How to Market Your Podcast
For those folks attending PodCamp NH 2011, this is a mindmap of the presentation, How to Market Your Podcast.
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Marketing White Belt |
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How to market your WordPress blog
I’m delighted and excited to share some of my ideas, strategies, tips, tools, and methods for marketing your WordPress blog at Boston’s WordCamp event. As I anticipate a fair number of people and A/V conditions that are always less optimal than we’d like, I’m providing the mindmap for the session in advance here, so that if you’re attending (or even if you’re just curious), you can follow along on your own device and not have to rely on squinting at the screen.
Click the image for larger versions.
Would you like a high resolution version you can download and print out? Click here for the high-res PDF.
One cautionary note: without hearing the presentation that goes with the map, there’s a good chance some stuff won’t make sense. If you’d like to hear the full presentation, make sure you request the next marketing conference you attend to book me to speak and ask for this presentation to be a session at the event.
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Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
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I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
Informer vs. performer
Ever look on a conference session list and see a presenter listed whose talk you’ve seen before? I certainly have, and depending on who it is, I’ll either go for a “repeat” session or skip them and see someone else. What makes the difference? Whether the presenter is an informer or performer.
I’ve talked to some presenters who believe that constantly changing your presentations is bad, the sign of an inexperienced presenter. If the goal is performance in the sense of performance art, then they are absolutely right. The goal is for the show to be as smooth, as flawless as possible. These folks have their shows timed perfectly, and it’s an art to watch and enjoy. Tom Hopkins is a great example of the performer as speaker – he can recite his presentations literally word for word from his books, which is no small accomplishment since his books are hundreds of pages long. That said, if you as a member of the audience got the message the first time, chances are you don’t need to see the show again unless you enjoy it for the performance that it is. Every subsequent performance will be a literal re-run.
I’ve talked to some presenters who believe that every speaking opportunity should be unique, with content tailored to what the audience is there to learn. If the goal is education, teaching, and sharing of knowledge, then they are absolutely right. The goal is for the education to be as thorough and as current as possible. The informer’s presentations will be rough around the edges. There will be stumbles as the presenter sees data they just slotted in the night before from the latest research study, or odd pauses as ideas hit them literally right on stage. There’s less polish, but you can go see the teacher at every single conference they’re at and get new ideas, new information, new perspectives, and new stuff to test.
Which is better? It depends on what you value. I value learning first and foremost at conferences. I’ve been in some sessions in which the presenter was awful but the data was valuable, and I was there principally to learn, so I got what I came for. I’ve been in some sessions in which the presenter was marvelous and I was incredibly entertained. That said, I walked away with nothing new from the presenter, so I didn’t get what I came for. If you’re a conference organizer choosing a keynote speaker, you may well value the polished, perfectly timed, perfectly nuanced performer for your center stage spotlight because they’re a known quantity and a reliable performer.
Can you have the best of both worlds, a presenter who is both a performer and an informer? Yes, you can, but such teachers are rare masters, true experts who have incredible expertise in their areas such that new information and new ideas are seamlessly integrated into their decades of existing knowledge and ability. Go watch someone like Stephen K. Hayes teach martial arts and you’ll see decades of experience and new learning all at the same time. What’s truly incredible about teachers like this is that they can present in such a way that everyone, veterans and newbies, walks away having learned something.
I’d imagine at the end of the day, most speakers who want to be on stage for a living aspire to be both informer and performer, masters of knowledge and delivery equally. I know I certainly do, and in a few decades, I hope to be able to do both flawlessly.
What about you? Which do you value more? Which do you enjoy more? Does this reflect who you choose to see at conferences?
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Marketing White Belt |
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I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
Video: Awaken Your Superhero from #140conf
I had the pleasure and privilege of presenting at Jeff Pulver‘s 140 Character Conference in New York City about a favorite topic of mine, Awaken Your Superhero:
One of the key points I hope you take away from this talk is that right now, you have superhero powers, you have opportunities to be a superhero, but you may not have the motivation to be a superhero, or may not realize your own power. As I suggested in the talk, this is an exceptionally dangerous place to be.
Without proper motivation, without a reason, a cause, something to believe in, your superhero powers will corrupt you. Sometimes it will corrupt you to just selling crap as a marketer. Sometimes the corruption will be much worse, making you believe you’re someone you aren’t, or don’t want to be, or never thought you could be.
Without proper awareness, you’re treating your superhero powers as something mundane instead of the tremendous gift that they really are. You’re beyond giving away your power – you’re actively resisting, actively denying your full potential as a digitally connected human being. Imagine Superman preferring to be Clark Kent all the time. Imagine Bruce Wayne staying in his mansion at nights, refusing to help Gotham. When you treat your powers as mundane aspects, or worse, as crass tools, you’re forfeiting the place that has been prepared for you to do amazing things with your life.
I hope this talk has motivated you to explore the your full potential as a future superhero in the digital world and given you a chance to take a step back and realize the power that you do have. Take that power and do some good with it!
If you enjoyed this talk, please consider leaving a recommendation for it here. Thank you!
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Marketing White Belt |
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I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
How to make better interview videos with Levelator and iMovie
At a variety of events I’ve been to recently, people have been shooting videos using handheld video cameras, like Flipcams and the built in video capabilities of the iPhone. These devices are wonderful – compact, good quality video recorders. However, they all suffer from one major deficiency:
The sound is usually terrible. Why? Most of the handheld video cameras simply have small, poor, or incorrectly aimed microphones that fail to record audio in nearly the same quality as the video. There are a number of ways to try to work around these limitations.
1. Get a wireless microphone setup. Talking with Tom does this using a wireless lavalier mic that brings focused sound into his iPhone. Not cheap, but very effective.
2. Record audio separately. This is what I do most often if I’m doing an interview that really matters. I’ll use a Zoom H2 discreetly placed out of field of view and record audio on it, then sync it up later in the video. Effective, great quality, but has a moderate financial cost and a significant time cost.
3. For video shot on the fly or if you don’t want to shovel money at the problem, your best bet is to use Conversations Network’s Levelator. This very simple sound cleaning software takes an existing audio file and tries to clean it up, fixing volume disparities (a very common problem when the interviewer is talking much closer to the camera than the interview subject), and other audio oddities.
The Levelator is fantastic at cleaning up conversation. One caveat: the same tech that lets it clean up speaking also mangles music, so don’t use it on any musical files.
Here’s how to do it in iMovie very simply:
1. Arrange things and know which clips you want in your project (and for how long).
2. Select Detach Audio.
3. Select Export via Quicktime and choose Sound to AIFF.
4. Drag and drop the audio into the Levelator. Let it do its thing.
5. Drag and drop the cleaned audio file back into iMovie and align it with the clip if need be.
6. Delete the original audio clip (purple) and publish your movie.
Here’s an example of a clip of Steve Garfield and Ewan Spence before levelation:
Note the volume differences between Ewan and Steve.
And here’s the clip afterwards:
Ewan and Steve sound roughly the same, and you don’t need to crank the audio all the way up.
Special thanks to Steve Garfield and Ewan Spence for their comedic skills at Blogworld NYC.
Updated: Doug Kaye from the Conversation Network left some clarifications in the comments.
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Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
Attend virtually! |
I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
Video: Chris Pirillo on why Empire Avenue works
For what I do in my work at Blue Sky Factory and personally, I still haven’t gotten much juice for the squeeze out of Empire Avenue, and that’s okay. I’m still learning and evaluating, but I got a chance to ask one of the heavy players of EAV about it at Blogworld: Chris Pirillo. Here’s what he had to say about what’s working, how it’s working, and his tips for getting started in a 9 minute video:
Can’t see the video? Watch it on the website.
Find Chris at his website, on Twitter, or buy his stock at (e)PIRILLO.
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Marketing White Belt |
Watch me speak:
Attend virtually! |
I recommend: for Twitter audience building. |
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