PLA Blog

I wish I had posted this last week, but in any case, this free webcast on screencasting (creating digital presentations that record your actions as you use a computer, with or without a voice over) is happening today from 8-9am PST (11-12am EST). If you don’t catch it the first time around, SirsiDynix will be adding it to their archive, along with a whole slew of interesting, free, archives of previous webcasts on everything from podcasting to teaching client (patron) relations, to name just a few.

Just one more post about podcasting before I post the remainder of the Service Response posts for everyone to discuss.

While I didn’t end up podcasting from PodCamp Boston, I was interviewed at PodCamp: one of those interviews is already up at Dave LaMorte’s Teaching for the Future podcast, and another should be coming to me via email from Francesca Rheannon at the Writer’s Voice podcast, for me to podcast from the PLA Blog.

The podcasters at PodCamp were an awesome group of geeks, who really believe in working together and collaborating as much as possible. The podcasters I listed above, as well as many other podcasters I met and talked to, are eager to collaborate, and were intrigued and excited with the idea of working with libraries and librarians.

Much like the rise of blogs and Wikipedia and social networking, I see podcasts, vidcasts, video blogs (vlogs), and other examples of multimedia content hold a world of possibilities for libraries. I recently made a pitch to my boss at my library about adding a podcast to our weekly newsletter, which is published using Blogger and also distributed by email. Nothing to fancy, a 5-minute clip on the upcoming book groups, or tech tips, or how to access databases from home, and more. We can even partner podcasts with quick and easy tutorials composed as sets in the library’s Flickr account, to give patrons the option of audio and visual information access.

One thing that was emphasized by all of the podcasters is that you shouldn’t be hung up on hardware, gear, sound quality. While these are all important, they shouldn’t define whether or not you try podcasting. It can be as easy as hooking up a regular old computer mic to a computer, and using an easy recording application. No mixers or equalizers, just you, your voice, and what you want to share with the world.

Not ready to jump in whole-hog on making podcasts? There are other wasy to interact with the technology, and show your patrons you’re hip. Try adding podcasts to your pathfinders and subject portals. Create recommended lists of podcasts on different subjects (they cover everything from physics to knitting) and place them near your library computers, audio books, in your newsletters, and on your site. As with other web content, librarians can help evaluate and recommend multimedia content, while becoming more familiar with the technology. You can even get in touch with podcasters, to learn from and collaborate with them. I’m sure they’d dig it.
Anyone who didn’t go to the conference can not only listen to and watch content from the conference on the PodCamp Boston Recordings page. You can also see pictures on Flickr, check out posts on Technorati, and join the Google Group.
Do you have ideas for podcasts you’d like to hear from the PLA Blog? Add a comment to this post and let us know.

Clinton Alvord, Leesa Barnes, Chris Brogan, Christopher Penn, John Wall, and Adam Weiss presented on the Podcast Formats Panel this afternoon, with Bryan Person as moderator. The goal of the discussion was focused on making the best podcast possible, the different flavors of podcasts, and how to best leverage them (more information about the session can be found on the wiki). While the session did cover some of the issues on the agenda, the best bit was the tips brainstorming session at the end.

Some of the tip gems include:

• Choose interviewees well. Even the most prominent people in a field can end up as bad interviewees.
• Have a good conversation, which good questions that you plan in advance.
• Toss out the bad stuff. It might be hard, especially with important people, but if it’s bad, don’t save it, and for the good of all, don’t publish it.
• Audio needs to be engaging, video makes it more fun, speaking in analogies helps a whole lot.
• Focus on a niche audience, even if you end up with a broader audience. Starting with a focus helps.
• Say your name right away, before any intro music, and the episode ID information, so people know whether or not they’ve heard the episode early, instead of 5 minutes in.
• Don’t let your intro music go on for a whole minute before you start talking!
• No housekeeping at the beginning of your podcast, and don’t apologize for not updating for a while.
• Experimentation is great, just don’t overhaul the podcast when you have thousands of listeners.
• If you do want to experiment, but you have an established template brand, you can have an episode every now and again that is understood to be a free-form episode.
• Get feedback from your listeners.

People like to use music in their podcasts, either as a whole show, or just for introductions, closers, and interstitials (kinda like, say, NPR). As you can imagine, there can be copyright issues if you use bits of music you don’t have permission to use, or beyond the fair use limit.

So in the podcasting world, there is something called “podsafe” music, music that is OK to use without royalties, licensing, or any other legal obstacle courses.

After lunch today at PodCamp, the musical group Uncle Seth performed, and they were quite good. People stuck around, many recording the music (there’s even a video of the music already up on the web, and they *just* wrapped). They put in a plug for their CDs at the end, noting that they had a whold podsafe sample CD for free. They also had a CD of a Joni Mitchell cover that they did, that one of the group members deemed “poddirty” in comparison. Another one for the dictionaries.
I *heart* geek conferences.

I met C.C. Chapman and Mitch Joel first thing when I walked in the door this morning. I had no idea that they would be presenting today, but really, that’s the fun of the unconference: anyone can present. I was even approached to do a presentation tomorrow, since there are still slots open. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, C.C. and Mitch spoke on the art of branding. A brand is not money, a name, a T shirt, a free mouse pad. A brand, indeed, is a story. And podcasting is about the conversation. If you have an experience, community, conversation, put it all together and you have a brand.

Who cares about a personal brand? Everyone should. It’s not just a corporate thing, it’s a small organization thing, a non-profit thing, a family thing. A brand brings you in, even if you’re not in agreement about the content. You get someone excited about something, and there’s interaction, that’s what’s bringing people in. (Especially if you’re trying to bring in money with your podcast.) However, you should never do anything that isn’t you, everything you have within you is what you should be communicating.

There are really three parts to branding, all connected to relationships.

• The Internal Conversation: Who are you, how do you get it out there. Find the real you, and tell your story. As Karen Hyman likes to say, it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the story, the humanization of your message, your goal, your desired outcome. Take all of that, and make it to your podcast. If you’re not sure what your podcast should be about, find your passion, and use that for your podcast, because somewhere you’ll find an audience. You are creating a mental tattoo on your audience, so that your show is among the 3 or 4 podcasts in the sea of over-subscribed feeds that people can’t wait to listen to.

• The One-to-One: This fits into the idea of the 15-second/elevator pitch, something that makes for an interesting *start* to a conversation. Podcasting is a broadcasting mechanism, it’s not the story. It’s “What are you listening to?” not “Do you listen to podcasts?” Spend the time and get to know your listeners, to plan how you’re going to get from your first podcast to 4 podcasts down the line. It’s all about listening, getting feedback, and improving the story, which improves the brand. It’s all very outreach oriented. It’s not about agreeing, it’s about the conversation, NOT the technology.

• The One-to-Many: Taking it to the next level, the real power is creating the communities by connecting through technology/podcasting/blogging. The community that forms from the connections, and sometimes those connections start and remain online.

A few other tidbits they shared include:

• Not all about who you know, it’s about who knows you.
• Always talk to strangers (not the dark alley ones), get to know the people next to you. Networking is key to marketing *and* improving your brand.
• Find about your podcast theme peers, your competitors, your dissidents, and listen.
• When you think about your podcast, networking, marketing, think “Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?” (quoted from The Economist)

Christopher Penn, the madman behind the PodCamp unconference, speaks about marketing a podcast once you have it. The value of this presentation is not just in the marketing information for a podcast, but the importance of social networking to the future of marketing, especially viral marketing, and how libraries should definitely be thinking about reaching the web market at multiple age levels.

Here’s the quick and dirty on how to market your podcast:

• First things first, make sure to search optimize your site. Make sure your name, or at least a few keywords on your show, is in the <TITLE> tag, list your site with search engines that accept site registrations or in directories. Your site for your podcast needs to be as searchable, indexable, and search-relevant as possible, so that when anyone types in your
• Keep your content as close to you as possible, and offer direct links to your content are key. Try to avoid second-party feed hosts (Yahoo! Podcasts is apparently notorious for fouling up podcasts, losing episodes, etc.) Hosting your own content, then creating feeds to that content allows you to keep a handle on the content as well as get better statistics.
• Create as many access points to your content as possible by creating as many accounts on as many social networking sites as possible, from LiveJournal to MySpace to Xanga to Facebook to Second Life. Provide linkage back to your content and feed, as well as adding the coding for in-page players.
• Create calls to action in your text as well as in your audio. Make sure your content feed and player are “above the fold” on your page, imbed a player so that people can click and listen, allow options for email subscription and email a friend. Also, in the audio of your podcast, tell people how to download iTunes or your podcast player/aggregator of choice and subscribe.
• Make your listeners evangelists by making it easy to let them pass the viral word along about your podcast. You can record little promos that other podcasters can use in their broadcasts, you can do interviews with anyone who wants to talk to you.
• MySpace, MySpace, MySpace. Books and book groups are *huge* on MySpace right now. Creating a profile that mirrors a few important bits of your podcast site, add the web-based player to your page as well as iTunes and direct links to your feed, and add friends like crazy. It does require a bit of homework, spending time in Groups on MySpace to add as friends to push your content to, but it’s a huge marketing boon for podcasters.

While these tips are podcast advertising oriented, I’d say this is a good way for libraries to start thinking about advertising what the library can do for people, especially for people who wouldn’t normally think to use or visit the library.

This weekend, I’ll be reporting to you from PodCamp Boston a free unconference at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.

Why is it called an unconference? While there is an official sponsor (Museum of Science in Boston) that paid for the location, the rest of the conference is man-made on the fly, as opposed to prefab and prescheduled, as you can see by visiting the wiki. The conference is free to all, and powered predominantly by donations (view the open ledger that tracks the expenses as well as the donations for the event, they made a fair bit from the kindness and interest of others). It’s an intereseting conference model, and in this case, if you build it, they will indeed come in droves.

If you’re still a bit sticky on the concept of wikis, check out “So You Want to Build a Wiki?” by Meredith Farkas. While the PodCamp wiki does go a bit beyond the basic community model to an organized chaos planning model (which, in my opinion, is fabulous and brave), this article will give you some basics.

Why PodCamp? I happen to live nearby, it’s free (although I plan on making a personal donation to the upcoming PodCamp 2, which hasn’t been scheduled yet), and podcasting has been hot as of late. It’s also nifty to attend a non-librarian conference and get the non-librarian view to share with other librarians, as insight to what our potential patrons are up to and thinking about. If you’re a librarian attending PodCamp, and let me know, since I’d love to meet up.

Will I be podcasting from PodCamp? I hope so. The PLA Blog had a successful toe in the podcasting water at ALA with the lemonade for libraries story, and we’d like to do more, especially at conferences. While I had PLA digital recording gear at my disposal in New Orleans, a podcast can be recorded straight to a laptop, so I’ll hopefully be able to record something of substance and interest. Otherwise, I’m walking into the conference like a total newbie with nothing but a laptop and a sense of adventure. I’m sure I’ll be able to hook something up with the help of my new podcasting friends.

I won’t be covering the basics of podcasting. Greg Schwartz did an excellent job of covering Podcasting 101 in his series of webinars, so you should definitely check them out as a place to start. I also recommend checking out Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting by George Colombo and Curtis Franklin as a great novice reference.

More later!