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Talknowledgy Podcast #105: Hurricane Sandy, Movember, Uncle Drew, Star Wars goes Disney, social gaming, and more
Plenty to chat about in the world of news this week. We kick off the show by discussing the social media and tech implications of Hurricane Sandy, the most popular Halloween candy on social media, and the launch of Movember.
In our “Creepy of Awesome?!” section we look at a new Facebook rumor – Users may be able to place classified ads to display to their friends on the social media giant. The main difference between this new feature, and the existing marketplace function, is you now have to pay to have your ad seen.
Our “YouTube Hero” this week is Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving. He reprises his role as Uncle Drew in a Pepsi Max commercial posted to YouTube this past Tuesday. The first video he did, posted May 2012, received 16 million views. Adding to the interest, Irving himself, wrote and directed both commercials.
Uncle Drew: Episode 2
And we couldn’t go a full show without touching on the US Presidential Election, so here’s our Bonus YouTube Hero this week, courtesy of The Simpsons:
Our “Hashtag Fail of the Week” is near and dear to Phil’s heart. Disney announces a new Star Wars trilogy. What do you think super-nerd Phil has to say about that? Tune in to find out!
If you liked the show, feel free to subscribe to this blog or our RSS feed to make sure you’re always up-to-date with Talknowledgy.
New Star Wars on the way, Courtesy of Disney
I wasn’t going to write a post this week.
Heck, this is only tangentially related to tech or social media.
But gosh darnit.
Is Star Wars better off with the house that Mickey built?
I believe George Lucas when he says he wants to see Star Wars persevere into another generation – whether for money reasons or because there’s never been (and probably never will be) another series quite like it – but is a new movie trilogy the way to do it? Is there no other way to introduce young people to Star Wars?
My fiancée is a big Looney Tunes fan, and her favourite character is Tweety. I’ve been looking for Tweety stuff for birthdays, Christmas, and what have you and it’s no easy task – likely because the show has been off the air for a while. I want to give them my money for Tweety merchandise but I effectively can’t do it! I shudder to think of a similar scenario where I won’t be able to find Star Wars stuff for my potential son or grandson. Sure, maybe some new series will come along that will be more relevant to his generation and I’ll be buying him action figures from that universe, but I firmly believe Star Wars is a unique universe. Maybe I’m biased because I grew up as the original trilogy came to VHS and as the new trilogy was just beginning production, but I’m not sure there will be another sci-fi movie series like it. Some compare Mass Effect to Star Wars, but Mass Effect has been and will always be a video game series first and foremost and, with an M rating, it is targeting a slightly older age group than Star Wars. I don’t know if it’s possible to have that same childhood nostalgia feelings about it as a series. So between the need for new merchandise and the gap in the market for a sci-fi series for tweens and teens, I can understand why Disney would look to launch a new trilogy…even if it is probably doomed to the same mockery that Lucas says forced him to step away from making Star Wars movies.
Why am I nay saying the new trilogy without knowing anything about it? It’s not just because it’s a cash grab or because I expect it will suck. My worry is that this series won’t be made for the Star Wars fan. I think this series is going to be for ‘new fans’, just like movies one to three, and it certainly will not be a love letter to guys like me or guys my dad’s age who saw the originals debut in theatres. The pent-up demand they refer to is not the demand of fans, who probably don’t want another movie since the story is complete as it is (and doesn’t need more editing, might I add Mr. Lucas). The pent-up demand is the demand for a new sci-fi series to inspire young minds and hock merchandise. Rather than start fresh, Disney aims to exploit the Star Wars brand and capture the imagination of a new group of pre-teens and teens by returning to a galaxy far, far away. And milking it dry.
If you think the future could sound bleak for Star Wars, I need hardly remind you that Lucasfilm also owns Indiana Jones and, with a more recent sequel that seemed to set up Shia LaBoeuf as the new Indy, that universe could also be headed to a dark place as Disney goes searching for lost treasure.
In the meantime, I eagerly anticipate Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money as a direct commentary on this whole situation.
Oh and don’t take my gripes as me saying I won’t go to see it.
-PG
How to Podcast
Talknowledgy debuted as a radio show on CKDJ 107.9 in Ottawa in September of 2010. At that time, podcasting was still kind of a new concept to Ted Raymond, my co-host at the time, and I. It was a neat idea to us but we weren’t sure who would listen, how we would get people to listen, where we would post it, and how much time we could devote to that (as we were college students at the time in what is the busiest term of Algonquin College‘s Radio Broadcasting program). Along the way we learned a few things, and I hope this checklist below will give you a starting point if you’d like to create your own podcast someday.
Pick a topic: First things first, what is the topic of your podcast? Is this a topic you’re interested in? Is it a topic that is broad enough that you can find listeners? How will you prove to people you are an expert in this topic?
Find a co-host or co-hosts: You could do a solo show or podcast, but it’s certainly more lively with one or two other people. It also helps if you have others to fall back on in case one of you is unavailable to do one show.
Line up the equipment: Good quality microphones is very important. Great content can be utterly ruined by bad or inconsistent audio quality. Everyone should be using the same microphone, and it should be in a quiet room with a lack of echo. Phone quality is acceptable in small bursts but a co-host should not be permanently on the phone. It gets hard to listen to!
Editing: Having good editing equipment is even more important. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to get! A copy of Adobe Audition is what you need! ProTools, Audacity, and other software will perform a similar function but in my opinion Audition is the easiest to use and does the job quite adequately – nearly every single Talknowledgy podcast was edited down through Audition! (One or two were edited using a radio news software called ‘Burli’ – not recommended for large-scale editing jobs and not cost efficient if all you need is the editing audio capability).
Length: Determining how long your podcast is important, especially if you want to syndicate this content by turning it into a radio show. If it’s purely for the internet, it can be as long as you want it to be and – in my opinion – it should be as long as it has to be. When Talknowledgy was on CKDJ, CKCU, and CFRA, the show was constrained by the ‘show clock’ – it had to be a certain length and couldn’t be longer or shorter. Now that it’s solely a podcast, we get to talk about every story we have lined up for the week! There are advantages to both models.
Schedule: When will your content go out? It can be easier or harder to get play throughs depending when it is released. We settled on Saturday morning because it was easiest from a recording standpoint and because we had a good number of clicks. By contrast, Friday night did not work for us at all. Your mileage may vary.
Get a podcast host, get a website: This will set you back a few bucks, but both are necessary. Find a podcast host that has a good billing structure based on your needs, looks presentable, gives you an RSS feed, makes it easy to embed audio, and helps spread the word about your podcast effectively. As for a website, WordPress is one avenue if your budget is tight or you aren’t all that web savvy!
Eventually you’ll want to look at things like budget, a content strategy to bring in more traffic to your website, a division of work among your partners, a promotion strategy, and many other things…but if you have the above figured out, you’re ready to start!
Good luck! Post a link to your podcast site in the comments – would love to check them out and chat with you about podcasting!
-PG
You’ve got Content – What do you do With it?
You’ve created a video showcasing your business. You’ve compiled an infographic to highlight last year’s accomplishments. You wrote up an article or other document outlining a new initiative. What do you do with it now?
SHARE IT.
Sometimes, it’s easy to rest on our laurels after creating content and think it will get out either because it’s on our website, or we’re posting it to social media. But in today’s internet landscape, people demand that information be pushed to them. To ensure you’re reaching the right people, sometimes you have to submit it to a lot of different places. Consider this a checklist for the next time you create a really stellar piece of content.
Get it online: If you’re producing great content with an external audience in mind and not posting it online, you’re missing out! While this seems like a ‘duh’ message, too often people are afraid of criticism and don’t want to take that next step to expose their content to the internet. Take a deep breath, and take the plunge anyways! Whether it’s a company site, a blog, or some other site – get it out there!
An RSS feed or email subscription: Seems again like a no-brainer, but consider what your existing online subscription options are. If people want your information, are you offering a way for it to be pushed right to them?
Your personal social media channels / your co-worker’s social media channels: While submitting it to the public via your organization’s profiles makes sense and should be your first stop, if you truly believe in what you’ve created then you should share it within your networks and add that little extra touch of a personal recommendation. Granted, you may not want to do this too often as your friends may become sick of seeing news about your company.
Stumbleupon: “StumbleUpon is the easiest way to find cool new websites, videos, photos and images from across the Web”, or so their website says. It’s certainly a way to gain exposure if you make use of their tags system to match up your content with people interested in it. Install the toolbar, and start “Liking”!
Reddit:While Reddit can be very anti-marketing and ‘troll-y’, as David Hall would put it, if it’s a legitimately cool piece of content you could get plenty of interesting feedback and exposure. Even if Redditors hate it, you can guarantee a boost in your site traffic! Just be sure to search out the appropriate and relevant sub-reddit to submit the link to and consider watching the subreddit’s etiquette, ie. how their users interact with one another, before posting.
Influencers, and industry blogs and publications:Find some thought leaders in your industry and share your content with them. Don’t beg for a retweet or reblog, but impress them with the quality and leave any action up to them.
Respond to related content: Find other content about a similar topic and leave a comment about it. Work in a reference to your content. Your comment should not simply be a plug for your content – that is bad netiquette!
News makers / news sources: While what you’ve produced may not be newsworthy to you, let the media company be the judge of that. You never know what stories they might be working on already. As I mentioned in last week’s post about the news cycle, your time window can be short on this so act fast!
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in – there is always another way to get your content out. I was advising some young, aspiring journalists this past week about ways to get exposure for their work to make a name for themselves. Whatever your goals, exposure is a key part in the growth of your organization and of your career.
What are some other ways to get your content out? Leave a comment below!
-PG
Talknowledgy Marks 100th Episode!
Ottawa, September 29, 2012. Talknowledgy, Ottawa’s cutting edge technology and social media podcast, released its one hundredth episode this morning on Talknowledgy.ca.
Talknowledgy debuted on September 20, 2010 on the airwaves of CKDJ 107.9 in Ottawa. Since then, the show has been heard by thousands in Ottawa and around the world. The name Talknowledgy is derived from the words “talk”, “knowledge”, and “technology”. It is the name that has been used by the show during its time on CKDJ 107.9, on 580 CFRA, on 93.1 CKCU, and as an online podcast. It is currently hosted by Phil Gaudreau and David Hall of DavidHallSocialMedia.com.
“The show has gone through many changes in the past two years, all with the listener in mind,” says show co-founder Phil Gaudreau. “We have a lot of fun doing the show, and not only is that important from our perspective but I think you can hear it when you’re listening to the show.”
David Hall first joined the show in the summer of 2011 through the “Social Media Tip of the Week Segment”. “When I was first asked to be a weekly contributor to the show, I jumped at the chance,” says Dave“I thought that the show was unique and had great growth potential. More importantly, I could tell that the hosts really loved what they were doing and having a great time. Undoubtedly, that has played a big role in the show’s longevity.”
Talknowledgy typically features intelligence and insight from Phil Gaudreau and David Hall on topics like social media, smartphone technology, viral videos, content creation, and more. Episode 100 touches on the recent iPhone 5 “Scuffgate”, along with the MySpace relaunch, and the social media impact of the NFL replacement referees. Both Phil and Dave blog regularly on many of these topics.
“If you haven’t listened to us yet, episode 100 is a great time to start,” adds Phil. “If you’re still new to technology and social media, don’t worry. We speak in a way that’s friendly, relatable, and easy to understand, and we’re always willing to answer questions via Twitter or email. I want to thank all those who have been listening since the beginning, and I hope you’re looking forward to the next 100 as much as I am!”
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For more information, contact:
Phil Gaudreau
Co-founder, Talknowledgy
