eflexonics

Even in 2012, there are tons of business owners who pay five thousand dollars to someone in order to design a website. If you have to make a change, it costs the entrepreneurial wizard five hundred dollars to do it. That’s way to much money for value. Please, I’m begging you, stop paying huge amounts of money on your web site.

If you own a microphone that is ‘side loading’ (that means that you must talk into the side, and not the top) then this DIY Pop filter could work nicely for you. As a matter of fact, it could work for top loads as well, but usually they just go down to the music store and buy a piece of foam that fits over the end. Enjoy

After you have made the giant leap to create a podcast show that has multiple episodes, the next item on your agenda needs to be your structure. Look at it from your clients point of view.

1) They have never heard of you (at this point, your company is less than a blip on their radar)

2) They know nothing about you (Up until the moment you handed them your business card, they didn’t even know that you and your business was a local member of the community)

3) They are looking for some kind of verification from themselves that its ‘OK’ to do business with you. (Both you and your business needs to stand out and be unique, different and interesting in order to attract any kind of attention)

4) At this point, there’s absolutely no reason to trust you or your company (Is your company getting hits on ‘Trip Advisor?’ Even if you aren’t a restaurant, using Trip Advisor and other electronic ‘This is the place to be’ services, it’s surprising how good those ‘Kudos’s’ feel when someone is checking their mobile phones.

5) They want to know that if they leave their current goods or service provider, your company will make it worth it for them to walk away from someone that they have been doing business with for years. (This is one powerful reason to market a series of videos on the Internet. After all, if your happy with your own dentist, and another comes up on the street and tries to convince you to do business with them, would you?) This is perhaps the biggest hurdle for any business to present well.

Give your perspective clients a glimpse inside your business.

What do you do, and how do you do it.
First, introduce you (the owner) and your staff. Clients don’t walk through your door to visit with all of the machinery and be impressed with the colors of your draperies, floor tiles, and choices of lighting in your washroom. They arrive at your business because of the person, so introduce the people. Oh, and don’t make the mistake and think that these video’s have to be the ultimate in professional film making. You don’t have to hire a video technician, sound design group and marketing department. Your clients will be delighted to watch you and your staff step up to a camera, introduce themselves, stating their qualifications and then carry on with the rest of their day.

What do you do differently?
There is no one in the world quite like you, and no one will run your business quite the way you do. That’s what makes it so much fun to tell people about your business and how you came to be. When you step in front of a camera, and about to tell people about yourself, TELL THEM. Don’t be stuffy, stiff, nervous or uptight. Just ‘be’. In a really good interview, it would be prudent for someone controlling the camera to see you laughing, frowning, thinking, even slightly confused, that’s good because its real life.
If you’ve ever watched the Leo Laporte show on www.twit.tv you will notice that they keep the camera rolling as long as they can, even after the show is over, and people flock to his web site just to watch what happens behind the scenes. If you were to do a study and research some of the best videos on the Internet that markets their products or services, you will find that the feeling is business casual, relaxed, educational but at the same time humorous as well. It works, and works very well. Lets put together a quick plan for you and your podcast shows.

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Show Length: Your shows can be anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes for type A personalities, 6 to 15 minutes for type B personalities, and 16 to 30 minutes for type C personalities. This is not far from the truth. Some folks will want to go to the Internet and get bored after looking at the screen for 2 minutes, then they want to go back to work. That’s great, and you can sit down in one setting with your equipment and change talking about different subjects every few minutes, you can get many shows done within 30 to 60 minutes.

Then, there are those who love to have a little longer visits, either with real people or a video show, because they are watching real people. Don’t discount the power of a longer podcast. They work. That’s because allot of clients take great delight in watching the secret nuances that your talent presents. The body language, the facial expressions, the tone of voice, the funny stories, the dramatic moments, all of those trappings are of real interest to a section of viewers.

Show Content: My advice is to turn on the camera, and just start talking. You will be surprised at what you can draw out from everyone on the show when that happens. I list my video shoots by three simple rules, and those are:

1) Tell them what your going to tell them.

2) Tell them.

3) Tell them what you’ve told them.

Always have it in your mind that you are willing to help your clients.

I love to see someone step up in front of a camera and say:

Hi, my name is Jack Lassiter, and I’m here to help.

That statement has a great opening (your name) it has a fantastic teaser (I’m here to help) and that’s your first step. Your here to help, period. Don’t try to get fancy and try to ‘sell’ something to anyone. The purpose of your video and or web radio show is to offer practical answers to a bunch of specific questions, and build your show concept around that. Have you ever heard the old saying ‘You attract allot more with honey than you do with vinegar’. Become extremely valuable to someone (which just happens to be our company slogan) When it gets right down to it, the entire reason behind your show structure is to become such a great educational resource within your industry that people will enthusiastically refer you and your company to others. That’s it. Don’t try to sugar coat it or paint that horse a different color, your here to help. Kind of refreshing isn’t it?

So lets say that your a tire store in your city and you really want to create a series of podcasts. Here is what I would suggest.

1) Put a show together showing the benefits of checking your tire pressure regularly using one of your staff members. For those tire enthusiasts who have high performance or extreme four wheel drive cars or trucks, they may have different needs for different days. For example, another one of your staff could handle that section on the show, stating suggestions for tire pressure for rock crawling, or drag racing. Ask your viewers to contribute some videos of there vehicles climbing over some huge obstacles if they are rock crawling, or a quick video of the drag race at the local strip between the mustang and corvette, or the rice rockets.

By using this simple tactic (putting just a few vids up) then asking the viewers to forward their video’s to your web site, you’ve instantly involved a bunch of people in the community, added to your own video library and got other people to do the work for you. Not to mention that viewers to your show love to put up video’s of their ‘rides’, and then they will tell their friends ‘hey, check out my truck on (then they give everyone they know the address for your specific website to your tire store) and your network just grew exponentially. And by the way, that idea and concept started from creating 2 short videos about tire pressure. Is this instantly going to catapult your profits to unheard of proportions? no, but it gives you a definite edge over everyone else who sells tires in your area.

2) Complete a video showing your wheel balancing procedures, cleanliness of the shop, video your top notch employees stating their training from recognized training institutions. In this way, once your shop has been shot on video showing how clean it is, that video can live on forever. This goes for restaurants, or any other service provider that could gain credibility from putting their best foot forward. It helps your image, branding and future growth as well. As a matter of fact, anything you can get on video that shows you doing something good, stable, unique, practical, educational or even humorous, you definitely win.

3) Produce a weekly show. Remember, a 2 minute video can give a client enough information to at least spark interest and pique your curiosity. Let’s go back to the tire shop example. Imagine doing shows on: Tread Design, Flat Repair (how to), Tire Dressing (how to) Mag Cleaning (how to) If you do front end alignment, show a video of how poor alignment can cause pre-mature tire wear, How often should you rotate your tires, Should you use nitrogen in your tires, When and why should you use dedicated winter tires, Do a how to video on fixing a flat with a compressed solution so anyone who purchases that system from you can use their smartphone to watch a video on how to do it when they are in the middle of no where and have a flat tire,

Within a few short sentences I have thought of at least 9 suggestions that you can use in order to turn into some great shows.

4) Take all of your material in the video and re-purpose everything you can. For example, whenever I throw up a video on you tube, I’ll strip out the audio portion on use it on a fantastic web based radio program called ‘Spreaker’. Now, spreaker is a fairly new service that allows you to have your own private and unique radio show. The wonderful thing about this service is that you can customize your radio show, get permission from Itunes to put in on their database, and now all of a sudden your private radio show is now available to anyone who has an Iphone, Ipad or Itouch as well as Android and Blackberry devices. If your camera shy and just wrote a script to read on your radio show, that script is perfect for uploading that material to a variety of ‘how to’ services like ‘Ehow’, or, in the case of our tire business owner, send it to one of the big car magazines and ask if they could use your material. Now that’s branding at its best.

5) Experiment and have fun with your video shows. You will find that even if you use one of those high definition pocket cams, almost all of them will need quite a bit of light. Nowadays, a high percentage of people have some kind of camcorder shoved in the attic or in a gadget drawer somewhere. Go and take a look. Just about any kind of camcorder will do because the quality on you tube specifications only has to be as good as 640 by 480 resolution. On the other hand, if you have a high def cam, all the better because you have the opportunity of climbing up in resolution and its nice to know that you have that kind of wiggle room if you need to have your video played at full screen for whatever reason.

6) Pay attention to audio quality as much as you can. I wrote a free e-book and put it on my site. It’s called: Podcasting Made Simple, The Passion Behind The Promotion. In that same book I have said more than once, viewers may be willing to forgive you for sub-standard video, but they won’t forgive you for sub standard audio. Oddly enough, its true, so if your going to step up your game you may think of using an external microphone on your camcorder if it is available. The other thing to do is to shoot the video, and then add voice narration to it afterward with a software program. I am a windows user so after doing quite a bit of research purchased a program called ‘camtasia’. It allows you to manipulate video and audio very well and add some great special effects that you don’t ordinarily get with some other programs. Camtasia will cost about three hundred dollars but dollar for dollar I feel that this is the best value for the money for business owners who want to start their own podcast show.

Let’s say for example that you just don’t have an external microphone output on your camcorder. Camtasia has a feature that will not only allow you to increase the volume of the audio picked up on a camcorders internal microphone, but it also has the ability to clean up sound and even get rid of some ambient background noises, so really, Camtasia can actually do double duty for those family vids you took a few years back. You can use Camtasia to improve the quality of the old vids as well.

As an alternative choice, if you really want to start podcasting about your business and don’t have a camcorder, see if you know a family member or a friend if they have a camcorder that you can borrow to do some test video’s with.

My free e-book covers a few more suggestions. First, for the price of a cheap camcorder you can go out and purchase a high definition webcam like the Logitech Pro 9000 for just over one hundred dollars that is USB based and will plug into just about any computer that has a USB connection on it. Then, for another one hundred dollars, you can pick up a great USB based professional microphone called the ‘Snowball’ from Blue. www.bluemic.com That is pretty well all you need to put together some amazing video podcasts. Whats nice about this set up is that you can attach both items into the USB at home on your desktop PC, then take that same system to work and hook them up to a notebook or desktop machine at your office. Works like a charm, and now you don’t have to worry about transferring anything from a camcorder to the computer because its all hooked up to begin with.

Don’t forget the power of Skype. For example, we’ll go back to the tire store owner. Suppose you have a tire that everyone loves to buy because of a certain tread design or other characteristic. You could phone their head office, and explain that your creating your own video show and you would very much like to interview a team member of their marketing department and use Skype to conduct the interview. I have heard of a blogger who was writing a book and phoned up several major as well as popular authors, and she actually was granted several high profile interviews from those very same authors. If you don’t ask, you’ll never get, that’s my motto.

Visit our tech blog at: Abbotsford Small Business . com

Abbotsford has to be one of the most beautiful places to live, raise a family and build a business. It’s one of the fastest growing cities in Canada, and has many attractions that are very appealing to business owners. I have decided to put together a video and informational blog about how small and medium sized businesses can use technology to grow their business.

I love technology. As a matter of fact, I went to college to study electronics, telephony and computer repair, then worked in the high tech industry for over 10 years, and at one point I taught various aspects of troubleshooting, using and deploying technology. Let me help you explore some areas of technology that can make your daily activities run much smoother, put your business at a distinct advantage, and even show you how to podcast and blog your business for increased sales growth.

Click here to go to our webpage: abbotsfordsmallbusiness.com and take a tour around our blog. If your using technology in a way that helps you grow your business, we would love to hear about it. You can even have a spot on our website talking about your business, and why you love to do the things that make up your business and passion.

Thank You for visiting. Rick Haaland, Your Biz-Tech-Blogger.

Every once in a while I will be perusing the Internet for research, and will come across an article, blog, podcast or video that I know deep down in my heart will change the way people see and blame themselves. That’s why I just had to share this video with you. Grab a cup of coffee and get ready to change your life.

To all of the business owners out there that want to know some of the best tips and tricks of running your business with a website, using social media and creating a fantastic consumable product, take a look at the video below.

Yes, it sounds incredibly strange doesn’t it. Well, allow me to explain. If your going to start blogging and podcasting about your own business, you might as well include businesses that compliment and can support your business. (Here comes the ‘crazy like a fox’ part) Here’s the suggestion. Suppose you sell paint. The kind of paint people put on the walls of their homes and businesses. You have a supplier on the left that supplies your product. Let’s say its a local factory that makes the paint, and then sells it to you. And, there are contractors and consumers on the right hand side that come to you for the paint, and you and your company is in the middle.

So, what would happen if you invited the good folks who supply your paint to be interviewed, and you listed their companies unique products and what makes them so good. Then, invite your best contractor that you supply paint to be interviewed by you and on that show they can tell the world how good they are. Whats in it for you? Everything! Remember that your the business in the middle of all of these podcasts and blogs, and you have gone out of your way to advertise the two complimentary businesses that can help you.

Also, when the two supporting businesses start showing their clients the interviews that you created, well, you are also tapping into their data base of clients, and can turn those consumers into clients for you. Your in the middle of the process, and this is a very exciting place to be. The other complimentary businesses simply don’t have time to podcast or blog about their business, but you do. You not only have the time, but the expertise to fulfill what Zig Ziglar says, and it goes something like this. ‘You can always get what you want, as long as you help other people get what they want’.

I mean, lets look at this concept for a moment. Your going out of your way to help another business owner out, and to offer free audio and or video advertising for them. You’d better watch out because, if this kind of behavior continues, your going to get a reputation as a business owner with allot of integrity and credibility. Plus, its kinda fun having all those extra eyeballs on your blog or website. You know, when you think about it, this really makes tons of sense. It allows you to get much more experience at podcasting and blogging, it expands your database of clients almost immediately, and the one of the most important reasons? It allows you to network like never before. When is the last time that you can remember someone who not only intended to spread goodwill, but actually did it through their podcasting.

As a matter of fact, this could become a new way of doing business for you. It would be a great experiment to find out how much it could affect your bottom line. Lets face it, people get so busy running their business, they rarely have time to get creative and do the things that I am suggesting in this blog post. Everyone networks, and everyone loves to be ‘in the loop’, and this is just one of the ways other business owners can be directly connected. On the blog that your video interviews are on, I would certainly put a big ‘sign up for our newsletter’ button right next to the videos.

I have finally found a system that makes researching and organizing the eflexonics tech show much easier. Look forward to a steady stream of great technical stories and opinions. Thanks for joining us on an incredible adventure. Rick and Pat.

(1) Review of last weeks blogs: How do you buy your technology. eflexonics article

(2) Food trucks are twittering like crazy. Maybe you should too. eflexonics article

(3) Our favorite android apps. eflexonics article

(4) Quit drinking the apple kool-aid. eflexonics article

(5) Listen to our very first podcast. eflexonics podcast

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(6) Airlines replacing flight manuals with Ipads

(7) Liquid Keyboard for Ipad

(8) Coke is allowing the common client to do what?

(9) Dell’s using Social Media the right way

(10) One of my favorite rants and raves. Notebook coolers.

(11) Killer Android Apps (5 of them)

(12) Poop Fueled Batteries. Ummm, yeachh.

(13) Japanese car makers are pretty clever

(14) Not tech based, but your going to want to read this. 

(15) Big Retailers are really embracing the Ipad.

(16) A projector camera. I want one.

(17) Samsung changes the TV game ‘big time’.

(18) Cruise Lines go high tech. This is crazy stuff.