I know when I first started podcasting over 5 years ago I was very nervous about what I would sound like and whether anyone would even be interested in what I had to say. Last week my youngest daughter met one of the people she admires – Rachel Allen the Irish chef and author. Before the event I asked her if she would like to do a little interview with Rachel so she prepared a few questions.

We were invited to the event by Marks and Spencer Ireland (I have to admit it is a favourite brand in our home). The event was a Summer barbeque held at the WHPR offices in Dublin (who support the Marks and Spencer account). The WHPR team had done a great job decking out the courtyard in wonderful garden furniture from the Marks and Spencer Summer collection and all the foods were from their store – they featured foods from their Irish producers and many were there on the evening.

On arrival, we sought out Rachel Allen and 8 year old Megan asked Rachel if she could interview her for a podcast. Rachel was delightful and was very approachable. We then found a relatively quiet area and Megan started with her questions. Picture it – I had Megan lifted in my left arm so she could look Rachel in the eye when doing the interview and held my iPhone in the right hand (I was testing out a new voice recording app to save me having to carry my microphone and recorder).

Was the recording perfect? No – mainly because I wasn’t happy with the quality of the audio from the application I used.

Were the tips that Rachel shared in the interview with 8 year old Megan valuable? Yes – listen out for the response that Rachel gave Megan when she asked for three tips if someone wanted to be a chef and author.

Will Megan remember that experience and is now proud of the opportunity to share her interview with the world in a video and a podcast? Absolutely! And repurposing the podcast we now have a video for her to show her friends.

So let me know what is stopping you from podcasting? If an 8 year old can podcast just imagine what you could do!

Leave your questions about podcasting below and I will answer your questions in a forthcoming FREE webinar. An of you are already podcasting, what tips do you have for creating memorable podcasts?

Listen to the podcast of Megan in conversation with Rachel Allen:

Watch the video – we repurposed the podcast into an online video:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Register for the FREE webinar about the 7 essential tips for profitable podcasting

• Find Rachel Allen on Facebook

• Find Marks & Spencer Ireland on Facebook

• Find WHPR on Facebook

• This video was first published on my Social Media Marketing Resources Page on Facebook

But this video made me smile – it’s of the ‘Sienna’ family and their ‘Swagger Wagon‘. You can see the video here for the Toyota Sienna featuring the ‘Sienna family’.

You can even download the MP3 if you ‘dig’ the tune – and there are also a series of other videos on the Toyota Sienna video channel on YouTube.

The Swagger Wagon already has over 1.335 million views since it was uploaded at the beginning of May.

The Toyota video was created by Saatchi & Saatchi and directed by Eastbound and Down producer Jody Hill.

I wonder if this will breath life into the challenged brand? It will be interesting to see if this translates into increased brand awareness and sales. I can not wait to see the ‘remakes’ of the ad which I am sure will follow soon!

Oh and if you are parent make sure you check out 1.35 minutes into the video – I am sure you can recognise that scene!

It is really simple to you – you can choose up to 7 short sentances and against each of these search queries you can choose if you want a web search, a blog search, a Google image search, a news search, a Google map,  products or books to be the associated image with the video.

Then you have a choice of music tracks that you can link to your 30 second video. The Google Search Stories Video Centre then creates your video (you can of course edit it if you want to change the titles, search results or music) then you are ready to create the video. Your video will be made available on your YouTube channel.

I think the fun thing is how can you create a compelling story around your short message and how can the Gooogle search results help you bring that story to life.

You can see my story about 5 tips for greater professional success here.

What do you think – could you imagine the story you could share about your business through the Google Search Stories Video Creator for fun or to market your product or services?

If you create a video using the Google Search Stories Video Creator do let us know the YouTube URL so we can mouse on over to take a look!

Don’t forget it’s still not too late to win a ticket to the IIA event taking place on 22 April in Dublin all about online video and podcasting to market your business – find our how to enter the competition for a free ticket – entries open to midnight on Monday 19 April 2010.

Increasingly there are a number of online video platforms that are relevant for niche communities and interests.

I was delighted to hear about a service I had not come across earlier today from a good friend of mine Winnie Anderson (a great copywriter should you need one). She directed me to a community called eCorpTV.com who focus on the business community. So I decided to test out the service.

Firstly it is free and easy to use – once you have logged into the site then you can upload a video and designate up to three channels relevant to the video to appear in.

I uploaded a video I had recorded almost a year ago about how to get started on Twitter – you can see a screen capture of it below.

As with many free services, you will find that the site hosts Google adverts obviously as a way of it being able to offer the service for free.

A couple of things to watch however:

1.  make sure that you take a note of your log in details – I didn’t receive the customary email with my registration details

2.  check the details of your copy that you se to promote your video – unlike on services like YouTube, I could not find any way of amending the details after the video had uploaded.

You can make the video private or public and if you make it public others can access a direct link or embed code for your video – there are also buttons to enable sharing across other social networks including Twitter and Facebook.

The eCorpTV.com blog comments that companies using the site for a number of different communication goals from sales and marketing, to product promotion and tutorials, customer education, talent recruitment, public relations, and staff training.

The article on the eCorpTV.com blog goes on to comment:

Business focus is maintained through the eCorpTV professional screening process that ensures each video submitted scores highly in one of the following key categories: information, demonstration, education/consulting, innovation, interaction or involvement and tasteful commercialism/ advertising. This screening, by additionally reviewing quality of content and integrity of the community, means that as few as 5% of the videos submitted to the site are actually posted on it. In fact, in November 2009 more than 11,400 submissions were received by eCorpTV.com while only 568 made the cut.

I would recommend your check out the service if you are publishing online videos that meet the above criteria – one of the benefits I think you might get is from the segmentation of videos by geographic location and with the site still being in it’s infancy, it could provide you with a unique leverage and online visibility opportunity.

If you have used eCorpTV.com what has been your experience? And if you are publishing online videos for a business audience which other sites do you recommend?

If you do have questions about creating and distributing online video as part of your marketing and communications programme, remember just post them to our Facebook page or leave a comment and I’ll ensure that they get answered in a future blog post, podcast or online video.

• 1975 – worlds first digital camera prototype was developed by Kodak
• 1997 – they created the world’s first 1.0 mega pixel camera.

He then went on to share some thoughts about online video and suggested that before we create our online video we need to start with is defining what success would look like in terms of the number of views and where we want the video to show up online e.g. YouTube, Facebook, in emails, your website, other sites

He shared his thoughts on what will increase the likelihood of increasing views of your online video – for this he suggested:

• be funny- though he comments that is hard
• be shocking – but do you want to associate your brand with this
• make it sexy
• use a contest
• be timely
• make it short – especially if you are sending the video in email.

You can find Kodak online and their links to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and their blog here. It wll be interesting to see if Kodak to take onboard ideas from their community.

Mark Tarbatt also shared with me on Twitter that Kodak also asked on their community on their blog and on Twitter  for ideas on what to name their digital camera – see the feedback here.

Colin Hetherington of Zoo Digital also shared some tips to help you optimise your video online incuding:

• using key words in your titles
• using key words in your tags
• sharing your video with friends to increase views
• share your video on many sites online.

I’d also add:

• make sure that your online video is relevant and brings value to your audience
• don’t over promote – most online videos that get high number of views are not sales piches for products and services
• ensure there is a call to action in your video – what do you want people to do or where do you want people to visit when they have watched your video online
• monitor your views – you might be as suprised (as I have been) where what you think will bet lots of views doesn’t, and a video that you think is not as interesting gets thousands of views.

What questions do you have about creating and distributing online video as part of your marketing mix? And who do you think has implemented online video effectively?

Additional Resources

Read about some recent European research about online advertising and the projected spend in 2010 here – it suggests that 33% of the advertisers report that they are increasing spending on online video advertising next year.

Adage covered the story and then went on to share four PR lessons when launching a take over bid:

1. MAKE THE DEAL SEEM LIKE A LOGICAL NEXT STEP. While companies obviously can’t tell reporters and analysts they are plotting a bid, they can lay out the rationale for such a deal in the months leading up to it. On conference calls with analysts, Kraft, for instance, has talked about why international confectionary acquisitions made sense for it for more than a year.

2. USE DIGITAL. Microsites dedicated to a takeover bid are an effective way of getting an unfiltered message out via online video and fact sheets. While social media hasn’t yet factored heavily into the equation, investor-relations pros say it’s just a matter of time until Twitter becomes a vital channel as well.

3. CAFFEINATE YOUR PR. As takeover plays quickly devolve into wars of words, winning them requires boosting response time when reporters and analysts come calling, making top executives available whenever possible. Everyone in your C-suite ought to be armed with talking points on every conceivable angle.

4. DON’T NEGLECT INSIDERS. Internal panic — and the leaking it inevitably spawns — will inevitably find its way out of your headquarters and into press coverage. Develop webcasts and memos specifically for your employees, not only to keep them informed but also to shoot down false rumors.

I would add three further points relating specifically to your online PR communications as part of your overall plan (this is based on being involved in many a take over or merger – though before we had all the wonderful widgets and tools we have today):

1. ESTABLISH YOUR ONLINE LISTENING CHANNEL – tune in to the sentiment about the brand as news of it spreads across online news and social media

2. CONSIDER HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA AS PART OF YOUR COMMUNICATIONS PLAN – rumours will be rife and you need to be able to respond quickly e.g. have your YouTube channel ready for content so that you can get your message out and not be at the mercy of others spinning stories about what is going on

3. TRAIN YOUR LEGAL TEAM IN THE VALUE OF ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS – in the case of a merger or takeover, there will, for good reason, be a degree of caution on what you can and can not say and your legal team are going to be central in signing off those communications. Make sure that you have also brought them up to speed with online communications so you have their support for integrating it into your communications plan.

What else would you add to this action list for PR and communications in the case of a take over or merger?

If you are looking for specific guidance with online PR, here are two workshops I am teaching that might be of interest:

IIA Workshop on 22 September 2009 – a half day workshop on using new media to attract new audiences

PRII Certificate in Social Media starting the 3 October 2009 – an indepth four day programme (running over 2 months) covering how to integrate social media into your communications plan for PR professionals.

However I came across a problem using it last week when uploading YouTube videos to my blog.

You see when I had added the embed code and then published the blog post, clicking on the play button of the online video I found the video opened in YouTube rather than my blog.

I checked with my YouTube friend Julie Perry (a whizz on YouTube marketing strategies) to see if she had ever had a problem like this but she hadn’t. However Julie noticed something in the source code of my blog post with the embedded online video.

So I republished the articles taking out the code from having published them through Windows Live Writer and I managed to get rid of the bug.

This might be something particular to my blog – but I thought I’d share it in case anyone else using Windows Live Writer with Wordpress.org has found a similar problem.

Are you a new start-up and wondering how to market your business?

Perhaps you have been thinking about writing a business blog? Then again should you be using Twitter? And didn’t someone recently tell you that YouTube and online video’s were ‘THE in thing’?

If you are not sure where to start then you might be interested in the Social Media Workshop taking place on the 13 June 2009 at the Abosolute Hotel in Limerick starting at 9.30 am and closing at 5pm. The event is being organised by Evert Bopp the Founder of the new business incubation centre in Limerick – GreenhouseLimerick.com

In the morning there will be the seminars and after lunch there will be an interactive workshop where all attendees will be able to set up with a Twitter account, an IGOpeople account, a LinkedIn profile (and if time permits a basic business blog).

Topics covered in the talks will be:

• Bernie Goldbach: How To Use Twitter
• Fred Caballero: Video-blogging On The Move
• Krishna De: Using Linkedin To Nurture New Clients
• Peter Donegan: Business Blogging Basics
• Campbell Scott: How To Network Online Using IGOPeople, Ireland’s online business network.

All the speakers are donating their time and the proceeds for the event will go towards funding the the new incubation unit in Limerick for start up businesses.

The investment for the day is 150 euro per person including lunch, tea and coffee during the day AND 1 years webhosting and a .com domain name for your business blog!

More details about the workshop are online HERE and you can book your place to attend the Social Media For Startups Workshop online HERE.

DETAILS OF FREE SCHOLARSHIP: I have however one free place available as a scholarship for one of our Biz Growth Community. Just post your details below and answer one simple question: what is your new business and how will attending this workshop help you get off to a flying start?

To qualify you must have established a new business since 1 January 2009 and the business must be based in Ireland. If you do win and you are not able to attend, please note that you will not be entitled to an alternative gift or prize money in lieu of attendance.

Please note that you will also be responsible for your own travel and if necessary hotel accomodation if you win the scholarship and are not based in Limerick.

If you are the successful winner we look forward to featuring your case study and your feedback about the event here with our Biz Growth Community.

We will select one person and the announcement of the winner will be made during the week of the 8 June 2009. Good luck with your entry. Here’s a short video with details of the speakers. See you in Limerick I hope!

If you are doing live recordings and interviews what are some of the things we need to consider when filming?

This is the question that that I put to Hugh Chaloner professional photographer and videographer.

You can listen to what Hugh had to say to me here or right click to download as an MP3.

And if you prefer to watch, here is Hugh in conversation with me.

What other suggestions do you have for how you make sure that your online video recordings have high impact?

I recently had the opportunity to attend an event by world renowned leadership expert Robin Sharma hosted by Celtic Guru and Aaron and I had the opportunity to catch up.

He shared with me a project he has been working on for some months – supporting professionals in the Dublin area who have recently been impacted by redundancy. The network meets each week, is free to attend and provides practical help to the attendees from how to prepare for interview through to critiquing each others CV’s.

In my time as an SVP of HR over the years I’ve used outplacement consultancies to help people in career transition. One worrying concern I have though in the current economy is that short cuts are being made – Aaron talked to me about two marketing professionals who had just worked with an outplacement company and both had the same CV. A quick tip from me – never ever hand over the complete development and writing of your resume or CV to anyone without ensuring that it reflects your unique skills, strengths and personal brand. Frankly that outplacement consultancy should be fired themselves for letting this happen!

Aaron shares information about the Dublin Job Club in this video. I hope you will pass the details on to professionals you know who have been impacted with a recent job loss.

And if you are a cafe or restaurant or venue that can provide free of charge a venue and refreshments for the network even just for one of their meetings, I know Aaron would love to hear from you.

If you prefer to listen to the audio either through streaming audio or to download it your computer you can do so here.

Post Script: within just 4 days of my posting this video on just one of of my online networks (not even on my channel at YouTube or hear at the blog), Aaron had received approaches from recruitment companies who are offering assistance, potential joint venture partners and was featured in an online newspaper. I then invited Aaron on stage to share his case study at an event I spoke attended by over 200 businesses leaders last week which generated even more interest in his network. If anyone tells you online video is not relevant to your business, Aaron’s case study may encourage you to think differently.

Aaron didn’t have to hire a videographer, he didn’t record or edit the video, he didn’t send it to his network, he didn’t have to spend a cent. What he did have to have were what I think are the 3C’s for successful online video:

1. a compelling message

2. courage to get in front of a camera

3. and connections to a community of people who would be interested in what he had to say.

What else do you think it needs for an online video to help create visibility and reputation and attract more clients or customers?