How to create video that is compelling and engaging and which will support your brand essence be that your corporate brand, employer brand or personal brand is the place many of us start.

But how do you then ensure that your online video is “onbrand”; how do you actually embed your brand identity and call to action into your video; where should you host your video; and how can you achieve this without costing you a small fortune?

Then are a vast array of platforms from hosting your video to live streaming – it’s enough to make your head fuzzy like eating too many chocolate Easter eggs!

We’ve been doing some test runs over the weekend which has been interesting – so get ready for some video’s here in the not too distant future.

This next Monday on Biz Growth Live, my guest was to be Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, but unfortunately Debbie can not join me as she is just finishing her house move and on Friday we had to postpone the session to a later date. Debbie sends her apologies to everyone.

So I got to thinking, if I am wondering about all these questions about online video, perhaps some of my Biz Growth Community are too. So I contacted my Facebook friend and someone who is an expert in video podcasting, Sherman Hu to see if he would join me as our guest expert this week.

Sherman is in the middle of a huge project so I was thrilled when he said he would join me this week.

If you’d like to join me and find out about online video, where to start and how it can support you in expressing your brand online, then you can register for the free Biz Growth Live call which will be taking place on Monday 24 March 2008 at 6pm in Ireland and the UK (2pm ET).

And if you have questions for Sherman or myself about how to master online video to bring your brand to life you can either post a question in the comments section or on our live questions page.

I also want to share with you a video clip from Stephen Fry a great British actor, comedian and author which I found on the terrific video sharing site VideoJug (their tag line is “life explained on film”). In this clip he covers:

- His defintition of Web 2.0

- His thoughts on the quality of user generated content

- How will Web 2.0 change traditional television

- What excites him about the way technology is evolving.

Stephen has a blog and podcast too if you want to connect with him through social media.


VideoJug: Stephen Fry: Web 2.0

4. Their business email address

5. Their business or personal blog url
 
6. Their landline and mobile number

7. Their field of interest and expertise

8. Details of any personal projects they are involved in – for example one journalist I know has a private art gallery and really appreciates it when I refer people to him
 
9.  Notes on how they like to receive information
 
10. A record of what you have spoken to them about and details of when you were featured in their article or show
 
11. Who referred you to them or how you connected originally
 
12. Mutual business contacts, hobbies and interests.

Make sure that you retain details of any projects you speak to you media contact about including the dates when you last connected and the outcome of that connection.
 
Your media contacts should include reporters, editors, radio and TV researchers, publicists, and even ‘A list’ bloggers and podcasters as our media connections today can and should cross traditional and social media.
 
You can build you list of media contacts by reviewing newspapers and journals which are read by your target audience, researching radio and TV stations, online publications and using Google news alerts.

Remember that your media database should be a living document, as in today’s fast changing world of the media, many of the key points of contact are often working on a freelance basis and move from one media outlet or project to another.
 
Your relationship with one person in the media can also impact the chances of you working with other contacts. For example, if you demonstrate that you are not a great radio guest on one show, you can be sure that the show host or researcher will let other people in their industry know to give you a wide steer.
 
Do not forget the number one rule of networking applies to the media too, not just your business contacts. Be generous in your support to help your media contacts do their job and they will help you too. Make sure that they know you can connect them to your personal network when they have a story that has to go to press quickly or they need a spokes person on a specific subject?
 
Get yourself known as a connector and you can be sure that your media contacts will help you connect to great media opportunities too.
 
© Krishna De, 2007. All rights reserved. This article is extracted from Krishna’s publication “How To Be A Media Magnet”.

Here are 7 rules of podcasting to generate more leads, more clients and more profits:

1. RESEARCH YOUR MARKET

Review other podcasts in your niche and providing content for your target market. What appeals to you about the structure of the podcast and the content that you know your listeners would find compelling? What ideas does that give you for your podcast so that you will be differentiated from your competition?

2. DETERMINE YOUR REVENUE MODEL

Are you going to offer all of your podcast available at no cost; or perhaps you plan to provide a shorter version for no cost and make the extended version available as an information product that you sell as individual recordings or bundle together in a membership community? Determining your revenue model is an important early step when determining a profitable podcast strategy.

3. KEEP YOUR CALL TO ACTION SIMPLE

If you decide to promote your programmes, products and services in your podcast make sure that you provide compelling and valuable content in your podcast which then will entice your listeners to purchase your information product.

Making the content too much of a sales pitch will make sure that your podcast community will not grow.

4. MAKE YOUR PODCAST EASY TO ACCESS

With the majority of people accessing podcasts through websites and blogs rather than iTunes, make it easy for people to either stream the podcast and listen to it with at their PC or download it to their computer.

5. ENCOURAGE FEEDBACK

Make it easy for your listeners to get engaged with your podcast. This may be by leaving messages on an audio line, posting their feedback at your podcast site, joining your podcast Facebook group or even dropping you an email.

Take time in each show to refer to your listeners messages, answer their questions and thank them for being part of your community.

6. FIND A GREAT TECHNOLOGY PARTNER

If you want to learn the ins and outs of podcasting, then seek out a great programme which will help you get off the ground faster than searching out all the resources yourself.

Alternatively, find a technology partner who will manage the recording, editing and publishing of your podcast so that you only have to focus on the recording schedule and content.

7. PROMOTE YOUR PODCAST

Make sure that you let people know you produce a podcast and what they can look forward to in the content. Use traditional and new media outlets along side word of mouth strategies online and offline to promote your podcast. Then track your subscribers through tools such as Feedburner and enjoy seeing your podcast community grow.

THIS WEEK’S ‘BIZ GROWTH’ ACTION STEPS

Podcasting is a great way to deliver valuable content to your ideal clients, employees and other stakeholders and business partners.

Consider how you can include podcasts in your marketing and communications plan then

Remember that just like article marketing where you can re-purpose your articles into other information products, your podcasts could help generate interest in your products and services, can be re-purposed into a live event, be transcribed to become chapters of your book or repacked into a CD home study programme if you leverage them appropriately.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

If you want to discover how to create your own information product empire from white papers to audio programmes, join me for the “PASSION FOR PRODUCTS” series of teleseminars starting on September 24, 2007.

And why not join me on Kilkenny on the 29 September 2007 at PodCamp Ireland if you want to learn more about podcasting, blogging and new media at Ireland first ever PodCamp?

© Krishna De, 2007. All rights reserved. This article is extracted from Krishna’s home study programme “Marketing On A Shoestring Budget”.

If you are in the field of marketing or public relations, do not underestimate the power and influence of bloggers to help you spread the word about your business – be that a product, a service or even a book.

And while Mark wrote the article about bloggers, you can also take the same approach for podcasters.

As I reported, blogs are considered by consumers to be a more trusted resource than advertising and email marketing.

I’d further add to Mark’s guidance that just as you would target specific marketing messages to specific media, connecting to bloggers and podcasters needs to be considered in the same way. Take a little time to get to know the blogger or podcaster through reading their blog and listening to their podcasts.

Some bloggers and podcasters do not allow advertising on their blogs or in their podcasts, but if you can demonstrate that your product or service would be of value to their community, they will be more prepared to do a review.

What won’t work is if you have no proven track record, are offering a service that is in conflict or direct competition to their own and do not take the time to build a relationship with them. You can be sure in this case you will not even get a polite reply to your email.

It is also more challenging if you are providing a service such as a training course and the blogger or podcaster has no knowledge of your expertsie or professionalism. Remember their recommendation or referral to you will reflect their personal brand so most bloggers and podcasters will not refer something sight unseen or unproven to them as they want to protect their reputation.

I also recommend that you read the draft Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics which you can adapt to fit your business:

• We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.
• We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.
• We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.
• Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.
  If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.
• We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.
• In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.
• We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.
• We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.
• You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)
• If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list – which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.
• If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.
• Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

What changes would you make to this if you were going to implement an outreach code of ethics for new media?

PS - during my vacation I had the opportunity to read David Meerman Scott’s great new book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” – watch out over the next week or so for my book review. David knows all about not only “pitching” but more importantly engaging bloggers and podcasters as the outstanding success of his book goes to show – listen to some of his podcast interviews and you will discover just how successful his book launch has been.

It is a case study worth taking the time to familiarise yourself with if you really want to see how effectively you can as a professional services provider engage in social media to market your products and services.

As I mentioned previously, the bloggers in the Irish Business Blog category are collaborating in creating a special report about business blogging in Ireland where we will share tips and best practice from our own experience of authoring a business blog. Watch out for that report in the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday the 6 finalists for the Business Blog category of the Irish Blog Awards met by telephone conference and we have recorded a podcast sharing our insights on the subject of business blogging in Ireland as a tool to build your brand online and as part of our marketing strategy.

You can access the audio here – you can either stream it from your PC or download the audio to your PC or save it to your MP3 player.

On the business blogging podcast you will hear our views on:

• What is a business blog
• what encouraged us to start a business blog
• how much time we invest in blogging each week
• the platforms we are using to host our business blogs
• the business benefits we have realised through business blogging
• how business blogging fits into our marketing and communications strategy
• how we have built traffic to our business blogs
• our personal perspectives on business blogging in Ireland
• what we wish we had known before we started our business blogs
• and one piece of advice we would like to others who are considering starting a business blog.

We enjoyed collaborating in this way and have decided to start a regular business blogging podcast where we will be sharing strategies and tips on the subject of business blogging and also inviting business blogging experts to share their favourite tips and business blogging advice.

Do share your thoughts on our first business blogging podcast by posting in the comments section. We would love to hear from you if you have found other strategies that have worked for you in developing your business blog.

And of course if you have any questions about business blogging, do post them and we will be delighted to reply to your questions.

Resources to get started blogging

Here are some recommeded resources if this business blogging podcast encouraged you to start blogging

• TypePad – the fastest and easiest way to start blogging today and referred to in the business blogging podcast and was how i got started blogging
• Andy Wibbels – a good friend and blogger extraordinaire provides training for the new blogger using the TypePad platform. Andy is also the author of the Amazon.com best seller “Go Blog Wild: a guide for small business blogging“. Do tell Andy you are a friend of mine.
• Sherman Hu – offers online turtorials if you want to useWordpress as a blogging platform (Wordpress is the platform Biz Growth News is hosted on)
• Mark White – known as The Blog Coach can help you set your blog up – he is based in the UK and is someone I refer my clients to. He has been instrumental in helping me with my blog extreme makeover. Do tell Mark I sent you.

Thanks to the people who made the podcast possible

This podcast would not have been possible without the engagement of the 6 finalists in the Business Blog category of the Irish Blog Awards 2007:

• Krishna De
• Ann Greene
• Brian Honan
• Kieran Murphy
• Damian O’Broin
• Connor O’Neill

We also would like to recognise the support of:

• Brian De-Alker of the Soundwave Studio who created the podcast
• Pat Phelan and hisAll Free Calls service which enabled us all to connect to our conference room
• Damian Mulley, without whose vision the Irish Blog Awards would never have been born.

Media note: The ‘Ireland Business Blogging Podcast’ was hosted by Krishna De and features the finalists in the Business Blog category of the Irish Blog Awards 2007.

This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. In the case of re-use or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. These conditions can be waived by permission from the copyright holder.

Similar to the Irish Blog Awards, the Brit Blog Awards have been set up to recognise the best in British blogging and nominations come from the public.

The awards will cover the following categories:

• Technology blogs
• Sport blogs
• Fashion blogs
• Politics blogs
• Arts and Entertainment blogs
• Travel blogs
• Youth blogs (bloggers under 18 years of age)
• Weird and Wonderful blogs

Nominations are invited before the 22 March 2007 for the Brit Blog Awards and the judging panel will include one expert or person involved with the category and a representative from Metro.co.uk and Ask.com.

The blogs will be assessed against the following criteria:

• Standard of writing – the blog will be judged on the quality of the writing
• Design – interesting layout, easy and clear to read
• Regularly updated – at least twice a week
• Influence – does this blog set a trend or influence the news?
• Number of links – how many other blogs is this site affiliated with?

It is tremendous that there is now an awards for the best British blogs. However unlike the Irish Blog Awards they are seemingly less inclusive.

For example:

• according to the rules for the Brit Blog Awards 2007, you must be resident in the UK to enter – so any Brits who blog and are based outside the UK are not eligible to enter
• and surpisingly there is no awards for best business blog or blogs in the not for profit or voluntary sector.

Blogging is an incredible and cost effective tool both for organisations to building buzz about your brand and to engage stakeholders from clients, business partners, employees and the community.

Particularly in the case of small businesses or voluntary organisations with limited marketing budgets, business blogging enables companies to express their brand on the web without the investment and expense usually required for a professional website.

So let’s hope that the Brit Blog Awards 2008 will have a category to recognise tremendous British business blogs and blogs in the voluntary sector.

In the meantime, I’m glad I’m in Ireland where there is an extensive range of categories in the Irish Blog Awards and it didn’t matter that I don’t hold an Irish passport to be considered as a nominee.

You can see nominees from the Irish Blog Awards featured on the Seoige and O’Shea show here thanks to Redmum.

Thank you so much to all of you who voted for Biz Growth News in the category Best Business Blog.

I am delighted that not only is Biz Growth News in the final shortlist for the 2007 Irish Blog Awards, but so is one of my clients which is terrific.

Ann is a business consultant in the area of team effectiveness and we only got her website online in November 2006 since when she has been blogging.

For me that is a testament to the power of business blogging as she has already raised great awareness of her brand.

Some 4800 votes were cast from people based in  67 countries across all 21 categories.

The final decisions for the best blogs overall in each of the categories in the Irish Blog Awards will now be made by a judging panel and the awards final will take place on the 3 March 2007 at the Alexander Hotel, Dublin.

Here are the finalists in the Best Business Blog Category for the 2007 Irish Blog Awards – there are some great blogs here:

• Allagi – blogging about team effectiveness
• Argolon – blogging about tecnhology
• Ask Direct – blogging about fundraising and marketing for non profits and charities
• Biz Growth News – blogging about branding and business development for professional services firms
• BH Consulting blog – blogging about internet security
• Icecream Ireland – blogging about all things icecream

Special notice to all nominees in the Irish Blog Awards:

An effective strategy to build awareness of your blog and drive more traffic is through an online press release. Why not leverage the fact that that you were a finalist in the 2007 Irish Blog Awards?

If you want to explore the power of this no cost and low cost marketing strategy, you are most welcome to access my 60 minute audio tutorial Insider Secrets of Online PR which comes with an example press release and details of recommended online press release sites.

All you need do is enter in your contact details – this will mean that you will then receive access to my weekly branding and business development seminars and our Biz Growth Live newsletter – but of course you can unsubscibe at any time.

Or perhaps you already host a business podcast but want to take it to the next level?

Then be sure to attend the forthcoming Corporate Podcasting Summit Europe which takes place in London between the 19-20 March 2007.

The Corporate Podcasting Summit is designed to help organisations, businesses and not-for-profit institutions understand how they apply the podcast to their everyday activities for profitable gain.

The programe includes workshops, case study presentations and analysis from leading and emerging enterprise podcasters.

So if you are looking for the A-Z of business podcasting, make sure you book your place soon.

If do decide to attend, make sure you let me know as I will be at the Corporate Podcasting Summit as one of the speakers.

Positioning yourself as a business leader who can provide great resources, has expert knowledge and can connect the journalist to information quickly and easily is critical.

If you nurture these relationships, you can be sure that the journalist will contact you again for future articles.

Here are 5 keys to support you in positioning yourself as an expert with the media:

1. Be accessible - make sure that you are easy to get in contact with. If a journalist wants to make contact with you and can not find your contact details on your website, you can be sure they will move on to the next lead. Remember that journalists are working on tight deadlines so do not have time to chase your details down.
2. Be responsive – if you get an email or a phone call from a journalist, be sure to return their call promptly. As the saying goes, the early bird catches the worm. You need to ensure that you are easy to do business with.
3. Be informative – if you know the kinds of questions you will be asked, get ready for the interview and have statistics and information to hand. The journalist’s goal is to write a compelling and informative article – after all if their name is against the article they want it to reflect well on their capability as a journalist and to attract readership to their publication.
4. Be prepared – make sure that you have an up-to-date media room on your so that the jouralist can access information about you easily. This should include your profile and a selection of photographs in different sizes so that they can easily access them for their article.
5. Be generous – you can be sure to position yourself as a great resource, someone that the journalist values if you are happy to connect them to people you know in your network. Make sure that the journalist knows your field of expertise and that you are happy to connect them to others in your network should they need further information in the future.

Apply these 5 keys to your connections with journalists and you will buid your reputation and personal brand as an expert in your field and you can be sure they will add your details to their address book.

As a result you will be able to access thousands of euro’s in media publicity and attract more clients to your professional services practice but without the investment in expensive advertising campaigns.

However if implemented without care, your business podcast could in fact damage your reputation and not build equity in your personal brand.

If you are considering establishing a business podcast, make sure that you embrace these 3 tips to help you build your personal brand and reputation:

• Quality content – with the increasing number of podcasts, make sure that the content you create in your podcast is relevant and compelling to your audience.Your clients and potential clients are time poor and have many choices available to them for free information. Do not waste their time or your resources producing a podcast that is not rich in quality content.The listeners of your business podcast are not going to be interested in hearing all about the details of your personal life – get to the point fast.
• Quality delivery – your personal brand is expressed in everything you do and that includes how you express yourself in your podcast.Even if you have great content if your recording is poor and difficult to listen to, you can be sure that your podcast listeners will not persevere no matter how much they love you.Ensure that you have a high quality recording – Skype is wonderful but not the solution to  record and create a high quality podcast if you want to position your business as a premium brand.Investing in editing your podcast will also enhance the delivery of the podcast.
• Build your traffic – if you are just getting started in podcasting there are some terrific low costs and no cost solutions available including hosting your business podcast on no cost and low cost platforms.These are ideal if you want to try podcasting and see if it podcasting is a medium that you enjoy. However if you are serious about business podcasting to build your personal brand, I highly recommend that the “home” of your business podcast is your own website or blog.You can host the audio with a third party, but your goal should be to build your online identity and online brand, therefore driving traffic back to your blog or website where you host your business podcast is imperative.

Creating a business podcast is an excellent low cost marketing tool that can build your reputation as an expert in your field, enhance your personal brand with an engaging high quality content and attract more clients.

But as with all tools it’s how the craftsman uses puts a tool to use and and the quality of the raw materials that creates a work of art or something for the trash can.