MediaJoltz

The Wasatch Business Conference is being held November 2nd at the Utah Valley State College.

Wasatch Business Conference Wesbite Link 

The conference is a great day full of education and networking with some of the most awesome business minded people in all of Utah County.

There will be presentations on topics covering marketing, finance, technology and management targeting the small business.

I am on the panel discussion talking about blogging, podcasting and networking.  It should be tons of fun.  Last year I made some new friends and learned some great tips-even some great tips on blogging!

So go check out the website, register and come join me on November 2nd!

Today is the middle of the week and so it is time for a promotion post.  There are two reasons why I do this:

1. Because the assignments I have given you so far-find and listen to podcasts to start formulating your own podcast, takes longer than a day to do.  So I want you to continue doing the searching, with a satisfying break in the middle.

2. I wouldn’t be where I am today-however unfamous I might be even still, I wouldn’t be as far as I am today with out these people-so where else to give them love than where I am excelling?!!

So today I give some love to my husband, Cammon Randle.  Cammon was the one who got me into technology.  He is a video guy.  Anything and everything that has to do with video-he knows.  He has his own company, CopperRain Productions and does corporate high definition video.

He was voted Businessweek’s Top 25 Entreprenuer under the age of 25 in October of 2006 and won three national videography awards including the Telly Award.

What has been fun though, is that while normally he is the one explaining how things work to me, lately he has been coming to me with help on social networking.  Asking questions like how to make the best use of Facebook?  He is now even on twitter-and that is how I know he is coming home from work!

He is a great guy-a great husband and will one day make a great dad.  And you can bet every moment is captured and stored on dvd!

Disclaimer: I forgot to mention that iTunes is not the only place to find your favorite podcasts. There are lots of places on the web to find podcasts-just do a google search for “podcast directory” you will find that there are lots of places to look for podcasts. I just use iTunes because it is convenient for me to find the podcast and hit the subscribe button.

So now, what if you found a podcast but it isn’t in the itunes directory? All you need to do if find the RSS feed button.
The orange button is the universal symbol for an RSS feed-or the url you need to add to your podcatcher.
It could also be written out in text. Below is a picture of some of the things you could see to click on.

Now the add to iTunes will open up your iTunes. But it is possible, because it could be a podcast and blog mixed that you will be directed to a window that looks like this:

You can see the option to add to other web-based podcatchers, iTunes, as well as a url for the feed.

Take that URL and head on over to your podcatcher, mine being iTunes and add it:

And you can see that it is being added to my iTunes Podcast selection:

Happy listening!

What are your favorite podcasts??? comment in the field below so that we can all check out some awesome shows!

Sometimes we aren’t sure what to write or podcast about.  That isn’t a problem for Chris Brogan who gives us a list of things he hopes you talk about in your next post or episode.

Here is a short version of the list:

1 How I Use Facebook
2 Ways I Embrace My Audience
3 Should My Town Use Social Media?
4 A Community I Love
5 Technology That Empowers Me
6 How Flickr Did it Right
7 How Best to Comment on a Corporate Blog
8 Ways to Save a Bad Time at a Conference
9 How I Find Blogging Ideas
10 Somebody Has to Say It
11 My Children Will Do it Differently
12 How Schools Could Use Social Media
13 The Best Parts of Marketing
14 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation
15 How I Find Time to Make Media
16 Empower Your Best Customers
17 After the Event- Carrying the Conversation Forward
18 Just Jump Into Podcasting- Heres How
19 My Community and How You Can Engage It
20 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What
21 Making a Miniseries
22 If I Were an Advertiser Today
23 My Mother is On Facebook
24 Does a Big Brand Need You
25 Books I Want to Write

check out Brogan’s site for the rest of the topics!

For the past month I’ve been traveling and giving some seminars on podcasting. To help my audience and you guys, Cammon from CopperRain put together a Step by Step guide to podcasting to help make sure the podcasting experience was as much fun and successful as possible.

Just like we went and explored other blogs, we need to also explore other podcasts to decide what things we like including:

-the length

-the format

-the intro music

And so here is part one of the Step by Step on how to find and listen to podcasts.

When you subscribe to a podcast you are actually subscribing to what is called the RSS feed. RSS stands for “really simple syndication.” What RSS does is attatch a piece of code to your podcast to let the computers belonging to those people who are subscribed to your podcast know that there is a new episode.
Having all the RSS do all the download work for you is great when you have nine or ten or more podcasts that you like to listen to on a regular basis.

The last thing you need in order to listen to a podcast is something that I have
just barely touched on, it’s called a podcatcher. In other words, some kind of program that will read the RSS feed and then allow you to watch or listen to a show after it is downloaded. A favorite seems to be iTunes and it is available on both Mac and PC. One nice feature about iTunes is that it has a built in Podcast directory.
You can go to www.apple.com and downloading iTunes if you don’t already have
it and taking a look at all the podcasts that are ready to be consumed.
Download itunes.

Once you have downloaded iTunes go ahead and open it up. It will ask you a
few questions like “do you want to make this program your media player?” Get past all those options we just want to get to the podcasts.

When the program opens up click on the “iTunes Store” it’s to the left of the
screen.

Next, find the Podcast section just to the right.

You are now ready to start browsing the thousands of podcasts from all over.

You can also browse to find podcasts that interest you:

Or you can search for specific podcasts

So now you can start listening to some of your favorite podcasts and see what you like about them. Write that down. Keep track of how often they produce an episode. Pay attention to the topic and if they stick to it or wonder on the show. How about the quality, is it good, bad, does it bother you if it isn’t radio quality? Start formulating what you like and don’t like and try to implement that into what you want for your own podcast.

Okay well so there are a lot of gadgets like, better and worse than, the Treo. That is not the point. The point of this post is to clue you in on how to be productive wherever you are-and you can turn that productivity on or off.

I have a Treo. I’ve only had it since May. The phone I had before that was a regular Samsong camera phone which did nothing for me but take and send phone calls. And for those of you new to the blog, I really am not a phone person. For some reason I like email way better. And now, I can get email on my phone. If someone calls, I also can just hit “respond through text” button that sends them a text message telling them why I didn’t pick up.

This is a great device-and yes there are lots others out there like it, ie the Blackberry and the iphone, being the biggest two I have heard of. I use this piece of equipment that fits in my pocket as a calendar, a camera, a video camera, my email station, my web browsing device and countless other things. There have been several times where I’m out and about and wanted to get a picture of something and thank goodness I had the camera built into my phone.

Take this picture for example. A homeless man sitting out in front of a Uncle Sam decoration that says “Proud to be an American.” I just couldn’t pass this up:

I even got a picture of a goat in the backseat of a car once, but my phone died and I never got to transfer that picture to a computer before it did.

Anyway, don’t be afraid of a device that can do more than make that phone call. Your life story is being played out everyday-take some pictures and video to remember it!

(What are some of the best situations you were in when you wished you had a camera?)

I don’t have much time today to expand, but I do want all of you to take a look at Christopher Penn’s video on social networking.

Think about when you are podcasting, the people you would otherwise never reach or get to know.

Christopher Penn on social networks