Chapter 15

Online information is all about creating live content that uses Internet to distribute that content, leading to livecasting. Livecasting falls into two main categories of audio and video. The first groups to actually broadcast audio live over the Internet were existing commercial radio stations that were already producing audio content. The next step in Internet broadcasting was for individuals to take advantage of this new and free technology, so people began to create their own radio show content and transmitting it over the Internet from everywhere.

Livecasting was made possible by the evolution of smaller, lighter, more energy-efficient hardware, including portable laptops, longer-life batteries, and wireless Internet connections. There are many forms of livecasting such as the earliest form of webcasting or broadcasting video live over the Internet was called web conferencing. This particular method used conferencing software that connects two or more people or computers, giving them the ability to speak and see one another simultaneously. While a webcast takes place when a live broadcast or prerecorded media file is distributed over the Internet using streaming technology. Ustream won some acclaim during some recent political campaigns for its usefulness in campaigning allowing political candidates to address a larger number of voters’ political questions in real time. Livecasting would be beneficial if you wanted to build a community of trusted followers, or if you wished you your own talk radio or television show. If you discuss issues important to your prospects, this will really humanize your company and like other social media tools, it only takes a little creativity.

One of the most creative ways I think livecasting has been used is the example the book uses as well, the example of Justin.tv. Califorinan Justin Kan began streaming his life in a continuous, live video, giving the process the name lifecasting. He gained a lot of attention when he announced he would wear his webcam on 24/7, broadcasting his life live and nonstop. When I first learned about Justin last year I was so intrigued I went to his live broadcast, and then I followed up again today. As I am typing he is currently playing Starcraft and listening to classical music. From his site and the links that are attached to his site, it is clear that he greatly influence live broadcast with almost 3,000 live video broadcasts connected to his.

Chapter 14

Microblogging lets those who participate create small, intimate communities that are centered on topics such as politics, technology, or medical issues. It lets your friends know where you are and what you are doing. It includes the ability to send messages, audio, video, and even attached files and can be as effortless as sending a text message from your cell phone to select group of friends. Microblogging began with the emergence of the web log or blog. People began to post more condensed, convenient, portable, personal versions of their conventional blog posts into microblogging. It is easier, faster, and immediately accessible.

One of the most popular microblogging, social networking services is Twitter which allows users to send and receive brief 140 characters or less text-based, micropost instant messages that are referred to as tweets. A positive advantage of Twitter is that if you feel that information on someone’s Twitter is irrelevant, you simply just “unfollow” them. The most common criticism of microblogging is the trivial nature and the mundane information of most posts. That’s way the ‘unfollow” button is so appealing.

While blogs are considered fairly simply to write and maintain, a two-sentence update is still easier than regular blogs. Microblogs are also significantly less complicated to digest than conventional blogs, especially when you are following several hundred or more twitters. But how are advertisers becoming profitable with microblogging sites? The main point is that it is free, but advertisers can’t reach everyone that they want. Tweeters have to choose that particular companies twitter and choose to “follow” them for their message to be delivered. Finding companies a profitable options on Twitter is something Twitter itself is still trying to manage.

I love microblogging! I get easily frustrated with blogging and with the emergence of Twitter, I discovered the convenience of microblogging. I am an offender of the mundane updates at times, but I think for companies or organizations such as Southwest Airlines and NASA that have embraced Twitter, it is important to have those trivial updates to maintain realness to your prospects. In my Twitter experience, consumers will “follow” who or what company they can relate to. A good balance of content and sincerity is important for a company wanting to take on a Twitter.

Chapter 13

The common point that The Social Media Bible has been trying to get across is that social media is now. If you don’t embrace social media now, you never will for it is constantly changing. The book states this in the words “just do it!” Video sharing is the easiest and fastest way to start building our social media portfolio. Like much social media, uploading is free and it makes your message accessible to all of your prospects and customers.

The only prerequisite for uploading videos is that they need to be in digital format and not exceed the host’s maximum file size. Once you have gathered all of your videos in a digital format you can go to YouTube and start uploading. It’s that easy! Another advantage of post

Another form of file sharing for music, video, e-books, movies, software, and other digital data is known as peer-to-peer or P2P. P2P takes place when many computers on a network, connected through the Internet, all share digital data in the form of files. P2P was made most famous, when it argued that 87 percent of all music on Napster’s download servers was copyrighted. Because Napster allowed people to easily copy and distribute MP3 files between one another for free, it led the music industry to accuse Napster of huge copyright violations. Peer-to-peer and Napster technology allowed music fans to easily share with each other song files in any format.

Reading this chapter makes me realize that I have never fully utilized YouTube. I have been sort of invisible on YouTube, viewing video I wanted to view, but never commenting, forwarding, or tagging. I have posted videos promoting events from high school and college and wondered why they views weren’t as high as I wanted them to be. It was because I was not properly advertising and video sharing to YouTube’s maximum. This is probably along the lines of what some advertising companies are experiencing. You to do more than just create the video, you have to share it and put it in front of people so they have no choice but to click it! Video sharing in a great way to get your company and product names out there. The more “What’s in it for me?” value that the video has, the more it will be watched and passed along.

Chapter 12

Vlogging or Video web logging, if engaging ensures that your viewer will watch it to its conclusion. The more sense that are engaged with people are mentally gathering information, the better. This is why video blogs and site like YouTube have become so successful.

When two people want to communicate with each other, half of the communication is through body language. Is this could be why sometime letters and emails are sometimes misconstrued and why vlogs are successful in this aspect. With the release of Quicktime users were able to view reasonably good quality color videos on their computers for the first time. With greater improvement in compression technology and increasingly faster transfer rate from modems, the video that the Internet is delivering constantly becomes better and better.

YouTube, a video sharing web site, allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. This became successful with more people being connected to the Internet. Vlogging and YouTube become so appealing because it removes geographic boundaries and creates a global community through personal interaction. Like with podcasting, if you wanted to start vlogging it is best to start out with a simple script consisting of main ideas and bullet points, but directly reading of our the script you created is the worst thing you could do as a vlogger. Viewers want to see sincerity and a realness to the vloggers. Being able to share your expressions, inflections, and body language with sincerity is what will make your vlogs successful. Although, sincerity is the first step, once your videos are created and edited, it is your responsibility to drive traffic to your video.

When I think of video blogs, I think of the celebrity’s video blogging about their touring adventures on the road or to simply tell their fans what they have been doing. I have always been frustrated with the video blogs of celebrities that have no point. If you have that amount of power and you are that successful, wouldn’t you want that viewing to video blog about something with substances? This chapter helped me realize that the most important thing about video blogging is the content and that, that content is relayed with sincerity. The viewers have to believe you. This comes important with advertising and selling a product or service over video. While video blogging should be creative and fun, it needs to deliver a message by relating to the consumers watching the blog.

Chapter 11

Podcasts are essentially a vehicle for many other types of media that individual and businesses can in realm of social networking. Podcasts allow you to add music, digital photos, animated company logos, or colorful videos. A podcast is an audio or video recording that a person can subscribe to, receive, download, listen to, or watch using a personal computer, iPod or iPhone. A podcast is similar to a television program or radio show, but easier to create and distribute. The process of audio sharing requires that you first create an audio file and then make it known and available. One of the ways you can make it known it is available is distributing it on iTunes.

iTunes is used for playing, organizing, downloading , and publishing audio and video files. iTunes enables users to connect to the iTunes Store through the Internet, where they can purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, along with buying apps for iPhones and iPods. iTunes allows you to create playlists, edit file information, and record CDs, copy files to digital audio or video players, essentially allowing to become an artist or an advertising straight from your personal computer.

Podbean opened in 2006 providing podcast publishing tools for users to begin creating professional podcasts. It allows them to do so in a short amount of time, with a bloglike environment that requires no technical knowledge, you can manage, publish, and promote podcasts from your computer. Podbean is used in a variety of ways such as for education, religion, music, etc. while allowing users to personalize with selecting themes or “skins”. The most important feature of Podbean is its ability to measure the website traffic, allowing you to know how you are performing. Measuring Internet traffic is one of the best features of online advertising.

Podcast is the social media that I know the least about so far, so I was intrigued when there was a second chapter describing audio podcasting and how they can be used in iTunes and Podbean. I think this chapter successfully continued the main idea from Chapter 10. The definitions and histories of podcasting, iTunes, and Podbean are important to get started, but if you don’t know how to effectively use them and distribute your audio podcasts to where consumers know they are available, then you efforts won’t be worthwhile. Creating your new podcast is one thing, but making it available to your customers, prospects, and employees is what will make it successful. This point goes back to all of the social media options we have discussed so far, it can be simple, but if you don’t use it up to it’s potential then you are not using it correctly.

Chapter 10

Historically, in-car audio programming has been the exclusive domain of radio, an industry that was built upon finding ways to entertain or inform and then sell stuff to a captive audience of drivers during the highly lucrative drive-time hours. But automakers today know that people bring iPods with them into their cars. How do you make podcasting apart of your business strategy?

Podcasting is an effective way for you and your business to be heard-to capture the valuable mindshare of customers, prospects, and employees. The more interesting you make your message, the more likely people are willing to hear it. Audio podcasting is a simpler (than video) expression of user-generate content, and all of the tools you to create your own audio podcast inside your computer. The essential tools that you need to create are your own audio podcast is a microphone, the free audio recording and editing software and your creative imagination.

Planning, recording, editing, and publishing all go into creating your own podcast. Gathering and importing information and then writing the script goes into planning. The script should include your introduction that may include a a verbal opening explaining who you are, what your subject matter is, and what you will be talking about. GarageBand is a get tool to get started with this. With recording it is important to create bullets about your main ideas and then speak spontaneously about that subject without being too rehearsed. Connect to your audio editing software, plug in your USB microphone and begin. Editing podcast will most likely be necessary which will including basic editing tools such as the ability to cut segments, mix tracks, convert formats, and spilt tracks. The final step is publishing. Podcasts are meant to be shared, to share thoughts and idea making this the most important step.

Special effects can enhance your podcasts. By adding a little creativity you can make your content exciting and entertaining. The easiest effect that you can enhance would be boosting the volume and the bass to add fullness to the podcast. You might need to install the proper software (such as GarageBand and Quicktime) as well as include the proper hardware (microphone, handset, recording docks, mixers, etc). Check and see what type of audio recording and editing software you have!

This chapter makes me feel excited that I could podcast from my house. At first, the audio recording details reminded me of my film major days and how much I disliked cutting and editing the audio at the beginning of my projects. I think it was because it was always the first step for me and it signaled the beginning of a long editing process, but this chapter made me see audio and podcasts in a different way. This chapter made me see audio podcasting as an easy, free and unique way to reach consumers. For me, it takes me a half hour drive to work, a half hour back. That is an hour of potential advertising that advertisers and companies could reach listeners and make an impact in a different way. This also applies to media buys and when media planners buy units of advertising. This chapter made it clear that radio drive times and podcasts are impactful in advertising. The more you podcast, the more quality content and contribution you will provide to your follower, listeners, and customers.

Chapter 9

The first great thing about photo sharing is that is provides high quality, low-cost exposure.

Photo sharing dates back to the very first web page, but the real rise of photo sharing web sites grew with the popularization of the digital camera in the late 1990’s. Digital cameras allow you to go directly from your camera to the Web without any additional hardware or software. The emergence of email continued photo sharing’s popularity which was soon followed by photo management applications such as iPhoto proving that sharing photographs has grown beyond the digital camera and Internet.

To gain an understanding about photo sharing, it is important to understand the process of a digital camera. The standard digital camera has options to auto-focus, auto-aperture, and to provide digital display. Quality of the picture is measured in megapixels or the total number of picture elements, the higher number of megapixels, the better the quality of image. A lower quality picture will appear grainy or fuzzy if not taken at a high enough picture quality.

To be successful at photo sharing is first to take the picture. The most common to do this is with an point-and-click camera. The second step is to transfer your photographs from your camera to your computer and edit them if needed, followed by uploading them to your photo sharing website. Businesses have acquired these steps and are using technique to share images of their products, tech support, employees, assembly lines, etc. You can help this process along by uploading as many photographs as you can, using the product names, application, and the company name.

If there is something I have learned so far in The Social Media Bible, it is that every new social media that is introduced, it is all about two way communication. Without this communication social media has no chance to be successful. For photo sharing, sharing your photos with global communities, friends, family coworkers, prospects, and customers and encouraging them to comment on your photos is what makes social media so effective. With photo sharing, you have the potential to become a photographer, an creative artist. Websites allow you to efficiently show your work to others that would usually not see it. Photo sharing can create a career for some or just enhance the positive publicity of the job you already have. I have recently seen this with business websites, attaching pictures of their employees and positive customer experiences. Photo sharing is a great way to utilize free advertising!