Video Podcast Workflow Tips from Podcamp NYC

I spoke this past weekend at "Podcamp NYC" to a standing-room-only crowd. I promised to post a summary and also provide the links, especially for those peeps who watched from the hallway!

Thanks also to these peeps who attended and offered their input: Jamison Tilsner of Tilzy.tv, Chef Mark Tafoya of Culinary Media Network, Tom Guariello of True Talk Now, Adam Sherlip of New York Islanders and Rahiem Drinkwater of Pdashmedia.

1. Concept (How time-consuming is it?)
   • There is a direct correlation between the difficulty of producing your show and the frequency by which you publish. The easier the format, the more often you can realistically deliver an episode.
   • The more often you release new content, the more often you show up on the top of the page of the various web video aggregation sites.
   • It better be something you love in order to sustain the amount of work it takes to deliver well and deliver consistently.
   • A typical 3-4 minute episode of Beach Walks with Rox, which uses a very simple formula (8 second title sequence, 3-minute one-shot main clip, and 20-second credit roll) and is unscripted, takes about 2.5 - 3 hrs to produce from start to finish.
2. Naming Conventions (for you & your subscribers)
   • Creating a naming convention makes it easy to file and search your content.
   • It makes things line up nicely when displayed on other people's directories such as iTunes.
   • For correct date sorting, use YYMMDD or YYYYMMDD, regular English will not work.
3. Project Template (reusable parts)
   • Create a master template folder (using your naming convention).
   • Have your main project file built in the software of your choice, and embed all of the reusable clips, such as your theme music bed, your show name and URL, and your version of copyright licensing.
   • Do the same for your episode thumbnail graphic. (You can use one main show graphic or you can use a unique graphic for each episode. I recommend using an episode graphic if you have visual content that changes from day to day - it helps people find an episode when viewing in iTunes, for example.)
   • Duplicate the template folder and rename accordingly for each new episode.
   • Assemble any additional bits and pieces of content in there belonging to that episode.
4. Look & Feel (easier editing & brand consistency)
   • Take some time when first creating your show to develop a look and feel.
   • Experiment with a few transition and titling styles, then stick with them. (Saves you time by being able to ignore all the other choices!)
   • Be sure to build in your show name, your web site address, and your copyright license. Some people also plan ahead for ad insertions, contact information, or other custom items.
5. Encoding & Uploading Tips
   • Flash format will play for most users. Several hosting sites will encode your Quicktime or Windows Media files into Flash for you.
   • You must also supply a downloadable format to enable RSS subscriptions. Your best option is a Quicktime-compatible format.
   • Be sure to add the META data to each episode. You can do this easily by bringing the encoded file into iTunes, and editing the info and adding your artwork.
   • Encoding times can vary considerably depending on the length, size, and output quality of each episode, as well as the speed of your computer. The Visual Hub software (below) does a remarkably good job in dramatically faster times. (Almost in real time whereas other programs can take 3-10 X real time.)
   • Uploading video files can be very time-consuming, and naturally will vary depending on your internet connection speed.

Links Mentioned
Visual Hub - Encodes in multiple formats; $23.32 USD
Viddler for free hosting, comments, & social features
Blip.tv for free hosting and built-in blog; geared to episodic shows
Tube Mogul for batch distribution across the web & stats tracking
Creative Commons for licensing your work if you want something other than full copyright.
Ioda PromoNet for royalty-free music for non-commercial use

Update! Going through my acquired business cards, these folks work in the space.

A Few More People I Met
Ariel Publicity - Ariel reps independent bands who want to promote their music on other people's shows
Filmosity - Chris Cavallari can help you with shooting, editing, on location work for hire, etc
Carrot Creative - Creative shop to help you with the web site and embrace new media
Truffle Media - They can help you with turn-key business podcasting
Vivid Screen Designs - Jane Gussin does motion graphics and video production
Cheil Worldwide - Ann Marie Mathis and Howard Levenson grok new media & social web campaigns

Do you invest more in people or gear?

There was a job posting over on a message list I follow, and it got me to thinking. It seems that lots of companies feel safer and more comfortable about investing in a lot of high end equipment, but then want to find people to work on spec or for very little pay or for fame. As a creator though, I have some different opinions, so I posed the question to a group of colleagues at ad:tech last week. You can listen to their opinions, then make up your own mind - and please tell me what you think!

Here's the original posting for context:

[Company X] is looking for a video engineer to manage, enhance and
operate our state-of-the-art HD multi-camera streaming video studio.
We're switched, have about 3,000 square feet of shooting space, a green
screen, etc. We need someone who wants to chart the course of what a
videoblogging/streaming studio should look be, on a beer budget.

In all fairness, beer is part of the company's culture, so you could take that last comment a couple of different ways. Feel free to leave a comment right in the video as well - you'll just have to create a quick account over at viddler.

Are You Addicted to Big Numbers?

I love math. It has an uncanny way of teasing apart the truth, but alas, it can also just as easily be used selectively to manipulate or create false impressions. And if we get addicted to a certain type of math - tracking eyeballs and households for example - then we can be inadvertently wasting time and money on our way to building brands and selling stuff.

In the old days of business, it was not possible in most cases to communicate with just the people who were a good fit for your products and services. So your agency developed campaigns for you that involved sending out millions of mailers or commercials broadcast to hundreds of thousands of households.

Typical rates of return? Less than one percent. We all know that. But those big campaign numbers are still so addicting. "I need the big numbers in order to get the rates of return to justify this expense." Well, you only want the actual end result numbers.

The point is that now with technology, new media aka podcasting or downloadable media and social networks, you can actually reach the precise people who are most likely to buy from you, on the first round. You don't have to bother interrupting or shouting at gazillions watching a mainstream TV show knowing that in there a few customers (who are probably fast-forwarding the commercials anyway...) You have other more powerful ways of having "private" conversations with your target audience instead of hoping your target finds you in the midst of all that noise.

I call it the phenomenon of having people actually self-enrolling themselves and it's one step faster and juicier than "targeting." Though there were dozens of companies here at ad:tech promising better and better targeting of audiences, wouldn't you rather be able to just show up with your stuff knowing that people had already organized themselves around a related "something"?

I have a couple of examples for you.

iPhone Users and Web Software
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal wrote about a new iPhone software:

Earlier today, we wrote about new software that lets businesses customize Web sites for visitors with iPhones. Our take: Businesses that sell to other businesses shouldn’t rush out and buy this software because iPhones only account for 0.18% of Internet traffic...

That's a really small number. 0.18%. Who wants to bother with such a small, even microscopic group of people? Well what if you knew that iPhone users as a group are high income and highly educated phone users, and as early adopters they are also trend-sensors as well as trend setters? They are the people who have the money and the intellect to detect smart moves in the marketplace and tend to have others who follow them.

Now, not every company wants to meet the smart, rich, trendy, 24-7 movers and shakers, but if you do, iPhone users have already identified themselves as such, and making your web site i-Phone-compatible is an incredibly easy way to say to them: hey you! over here. My company wants to make it easy for you to play with us.

Mainstream Media Placement or Podcast Placement?
There's a local girl band here in Hawaii, MighTyJ. During the production of their album, they set up a blog and filmed a vidcast aka video podcast with their recording engineer, Doctor Trey. When it was time to start promoting themselves, they used a combination of approaches. For one they got booked on the CBS-affiliate morning show (about 25,000 households). After that appearance, there was zero uptick on their web site traffic and no increase in downloads or subscribers to their vidcast.

Then they made an appearance on our daily Internet TV show, Beach Walks with Rox, average daily download of about 2500 or one-tenth the reported size of morning network TV. Their site traffic jumped enormously and they doubled the number of subscribers to their podcast.

So do you want to waste your time contacting 25,000 and get no response or contact 2,500 and get an enormous response?

Welcome to the new new math people. Fall in love with small numbers. Be willing to pay a higher CPM/CPA because other things (technology) and other people (podcast creators) are doing the heavy lifting for you.

Pep Talk and Talk Prep for HAF

I'll be speaking this morning at the Hawaii Advertising Federation's annual "university." This is a day when the ad pros come together to network and open minds to new ideas.

First off, I say congrats. There is this sticky wicket in that the more a person becomes an expert, the more confusing it is to find space for new information. If you are like me, you can hear the echo of a client somewhere saying, "But you're the expert - why didn't you know that already or why are you going to this seminar?"

Of course, true experts and wise people understand that with information being created at an inconceivably fast pace, no one can be an expert for more than a few moments in time. I prefer to think of myself as a lover of knowledge, and that inspires me to learn as much as I can, plus I am interested in sharing it with others. That is my time-saving gift - I will do the research and make some of the silly learning mistakes so I can fast track you with a new tool.

This session is a tour of the deep parts of the tubes. The internet truly is a culture of its own, and I will be your tour guide making the trip inside fun and informative and safe. It will be a living example of how the net works these days, so please expect some interaction, some social networking, some gossip 2.0, and some key takeaways for how this can impact your business and those you serve.

Rent or Buy? How Does a Company Decide to Use New Media

I just tripped across the Custom Content Conference being held this March in New Orleans. It is targeted at brand managers and ad folks who may be considering creating their own serialized web content or new media/social media channels. I thought I'd mention a few of the companies who have already ventured in to this arena, and hopefully you may have some more to add to the list.

Whole Foods has been doing this for about a year with both audio and video podcasts, all of which are produced using in-house talent. Scott Simons, Regional Marketing Director, hosts the Secret Ingredient show. There has been discussion on the Yahoo Videoblogging List about this show and the opportunities to also integrate both freelance-produced content as well as user-generated content. Word on the street is that Whole Food is not interested, preferring to control the show in-house. It's a full service blog-based site, with comments accepted and RSS. Visitors can manually download the flash version of the episode, though that is not playable on most MP3 devices.

American Express last year launched LX.tv which is a combination traditional web site and video blog, using the "new" part of the media and not so much the "social" part of the media. It is Flash-based, which makes the site a bit slow for my tastes, but does allow the designers to create a very rich, urban mood and feel. They use freelance contributors and the episodes focus on restaurants (AMEX merchants) and celebrity/social life. You can get an RSS feed, and in their grab the embed code for each episode, but the flash programming makes that part very cumbersome and the interface is elusive unless you know what the little icons represent. Viewer comments are not accepted.

Starwood Hotels launched The Lobby as a text blog in 2006. It also hires freelance contributors around the world, sharing local life stories and virtually always ending with a link to a hotel or hotel service found in the region. They have started including YouTube-hosted videos made by their contributors. I really like the widget they have in addition to traditional RSS options.

We are in production with a Fortune 100 company to develop a branded show that is educational in nature. Naturally, the goal is to drive sales for this particular service, but the company believes (and so do we) that creating original branded content that is useful and entertaining using new media (aka your own internet TV station) is a terrific, largely untapped opportunity at this time.

There are many other examples of companies who are doing direct ad sponsorships of independently-produced shows. I discussed the Ford - Amanda Across America collaboration in this post with follow-up in this post. Earthlink was an early sponsor of the Washington Post video podcasts and pharmaceutical companies are pursing this as well.

I definitely have my preferences, based on years of experience as a consumer (!) and also the past three years of being on the forefront of creating audio and video content for the web. Keep in mind as well that the criteria will vary depending on your audience and your product/service - there is no cookie-cutter solution here. And if things go wrong, as they did on the Edelman-managed video for Walmart, do like Edelman did and learn from the experience. It's not possible to know it all - and that's the reason for us to keep talking. For those of you attending the HAF Conference tomorrow, we'll be discussing this in more detail.

Getting Clients to Pay On Time

We are a small business. We invoice once a month, for services performed in the previous month. Our payment terms are "due on receipt." Some clients pay accordingly. Others have tended to lump us into the "net-30" category based (my ass-u-mption) on the terms they receive from other vendors. A few others appear to have a "squeaky wheel" folder, aka don't pay until someone is bugging them repeatedly to pay.

Years ago I contemplated putting up a web site called "theydontpay.com" that would serve as a sort of small business Dun & Bradstreet service. Small business owners could post their experiences of companies with a bad record of not paying, so other small companies could check out a potential client in advance. Back in those days, we had a few big names you would think would be an asset to the client list. But in reality, they had a high P.I.T.A. score often based on refusal to pay normal invoices. The concept was very similar to another social media site I recently discovered, RottenNeighbor.com. (I could have some fun there!)

Since I was too busy to do that, and am wary in general of putting out stink eye for all the world to see (I prefer Aloha), I decided instead to offer positive incentives. I've been having fun, but have to report that it has only made the good clients better and not the "bad" clients better. The first month was a 10% discount to the first payment received. We accept and encourage electronic payments so the first payment was delivered in less than 20 minutes by a nonprofit client, NAWBO. I reported that in my next monthly mailing.

The next time I offered a free $10 iTunes Gift Card to anyone who left a comment on our blog. This was to also help our clients get more comfortable leaving blog comments and hey, do any of you not love getting more blog comments?

Guess what? Only one person played. Meredith of HereComesTheGuide.com was stoked, and I extended it some because she actually left two comments! I sent her a 25 gift card that also donates 10% to AIDS relief in Africa. (I hope that link survives outside of my browser cookie settings...)

This month, I am offering a more generic BareFeetShop/Amazon.com $10 gift certificate and link love to all those who tell me about a blog they read and why. (And I even encouraged them to get staff involved.) Early congrats to Andy at Packet Analytics who replied in less than 15 minutes! I'll compile the results here in a few weeks.

Wish me luck. I'd sure like to find out what the tipping point is to get old invoices paid. (You know who you are, though I wonder if you read our blog. Please contact me privately to tell me about your sweet spots.) I am all ears to the rest of you who have fun ways to help clients pay on time and feel so good about it they'll want to do it over and over again.

Video Podcasting for Unconferenz 2008

Here is my talk at Unconferenz 2008 in Honolulu on Jan 12, 2008. I am using the social networking site for slide shows, SlideShare.net. It does not play the embedded video — for that you'll want to be live! UPDATE: Ryan Ozawa has posted this video compilation from the day's events.

Links from the talk
Hardware & Software
Elgato Turbo USB encoding device
Sanyo Xacti Digital Underwater Video Camera
Flip Digital Video Camera
The Poor Man's Steady Cam
Visual Hub Batch Encoding Software
Quicktime Pro

Video Clips Used in Presentation
The Clip Show - Jim Kirks' Video Podcast Reviews
Levelator Audio Software by Bruce Sharpe
Todd Cochrane of Raw Voice
Laura Athavale Fitton of Pistachio Consulting

Other Useful Links for Video Podcasting
Blip.tv - free and almost free hosting for serialized video content
TubeMogul - batch upload your files to multiple sites and get viewership stats
Show in a Box WordPress theme for Video
Freevlog - Tutorials on Video Blogging

Our Internet TV Show
Beach Walks with Rox

Site ReLaunch: Coffee Kids

Coffee Kids has been our client for almost a decade. As a nonprofit, they help coffee-growing families learn new skills and develop sustainable lifestyles, as the coffee industry suffers from a glut of over-production that keeps income low to the first line of coffee workers - those who cultivate and pick the beans. It's not an easy story to tell when you and I are used to paying four bucks for a grandé latté. They depend on their web site as the key communication tool.

Their site has been due for an upgrade for years, but time and money constraints have meant the web site has been on the back burner. Years ago we set them up to collect online payments and also use Contribute software to edit their pages. It was a good tool at that time, but had out-grown its usefulness. It had many limitations and required a software license on each computer that was being used to make updates, not to mention training.

Their new site uses Expression Engine software, which is our favorite enterprise content management system. It is highly flexible from a programmers point of view, very easy to work in from an editor's point of view (right in the browser - no extra software required), and very easy to control multi-user access from an administrator's point of view. With just 1.5 hours of training, the staff was busy adding new Businesses to their searchable database, uploading photos, and blogging in both English and Spanish! Click on the thumbnail graphics to see full size screenshots, then follow the numbers for a detailed analysis below.

Home Page Before	Home Page After

A Few Home Page Highlights
1 Toolbar	Old site: no search. New site: full search plus CSS tools to easily let the user change font size. Donate and Contact are easily found on every single page.
2 High Impact Headline	Old Site: lots going on, no real focal point, a lot of reading required to get your attention. New Site: Wow - color, font size, and brevity all work to stop the visitor and create an emotional connection via a powerful statement of fact.
3 Time-sensitive Call to Action	Via a PHP script, we pull the date in (like a lot of sites do) but we integrate it into the message of the page. It is then immediately followed by three strong actions. Surely one of them will speak to you! This is an editable area, so the client can include as many as they want at any given time. A special link style was created to give this call to action even more prominence and draw users into the site. We are especially proud of the features added to their Business Members database, and pages that encourage people to visit their donors, tell a friend about the local businesses, and support special programs offered by donors. By helping Coffee Kids help their donors, the web site strengthens the donor partnerships.
4 Use Flickr to Manage Photos	Why build a private cumbersome photo gallery when they can join the Flickr community? One of the original (and still one of the best) social applications, it allows for easy upload of pictures, tagging of pictures, creating and belonging to groups, and a little script here automatically feeds in new pictures to the home page. Not only does it help Coffee Kids easily manage their many compelling pictures, it helps them network with others over at Flickr, finding new supporters.
5 Embedded Video Message	Coffee Kids wants to explore using video - which is very hot right now. Because video is much harder to create, we decided to try placing a short intro message on the home page as a way to start. However, this high impact placement can be converted later to a video blog post if desired. We like to build the bones first and then let the site's function and content grow organically over time.
6 A Blog	It's my opinion that you just aren't serious about communicating with your audience if you don't have a blog. Like many companies (and non-profits especially) they had concerns. "We've never done this." "What if people leave bad comments?" "It takes too much time." But luckily and ideally, they now have a staff member, Kyle Freund, who is leading the challenge to provide support and coaching inside the organization. Coffee Kids is also rare in having a multilingual blog—perfect because so much of their work takes place in Central and South America. We've also coded simple buttons in the admin so editors can easily add accented Spanish characters without learning the code.

Donate Page Before	Donate Page After

Making Donations Count
1 Easy to Sort Donor Groups	Old site: one long cumbersome donation page. New site: separate pages for individuals and businesses, because Coffee Kids really has unique messages and requests for each group. The generic donation information is clearly displayed on a separate page, easily accessible to both groups.
2 Custom PayPal Programming	Old Site - default PayPal button functionality. New Site - custom programming for a cleaner, more flexible user interface. We also added the option for gift donations, thereby removing yet one more barrier to give. By continuing to use PayPal, Coffee Kids can leverage the very low transaction fees and very wide user base without incurring custom shopping cart software expense.
3 Colorful clear graphics	The entire look of the site is more modern, easy to navigate, and user-friendly. The submit buttons include help messaging to make the donation process even easier.
4 Multiple Donation Choices	The new configuration allows for different amounts for individuals and business, and allows each group to make a one-time or recurring donation. The layout clearly sorts the two, instead of having them all lumped together as on the old site. This allows for a simple, deliberative process for their donors which means fewer clean ups by office staff for mistaken donations.
5 Interactive Donate button	Every inside page of the site has this bold Donate button, that rolls over to red and answers the "Want to Donate?" question with, "Your gift really helps." A smart strategy and simple programming makes for a high impact conversation with site visitors.

With all this lean CSS design, re-thinking of the content strategy to use social apps wherever possible, and the inclusion of a blog, search engines love this site! And the possibilities for expanding further into social media and community building are amazing.

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