send me a link to an MP3 ( <= free MP3! ) so that I could hear what you have to offer – that’d be a start. Tell me WHY your musicians are so good, and whether or not musicians like to be compared to others, tell me at least who they kind of sound like – for example, Matthew Ebel sounds like the love child of Billy Joel and Ben Folds with a dash of William Shatner from time to time, and an ounce or two of John Mayer.

Marketing music is difficult under the best circumstances, and lord knows I’ve made more than my share of missteps. At least maybe this list of basics will help music marketers who WANT to do outreach be a little more effective.

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