Quick and Painless Multimedia (handouts)

Quick and Painless Multimedia HANDOUT IABC Canada Business Communicators Summit NOVEMBER 2012

Donna Papacosta

Goals today

•  Get familiar with easy-to-use tools •  Learn to add multimedia to your

communications •  Share experiences •  Have fun

#CdnIABC12 @donnapapacosta

Why multimedia? •  We  are  visual  people  

•  S.ll  and  moving  images  and  sound  engage  us  

•  Prolifera.on  of  visually  oriented  media  and  tools  

•  More  likely  to  be  shared  

Bodyform: Answering a Facebook post with a cheeky video

About Pinterest

•  Virtual pinboard

•  Digital scrapbook/curation tool

•  Ties into trend toward visual communication, curation, social sharing

•  Easy and fun

•  Drives more traffic than LinkedIn, YouTube and G+ combined

Not just for fashion and decor

Be a better pinner

•  Set a goal first

•  Curate the best; don’t pin everything you see

•  Set your board cover

•  Add context with text descriptions

•  Add visuals to your own best content; link to it

Instagram

Can follow people or hashtags

Instagram for busines s More than 40% of major brands use Pinterest.

Flipboard

Finding photos

Quick and Painless Multimedia

http://search.creativecommons.org/

Using photos in content marketing

•  Share your organization’s story in photos

•  Get good product shots, including how to use

•  Show people

•  Invite customers to share

Make your content “pinnable”

•  Use images in standard formats (.jpg, .gif, .png), not Flash

•  Do not use Javascript to load images onto page

Infographics: the good, the bad, the ugly Graphic above by Ian Lurie

Infographics

•  Is it really an infographic? Does it communicate data in a visual format?

•  Make it crystal clear

•  Don’t use too many fonts

•  Be sure the information flows

Don’t do this! •  Does not tell a story

•  Does not use visuals

•  No flow

•  No story

•  BORING

Screen capture

•  Grab still shots from your screen

•  Some software allows annotation too

•  Try Skitch (Mac), Snipping Tool (Windows 7)

•  Great for presentations (Skitch used in my slides)

Screencasts

•  “Show and tell”

•  Use a series of stills OR video capture

•  Capture your screen and audio in video form

•  Many choices: Camtasia (Mac and PC), Snagit (Windows), Jing (Windows, Mac)

Screencast with Camtasia

Save PPT slides as pictures

iMovie, MovieMaker or others

Slideshare.net

You do not need a fancy camera

•  Use screenshots/screencasts

•  Turn presentations into videos

•  Buy stock video; save old B roll

•  Shoot video on smartphones

•  Try tool like Animoto

Optimizing your video

•  Strong title and file name

•  Include keywords in description; be sure to add word “video” for the sake of search

•  On YouTube, allow syndication and captions

Where to host video?

•  YouTube

•  Vzaar

•  Vimeo

•  Blip.tv

•  Many others

Why audio?

•  Warmth of the human voice

•  Today’s tools are accessible, easy to use

•  Gear is much less expensive now

Podcasting defined

•  Audio that can be played and shared online

•  Serial in nature

•  True podcast requires RSS

•  No iPod needed

Sound quality matters!

Quick and Painless Multimedia

Basic gear Better gear

•  Computer

•  Built-in mic or headset

•  Computer

•  USB mic or mic with mixer or preamp

•  Headphones

Blue Yeti USB microphone

Recording your podcast

•  Reduce ambient noise

•  Avoid built-in microphones

•  Learn to use the mic and other gear

•  Consider a digital recorder

•  Always record in uncompressed format

•  Use 44100 Hz sample rate, 64kbp bit rate, mono

Listener has no visual cues

•  Communicate for the ear, not the eye

•  Use simple language; start with a hook

•  Give auditory guideposts (Let’s talk about three things… First…”)

•  Avoid lots of numbers

•  Do a recap at the end

To script or not?

•  Light scripting better than tight

•  If you script, mark up script and rehearse

•  Learn to sound natural when reading

•  My advice: Don’t script, unless you have a talent for voice acting (exception: reading your fiction or essay)

Remote interviews

•  Skype

•  Recording software (Pamela, Call Recorder or others)

•  Microphone and headphones

•  Good Internet connection

Get great interviews

•  Pick an expert who speaks well

•  Do pre-interview

•  Plan questions but don’t share exact ones

•  Always be conversational

•  Don’t insert agreement utterances

My favourite digital recorders Zoom H4n iPhone with iRig microphone

Why edit audio?

•  Remove stumbles

•  Excessive um and ah

•  Tighten up rambling parts

•  Add something you forgot in the first pass

Audacity (free software)

Garage Band (Mac)

Many editing choices

•  Audacity (Mac, PC, Linux)

•  Garage Band (Mac)

•  Adobe Audition (Mac, PC)

•  And others

Levelator: Podcaster’s secret weapon

A word about show notes

•  Improve your SEO

•  Helpful to listeners

•  An alternative to a transcript

Importance of ID3 tags

•  ID3 tags describe your podcast for iTunes and other players

•  Add them in Audacity or ID3 Editor

Where to host your audio?

•  On your own server

•  Libsyn

•  SoundCloud

•  And more

Shortcuts to using audio

Quick and Painless Multimedia

SoundCloud

•  Easy way to publish audio online

•  Mobile version too

SoundCloud how-to

•  Record on iPhone or computer

•  Upload to SoundCloud

•  Share your audio via social media

•  SoundCloud now offers full podcast capabilities with RSS feed, etc.

Easy to share with SoundCloud

Quick and Painless Multimedia

Easy to add photos to Twitter

Add curation to your bag of tricks

•  Find and share the best of relevant content produced by others

•  Curation should be part of your content marketing efforts

•  Be seen as an information source; possible thought leader

Paper.li for curating multimedia

Ideas for curated content •  Industry news

•  Expert tips and advice/how-to

•  Presentations

•  Case studies

•  Reviews of events or books

•  Photos

•  Infographics

•  Videos, podcasts

Quick list of curation tools •  Delicious

•  Clipboard

•  Pearltrees

•  Diigo

•  Storify

•  Scoop.it

•  Paper.li

•  Google+ Sparks

•  Bundlr

•  Magnify.net

•  Pinterest

•  Curata

•  Curation Station

•  Scribit

Please keep in touch

Donna Papacosta donna@trafcom.com 905.844.7645

trafcom.com @donnapapacosta