Sound Solutions: North Bank Audio Solutions

So, you probably know by now that you should be submitting articles to article directories by now, so I won’t bore with you why. I’ll just let you check out Article Marketer to find out more on that topic - they’re the experts. What a lot of people aren’t doing though is effectively linking their work together. What do I mean by this? You should have your body of work (your blog, podcast, articles, videos, and social media etc.) all refer to eachother. Here are a few examples:

1. When you create a blog post, include a link to a relevent vidoe that you posted on YouTube.
2. When you post something to Twitter, link to a related podcast, blog post or article you submitted to ezinearticles.com.
3. Post the videos you put on YouTube to your Facebook account.
4. When you upload videos to YouTube, include a link to your free report or teleseminar recording opt-in page for lead generation.
5. Link your blog to your social networking sites. Like Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin and Facebook.

The reasons for doing these things are two fold:

1. You want human beings to click on these links. This is pretty obvious, but remember, the more ways you can display your information, the better. Some of your prospects and clients might love to read blogs, but others might do better with video or audio.
2. You want search engines to know where your stuff is online. The logic goes like this - if you link to your YouTube video on your blog, then you are letting Google and Yahoo know that the video exists, thus pushing that video up in order of importance. The same goes with your articles, blog posts, social media, podcasts, etc.

One more tip - for those of you who are blogging (and I hope that’s all of you) may I make the suggestion, that you go a step further with these suggestions? If you take a look at my blog, you’ll notice that my Twitter updates are syndicated on the lower right hand side. This is done for a similar reason as I explained above. People might click on my updates and go to my Twitter profile and because search engines like fresh, new content, my blog site is constantly changing each time I post to twitter. You’ll also notice that I’ve integrated my podcast in a similar way. This is a slightly more advanced way of linking your blogs and social media, but all the more effective. You can actually do this on your static websites as well with a tool called Feedburner. If you’re not using Feedburner, shame on you. No, but seriously, check it out. It’s free. I’ll probably include some video tutorial of how to do these things in the near future, so make sure to subscribe to my feed so you get them as soon as I post them.

Many people are turned off by how fast technology moves. I recently got a question from someone who wanted to get into using video more to market her business and monetize her knowledge, but was puzzled as to how to get started.

She didn’t want to spend a bunch of money only to have her gadgets become obsolete a few months later. We’ll call her “Technophobe” for the purposes of this post. I don’t use this term in a degrading way. I think her anxiety around fast-moving technology highlights a common thread through the psyches of many people who want to get into info marketing, but aren’t sure how to get started. It’s also something I’ve noticed is very common with people who aren’t quite young enough to have grown up in the age of 1,000 mile-per-hour computer technology.

Here was my advice to her. I hope you find it helpful as well.

Dear Technophobe,

Don’t be discouraged by fast changes in technology. Much of that is simply marketing tactics to create perceived obsolescence so that people will buy more products. (The ironic thing is that this kind of marketing often discourages people like you - and myself - from buying anything.) The truth is, if it does the job now, it’s probably going to do the job just fine for years to come. It mantra doesn’t always work for things like computers, but now that we’re in the digital age, I wouldn’t worry too much about making a bad investment in a camera. Now is a good time to buy one.

I would go to an electronics store and try out a few cameras and just pick which one you like. I don’t have a specific suggestion. Simply find one that fits within your budget. Generally, with cameras, I would say don’t buy the very cheapest one available, but maybe a step or two up. You can find very decent video cameras for around $200.00. The cool thing about technology moving so fast is that these same cameras were five or ten times more expensive a few years back, so you’ve actually saved money by waiting.

Some specs to look for are:

* Buy a camera that uses miniDV tapes. I would avoid the cameras that export to a proprietary format because you can run into problems when you try to edit and produce them.

* Make sure it has an external microphone input. Audio quality is at least as important as video quality. This way, you can always upgrade the audio without buying a new camera.

* Pick a camera that isn’t too noisy. It’s always a bummer when you play back your recordings and there’s an annoying buzz or hum over the whole take.

Probably more important than the camera itself is that you have proper lighting when you record and that you use a tripod. Natural light looks the best, so if you can record in a space with lots of windows, that is ideal. You can supplement by placing lights (sometimes household lamps will work just fine) behind the camera as you record.

To edit your video, it all depends on your level of tech-savvyness. If you use windows, sometimes the free Windows Movie maker will work just fine. If you use a mac, iMovie will do the job. A step up is Sony Vegas Video Studio (about $100 I think) and if you want to use what the pros use, go for Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. I use Adobe Premiere, but going that way will set you back quite a bit.

If you’d rather delegate the editing, there are lots of people who can do that for you. My business offers video production (http://northbankaudio.com) but we are by no means the only show in town. Shop around locally and online or ask colleagues for a recommendation.

To get your stuff online, there’s a nifty tool called http://tubemogul.com/ that will help you upload to about a dozen of the top video sites (including YouTube) in one swoop, for free. This is one of my favorite tools.

I hope this helps. Let me know if I brought up any other questions or ideas along the way.

~Caleb

Here’s another question I helped a friend on LinkedIn with. I think the answer will help the general public. Check it out:

My original question:

What questions do you have about using audio or video in your marketing or product development efforts (info products, podcasts, online videos etc).

Alex’s response:

What are some of the best ways to promote online video into directories, search engines and RSS submission sites?

My advice:

Hi Alex,

I would start by submitting your videos to http://www.tubemogul.com/. This automatically submits them all the major video engines for free.

There is also a paid solution that has some other features at www.trafficgeyser.com.

I would post videos to your blog if you have one. If you do not have a blog, you should consider creating one. Wordpress.com is what I would suggest if you are just getting started.

You can take the blog a step further by making it a video podcast. This just means you are embedding the actual video files in the posts, so you have to link to the actual source file. If you use wordpress.com, you’ll want to purchase two upgrades: custom domain and a hosting upgrade so you can have your own domain name and upload mp3 files. This will only cost $30-40 per year!

You’ll want to set up a feedburner.com account too. It’s free. This helps you track who subscribes and gives you all sorts of cool tools.

Then, submit your feedburner feed url to directories using podpusher.com and submit to the iTunes directory by installing the free iTunes software and clicking on the “podcasts” button and entering your feed url from feedburner.

If any of the above makes your head spin, you can email me at caleb@northbankaudio.com and we can either set up a consultation or you can simply delegate the work to us so you can focus on your content.

I hope this helps!

Caleb Scoville
North Bank Audio Solutions
http://www.northbankaudio.com

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