Podcasting

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

WOMMA to issue guide to social media marketing disclosure

UPDATE: WOMMA has issued its press release on its new guidelines for social media disclosure.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is set to issue a guide to disclosure in social media marketing sometime tomorrow, February 17. The guide was prompted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines for disclosure of relationships between companies and people discussing them and their products or services in social media venues.

The document is designed to enhance rather than replace the rules that may already exist in your organization. And it’s WOMMA’s intention to continually update the guide given the ongoing evolution of social media.

The guide covers the most commonly used social media channels, including blogs, Twitter and other microblogging tools, social network status updates, video and photo sharing sites and podcasts.

The microblogging hashtag recommendations could be problematic, given the number of similar proposals that have been introduced over the last year or so. (Here’s one proposal; here’s another, and another.) But if all WOMMA members adopt the tags the guide recommends, we may see some consistency emerge around how disclosure is handled on Twitter. The three tags listed in the guide include…

• #spon—Sponsored
• #paid—Paid
• #samp—Sample

WOMMA advises using the same tags on status updates through social networks should there be a character limit in the status update function.

The best advice in the guide—which applies to all of the channels covered—is to provide a link to a complete disclosure and relationships statement, although recommended language for such a statement isn’t included.

The document does recommend language for disclosure that is

clear and prominent. Language should be easily understood and unambiguous. Placement of the disclosure must be easily viewed and not hidden deep in the text or deep on the page. All disclosures should appear in a reasonable font size and color that is both reasable and noticeable to consumers.

For example, for personal and editorial blogs, WOMMA recommends disclosure like…

• I received ___ (product or sample) ___ from ___ (company name), or
• (Company name) ___ sent me ___ (product or sample) ___

WOMMA went through a deliberate process to develop the guide, including creating a blog, Living Ethics, that served as a forum for comments and questions.

I’ll update this post tomorrow when a link becomes available to the official WOMMA guide.

Oh, and by way of disclosure, I was offered a sneak peek at the guide by WOMMA and was not put under an embargo until tomorrow’s announcement.

Monday, January 04, 2010

Why I commit 14 hours each week to podcasting

My friend and colleague, Neville Hobson, and I just wrapped up recording of episode #514 of our twice-weekly podcast, For Immediate Release. It’s an auspicious episode, the fifth anniversary of FIR’s launch on January 3, 2005. Neville blogged eloquently about the anniversary in a post on the actual anniversary yesterday.

As I waited for Adobe Audition to process the WAV file to eliminate background noise (always the longest part of post-production), I pondered the question and comment posed most often about FIR, which has to do with the amount of time it takes to produce two episodes each week (not to mention interviews and other FIR content) and how Neville and I are able to maintain the commitment to the show.

There are several answers:

Our listeners—A year or so ago, we were late getting an episode published. Not days late. Hours late. Yet we heard from several listeners wondering where it was. Not having the latest FIR was a disruption to their routines. (I think it was Mitch Joel who told us that he counted on FIR on Mondays and Thursdays to keep his mind occupied while he was on the treadmill.) Neville and I have always viewed FIR as a listener-driven show. Our listeners are the most important dimension of the podcast. I’m humbled that so many people have told me how important FIR has been to their professional and career development. That makes it difficult to adopt a cavalier attitude toward producing the show.

Mutual respect—The fact that the show is co-hosted makes it much harder to shrug off producing an episode. We have a set time for recording the show: 9 a.m. my time (Pacific) and 5 p.m. in the U.K. Each of us knows the other has planned to be ready, so if one of us opts not to do an episode, it leaves the other hanging out to dry. As a result, we have fallen into the habit of being ready. If one of us has to travel or has some other commitment, we make sure the other knows in plenty of time to plan a solo show or arrange for a guest co-host. There have even been a couple instances when neither of us were available, but the show went on with guest co-hosts Dan York and Sallie Goetsch. FIR also allows Neville and me to maintain regular contact despite being separated by a continent and an ocean. It’s a relationship that has been beneficial both personally and professionally.

Staying current—I can’t speak for Neville, but for me, FIR is the catalyst for staying on top of the news and trends that drive the communications profession. For each episode, I review well over 100 RSS feeds that keep me updated on blog posts and news stories that match a wide range of key words. Much has been written lately about the demise of the RSS news reader since people find out what’s going on through real-time resources, notably Twitter. For me, Twitter is simply inadequate since I won’t get the comprehensive overview I need in order to plan the stories I’ll cover on FIR. As a result, I’m generally on top of news and trends, which certainly aids my consulting practice. It would be much harder to be current if I weren’t checking my feeds at least twice a week.

Client work—Speaking of clients, several have asked for my help with podcasting based on my experience with FIR. I don’t for a minute believe business podcasting is dead, particularly as an internal communications medium, and I’m delighted to be able to offer expertise gained doing the show as a service. In fact, developing the expertise was the primary motivation for starting FIR back when I first conceived it in September or so of 2004.

Commitment to podcasting—When it comes to podcasting as a medium, I’m a true believer. No, it never exploded the way microblogging or social networks have, but the number of podcasts, the adoption of podcasting by mainstream media, and the number of listeners continues to grow incrementally, not to mention general public awareness of the medium. I love the idea of niche-oriented shows that appeal to smaller audiences than are required to support radio or television shows. I have become A Podcaster and I just can’t imagine not doing it.

I don’t see any of these factors changing anytime soon, so I’ll continue to put in the the time it takes to knock out two episodes (plus interviews) per week. In case you’re wondering, that’s about seven hours per show, or 14 hours per week. It breaks out something like this:

• 1.5 hours - Research
• 0.5 hours - Outline development (we maintain the outline on Google Wave, by the way)
• 2 hours - Pre-production (e.g., preparing stories, managing audio comments from listeners)
• 1.5 hours - Recording
• 1.5 hours - Post-production

It’s worth every minute.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A few words about Web Managers University

I taught a half-day workshop on podcasting today at Web Managers University, a program of the U.S. General Services Administration. Part of the workshop focused on newer services available to podcasters like iPadio, BlogTalk Radio and AudioBoo. To demonstrate how easy they are to use, I ran a brief demonstration, interviewing WMU’s Jae Rouse. Here’s the interview:

Interestingly, as soon as the audio file was available from AudioBoo, Jae posted it to her Facebook profile so friends who wondered what she did for a living could find out. Nice one, Jae!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

My podcasting travel rig

More than a few people have asked me about the podcasting rig I take with me on the road. The last time I broke the rig out, I decided to snap a quick picture.

This is the same mix-minus setup I use in the office, but with less gear, less expensive gear, and in one case, tougher gear.

It starts with the mixer, an absolute requirement for a mix-minus setup. Instead of the larger and heavier Mackie I use in the office, I carry a Behringer Xenyx 802 (upper left). It’s small, inexpensive (about $70), and features the auxiliary input/output ports required for the mix-minus. Sometimes it feels like the AC adapter for the mixer weighs more than the mixer itself.

Just below the mixer is the Marantz PMD-620 (lower left). About the size of a pack of playing cards—considerably smaller than the PMD-660 I use in the office (and I’m jonesing for the new PMD-661)—the PMD-620 is a marvel of modern audio engineering. Even though I usually use the PMD-620 for interviews, I don’t have to change the setting from microphone to line-in, since the device auto-detects the kind of input you’re using.

Just to the right of the PMD-620 is a first-generation iPod Nano, the same one I use in the office to add listeners’ audio comments and other audio to the mix.

Between the Nano and the laptop is the pair of Shure SE530 earbuds I use to listen to music. I don’t carry studio monitors on the road, but the earbuds work just fine.

To the right of the laptop is the ElectroVoice (EV) N/D767a dynamic microphone (about $100). Condenser microphones produce better quality, but they’re delicate, while dynamic mics have no moving parts and can withstand the rigors of travel. The EV was recommended to me by a radio journalist who said his had been run over by a Humvee and still worked great.

The microphone is supported on a tabletop tripod.

One last item: I use a woman’s makeup bag to hold the various cables required for this setup. This bag unfolds flat with a number of zippered compartments, perfect for cables and adapters.

Missing from this setup is a digital effects processor, a microphone pre-amp, and a compressor…just too much to carry. I try to remember to bring my iRiver IFP-890 for backup, but usually forget.

This equipment only finds its way into my luggage when I know I’ll have a Monday or Thursday morning free so Neville and I can do a regular show. Otherwise, my Marantz PMD-620 is always with me; it’s what I use to record segments to send Neville when my commitments keep me from joining him for our regular co-hosted format.

The setup is simple:

1. Main output goes to the PMD-620.
2. Shure earbuds are attached to the headphone output of the PMD-620.
3. Microphone is jacked into the Line 1 input plug on the Xenyx mixer. Audio for Line 1 is panned left.
4. Cable runs from mixer auxiliary output to laptop microphone input jack.
5. Cable runs from laptop headphone jack to Line 3 input jack. Audio for Line 3 is panned right.
6. Cable runs from Nano headphone output jack to the mixer’s Line 4 input jack. Audio for Line 4 is panned left.
7. Auxiliary output is panned left.

The idea here is simple. While the main mix—being recorded by the PMD-620—plays all output, Neville (my co-host) wants to hear all output except himself. By panning coming into the mix from the laptop (which would be Neville’s voice over Skype) to the right track, I’m able to use the auxiliary send to feed everything except the right track back into the microphone input so Neville hears me (through the microphone) and other audio (from the Nano).

It all fits into my suitcase along with everything else I need and, if I can get away with only one suit, I can still avoid checking my bag.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Word of mouth as a podcast promotion channel

The business adoption of podcasting continues apace. In particular, I find a lot of small businesses producing podcasts. I was delighted to find that the owner of the house I live in has produces a podcast, both audio and video, addressing tax credit issues (he’s a CPA). The podcast is called “Tax Credit Tuesday.”

Podcasting’s allure for small businesses is simple to understand, given the ease and low cost of production. But the number of large businesses with podcasts continues to expand as well. Companies also no doubt recognize podcasting’s ability to reach niche audiences.

Sadly, most business podcasts are positioned as one-way time-shifted broadcasts. There’s no effort to build community or otherwise apply social media principles to these shows. They’re not housed on blogs, there’s no listener feedback or even a means by which listeners can comment.

This morning, Neville and I had a discussion on episode 392 of our podcast, For Immediate Release, that was sparked by a question from a listener, Simon Young in New Zealand. Simon wondered how others select the podcasts to which they’ll give their attention given the limited time available for listening and the massive number of shows available.

I posted Simon’s question on the FIR FriendFeed room, which produced a number of comments, most of which were in synch with Neville’s and my own view: We try out new podcasts mostly based on recommendations from people we know and trust. That is, word of mouth is critical to the marketing of podcasts.

For those businesses that don’t embrace the social media dimensions of podcasting, I wonder how they’re getting new listeners. I’m sure some are promoting their shows through the channels they’re already using to communicate with existing customers, but many business podcasts are designed with the hope of reaching new audiences. Listeners who feel they are part of a podcast community are far more likely to spread the word than those who see themselves as merely part of a broadcast audience.

If you’re taking the time to produce a podcast, shouldn’t you adopt the means by which most podcasts are discovered? Is word-of-mouth the primary means by which you find new podcasts?

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Podcasting from the heart—with editing

Two of my good friends—C.C. Chapman and Mitch Joel—have, on their most recent podcasts, extolled the virtues of podcasting without editing. “Live to the hard drive” is the phrase I hear most often in reference to this podcasting style; a lot of shows I listen to are recorded this way, including (of course) C.C.‘s “Managing the Gray” and Mitch’s “Six Pixels of Separation.” It’s no surprise that Mitch and C.C. were co-presenting a session at Podcamp Montreal (coming up September 20-21) titled, “Podcasting from the Heart: The Value of Recording a Show with No Editing and No Second Takes.”

C.C. refers to it as “passionate podcasting—hit record and go, and when you’re done, you’re done.” Mitch suggests that the processes of producing a more polished show would prevent him from conveying “the spirit in which I want to communicate to you.”

Don’t get me wrong. C.C.‘s and Mitch’s shows are among the few that I won’t miss, along with “Marketing Over Coffee,” another live-to-the-hard-drive show in which the ambience of the location adds a tasty dimension to Christopher S. Penn and John Wall‘s conversations. (Update: John Wall has noted in a post to his Ronin Marketeer blog that “Marketing Over Coffee” is, in fact, edited—a testament to how good editing can make a show sound natural and unedited!.) But I don’t agree that a show that is edited after recording is any less passionate, any less from the heart, than one that isn’t.

The primary reason I do post-production on “For Immediate Release,” the podcast I’ve been recording with Neville Hobson since early January 2005, is simple: There are two of us separated by a continent and an ocean. We can’t see each other, we’re working from a playlist, and we stumble over each other’s words, we miss cues, we make mistakes. Sure, we could just let it fly, but the mistakes would make the show longer and distract from the content.

Nevertheless, we’re just as passionate about our topics. Our delivery is most definitely from the heart. (In fact, following a recent tirade of mine, listener Sherilynne Starkie left a comment to the show’s blog noting, “Shel’s right worked up about this one, eh?”)

Another reason for post-production: I want to make the show as easy on listeners’ ears as possible. As a podcast listener (I currently subscribe to 26 shows), I routinely find myself yanking the buds out of my ears when a new segment is a billion or so decibels louder than the last. I unsubscribe from shows with good content when background noise or some other flaw is so bad that it mitigates the pleasure of listening.

For the record, here’s how FIR is recorded and edited:

Neville and I record over Skype using a process called a “mix-minus.” (A couple years ago, I recorded a YouTube video that provides detail on how to configure a mix-minus setup.) One of the key advantages of the mix minus is that each of our voices is recorded to a separate track.

The file is recorded to a digital recorder onto a flash card. I keep a notepad by the rig to note the timecodes of mistakes. Often, when we screw up, we have a bit of a chat about what to do next, more bits our listeners just don’t need.

I record to the uncompressed WAV format, advice I got at a New Media Expo from Doug Kaye. If you record to MP3 and edit the MP3 file, then save it, you’ve just compressed a compressed file. Each time you save, you degrade the audio. So I do all my work in WAV, saving the compression to MP3 for the very last stage.

Once the recording is done, I transfer the WAV file to my laptop and open it in Adobe Audition. (I used Audacity for the first couple years of the show, but as podcasting became more of a hobby, I graduated to a commercial product with more bells and whistles.)

At the beginning of our session, I let the recorder run for about 20 seconds while neither of us says a word. I use this clip as a noise profile, which lets me run a noise reduction utility on the entire recording. As a result, the hiss in the background—from air conditioning, heating, or whatever, is eliminated.

Next, I use my notes to delete the extraneous discussions and mistakes. If I’m trying to get a show that ran particularly long down to an hour or so, I also delete some bits and bobs, or even entire news items that will become FIR Cuts, segments that didn’t make the final cut but that we make available as separate files.

With the editing done, I save each track as a new, mono file. On each of these files is just one of our voices, so there are long gaps during which you can’t hear anybody talking. These gaps are mostly dead silent, thanks to the noise reduction routine, but that process leaves artifacts whenever it encounters a sound that’s louder than the hiss captured in the noise profile (such as an inadvertent bumping of the microphone). These artifacts mostly sound like clicks and pops, so I highlight each of these gaps and use Audition’s amplification tool to reduce the sound to zero.

(Incidentally, I’ve never taken an audio engineering class; I learned to use Audition by trial and error. I suspect there are easier ways to do this—some of you might even be rolling your eyes, wondering why I do it this way. If there’s a more efficient process that produces these results, tell me!)

Now that the treatment of each track is finished, I move the them to the multitrack view, which combines the two tracks. I save this as a WAV file, naming it with the episode number and the word “voices,” like this: fir377-voices. I use Levelator, a free tool from The Conversations Network, to bring all voices to the same optimum level.

I load the output file from Levelator back into Audition, and add the music from the intro, the segment intros for news and comments, and the podsafe song we play at the end of the show; Levelator is for voices, and doesn’t do so well with music.

I export that file to MP3, add the ID3 tags, and upload the file to LibSyn, where our audio files are hosted.

The entire process takes about two hours. The longest stretches are the noise reduction and Levelating processes, during which I do other work on my other computer, so the actual amount of time I spend physically manipulating the audio file is about an hour.

The result is a show that is passionate and from the heart, but sounds good.

It’s a choice. It’s not the right choice, or the only choice, but it’s the one we’ve opted to use, and I don’t believe for a minute that it diminishes the value of the show.

If we read the entire show from a script, on the other hand…how passionate or from the heart would that be?

Friday, August 29, 2008

IABC Heritage Region conference podcasts are up

IABC’s Heritage Region is gearing up for its conference October 12-14 in Hartford, Connecticut. To promote the conference, I was asked if I could produce a series of short audio interviews with speakers. I’ve wrapped up eight of the 12 interviews, which include some pretty good information even for those not planning on attending the conference. The interviews run about 10 minutes each and are available for download, listening directly from the conference podcast page, or subscription via RSS.

Among the topics addressed in the interviews:

• Building Brands and Managing Reputation via Social Media
• Media Relations: The Fallacy of Staying on Message
• Connecting Employees Across Generations and Geographies
• Avoiding a Corporate Identity Crisis: How Communications Can Take the Lead

I’ll wrap up the last four interviews next Thursday.