Still hungry for ideas about internet marketing? In the third and final installment of my interview with Victoria Player, we talk about the power of being interviewed to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Have a listen by clicking on play in the Spring Widgets box in the left hand column (episode 11) or click on RSS in that box to subscribe…
If you’re looking for ideas on online marketing then this podcast episode gives you more tips from expert online marketing coach, Victoria Player.
This time she tells us about the power of live voice testimonials….
As always, click on the Spring Widgets player on the right hand side to listen directly from your computer or click on RSS in that box to subscribe and have it delivered directly to your podcatcher (itunes etc).
A fellow podcaster, Colin Maddocks, of Nile Cruise Podcast , recently cast an admiring eye over my little Spring Widgets audio player on my site and emailed me to ask how I’d got hold of it.
By the time I could respond to his email, I noticed from his site that he’d gone ahead and found out how to get his very own (and lovely it looks too!).
As Colin obviously found out, it is super easy (and free) to get your hands on your very own audio player from Spring Widgets and embed it on your site. To get yours, follow the instructions below:
You’ll then be give some code which you need to copy and paste into your site (in Typepad do this in a Typelist, in Wordpress make a new text widget). If you’re using a traditional website, ask your web guy to embed it, it’s very quick and easy!
Every time you update your podcast, the Spring Widget is magically notified and will also update (it’s not really magic, it’s the RSS feed you gave it that lets it know).
And that is that.
Have you ever wondered how you can use audio in your online marketing mix? Victoria Player, online marketing coach, tells us how in the first part of this podcast series focussing on 7 ways you can use audio to market your business online.
Victoria has a great deal to say on the matter and each of the three episodes is packed full of useful information as to how you can increase your sleepy-time earnings by using audio as part of your web offerings.
Have a listen to the first half now by clicking the play button in the Spring Widgets player on the left hand side of the page.
I recently took some great advice about public speaking to promote my business from Nick R Thomas, a really experienced speaker who gives some top tips in his blog.
Nick got me thinking about tips I’d give people on public speaking and my advice is this: don’t miss a trick by not recording your speech. You could use the resulting recording to promote yourself as a speaker by featuring it on your website or to promote your business in general by using it as a giveaway to get people to sign up to your newsletter. Or you could even have it transferred to CD and hand it out as an audio business card at networking events.
The best way to record your audio is by using a tie mic with your digital recorder or minidisc recorder but if all else fails you could have your digital recorder’s built in mic as near to you as possible (if you’re standing at a lecturn this works, if not, go for the tie mic) and record that way.
Either way, don’t miss the opportunity to let people hear how well you can speak about your business. Not everyone you need to reach will be at that talk but we all know how far and wide that there internet spreads its sticky tentacles….
Well I wouldn’t actually go quite that far, I don’t want to sound like a techie geekoid, in love with a piece of machinery (but I am)!
Last week I had to say goodbye to my much-loved, long-serving minidisc recorder. It breathed its last whilst I was out on a job (I won’t go into the massive hissy I had when this happened) and I laid it to rest for the final time that day.
It was with a heavy heart that I searched the internet for a replacement and, I have to say, a small tear rolled from my eye as I ordered my new-fangled digital recorder.
And oh my goodness me, am I glad that I did! I’m so over the minidisc recorder and, if I’m honest, I only wish it had carked it sooner (sorry Miffy, RIP). So, I’m pleased to introduce you to my new best friend, the Zoom H4. She’s a beauty, isn’t she?
If the truth be told, in the flesh it looks a tad cheap because it’s quite lightweight, in a fairly plasticky way rather than a good way and the battery housing really does feel like it’s going to break sooner rather than later but aside from that I’m really enjoying it.
I’m usually very suspicious of built-in mics but this one really is quite good, although the voice quality comes out a little thin. But if you’re at the stage where you really don’t care to know that this has 2 XLR mic outputs (phantom power) then the built in mic will do the job just fine. For the more geeky who do care about spec, check it out here.
This is a very easy to use piece of kit with a nice quality sound output. For your 200 quid you really aren’t getting a top-dollar product and there are much more expensive (and much better) digital recorders on the market. But for what it is, it beats the minidisc recorder hands down in my book. I also got a free mini tripod thrown in with mine, which I’d say is a must - holding it with your hands, even if you’re very dainty and careful means you get what’s known as ‘handling noise’. No surface to put it on? Attach the tripod and use it to hold the recorder - this works well for me and gives no unwanted noise.
For the sake of balance (although I don’t have to, it’s my blog!) another similar product is the Edirol R09 - opinions are split across the internet as to which is better. It seems the general consensus is that the Zoom requires more button pressing but has more features than the Edirol. The bottom line is that for basic recording, either of the two would be great.
So, get yourself one of these babies and feel like a love struck teenager all over again (if you’re a geek, which I’m not).
I was recently asked for advice on buying a headset for use with Skype and for recording calls. Buying equipment can be a bit of a minefield, especially when there are so many different options on the market, from £5 sets to wireless ones costing over £70.
The best advice I can give someone when choosing a headset is to use one with a USB connection - it’s a ‘cleaner’ connection and will give a better sound quality than the standard jack plug, which can come loose.
After that, I’d probably advise them to go for a brand like Plantronics or Sennheiser, both of which are tried and trusted (my current headset is from Plantronics and cost around £35). I use this to interview people for my podcast and whilst the sound quality is never perfect (I’m going through Skype with this) and nowhere near as good as my studio mic, it’s generally pretty ok.
An interesting question came up recently from a colleague, the jist of which is as follows:
“I’m doing a 15 minute tutorial with someone to show them how to set up Adsense in their blog sidebar. Would that be a ‘weird’ podcast? I mean, normally I’d do this via Instant Teleseminar and have a recording available to people but the other day I signed up for BlogTalkRadio and wondered if I should use this service instead.
Or is podcasting really for interviewing people and / or… dunno!”
I’d be interested to hear other people’s views on this but my response, in short, was ‘why the hell not?’
“My personal opinion is that podcasting is for communicating ideas and if it’s something that you think your clients/potential clients should know or would find helpful or would enhance your expertise (or a combination of all of these things) then I would certainly put it in podcast format.
If the answer to the question, ‘would I blog about this?’ is ‘yes’ then you can podcast it and I think you probably would put a little blog post or even an extended tutorial blog post up about this, no?
Joanna Young uses podcasting to record 5 minute snippets of advice on how to improve writing skills - again, I think this is an excellent way of doing it and she’s had some good feedback. If you have a real live client with you whilst you’re being super helpful/expert like and people can hear how they’re getting on with you, then all the better. Added to that, even though, in your case, your personality comes across really well in the way you write, it’s an ace way for your potential clients to feel they know you a little better by hearing your voice.
So, the short answer is yes! Do it!
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, some would argue that you should always podcast to the same format and do it on a weekly/biweekly/monthly basis but I really don’t think there should be any hard and fast rules on this. Yes, you can set up a podcast in that way and build a loyal following etc but I don’t see that it would harm to have an occasional podcast, with varying formats, that could still attract clients into your world. Just as long as you give your podcast episodes clear titles and say somewhere in your notes/profile that it’s occasional, then people can know that they can browse through the titles (if they choose to subscribe or revisit) and they’ll get what they came for.
Once you’ve done the podcast, don’t forget to use it as a blog post i.e. whack an audio link into Typepad (they have a very easy way of doing it - am sure you know more about it than me) or I think you can embed your blogtalkradio episode link directly into a post. Then make sure to write in your blog post what your episode is about - the spiders won’t ’see’ the audio but they will see your words about it…”
What do others think to this? What are some of the ways other people are podcasting/thinking of podcasting?
I’ve just posted the latest episode of my podcast, which gives hints and tips for easy podcasting. The episode features social media expert Claire Raikes, aka The Business Blog Angel. It’s the second half of an interview I did with her (which I chopped in two on her advice!) and in this one we pick up the conversation talking about show notes. Claire also reveals some of her top tips for podcasters…
To listen through your computer speakers or headphones, just click the play button in the window to the left of this post or to subscribe via itunes or other podcatcher, just copy and paste this feed.
http://audiopodartist.libsyn.com/rss
If you’re asking yourself the question ‘why podcasting?’ then it’s worth taking a look at the latest stats, as published this week by Podcasting News.
If you are thinking of starting a podcast then it’s a great time to do it as, according to the article, numbers of podcast listeners have increased, having grown by 38% for audio podcasts and 45% for video. Interestingly, 75% of listeners use their computers to listen.
I find this last stat quite interesting as it means that the majority of users aren’t necessarily downloading the mp3s to their ipods. This is good news for those of you who aren’t quite ready to go the whole hog and start a regular podcast but who do want some kind of web audio so that potential clients can get to know you better. People are seemingly becoming more keen to listen to web audio so having some on your site could mean you’re giving your website visitors the little extra that they’re looking for…or should I say listening for?
