This week I share the Cliffs notes version of my WordCamp Orange County talk.
Upcoming Events
- WordCamp Boston – July 23-24
- WordCamp Belo Horizonte– July 23 (Brazi)
- WordCamp Montreal – July 23-24
- WordCamp Fayetteville – July 22-24
- WordCamp Brighton – July 23-24, 2016
Segment 1: In the News
Segment 2: This week I share the cliff notes version of my WordCamp Orange County talk.
My tools
- Adobe Audtion
- Libsyn
- Rev.com
- Book: The Checklist Manifesto
Segment 3: Tool of the Week
- Post Promoter Pro – built in support for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (and support for others on the way), you'll be able to reach your followers wherever they are.
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Adam:
This is the Kitchen Sink WP podcast, episode 125. [Opening Sequenze]
Why, hello there. This is Adam Silver, the host of the KitchenSinkWP Podcast. Thanks for being here. Let's get started. All right. Upcoming events. We have a lot this next weekend. Actually there are 5 WordCamps. 1, 2, 3, yeah, 5. We have WordCamp Boston July 23rd, 24th. WordCamp Belo Horizonte. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, Belo Horizonte. It's in Brazil July 23rd, a one day event. WordCamp Montreal July 23rd, 24th. WordCamp Fayetteville, 22nd to 24th, 3 days. WordCamp Brighton 23rd and 24th as well.
Let me check here for you real quick. Just so you know, let's see, are there tickets available for any of these? Let's see. Boston does have a few tickets. Yes, they do have tickets. Belo Horizonte, let's see. It's in Spanish. Tickets, tickets. We'll go to tickets real quick. Looks like they have tickets, yes. Montreal. I wish I could go to Montreal, I love Montreal. Great town. The tickets are still available there as well. Only about fifty tickets left there, so within a week it could very well be gone. Let's see, it's a regular ticket. Then Fayetteville deadline. Yes, so there are some tickets there as well. There's actually a whole bunch there. That's the most. Over a hundred. Brighton has tickets. Let's see here, checking for you. Yes, under 50 as well.
There are tickets available at all those camps. By all means, feel free. Go. It's affordable, it's great. You'll have a great time. Trust me when I say it's well worth it. We'll talk more about camps in a minute. Actually I want to follow up on something from last week. The Meat and Potatoes. Okay, that's it for upcoming events.
Oh actually last thing, I do apologize. I meant to tell people about Word Campus. WordCamp, like call it the higher education thing, was this past weekend. It totally slipped my mind. It was in Florida. It looked like it was a great event per all the tweets and things that's on social media. I hope to go next year, if I can help in any capacity. Maybe they'll move it around. I'm not sure if it's always going to be in Florida or not. I know a lot of people from southern California flew to Florida for the conference, and then they're coming back right now.
All right. Segment 1 in the news, moving along here. WordPress 4.6 beta 3 came out. We had beta 1, beta 2, and beta 3, 3 weeks in a row, 3 new updates. I am running it actually, on a local dev server, running Desktop Server of course. I don't know all the changes, and actually here in the blog notes there were 65 more changes. They've improved handleing of the UTF 8 address headers for email. TinyMCE has been updated to 4.4.0. Revisions had a fix for restoration issues. Check that out. Run it locally of course. Use the Bleeding Edge nightlies if you want. Don't put it on a live server.
I've noticed a few things though. I've noticed for me, it seems to be faster. I really did notice that. Just interactions with it seem to be a lot faster. I'm not sure if that's core, or the code base, but it does seem to be faster in things I'm trying with it. I was testing not just it, but testing with another plug-in, for the Tip and Tool of the Week this week. Anyway, I noticed that there was some speed increases there. Check that out. 4.6 beta 3 is now out.
What else? In the news also, David Jesch joined ServerPress as a partner. ServerPress, as you know, they're friends of the show. I do some part-time work for them in social media. There's that transparency. David is an amazing developer. Has a wicked sense of dry humor. A fantastic knowledge of obscure movie facts. I love the guy. He's awesome. Jennifer, his wife, is also brilliant. She's just really funny as well. I'm always surprised how funny she is, because you just don't expect it sometimes from some people.
Anyway, looking forward to getting to know them better, as part of the team, as part of the ownership of ServerPress, and can't wait to see what comes back out from the future of the projects in general, because he is bringing a lot to the table as a partner in that company. Welcome to the team, or welcome to ownership I guess, David and Jennifer. There you go.
All right, moving along to segment 2, Meat and Potatoes, but before that I want to mention a thanks to our sponsor for the past two weeks. I'd mentioned in a few articles an indication of constant hacks, exploits, and user data of passwords being used and leaked and shared. It's a problem that's not going away. Once again, I want to thank SNAP i.d. for sponsoring this episode. With SNAP i.d. I never have to remember my user name or password for my WordPress sites. All I have to do is click a button, text a code, and I'm logged in. It really is easy. I love it. I've been using it and showing it for different things and speaking. I did 6 hours of talks this past week, 3 talks, 6 hours. I've shown it to those talks, I've showed it. It's was like, oh that's pretty cool. Thanks again for sponsoring the podcast. Give it a shot. It's completely free. Check it out, it's over at SNAP i.d., and I'll put a link in the show notes. All right. Thanks for that.
Moving on to segment two, the Meat and Potatoes, if you're a regular listener of the podcast, you know that I speak at WordCamps, and just last weekend I attended and spoke at WordCamp Orange County. I interviewed Peter Malick, and I got a quick shot out to him again. He's huge apparently. I didn't know this before hand, but he's huge in the K-pop arena of music producing. He shared the podcast, the interview with him, and it just kind of blew up on that side of the world. Nothing I'm connected to, but I want to thank him again for being on the show. My traffic spiked. It went pretty good. Social media went well. Anyways, so thanks again to Peter Malick. Check out that interview about why it's awesome to attend a WordCamp as a first time WordCamper. He's already signed up to be a volunteer at WordCamp Los Angeles.
Actually, that's one thing I want to say real quick. You can now sign up to be a volunteer. That went live this week. Check that out as well if you want to be a volunteer if you live in southern California. We're still accepting applications for that.
This week I got a bunch of nice feedback about my talk at WordCamp Orange County. A lot of people in the attendance wanted my slides. I say that in air quotes. It wasn't a standard presentation. It was more of a conversation without slides. It wasn't recorded, which is kind of a bummer. Sad, I know, but it's okay. I'm going to do a short recap here of what I spoke about. For those who requested it. That's how I roll. You asked for it, I'm going to deliver it.
The basic topic and preface was WordPress podcasting and marketing. I spoke to a few key bullet points. Those bullet points were statistics, benefits, marketing, the monetization, tools in the work flow, and the steps to success.
We as a group, there was about 30 in that room, spoke in a conversation. I hosted those bullet points, and I spoke at them. Then took questions regarding each one of them as we moved along. Here's an abbreviated, shortened version. Let's call it The Cliff Notes, if you will, of my talk. I don't want to be 2 hours here, I want to keep it short like normal.
Just starting with the stats for example, I mentioned the stats about podcasting. 420 million active blogs versus 250 thousand podcasts. That stat came last year, 2015. That's just a lot of blogs versus not many that podcasts. Podcasting is awesome, and it's growing, and there's growth for it. No matter how many podcasts you think are out there, there aren't nearly as many as there are blogs. That being said, if you have a concept, if you have an idea, well podcasting's awesome. It s a great way to get your foot in the door. Make a connection. I'll get to that in a second.
More stats. 29 million, 200 thousand minutes are being produced every year. 2.5 million minutes a more. 80 thousand minutes a day. 55 being podcast right now, being recorded at any given moment. The most popular categories are Christian at 39 thousand, music 33 thousand, comedy, TV, film, literature, each at about 15 thousand. Which I thought was interesting as far as categories go. Average length of time, 22 minutes, and updated weekly. Not a daily show, not a monthly show, but updated weekly, 22 minutes is the average length of a show. Most podcast growth is being driven by mobility. Meaning obviously cell phones. iPhones, IOS, Android, because that's where people have time to listen to it. Those are the stats.
The benefits. Number 2 here. Stats was number 1, benefits number 2. Podcasting is one of the most intimate connections to connect with your audience. Hearing the voice, builds rapport. It's true. It really does. I know for a fact that when I was at a conference last year, someone recognized my voice. They said, “Hey, I know you.” Not that they knew me, they knew my voice. It was pretty interesting. It was pretty neat.
Creating content is easy for some, including myself, speaking is easier than writing 500 to a thousand word blog post. I like to talk, that's obvious. I do it every week here for you guys. The benefit is, it's easier sometimes to talk, record that, and share that, right? The other benefit here is, audio is available 24 hours a day. People can find my show, can find your show, and go back and binge listen. They can do the Netflix of listening to the podcasts. I mean, for 125 weeks, you might just find that … This might be your first time you've ever heard me speak, and you like what you hear, you can go back and listen to it whenever you want. You can download all of them, you can download just a few of them based on title, etc. That's another benefit. 3 main benefits there.
All right. Moving along here. Tools and work flow. I record directly into an Edirol, via my mixer. I have an Edirol, it's by Roland, it's a hardware device. My laptop goes into the mixer as well. Out of that, I get a wav file. Everything mixes down to a mixer. Yes, I could record into a laptop through a USB headset. I don't because laptops have hum, buzz, feedback, they could crash, the software may crash. I like this way. Not hard, but it's an investment of some hardware. The Edirol cost me, I think, 350 dollars. I also use a relatively good microphone. I use a ATR2100, it's USB and XLR. I use the XLR out, so that way it has a nice, deeper sound to it. I edit in Adobe Audition. I use SoundBoard for my bumpers, my in and out music. If I have a Q&A from Speakpipe, that goes into an MP3 file, and I put that into the Soundboard, and I can press a button, and it just pops up.
I upload my audio file after I do editing, into the service called Libsyn. L-I-B-S-Y-N, Libsyn is the service. I use Rev.com for transcription. That's pretty much the tools I use. The work flow itself has about 20 steps from the ideation of an idea for the weekly podcast, recording, post-production. I spend approximately 90 minutes I think. I don't think I spend that much more time before. I spend some time earlier to do the research on a topic. If I'm diving into a plug-in or a theme or how to do something, the recording is real time. Obviously, the editing I'm pretty darn fast at. I don't do a lot of editing it at all. I may take out a few gaps of time, especially on an interview when there's pauses. Even that, I don't do a whole lot of editing.
I do have a checklist. I love my checklists. I don't use it anymore, because 125 weeks in, I'm pretty well memorized on my process. I have it so if and when the time comes, that I want to out-source or hand off to somebody, I can. Here are the steps you have to follow precisely.
As I mentioned in the presentation last work in Orange County, I love the book, The Checklist Manifesto. Check it out on Amazon. I'll put a link in the show notes, but I am no affiliate to them. It's a great book about checklists and how they can really help your process in your day-to-day. Whatever you may do, checklists are awesome.
What else? Oh, here's another thing, one of the bullet points that I spoke to. Money. Monetization. This was a big one obviously. We spent a lot of time here. How do you make money doing this? After episode 100, I started accepting sponsors. I never did before that. I was asked a lot. People always wanted, “Hey can I sponsor your podcast? We'll pay you.”
I didn't really want to do that because I felt, it's a fine line and a gray area of taking sponsorship money for the podcast and WordPressing community. Obviously, after 100 episodes, I had an audience, and I feel like, okay I can represent my audience pretty well, and I do now. I have a form on the website that you have to fill out. You send it in and I review it. I've turned away a bunch of companies since I started that, 25 weeks ago. If it doesn't match the audience, I'm not going to take your money. It's as simple as that. If it doesn't match, I'm not going to just take the money.
I do also have affiliates that I'll use on the resources page. That's different. Affiliates are … You get a discount if I work something out with the company, but I only get paid if you use that link. That's the difference. The sponsorship's pay me to say it, whether you go there or not, so there's a trade-off.
I think that's all of the bullet points. Let's see. Make sure. Double-check here. Stats, benefits, marketing, tools. Oh, oh. Number 5. The last one. Steps to success. This was a longer conversation. It can be a really long conversation, but the key here is, consistency. If you can't come up with at least 10, 15, 20 topics to talk about in either blogging or podcasting, then you may not have the passion. You may not have the length.
Often many podcasts pod-fade after 7 weeks, because people just lose the energy behind it. They feel like, oh I have to go record something. If you have to go do something, you may not want to do it. You got to have the passion that's going to sustain you every day, every week that you're going to put some content out.
Consistency's number 1, then passion. The consistency also goes into, if you have a daily show … Not a daily show, a weekly podcast. Pick a day of the week and put it out every week. Every time at the same time. Mondays 6 am, my show comes out in the Pacific. No, I'm sorry. 3 am Pacific, 6 am Eastern. Every Monday. I don't miss. I've been late twice because I forgot to check my checklist. I forgot to do the checkbox of podcast as a category. I got tweets and email. “Hey, where's the show?” People want the show. The people want your content when they expect it. Be really consistent on that.
That to me, is the main step to success. I mean honestly, it's just about putting in the time. Week in, week out, month in, month out. It's that simple. Offer the most possible value you can offer. Answer the questions. Give, give, give. I like to quote Gary V on this, “Jab, jab, jab, right hook.” I want to give you as much information of value as I can, and I definitely want you to trust me. Maybe you call me up, you ask me for some help as a consult. That's fine, but that's not why I do it. It's part of what I'm doing as overall just helping the community. I love it. I do get work from it now and then, but I'm not relying on the podcast to give me the work. Offer a value, and offer a lot of value, give, give, give, and I think you'll find success over time.
All right. I hope that's helpful. It's the 15 minute version of that. Of my talk at WordCamp OC, without cute questions coming back from you guys right now. Obviously it's not live. There's a nutshell. There you go. That took about 2 hours with Q&A. Hope that's helpful.
All right, moving along. Segment 3. Tip and Tool of the Week. This week, I'm not sure where I heard about this plug-in or where I saw it, but I want to share with you, Post Promoter Pro. It's written by Chris Klosowsky. I'm going to mess his name up. Written by Chris. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's a really cool plug-in. It lets you automatically schedule your posts to social media. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It's a premium plug-in, paid. $49 for one site, one year of updates, one support.
Chris works with Pippin of Pippins Plug-ins, so I trust him, I trust the code. I know it's solid. I borrowed a copy from a good friend. I'm not going to use it without paying for it, but it's awesome. I'm in the process right now of evaluating a bunch of tools like thIS. Edgar, Hootsuite, Buffer, but if you want to keep things inside of WordPress, check this out. Post Promoter Pro. It's really cool. I have no connection to him at the moment. I just thought it was kind of neat. I tried it yesterday on a dev site, and it worked really well. I was pretty impressed. Anyway, check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes as well.
All right. Well, that is is this week. I hope that's helpful. I really do. I'm here to help you guys. Ask any questions you want. If you have a question, go ahead and send it in via email. Adam@kitchensinkwp.com, or use the Speakpipe functionality of the website. Thanks so much again for listening. We'll see you next week, and go out and do some awesome things this week with WordPress.
All right. Bye-bye.
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