For social media you feed the buffer

For most of my work life I have learned to concentrate on:

• single piece flow
• release it when done

With social media I'm having to learn a new set of strategies.

• batch creation
• single piece flow editing
• buffered release cycles
• revisit to repurpose

Never repeat a public speaking talk - until you get busy

I have only once, repeated a conference talk:

• same slides
• same content

I was at a two day conference and a keynote speaker for the second day pulled out, so I stepped in and did a talk on the second day (as well as the first).

I didn’t have time to create a new talk so I refreshed my memory of the old talk and presented that in the morning.

I didn’t enjoy it and it didn’t feel right to me, but it went down OK.

But I’ve never repeated a talk since.

I realise now that I’ve had the luxury of preparation time when getting ready for conferences, so I was able to create new talks, from scratch, and then never repeat them.

But now, I find that I’m being asked to talk, with much less notice than I’d like, and I simply don’t have time to create completely new content.

So I’m repeating talks… kind of.

I don’t:

• use exactly the same slide deck
• use the same words
• have the same talk title
• etc.

Because all audiences are different, but I’m …

• creating new titles aimed at the audience
• re-using slides
• re-using themes
• extending parts of one talk when I add the theme into another
• contracting themes when the are relevant, but not as important
• learning from previous talks and adding new information into the ‘repeat’

It feels like ‘re-purposing’ rather than re-using, but if you came to all the talks you’d certainly see similarities.

I’m hoping that:

• it doesn’t feel like a repeat
• I’m still creating content for the audience
• the ‘same’ sections improve each time

I realise that I still have a luxury of some time, so I am able to re-purpose rather than ‘repeat’. But I’ve amended my ‘never repeat a talk’ motto to ‘never repeat a talk, unless I get really busy’.

I’m hoping that one day, I’ll be able to create unique talks, with minimal preparation that still:

• entertain
• educate
• motivate
• inspire questions

…and by minimal preparation I mean - a few minutes.

But I’m not there yet.

Marketing using Instagram videos with Captions

I have been creating daily instagram videos and I’ve started to be concerned that many people will not watch them because you have to have sound and often we don’t have then when looking at instagram.

A few recent Gary Vaynerchuck instagram videos had captions on them and I found myself watching the video and following along by reading the captions. I suspect the ‘view figures’ for the video did not increase as a result, but my engagement with his content did, and that is really what counts.

So how can someone without the resources of Gary V do a similar thing?

Here’s my initial experiment.

• I upload the video into Trint
• Tidy the automated transcription
• export as a srtfile
• upload my video from my phone to my computer
• create a camtasia project
• set the Project settings canvas size to 1080 by 1080
• amend the caption font size to about 80-90
• import the srt file as captions
• export video to mp4
• use buffer to share on instagram and facebook

And voila - a ‘watchable’ instagram video without having to have sound and without needing resources on the level of Gary V.

I will iterate forward from this to streamline my process.

Oh - I had one srt file that Camtasia refused to import, so I used smisrt.com/en to conver the file to smi which Camtasia did import. I don’t know if this was an issue with Trint or Camtasia - but this is the workaround I used.

All told this probably takes about 20 minutes for a 1 minute instgram video, but I think the engagement increase will go up and that will make this worthwhile. Also I have a transcript that I can repurpose later.

Content creation realisation "only you see everything you do"

Note to self: "The only person seeing everything that you are doing is you."

Therefore:

• you can re-use content and it will be new to most people
• you can re-purpose content, to keep it alive, if it is core to your message
• you can re-promote content because people will not have seen it

If you share and create good stuff then help people find it.

Stop:

• thinking that people will tire of what you create
• keep creating new stuff
• keep reminding people about the old good stuff
• thinking that if you include content from posts in your talks that people will 'already have seen it:
• most people don't read blogs
• most people don't follow you on instagram
• most people don't read linkedin
• most people don't follow you on twitter
• most people dont ... etc.
• And... more importantly
• when you talk, you add extra value with, in your face emotional and passionate presenting because you care about the content

Every channel offers additional value even if the content is 'the same' (but the content is not the same, it is channel specific).

Notes from a failed pitch - show the map, and the route from here to there

Just a quick write up of notes from a failed pitch.

A consultancy that I periodically work through brought me in on a pitch.

• I had the skills to lead the project
• they could provide the staff
• it was their lead
• they had the client contact and relationship

So we engaged in a joint pitch.

Re-posting and re-purposing as a content creation strategy

Efficient content marketing requires re-use and re-purposing of content.

Sometimes that means direct re-posting, but it also means - using previous content as a basis for creating new content (re-purposing).

e.g.

• I create a daily instagram video
• I try and summarise it into a ‘motivational quote’ image for instagram and pinterst
• I collate the instagram videos into a YouTube video with additional content
• I transcribe the youtube video
• I turn the transcription into a markdown file which I use to create slides for uploading to slideshare
• I transcribe the youtube video into a blog post and add links to the youtube video, instagrams and slides
• I review the blog post from a ‘management’ or ‘motivational’ perspective for one or two linkedin posts

Some of those steps are re-posting, some are re-purposing.

A quick review of content collation and curation tools for newsletter creation

One thing I’m not particularly good at, is sending out a newsletter.

I thought I’d have a quick look at some curation tools to see if they help (and yes, I know this could be considered procrastination).