The end is near

Well, the course is almost over. The final assignment is due Dec 11. It’s pretty much ready, just need to record the voice-over and convert to video. Wonder how many takes for this one? 🙂

Once the course is over, I will be shutting down this blog and sticking to my other one: http://nancipattenden.wordpress.com/. Feel free to follow that if you wish. It will mainly be my book progress and assorted writing things. Ditto for the Twitter account.  I will only be using @npattenden in the future.

Had fun with this course and learned some really useful things.

I’ll be politically incorrect and say Merry Christmas to everyone.

 

Social Media at Work

I’ve been thinking about the various ways we could use social media at work, just in my department.  The company currently has a Twitter account and we also have a presence at LinkedIn.

My department has employees in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia. I think the best way to stay connected would be by using a blog. There are only a few times throughout the year that we all get together – a few weeks ago we had our quarterly business review for everyone.  There were still a few people missing though. I’m sure we could use podcasting for the odd thing, like safety and accepting awards, but I think blogging is the easiest thing for us. No re-takes and uploads like there is with video.  It could possibly be set up in such a way that everyone would have the ability to post to it. I suggested a newsletter to my GM, and he liked the idea.  Wonder how he would feel about a blog????

Hmmmmm, something for the final assignment I think.

Classmate’s Videos

I’ve only managed to find a few of the videos. I’ve been through some blogs and while I’ve found posts indicating how the experience went, some did not put links to their video, at least not that I’ve found yet. I’ll keep checking back though.

I enjoyed Adventures in Social Media.  It was short and to the point. She had great points listed in the video, and I’m sure there are lots of people who would line up to participate.

I discovered that ZubeidaK used Powerpoint, just like I ended up doing. It was quite informative. There were animations and effects that I didn’t see when I was using it. I’ll have to look into that further.

I checked out Meldemac’s Nepal video.  What a great way to record your vacation. Especially if it is someplace that a lot of people never get to. I would not like to live or work in one of those skyscraper buildings in Hong Kong. The architecture is amazing on the old buildings in Kathmandu.

The different videos that I found were all so different from one another, even when the same software was used. Everyone did an absolutely super job.

Video Podcast

Finally got a video done.  I looked at several sites, and found a couple that did super animations. Problem is I just don’t have time to properly learn how to use them. Ended up going back to my original idea. Did it in Powerpoint and saved it as a Windows media file, on my “part-time” job as a writer. Got it uploaded both at YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p5SnKNdLPc&feature=youtu.be) and  Podomatic (http://genealogy101.podomatic.com/entry/2013-11-24T11_52_54-08_00).

I couldn’t think of much in the way of using videos at work.  I process invoices. How boring! I don’t think anyone really wants to see a video on that. 🙂

The whole process of doing a video was a little intimidating, but it wasn’t really that bad. The only part I didn’t like was doing the audio. Maybe I’ll look for a site where you can change your voice into something else. I kept one of the animation programs and will see if I can figure out how to use it properly so I can create a trailer once my novella is published.

You Tube Video

Well. I’ve been trying to do a video for YouTube.  Not as easy as I thought it might be.  I was searching around hoping to find a someplace to easily do a video.  Found one, and was playing around with it, but it will take quit  a while to get the hang of it, so I gave up and went back to searching. Found another site, created an account and did my video. Easy as pie. It emailed it to me when I was done. I checked my email, and was disappointed to discover that it was only a link to the video. There doesn’t seem to be any way to download the video so I can upload to YouTube. Oh well, back to the drawing board.  Will see what I can do tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here’s the link to the one I can’t upload:

http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-922538

Podcasting at Work

Originally I thought there would be little to no use for podcasting at work. I’ve re-thought that. The client contract that I work on is extremely safety oriented – Shell. Safety and gasoline – good partnering. We have a dedicated person from the safety department working with us. I think podcasting could be a good way to get information out to us. We get emails regularly, but when they are long, who wants to read them? If information was sent via a podcast, we could listen to it while doing other things. Hearing someone talk can also be much more effective than just reading an email. With a podcast we could hear the change in his tone when talking about some of the serious accidents, or introducing something that he is excited about.  An email is flat, a podcast has life.

Another area it could be used is to inform us of awards. We just had our quarterly business review meeting, and apparently we won six awards. If the info was shared with us, it was through email and I deleted them thinking they were boring stuff again. No one at the meeting seemed to know though. Since our GM is in another province, instead of sending an email, he could send a podcast announcing the award. That way we would be able to hear the excitement and pride in his voice.  He’s still in town.  Maybe I will put a bug in his ear.

Useful-ness of Podcasts

After doing the podcasts I’ve decided they aren’t deadly.  I’m still alive after doing two of them. I discovered that there is a lot of garbage out there in the world of podcasting, but there are good ones two.  Same for YouTube. I can’t see any use for podcasts at work, but my two “hobbies” are genealogy and writing. Podcasts can be very useful for both if they are done right.

A podcast can be produced as a series so you can guide people along step by step, without overloading them with too much information at once. Sprinkle in a little personal experiences, and voila, a new online series is born. If only I had the time. 😦

With some research and lots of patience, good podcasts can be very easily recorded and uploaded. They can be  created to assist other writers and genealogists to get them started, or to get them over a rough patch. Podcasts could also be used for advertising your book or service, but I think YouTube would be a much better vehicle for that.

As long as they are kept fairly short and the information is accurate, they can be extremely helpful to both newbies, and the more experienced.

Podscasts I subscribe to

Since I do genealogy, I thought I’d look for some podcasts.  I know there are quite a few out there from a genealogy course I did recently, just never got around to subscribing.  I knew about Genealogy Gems, so I found it and subscribed. They have lots of episodes posted (161), and cover a wide variety of topics. Some are general, others are specific to a country, or a topic, like the Civil War.

Another popular one is The Genealogy Guys. They have 256 episodes posted. They boast they are the longest running, regularly posted genealogy podcast in the world. I couldn’t find a place to actually subscribe, so I just bookmarked the site. Their podcast is not just genealogy how-to information like Genealogy Gems. They include genealogy news. Things like Ancestry’s latest acquisition, news from the various genealogy software companies, DNA news, etc.

Both these blogs post different types of information, and all of it is extremely useful for anyone doing genealogy. Yes, you definitely need to know “how-to” do different things and where to find the information, but you also need to keep up on where records are available, or who bought out who, as that could affect online website subscriptions. It’s nice to find out when the software you use had an update, or a problem.  The two sites compliment each other, so it’s no wonder they are two of the most popular on the web.

You Tube Videos on Writing/E-publishing

I was looking for videos related to writing and e-publishing.  I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bccwTOiRouY, and thought, “Cool, nice and short.” Short yes, not so sure about nice. He doesn’t really tell you anything at all. He is pushing publishing at Kindle, and really all he tells  you is to go to the Kindle site.  The video really could have been more informative.  Maybe say why he thinks Kindle is better than other e-publishing sites. I would say it was a waste of time, but it was only 1:12 long, so the time was barely noticeable. 🙂

I then listened to a video from Wisdom House Publishers at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShsNtpc7ELQ. Reading the comments before I even hit the play button made me wonder what I would hear. One comment was “WTF is this shit?” so I wasn’t expecting much from this one either. She talks about using index cards to write the book.  Her suggestion was to have people write questions they want to know about on these cards, and use that for ideas. A lot of people use index cards, she just didn’t explain it all that well.  She only dealt with one way to use them. I guess it is a little helpful for anyone who has not written before and just needs some type of vehicle to get them going. A lot of established writers use index cards, just not in the way she suggested. The more common way to use them is to write character descriptions, plot subjects, geographical information, etc. and organize them in categories. It can be quite helpful so you can refer back to prevent you from changing your info part way through the book.  For example, if you have a card for each character, you can check them periodically so your character doesn’t change hair or eye colour suddenly. While the video was not a screaming success, she did have a basis of a good idea.

Finally found a video that was actually encouraging- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKAs-jiDrVI. She mentioned the key points that you need to think about; your target audience, ideas, length of the book and overall message. She also mentioned that you will have to pay to have the book printed. What she didn’t mention is that you don’t have to pay to be published. Lulu is the only one she mentioned, but there are lots of free sites, such as Kindle, Smashwords and Fast Pencil. Sounds like she had a good grasp of the concept, and the video had the potential to be much longer and more informative.

What I didn’t find was a really good video on writing and/or e-publishing your book. Most of the videos were either advertising or way too long to listen to. Some were personal opinions based on nothing specific. Some of the videos were very old, so I didn’t even bother with them. E-publishing has changed a lot over the past couple of years, so I only wanted content that was reasonably current.

Guess I’ll have to keep looking, and do my own reading and research. Maybe I’ll eventually come up with my own e-publishing video on day.

 

E-marketing book

I found a nice little e-book that deals with marketing yourself and your new book, It’s called Publicizing Yourself: A Beginners Guide to Author Marketing, by M.J. Moores.  It’s available online at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/360988, and is available in several different formats. The book was written in September 2013, so the websites and links are current.

M.J. Moores explains how to balance your writing and marketing with your life, for little or no money. Something that is very important to most new writers. While the book is only 35 pages long, it contains over 40 links, along with the information that she has discovered on her own journey to find an inexpensive way to market her own writing.

She explains the different between vanity publishes and small press or independent publishers. Not knowing the different can cost the newbie thousands of dollars.

Among the 40 links provided are sites where you can self-publish, sites that provide reviews, and sites where you can create author platforms.

While the book is short in length, it is full of valuable information.