SMUG Social Media University Global

50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

As part of her homework for Facebook 107, SMUG Student Peggy Hoffman used Facebook to send me this helpful overview list from Chris Brogan. It’s worth a look.

Social media isn’t always the right tool for the job. Not every company needs a blog. YouTube worked for BlendTec, but it might not work for your company. And yet, there’s something to this. Over the last three days, I’ve spoken to four HUGE brands in America that are considering social media for one project or another, and there are many more out there working on how these tools might integrate into their business needs. Here’s a list of 50 ideas (in no particular order) to help move the conversation along. Note: I mix PR and Marketing. They should get back together again.

50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing | chrisbrogan.com.

Chris has created a nice list of some potential ways to use social media; SMUG’s objective is to give you hands-on experience using the tools, so you can go to management with confidence both that a given tool is right for your organization AND that you know how to use it.

For example, the Podcasting curriculum, and in particular the 10 Steps to Your Own FREE Podcast post, walks you through the process to recording, publishing and promoting your own personal podcast.

So please follow Peg’s example by using Facebook to share some more of these good finds (or put them in the comments below.)

Have a great weekend. I’m hoping it doesn’t rain so we can begin painting the SMUG North Annex. Video reports about our construction process will be coming soon.

Jeff Jarvis on “The myth of the creative class”

I’ve been a little quiet for the last couple of days, as I’ve dived back into work after a five-day family trip. I’ve been learning some really interesting things that will revolutionize SMUGs teaching methods, and look forward to implementing some of this. I’ll have a post demonstrating this soon.

But meanwhile, here’s a good read from Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine.

Internet curmudgeons argue that Google et al are bringing society to ruin precisely because they rob the creative class of its financial support and exclusivity: its pedestal. But internet triumphalists, like me, argue that the internet opens up creativity past one-size-fits-all mass measurements and priestly definitions and lets us not only find what we like but find people who like what we do. The internet kills the mass, once and for all. With it comes the death of mass economics and mass media, but I don’t lament that, not for a moment.

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The myth of the creative class.

I sometimes disagree with Jeff because of his almost religious antipathy for religion Update: frequently and caustically expressed opposition to at least “certain policies of certain churches” (see his comment below, and my clarification), and with his new book attributing deity to Google his irreverence goes too far, but more often than not he’s on target when he talks about the new economics of media.

This post is particularly good. The celebrity-oriented “creative class” is an artifact of the mass media, when access was scarce and limited by gatekeepers.

Now millions of bloggers, podcasters and video producers have access to low-cost equipment through which their creativity can flourish.

The days of moving to Nashville or LA to pursue a record deal (“Record? Daddy, what’s a record?”) are gone. Anyone can have access to the world through social media tools.

Will many make a living at it? Nope. Fewer will than did in the “old days.” Just ask the newspaper guild. When everyone can publish, and there is no monopoly or oligopoly control on the means of publication, the guilds no longer can command premium prices.

But if, as Jeff says, 81 percent of us think we have a book inside of us, we now have a chance to let it out.

You don’t need to get a book deal, and an advance from a publisher, and get permission to speak out. You can just do it. And if people find what you have to say is worthwhile, they’ll link to it. Like I just have to Jeff.

How about you? What story, or song, or book, or short movie do you have inside you?

What’s keeping you from just starting?

A Peek at the Flip Mino

In our family visit to Louisville this weekend, I got to see my friend Rick Kelley, who had taken my recommendation to get a Flip. He chose the Mino instead of the Ultra, though, because he has a house full of boys. The Ultra’s AA batteries likely would have been regularly cannibalized for use in a GameBoy; with the Mino’s rechargeable battery, that’s not a concern.

So here’s some video I shot of Rick’s Mino, using my Ultra.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP-QjMrxB84]

Here, for comparison, is some video of me handling an Ultra. I shot it using my webcam and did a direct upload to YouTube, so it was optimized for speed instead of quality. But you can get the idea of the relative size and design aesthetics of the two models.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4NiuuUxUo]

Of course, you can see a more elegant view of the Flip at the company’s site, but I’m betting they used a higher-end camera to produce it. Just a hunch.

Podcasting 201: Flip Camera as Alternate Audio Source

In the 100-level podcasting courses, we used the built-in MacBook Pro microphone and Audacity as the source for audio files. (See Podcasting 103).

Here’s an example of one of those files, from Podcasting 109. You’ll note some hum and a bunch of background noise.

This course, Podcasting 201, is about a MacGyveresque hack that enables you to get much better sound quality.

One of the limitations of the Flip as a video camera is that it doesn’t have an audio input jack, so you’re stuck with its built-in microphone. That means that in a noisy environment, such as I experienced at the U.S. Transplant Games, background noise can be bothersome.

But if you’re not concerned about the video you’re getting, the Flip can actually be a pretty nifty audio recording device.

Here, for example is the audio from Podcasting 110, which I recorded using a Flip Ultra.

So how do you do that?

First, because you aren’t concerned about the picture, you can hold the Flip right next to your mouth to get maximum pick-up of your voice. Here is a frame grab from when I recorded Podcasting 110.

Using the Flip for close-range audio recording

Nice angle, huh?

At any rate, once you’ve captured the audio by holding the camera nice and close to your mouth, all you need to do is open the .AVI file from the Flip in QuickTime Pro (for Mac) or a similar Windows program, and export the audio as a .WAV file.

Then you can open the file in Audacity and edit in the same way as you would in Podcasting 103, saving your edited file as an mp3.

It’s that simple. It does require the purchase of a Flip, but you really should get one of those anyway. But because this method does involve some expenditure (a Flip costs about $150), this is a 200-level course instead of 100-level.

If you have another kind of video camera, such as a mini-DV, that also could be used to capture audio, but the steps involved would be much more complicated. With the Flip, it’s just about as easy as using the built-in computer microphone, but with much better quality.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still going to be mostly putting the Flip to its intended use. But until I get another source for audio in my personal podcasts, it will be my digital audio recorder too.

For more fun with podcasting, check out 10 Steps to Your Own Free Podcast.

Trouble Outside of Paradise, and the Power of Duct Tape

My son-in-law’s brother is getting married today in Lafayette, Indiana, and I’m producing a wedding video as our gift to the couple, so we turned it into a five-day partial family getaway.

It seems my youngest daughter, Ruth, is “in a relationship” (to use the Facebook lingo), with a young man from Louisville, Kentucky whom she has known through her Bible Bowl competitions. The Kelley family lives 676 miles from Old Main, as we learned on our long but uneventful Thursday drive. And they’re “only” 180 miles from Lafayette, so we left our three youngest children with the Kelleys while we drove up for the rehearsal and Groom’s Dinner yesterday and wedding today. We’ll head back to Louisville early tomorrow morning for church and to spend the day, before returning to Minnesota on Monday.

Note to potential Old Main burglars: Even through we’re away from Austin, you should be aware that our next-door neighbor, Mark May, is a deputy sheriff. He has a gun, and he knows how to use it.

Rick Kelley took Friday morning off so he and April could take Lisa and me out for brunch at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, a well-known Louisville hangout. We saw a picture of Hillary Clinton inside as one of the high-profile visitors, and there’s a huge wall map near the restrooms on which patrons can place a sticky dot representing their hometown. The whole U.S. is pretty well plastered with dots.

We had a wonderful time with Rick and April, but as we came out to our cars afterward, we saw the damage from a hit-and-run driver:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Ppz6eOugI]

Apparently someone had pulled out of the alley you see behind that nice police officer, clipped our rear bumper and shoved our Grand Caravan into the Kelleys’ Camry. Thankfully their car wasn’t damaged.

And thanks also to the power of duct tape from a nearby Home Depot, we were able to get back on the road with at least a temporary fix.