Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Tuesday, May 15, 2007.

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

IN TODAY’S SHOW:

Audio comment on managing your social media from Chip Griffin, CEO of Custom Scoop, host of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast, and blogger at Pardon the Disruption:

NEW COMM ROAD MAP: Blogger relations

A discussion, live from Starbucks in Boston’s South End, with Doug Haslam, from Topaz Partners, the Tech PR Gems blog and PRobecast, and the Gischeleman’s Blog.

Five steps to running a successful blogger relations campaign:

1. Identify the goal(s) of the campaign before you start it — raise awareness, move people to take a particular action, etc.
2. Try to build up a relationship with bloggers in advance/over time
3. Read the bloggers’ blogs before you contact them
4. Send personalized messages
5. Don’t just pitch the A-list bloggers

TOOLS OF YOUR TRADE:

Doug talks about how he uses the tools of new media in his PR role at Topaz Partners.

Music:
+ From GarageBand.com: Still Holding On, by Rantings of Eva

* This show can also be found on Blubrry.

YOUR FEEDBACK:

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 202-3996

Technorati Tags: Boston, Bryan Person, New Comm Road, Chip Griffin, Custom Scoop, Disruptive Dialogue, Pardon the Disruption, Doug Haslam, Topaz Partners, Tech PR Gems blog, Gischeleman Blog, PRobecast, Blogger Relations Campaign, Blogger Relations, Pitching Bloggers, Rantings of Eva.

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Running time: 32:19

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Just as in Hollywood, becoming a hit takes talent, effort, timing and some luck. Sex appeal is just as valuable online as off. And getting noticed by the “mainstream” press also helps build buzz.

Here is the “magic formula for Web stardom” that author Michael Totty’s has created, with some of my own editorializing. See if you agree:

1. Be consistent. If you’re a podcaster or a blogger, publish on a regular schedule. Grammar Girl host Mignon Fogarty, whom I interviewed about building a podcast audience and network on the New Comm Road podcast earlier this year, releases her show every Thursday. (Note to self: try and do the same for New Comm Road.)
2. Get in early. Big advantage to those who are first.
3. Find a niche. Think a show about dangling participles and predicate adjectives isn’t niched? Connect to an audience that is as interested as you are about a particular subject, and you could be on your way to superstardom.
4. Work your network. Capitalize on the tools of new media to create a world-of-mouth sensation that spreads like wildfire.
5. Act like a pro. While online consumers don’t expect or necessarily even want a podcast or video to have the same production values as mainstream media production, they’ll generally gravitate toward content that looks and sounds better. Yes, content may be king, but production values matter, too.
6. Beauty sells. Certainly on the video side, it’s hard to argue this point in the article: “People who are unusually attractive stand a better chance of getting attention.”

Here’s what I’d add to Totty’s list:

7. Be passionate. When you as a blogger, podcasters, videoblogger, or Flickr artist exude passion in every piece of content you produce, we can feel it. And we’re compelled to come back for more of your content again and again.
8. Tell a good story. We all enjoy telling and listening to interesting stories, whether it’s around a campfire, at the water cooler or pub, or over family dinner. What is the story behind your content, and how can you share it in a way that move people to hunger for the next chapter?

What are the other ingredients to becoming an online superstar?

Technorati Tags: Wall Street Journal, How to Be a Star in a YouTube World, Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, New Comm Road, Michael Totty

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Tuesday, May 8, 2007.

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

IN TODAY’S SHOW:

Feature interviewwith Jeff Scott – manager of Casa Grande Public Library in Casa Grande, Arizona.

• Twitter will help library reach its audience more effectively.
• Library 2.0 — engaging community members in the media that they use.
• Library’s marketing efforts have paid off — book checkouts are up 30% this year.
• Casa Grande Library’s Web 2.0 resources:
  • Twitter page
  • RSS feeds and podcasts
  • Flickr page
  • Videos through Photobucket
  • Jeff’s personal blog — Gather No Dust.

NEW COMM ROAD MAP: Manage your social media

Based on an audio comment and question from Doug Haslam, from Topaz Partners, the Tech PR Gems blog, PRobecast, and the Gischeleman’s Blog.

Six steps to managing your social media:

1. Pick your tools. You can’t use all of them — or at least not all of them every day.
2. Know when to limit your distractions.
3. If you need a break, then give yourself some “goof-off time” and go wild (from Ben Yoskovitz at the Instigator Blog). Then, when you’re done, close off those connections and get back to more serious work.
4. Clean up your RSS feeds
5. Trust your network.
6. Have a way to capture your ideas when you’re away from computer. Use a K7.net number (206) or a Jott account.

TOOLS OF YOUR TRADE:

No submissions in this show. Send yours in!

Music:
+ From GarageBand.com: Still Holding On, by Rantings of Eva

* This show can also be found on Blubrry.

YOUR FEEDBACK:

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 202-3996

Technorati Tags: Boston, Bryan Person, New Comm Road, Jeff Scott, Casa Grande Public Library, Library 2.0, Twitter, Doug Haslam, Topaz Partners, Tech PR Gems blog, Gischeleman Blog, PRobecast, Manage Social Media, Rantings of Eva.

LISTEN:

Running time: 37:00

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Here is an adaptation of Andy’s seven-step process for getting started in Twitter. I’ve replaced the names he used with some of my own Twitter friends — namely, the four participants from our presentation who’ve already accepted our challenge and started (or resumed) Twittering themselves.

1. Go to Twitter and sign up for an account.
2. Go to my Twitter URL (http://twitter.com/bryper)
3. Click add bryper.
4. Congrats, you’re now following your first person. Look at the icons in the right-hand toolbar on my page. If you see people that you’d like to follow, click on their icons and add them as well.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 with: Alex Sherman, Critt Jarvis, Jesse Baer, and Deb Block-Schwenk. That should get you started with a stream of incoming tweets.
6. Start sending out updates yourself. Now you’re part of the conversation!
7. When you’re up and running, leave a comment [here] with your thoughts, along with you twitter URL.

Note: Here is Andy Kaufman’s Twitter stream.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Andy Kaufman

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from historic Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from historic Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

IN TODAY’S SHOW:

* New Comm Road Citation to Bryper

* Mitch Joel promo – Foreword Thinking Podcast

* Kathryn Jones audio comment – ?? (Question) of the Week – Inspiration and Indie Tunes video podcast – IfNotNow.Net.

* PodCamp NYC promo – April 6-7, 2007 at the New Yorker Hotel.

* PodCruise Miami promo – December 7-10, 2007

* Report on social networks for ethnic groups from Brett Atwood’s PR 475 students at Washington State University.

* Audio comment from Eden Spoken, from Bargainista.Blogspot.com/

* Interview with Eli Singer and Andrea Lekushoff about the social media book launch for The Strategy Paradox, by Michael Raynor. Event held in Boston on Tuesday, March 27.

* Audio comment from Michael Seaton, from Scotiabank, The Money Clip, and The Client Side.

NEW COMM ROAD MAP:

* From Christopher Penn, recapping Bum Rush the Charts.

TOOLS OF YOUR TRADE:

* From David Levy, from TheThingIs.typepad.com

Music:
+ From GarageBand.com: Still Holding On, by Rantings of Eva

* This show can also be found on Blubrry.

YOUR FEEDBACK:

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 202-3996

Technorati Tags: Historic Boston, Foreword Thinking, Mitch Joel, Kathryn Jones, Question of the Week, PodCamp NYC, PodCruise Miami, Eden Spodek, Bargainista, Eli Singer, The Cundari Group, Andrea Lekushoff, Deloitte, Strategy Paradox, Michael Raynor, Michael Seaton, Scotiabank, The Money Clip, The Client Side, Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast, Bum Rush the Charts, David Levy

LISTEN:

Running time: 00:51:56

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from historic Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Monday, February 19, 2007.

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Click on the iTunes image above, or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

IN TODAY’S SHOW:

News and discussion
+ PodCamp Toronto taking place on Saturday-Sunday, February 24-25, 2007 at the Rogers Communications Centre at Ryerson University. I’ll be there, and I hope that you will be, too!

+ Jay Moonah and Bryan Person will lead a presentation on using Second Life. Check out the full schedule.

Listener feedback:
+ Audio comment from David Levy on social media and the 2008 presidential race.
+ Audio comment from Christopher Penn, host of the Financial Aid Podcast, on social media and the 2008 presidential race.
+ Audio comment from Marko of photography.ca and pets.ca with questions about using Flickr and how he likes to learn.

Podcast promo:
+ Steve Runner will be podcasting while running the Boston Marathon.

New Comm Road Map:

A discussion of Twitter, a social media tool gaining in popularity.

+ A system for sending IM/SMS.
+ Can send and receive updates on the web, through an IM client, or via your mobile phone.
+ Something Chris Heuer from the Social Media Club calls “Everywhere Messaging”
+ A way to communicate a state of mind and answer the question “What are you doing?”
+ Could be called “asynchronous micro-blogging”
+ Why can’t it expand to audio and video?
+ Must be coming soon: Twittering to specific groups
+ It can be used in political campaigning.
+ It can be used in internal communications.
+ It can be used to easily keep in touch with family and friends when you’re on the road.
+ A chance for marketing or mobile marketing coming?
+ My profile: Twitter.com/Bryper

Steps on the Road Map

1. Sign up for an account at Twitter.com
2. Decide whether you want your updates to be seen by anyone — public — or just by friends that you approve. This latter option works best if you just want to use Twitter within a specific group.
3. Add friends.
4. Determine whether you want receive messages by IM — AIM, Gmail talk, or Jabber — and phone. Consider how often you want to receive those interruptions while your working, whether you want to receive messages in the middle of the night, etc. You can also choose just to receive IM/phone messages from a select group of friends. To exclude a friend from IM/phone updates, click on the user’s profile and select “leave.” You still keep that person as a friend, but your IM/phone stream won’t pick up that user’s messages.
5. If you have a specific link you want someone to see, include the URL in your post. Promote your blog post, new podcast, etc.
6. Build community by featuring your friends in your posts with the “@ symbol” or a link.
7. Need a quick question answered and want to ask a big group at once? Try throwing out the question to Twitter.

Tools of your trade

A new segment on the podcast that will feature your audio contributions and how you use new media in your job. Which new-media tools do you use?

Send in your audio contribution with these three components:

1. Introduce yourself
2. Talk a little bit about your job. Are you in PR? Marketing? A non-profit company?
3. Talk about how you incorporate the tools of new media into your work. Which new-media tools do you use and how do you use them?

YOUR FEEDBACK:

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 202-3996

Technorati Tags: PodCamp Toronto, Jay Moonah, David Levy, Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast, Marko Kulik, Twitter, Everywhere Messaging, BarrackObama.com, Chris Heuer

LISTEN:

Running time: 00:31:25

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There’s something strangely addictive and alluring about Twitter.

On the surface it’s nothing more than a glorified service for typing short text messages that answer the question “What are you doing?”

Ahh, but dig a little deeper, and the marketing lightbulbs should start buzzing inside your brain:

• You can build a network of friends — I’m already up to 24 in a week’s time
• You can send and receive messages, including your friends’, from your mobile phone or an instant messenging client — perfect for quickly sending out group messages or status updates, such as for political campaigning)
• You can drop linkable URLs into your messages — hello, mobile marketing!
• You can private message specific friends
• You can add a widget to your blog that displays your latest message (see the sidebar on Chris Brogan.com as an example)

Hey, the corporate world is starting to experiment with Twitter. Maybe you should, too.

Update. Here’s where you can follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bryper

Technorati Tags: Twitter

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My advice to him? Make your pitch by advertising on a podcast, particularly one where the show’s audience is tuned into both social media and PR.

I’m not sure if the HR manager ever followed through on my recommendation, but someone who did employ that tactic earlier this week was Andrew Findlater, who is seeking to hire a social-media-savvy PR pro for NATIONAL Public Relations in Canada.

Andrew talks all about the candidate he is looking for in an audio comment to Terry Fallis and David Jones for Episode 44 of the Inside PR podcast. This is a smart move by Andrew, as he knows that that Inside PR 1) focuses on the nuts and bolts of public relations and 2) clearly attracts a listenership of social-media participants and advocates.

To boot, Andrew didn’t have to pay a dime this time around — Terry and David played the comment as a form of experimentation, it seems — and I’m betting his effort will be successful.

When you’re searching for new-media talent, advertise to them in the places that those talented people are listening — on podcasts.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, podcast advertising, Inside PR, NATIONAL Public Relations

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Video blogger extraordinaire Steve Garfield, whom I ran into last night at a meetup of the Web Innovators Group, has a saying that I realy like: “I subscribe to people.”

And I’d suspect that most of us would say the same. While the blogs I read and podcasts I listen to need to offer compelling content on some level for me to say interested, what also ensures that I keep reading and listening are the people behind that content. As you get to know the content producers as people — either through the tidbits about their lives, interests, and passions that are revealed to their audience along on the way, or the personal relationships you develop with them on your own — you can’t help but want to read about and listen to those passions day after day, week after week.

So which people do you subscribe to?

Here are just a few on my list:

• Chris Brogan
• Christopher Penn
• Mitch Joel
• David Jones – blog and podcast

And yes, I subscribe to Steve, too.

Technorati Tags: Steve Garfield, subscribe to people

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Hosted by Bryan Person. Recorded from historic Boston, Massachusetts, USA and published for Wednesday, January 24, 2007.

Subscribe to the New Comm Road podcast. It’s free, and it ensures you won’t miss a single episode! Find us in the iTunes store or paste this feed into iTunes or your podcatching software of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewCommRoad

IN TODAY’S SHOW:

Latest News:
+ PodCamp Second Life taking place from Friday, January 26 – Sunday, January 28 and is being organized by Lynette Young and Jay Moonah.
+ Bryper Bits podcast for your mobile phone being trialled at Bryper.com, using service from FoneShow.com
+ Bryper.com blog named to Todd Andrlik’s Power 150 list for top U.S. marketing blogs.

Comments:
+ Donna Papacosta comments on Episode 23 and my interview with Grammar Girl
+ Jason Van Orden and Christopher Penn comment on Episode 22 and whether people will be willing to pay for content that could be available elsewhere for free
+ Anna Farmery has also sent in an audio comment, but I’m holding it for a future episode.
+ Audio promo from Terry Fallis, who’s podcasting his new book, The Best Laid Plans.

New Comm Road Map:

+ Question from Marko Kulik from Pets.ca and the Photography.ca Podcast originally played on Six Pixels of Separation, The Twist Image Podcast.

Six ways to make Technorati work for you, which will be simulcasted on Six Pixels:

0. Create an account in Technorati

1. Claim your blog(s) in Technorati.

2. Use the Technorati tools and widgets.

3. Set up Technorati watch lists for hot topics that you want to follow.

4. Use all of the various Technorati tag searches to research a topic. Make sure that in the Technorati search box, your drop-down menu shows “in tags” Then, when you do a search, you’ll also see options to search your tags by blog post, photos, video, music, etc. Photo tags pull from Flickr. Video tags pull from YouTube.

5. Understand the difference between a Technorati tag using “in blog posts” and “in tags.” The first includes any mention of your search term in a blog, which is sometimes what you want. However, the “in tags” option will specifically give you results in which someone has taken the active step of categorizing that blog post, photo, or video about the topic your looking for.

6. Use RSS to subscribe to searches — about you (ego surfing), about your clients, about industry topics, or particular tags. This option works specifically for searches of blog posts — in both the “in blog posts” and “in tags” modes. At the top of the search results page, you’ll see the orange RSS logo and the word subscribe. Add that RSS link into your RSS reader!

New Comm Road Citation:

The citation is being given to … me. Podcaster and blogger Dan York has been on a crusade lately asking bloggers and podcasters to include a logo/badge somewhere on their site that he and others can use when blogging about those sites. This badge can help him to promote our blogs and podcasters and offers a good visual identity for our content.

I don’t have one of these badges on the NewCommRoad.com blog or the Bryper.com blog. That will change.

MUSIC:
+ From GarageBand.com: Still Holding On, by Rantings of Eva

* This show can also be found on Blubrry.

YOUR FEEDBACK:

• Leave your text and audio comments below this post
• Send us audio files or text e-mails to comments-AT-NewCommRoad.com
• Leave an audio comment to this blog post
• Call us on our comment line: (206) 202-3996

Technorati Tags: New Comm Road, Bryper, Bryan Person, PodCamp Second Life, Todd Andrlik’s Power 150 List, FoneShow, Bryper Bits, Donna Papacosta, Jason Van Orden, Christopher Penn, Anna Farmery, Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans, Technorati, Lee Hopkins, Mitch Joel, Twist Image, Six Pixels of Separation, Marko Kulik, Lynette Young, Jay Moonah, Dan York

LISTEN:

Running time: 00:26:59

Direct download this episode, or listen using the player below!

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