Author: Angelo Fernando

What’s your story? Dump the ‘pitch,’ find your story!

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I’ve said it before: radio, which seems a lot like ‘old media’ has one leg up over new media because it’s where people come to expect to hear stories. Not sound bytes, not pitches, not bullet points, not all those forms of condensed communication snacks we have come to expect in every other form of media.

Don’t blame it on TV entirely. There are TV programs that refuse to do the truncated story, shun the fast cuts, and slick camera work so as to let the story unfold. We have ingested this packet switching mentality that the Internet brought with it, and forced our stories into the tiniest bits of content. It’s become the default format, and we go along with it.

But guess what? It is not the only format that works.

Exhibit A: I listened to a long segment today on a new trend Daryl Hall started, called Live From Daryl’s House. It’s an internet phenomenon. But if it hadn’t been thoughtfully told as a story by NPR reporter Robert Smith, I would have skipped it.

Exhibit B: Radio again. This time I have to bring in the show I co-host with Derrick Mains as an example of how we make  ‘talk show’ (in most people’s minds it’s where the hosts yak all the time) into a storytelling space. We bring people around the topics of business entrepreneurship, innovation and corporate sustainability, and let their stories unfold.

Everyone’s tired of hearing pitches. Too many people tell you what they do in that distilled, dehumanized format. Stories have a different pace, and in fact, different goals. Yet they break through the clutter in a more powerful way.

What’s your pitch? Could you turn it into a story? Try it. Record it and listen to it. You’ll never want to talk in bullet points again!

Clay Shirky on distraction: turn the damn wi-fi off!

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Whenever  I digest Clay Shirky’s books, such as Here comes everybody, I always wonder where someone like him finds time to draw out such astute observations about so many social and technological events swirling around us.

His latest, Cognitive Surplus,  is a must read for anyone wondering (or responding to the cynical question)’where do people like you fund time to blog and hang out on social media sites?”

So when I heard him last week on a webinar, remark that he often goes to a place with his Netbook and turns the wi-fi off, it all made sense. We celebrate the fact that many gadgets around us are wi-fi enabled –now including cameras and MP3 players. But just because we have the default option of being always on, always connected to the grid, we could be denying ourselves the time to sit back and come to our own conclusions.

“The volume of the media coming at us is so large,” he observed;” we need to filter it and ‘do new imaginative things’ out of them.

Whereas once literacy was once a goal for our children,  we now need to teach children how not to be distracted, he said. “Being deluged,” is the norm. “For all the fetishizaion of ‘inbox zero’ for example, there is no way to keep people from  wasting your time. The discipline comes to basically turning off the channels.

I tried it today at the coffee shop. I got so much more done. I was reminded of the book I intended top pick up, Distracted.  It deals with “networks of attention.”

That’s a new phrase to me!

“Attention is not always within our control. The unexpected, the changeable, the novel, even the habitual abduct our focus, intrude upon our awareness, and pull us off course for a time.”

The funny thing is, I would not have been able to find that book is not for my wi-fi connection. I know what Clay would say: “Get thee to a library!”

Podcasts of first six radio shows!

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For those of you who have asked, here are the links to the podcasts of the radio show I co-host on KFNX 1100, every Wednesday.

Show # 6:      8 Sept 2010 – Michael Muyot

Show #5: 1 Sept, 2010 – Park Howell and Donna DiFrancisco

Show #4: 25 August 2010 – Tom Szaky

Show #3:         18 August 2010 – Kathy Miller and Marty Metro

Show #2: 11 August 2010 –  Joe Turturica and Stan Alpert

Show #1: 4 August 2010 – Cindy Laurin and Andrew Nisker

Are you a Hootsuite or Tweetdeck person?

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There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide the world into two sets of people, and those who see us as one big blob of humanity…

OK, more seriously, while presenting Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, at the webinar on Thursday night (it was Friday in Sri Lanka)  it struck me that these two interfaces, while similar in terms of dashboards, appeal to two types. After all, Hootsuite is a web-based application – no downloads necessary. There are some who are not very comfortable with apps that don’t reside on their computer.  Tweetdeck on the other hand, is a slick application that resides on your desktop (now also for the iPad and iPhone. Both are great search engines in their own right.

In my experience Tweetdeck gives you a lot more search results.

Tweetdeck Advantage: Try this: Look for “Floods in Pakistan” on Tweetdeck. The Search within Tweetdeck gives you a real-time feed of tweets. BUT you could get a broader, deeper set of results by going to Tweetdeck.com, and searching there. The same phrase gives you this. It is a lists of Lists, that also give you a snapshot of the number of followers of that list and the number of tweets a day by people on that list.

Hootsuite gives you a lot more filtration.

Hootsuite Advantage: To conduct the same search on Hootsuite you could either do a quick search using he magnifying glass icon and it brings up a floating column with results, or you could create a permanent feed. But what I like about Hootsuite is that you can then sort through those results using the pull down tab and selecting ‘filter.’ This is very useful when searching for a keyword, organization name or hashtag within the results.

So what’s your dashboard preference? Does it say something about your work style? How does it simplify your search?

Replace dirty filters! Stop content clogging up your pipes!

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

On last Friday’s webinar I asked Dave Barnhart to co-present with me on the final in this 6-part series on Passport To Digital Citizenship. Dave is a social media coach who runs a successful business practice around blogging strategy, micro-blogging and web content. Steve England was also on hand with his mobile marketing insight on how all this plays out as we take our tools and our content into a wireless world.

In this session I focused on filters and deep drilling!

We had previously taught attendees how  to create content, leverage the channels, connect and interact with audiences. So in this final seminar, I asked them to consider what it might be to be on the other side of the equation -as recipients. Too Much Information (TMI) is clogging up the arteries, and customers, readers, listeners and viewers may be filtering us out. What do social media filters look like? How do they provide us with deeper insight?

We’re talked about  Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Bloglines and much more! It was a great rounding off of what we do a both communicators and recipients!

Yesterday’s Webinar on YouTube

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Gary Campbell and I shot this a video on the morning of the webinar, to use it before the event, and also as the content for the channel we created during the session.

Obviously there was a lot we would have liked to fix –lighting, for instance– but this was itself a demo of how to produce a video with a short deadline, with minimal editing.

Juggling radio and webinars –a lesson in distraction

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I had as a guest in the studio Bart Butler, an IABC member ho wanted to do a  story of my radio show. So it was really flattering to see what came of it –an article in EDIT EXPRESS, the online newsletter for members bt members.

Bart came at  good time. Bad really because this was a week during which I was sandwiching in one of my webinars and the show, among other things. So the point he picked up,(that  radio is non distracting medium) has been on my mind a lot. Here’s why: As we put on our hats as content creators, it could be very annoying to deal with the glue and tape (and that conduits and access points) of media distribution. I find this point being driven home by a book i am not reading, Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky, who talks of the fragmentation of the concept of ‘media’ today. It used to be a word that bundled process, product and  output. But I digress.

Here is his article: Social Media Guru Goes Retro…with Radio

I like to add one thing, Bart: The only reason we seem ‘relaxed’ on radio is that conversations are relaxing. Whether they happen on-air, online or offline. The moment you remove the talk-back button, that’s when sweat breaks out for me!

OK, two things. Please don’t use the word guru!

Podcast: Is mobile marketing on the right dirt track?

/ Angelo Fernando / 4 Comments

I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t even know what ‘‘The future of the internet’ is, even though I was featured on a podcast by Antonio Edward about this week.

But I think he was trying to tease out what we practitioners of social media and Marcom think of the mobile device as it becomes the primary means of connecting, communicating and collaborating online.

http://mobicast.mobi/2010/08/14/the-future-of-the-internet/

This I do know.

  • There is far too much that tech companies and advocates of their tools take for granted. Many people are still in at the ground level when it comes to tagging, quick response codes, social media collaboration, and ‘location-aware social networking.’ What’s that? Exactly my point!
  • The iPhone and iPad are sucking up all the oxygen of publicity and discussion, so people on other operating systems haven’t begun to discover value in the ‘laptop replacement device’ in their pockets.

Webinar on LinkedIn tomorrow

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If you are new to the webinar series –and I know some of you will be based on the requests from companies — here is a preview of what we will be talking about in the webinar on LinkedIn tomorrow. I say tomorrow, because it will be the night of August 16th for me in the US, even though it will be the morning of the 17th in Sri Lanka!

LinkedIn is a ‘gated community’ and is much smaller than, say, Facebook. But it is also a super professional network that lets you build networks within the network. You develop solid connections and have richer conversations within this ‘closed’ (which is also a ‘private’) environment.

Here is my short take on LinkedIn: I think of LinkedIn as a knowledge–sharing portal, rather than a friend hang-out. It lets you ‘communicate to the niches’ rather than waste your resources on mass communication tactics.

Here is my co-presenter, Derrick Mains on the subject.

Some of you may recall that I featured Derrick in a guest spot during a previous webinar. Steve England will also join us as usual, with his amazing ideas on how mobile devices are powering social networks.

Here’s the format of the webinar:

  • 1st 10 minutes: introduction and review of what we have done so far in our series on “Passport To Digital Citizenship.”
  • 20 minutes: The key features of LinkedIn and how LinkedIn differs from Facebook. We will show you some strategies and a case study of how to do ‘business’ with individuals across organizations.
  • Break

After the break:

  • Hands-on session
  • Questions Time

Shrink the link, a craft worth learning

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If you’ve ever played around with Tiny URL and Bit.ly you will know that there are a few ways to shrink your links.

The easy way is to simply use the automated feature and let Bit.ly or TinyURL do it for you. The better way is to use the custom feature –still free!– and tighten things up so your readers recognize it is related to your content.

I tend to use this custom feature more these days, especially when I have repeated use of a specific URL. When should you consider using a custom URL?

  • For streaming audio of a fixed radio or TV show
  • The registration page of a micro-site created for an event
  • As a link to a photo album being updated regularly with news or event coverage
  • A contest that typically targets social media users through different channels. Perfect for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
  • When you want to email a link to a group, or embed it in a link to a  survey

But there is another way to go about this  for branding purposes. Take a look (on the right) at what Twitter uses. The URL is condensed to http://t.co. What’s that .co domain? It is the country domain assigned to Columbia! Speaking of new domains, there are others worth considering.

  • The .ly domain is the country  domain for Libya. It is used by Bit.ly/
  • If you are in the medical profession, you could register a domain ending in .md -the country domain for the Republic of Moldova, an Eastern European country.  However, to register a country domain you need to prove that you have a legal or business reason to do so.
  • The best known one is .tv –the country domain for Tuvalu. There’s a whole lot of information on how to use the.TV domain here.

So the next time you are planning an online campaign, consider how you could do this using your URL. It’s often an afterthought right? It shouldn’t be.

I haven’t even touched on the tracking features available with Bit.ly or Ow.ly/ That’s the topic of another post!