Managing Your Social Media

We are becoming overloaded with a surfeit of social media sites and tools. We can either break under the load of options or we can find ways to cope, to manage our social media.

Bryan Person came all the way from Boston (6 hour drive) to talk to Podcasters Across Borders about how he manages these tools – and we’re glad he did.

Bryan Person-1 First, you have to make hard decisions. Make choices among the essential tools.

Develop a routine to allow you to cover things quickly. For example: Email; Twitter; Facebook; Calendar; Blog Reader. Then you’re good to go.

Using Tagging to save items associated with terms that are meaningful to you.

Prune your feedreader subscriptions. In fact, think of deleting all of them. You’ll quickly re-subscribe to those feeds that really matter to you.

Trust your network for recommendations. You don’t need to subscribe to or read everything. If one of your friends spot something that he or she thinks is important, they’ll pass it along to you.

Finally, be prepared to step away. Turn your computer off. Enjoy life. Then you can come back to the computer refreshed.

Getting your podcast seen as well as heard

To find information, most people search for a term on Google, Yahoo or MSN. And these Search engines don’t really care about sound. They care about text.

So, how do you, as a podcaster get Google to notice you?

Julien Smith-1 That’s the question that Julien Smith provided a practical, straightforward answer to this question in his presentation at Podcasters Across Borders.

First, podcasters need to become more than just a podcaster. You need to be Web producers. That means communicating through a blog, communicating through Twitter, through forums, through a variety of channels and media.

Second, you must pay attention to the keywords that people are using to find you. Subscribe to sites like SEOBook and SearchEngineLand to learn basic Search Engine Optimization techniques.

Don’t forget to post show notes for all of your podcasts. Use key words that describe your content.

Julien has many more tips. But, he only had 30 minutes for his presentation. So, if you get a chance to attend a session with Julien, grab it. You’ll learn a lot.

Creative Commons Licensing in Canada

Andy Kaplan-Myrth and Kathi Simmons from the University of Ottawa’s Law and Technology Program spoke at Podcasters Across Borders about the legal regime that podcasters and bloggers in Canada must observe.

Kaplan-Myrth outlined the fundamentals of Creative Commons licensing in Canada.

Traditional copyright seeks to reserve all rights to the author other than those that she specifically surrenders.

Creative commons has been developed to encourage sharing of information. It has several different licences that allow sharing based on a selection of different elements:

  • Attribution: Content may be used and redistributed, but the original creator must be given credit for it.
  • NonCommercial: The content may be used and redistributed only for noncommercial purposes.
  • NoDerivatives: People can use and redistribute, but not modify the work.
  • ShareAlike: Users can use, redistribute and modify your work. But if you do modify it, any work that you produce based on these changes must have the same ShareAlike condition.

In Canada, there are over 300,000 works licensed under the Canadian Creative Commons. This Canadian licences have been customized to reflect Canadian laws, so Canadian bloggers and podcasters who use a non-Canadian CC licence should switch to a Canadian licence.

Kathi Simmons unveiled the Canadian Podcasting Legal Guide. It has been prepared by the Law and Technology group at UOttawa to provide Canadians with the basic information they need to understand the law that applies to authoring and using content for social media in Canada. 

Hard copies of the guide were distributed to PAB attendees.

The Canadian Podcasting Legal Guide will be available for download form the Canadian Creative Commons site.

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Podcasters Across Borders

Podcasters Across Borders brought together about 125 podcasting enthusiasts for two days to talk about everything podcasting.

Some fresh voices that I’m not used to hearing at the standard conferences I attend.

Ted Riecken delved into podcasting as a community.

Communities exist as an expression of shared interests, similar backgrounds, shared needs. Podcasting exists as a liberatory space – a place where many people on the periphery can share in the common wealth of knowledge. As a communication medium, it serves as a gathering place.

Podcasting provides a means for people to tell genuine stories to a community with common interests in a largely unregulated environment.

Podcasting has many of the characteristics of a frontier culture. It is transitory, emergent and constantly evolving. Like a frontier economy, there are still limited and alternative forms of commerce. The discussion of “how do I monetize my podcast?’ does not yet have a universally accepted answer.

The podcast culture places an emphasis on freedom, opportunity and growth. Much of the content originates on the edge and reflects niche interests.

Podcasters place an emphasis on freedom of speech, thought and expression. They prize real people telling authentic stories about lived experience.

The echo chamber effect presents a challenge to the evolution of the podcasting culture. To overcome this, it is important to emphasize diversity, critical inquiry and thought, to offset the positive feedback loops.

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Making Audio Stories that Don't Suck

Tod Maffin entertained and educated the Podcasters Across Borders attendees with his From Idea to Air presentation.

Tod Maffin From Idea to AirIf you haven’t seen Tod give one of his keynotes or workshops, you absolutely have to. The best presenter bar none.

I’m not going to be able to do justice to Tod’s full presentation. He’s much better than I make him sound. And sound is the operative word. Tod doesn’t just offer sage advice in an entertaining way. He peppers his presentation with sound clips that make the points he wants to convey.

So, how do you tell great stories?
Off the top. If you want to tell good audio stories, don’t be predictable. Don’t follow a formula. Don’t be boring.

Start with an idea. And remember, that YOU are the content. Look around you for story ideas. Ask family. Ask friends. Never throw away clips. The bloopers and off-story clips may let you approach the story from a different, more playful angle.

Revisit old stories. Epilogues to past stories can be poignant and compelling.

Look for inspiration in wallpaper – the stuff all around us. The commonplace. Those things that are part of our routine and that we take for granted. Like ordering a cup of coffee leads to a story on oversized servings. Why the close buttons on elevators never work.

Use comparisons to create images in your listener’s mind. Like …a 20 oz. drink? You can buy 20 oz. baseball bats.

Take your recorder everywhere. You never know when you will encounter a great opportunity to capture a story as it occurs. And things captured as they occur have an emotion and an unpolihsed genuineness.

Don’t overedit. Sometimes the raw tape – with the pauses, the sighs, the silence – can be much more arresting than any edit or voiceover.

You can structure you story around several different devices.

The universal truth: It throws something into relief that strikes a chord with us and causes us to nod unconsciously. You can lead into this with the phrase, “There’s something about…” This sets up the listener to listen for something more profound.

The anecdote and reflection: This is the basic essence of storytelling. Bringing meaning to what you’ve just heard. Tell a little of the story. Reflect. Tell a bit more. Reflect. Dip in and out of the story. The audeince will follow throughout.

Bob Goyetche, Mark Blevis & Mitch Joel listen to TodSixty second scenes: Actively listening requires the brain to compose images. Allow time for this to happen. Provide audible “audio on-reamps” – music, an audio effect or even silence – to signal to the listener that they should be ready for a change of scene.

Emotional charges: Modulate the emotions through the story. Unrelenting seriousness is unlikely to sustain an audience’s attention in the way that a story that alternates poignancy with a lighter mood to bring balance.

Scoring: Use music. But don’t use music to comment on the story. It can be hackneyed (Pink Floyd’s Money in a story about the rich). Or it can actually pull the listener out of the images they have created in their mind.

There are three critical values for a compelling character.

  1. Your protagonist must be on a proactive quest toward a goal (love, redemption, money)
  2. Something is preventing him or her from achieving that goal (“force of antagonism”)
  3. The protagonist is risking something to achieve the goal. Risk is the secret sauce in making people care about a character.

Tod Maffin speaks at PABThe quest should have not be linear. There should be progress followed by setbacks followed by progress. Drama and comedy rest in the “Gap” between what a character expects to achieve and what they actually achieve. This gap provides reason for the protagonist to attempt a different approach to achieve their objective. And at each turn, the risk increases.

If life would go back to normal if the character failed to achieve her objective, then the story is not worth telling. It fails the risk test.

Tod presented much more on how to do this. But I’m not going to cover that here. You simply have to see Tod live to get the rest. And trust me. It’s the best presentation of this material you’ll ever see.

Podcasting Basics

Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche kicked off Podcasters Across Borders with a podcasting basics session. I’m a beginner podcaster and the guys provided me with an overview of what I need to get started.

Bob GoyetcheBasic equipment

The MXL 990 microphone is a good starter mic. Cost: About $150.

Add a pop screen to suppress the popping of your ‘P’s. Cost: $25 to $50.

Add a mixer will enable you to tailor your sound. Tod Maffin uses a Behrenger Eurorack 1002. Cost: $150.

You can mix either directly into your PC or into a recorder. The Samson Zoom H4 portable recorder is a good choice. Cost: About $400.

If you record directly into a computer, Apples come with GarageBand built in. PC users can download the FREE open source Audacity audio editor and recorder. Cost: Free

Cleaning the sound

SoundSoap 2 will help to filter extraneous noise. Cost: $130

Content

That’s up to me. Yikes!

Mark Blevis previews this year's Podcasters Across Borders

Podcasters Across BordersThis year’s Podcasters Across Borders conference is just three weeks away.

Terry Fallis attended last year’s conference and returned from it with new energy and a bootful of ideas for the Inside PR podcast. This year’s conference looks like it will be even better.

I had a chance couple weeks ago to sit down with Mark Blevis, the co-founder with Bob Goyetche of PAB and the Canadian Podcast Buffet. Mark talked to me about the hightlights of this year’s program.

Have a listen and then register to attend:

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By the way, we think this is such a great conference that we’ve made made a commitment as a sponsor of this year’s Podcasters Across Borders. And we’ve found that the organizers have really valued our support and the community has been great in recognizing it.

So, if you run a company that is involved in podcasting or social media more generally, I’d encourage you to become a sponsor of this year’s PAB.

Tod Maffin and the Sting of the Webswarm

Blogging broadcaster Tod Maffin talked to a group of about 100 IABC Toronto members about the power of social media to shape and break reputations.

Webswarming is when masses of people congregate in the same place on the Internet. Swarms are led from the inside – like a swarm of bees. Corporate communications is very often out of sync with this way of thinking. Instead corporate communicators more often try to direct from the front, hoping that people will fall into formation behind them. With social media, we can position ourselves inside swarms to take advantage of many-to-many communications.

When a critical Webswarm forms around your company, you can respond with a simple five step S-W-A-R-M strategy:

  1. Sweeten the honeypot. Match your tone to the swarm. Be self-deprecating. Use humour. Be humble.
  2. Win-win.  Let them feel like they’ve “won”in some way.
  3. Advise them how you’ve changed. And do it within the first few sentences.
  4. Right wrongs: Correct inaccuracies. Don’t let errors stand in Google’s cache forever.
  5. Make friends. Email specific compatants and invite them to continue to provide suggestions, perhaps through an advisory panel.

If you want to be effective in the swarm, you must have an active and respected member within the swarm if you expect to communicate within it and learn from it.

Above all, put a human face on your postings and comments. Step out from behind corporate speak and be genuine.

Blogging for dollars

Stuart MacDonald chaired a panel tackling the issue of monetizing blogs and podcasts. The panelists were Ryanne Hodson, co-author of The Secrets of Videoblogging, Michael O’Connor Clarke, Vice President of Thornley Fallis, Mark Evans, Vice President Operations of b5media, and Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations.

What is the motivation for bloggers? Is it dollars?

Mark Evans argued that the first requirment for bloggers is passion. Shel Israel added that the best blogs are started by someone who has something they really want to say. However, once a blogger starts a blogger they will inevitably come to the realization that they are putting tremendous effort into and ask what they are doing it for. Michael O’Connor Clarke pointed out that there is a distinction between making money from blogging and making money because of blogging. Google doesn’t actually make money from search. They make money because they are a great search company. And the same thing applies to blogging.

 Ryanne Hodson agreed that blogging can help achieve other objectives. She hasn’t made a great deal of money directly from her vlog. But she has received job offers because she is a vlogger.

Mark Evans suggested that he is finding that established bloggers now are talking more about receiving a fair return from their blogging.

Shel Israel pointed out that the people who produce content have historically been the most poorly compensated relative to aggregators, distributors and exhibitors.

Ryanne Hodson indicated that many creators are seeking aggregator sites like blip.tv that provide a return to creators and show respect for creators’ rights over their content.

 Mark Evans said that b5media is trying to follow this course by defining a compensation plan for b5 bloggers that give them a share of the success along with a minimum monthly payment.

What about Lonelygirl15 or Bridezilla? These are examples of advertising thinking trying to find ways to fit social media into traditional marketing think. Stuart MacDonald suggested that the concern with them seemed to be more about driving traffic than building community.

Ryanne Hodson argued that its a fine line. You can do multiple things. Ryanne is making a living from video blogging.

Stuart suggested that the best monetization model may not be to derive revenue directly from blogging, but to instead look to monetize the activites as they support other enterprises. A means to a job (Ryanne Hodson). A means to position a corporation (Microsoft and Scoble). 

Michael O’Connor Clarke suggested that Bridezilla and Lonelygirl are examples of where things are going wrong – the attempt to create something artificial in a medium that is all about genuine, open and transparent communications.

Mark Evans said that b5media is trying to do online what trditional media companies have done online. To be a one stop shop for advertisers.

How about corporate blogs? Shel Israel pointed out that companies don’t blog, people do. And one of the problems with corporate and CEO blogs very often is that the people are afraid to expose themselves in an open and honest fashion. So their blogs end up being boring and not widely read.

I'm not at podCampToronto

PodCampToronto

I’d printed my boarding pass before going to bed last night, showed up at the airport this morning an hour before flight departure, passed through security and made my way to the Air Canada lounge. That’s when the passenger agent told me that Air Canada had in fact cancelled my flight!

(I suspect the plane I was supposed to be on was transferred to the Ottawa-Vancouver flight. As I passed that gate, I heard the passenger agent announcing that, due to mechanical problems with the aircraft assigned to that flight, Air Canada had been forced to “down-gauge” the plane – and they would offer 10 passengers $200 each to give up their seats. “Down-gauge.” Now that’s a good term. Makes a passenger feel like sausage stuffing. Yechh!)

So, there I am in the passenger lounge at 8:05 in the morning heading to Toronto for the 10AM opening of podcampToronto. Air Canada had cancelled my flight. But they could put me on a flight at 1PM. Oops…

So I missed the sessions I was hoping to attend: Mitch Joel‘s presentation on Building Your Personal Brand Through Podcasting, Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche‘s session on Building a community, Julien Smith on Giving your podcast a Google presence, Peter O’Connell‘s tips on audio tools, resources and production techniques, Mark Blevis’ Editing techniques, Tari Akpodiete‘s session on Getting started with videoblogging, Leesa Barnes on Planning a killer podcast and Mitch Joel and John Wall on What’s hot in Marketing Your Podcast. And I won’t get my long-overdue chance to meet Bryan Person.

I’ve tried to connect to the Quicktime video streams on the podcamp Wiki. But, so far no luck.

I’m hoping that those people who did make it to podcampToronto will blog about the sessions they attend. It’s not quite as good as being there. But this conference is just too good to miss completely.