Thanks to Gord Young for introducing me to this fantastic service that combines article marketing with video marketing and enables you to turn your articles into videos quickly and simply.

Watch these 2 videos on Article Video Robot as I walk you through creating a video out of one of my own articles.

This is so powerful for reaching new people, building relationships, increasing accessibility to your content, and leveraging the things you already do.

The service offers stock photos and music (as well as video if you are a business member) to add to your videos. Plus you can choose a computerized voiceover or you can record it yourself (either pre-record or record it live).

I’m not a big fan of computerized voiceovers (big surprise!) but I know many of you have already discovered Odiogo, which will automatically turn your articles into audio – again, great for added accessibility on your blog. I would prefer to hear you read your articles because what you have written in your own “voice” is bound to sound better in your own voice, but I know many are not as comfortable with recording their voice as I am (go on….bust through that comfort zone!).

This is the final version of the video I made:

Obviously, you will want to play around with the tools to perfect your videos and Article Video Robot offers a free 14 day trial in order to do this. Unfortunately, they only allow you to do certain things with the free videos you have created so you cannot upload them to Youtube or download them – you are reliant on the embed code, which I have used here (and find a bit stuttery and unreliable).

Also, the live recording doesn’t conform to my audio perfectionism streak (some might call me anal) but I can overcome that by pre-recording and uploading the mp3 (see the Audacity tutorials if you are unsure how to do this).

But, overall this service is exceptional and means you can harness the power of article marketing AND video marketing: more online real estate, more quality backlinks and greater accessibility.

Go and try out Article Video Robot for yourself, and if you decide to buy, add tryme30 on the payment page for a 30% discount (join the Summer of Sound mailing list near the top right of this blog before 10th September 2009 to receive a full 50% discount)

Also, since I changed the blog (after losing everything and having to re-install from a backup) I have noticed most of the audio and pictures I had uploaded have disappeared from blog posts and pages, so I will start replacing those at the weekend.

I had a lovely surprise when I returned from France to discover I had made number 21 on a list of the 50 Most Powerful and Influential Women in Social Marketing on the Immediate Influence Blog. I feel quite honored to appear on a list like this – I’m pretty sure it’s the first time, and want to thank anyone who nominated me through Twitter (I sound like I’m making an Oscar acceptance speech – LOL – I’d like to thank God, my parents, the wonderful developers at Twitter…).  I’m not sure how influential or powerful I actually am, but it’s great to see that somebody thinks my ramblings are worth listening to.

In France I was – yet again – trying to explain to my friends the point of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. They couldn’t understand the value of creating communities and networking online, whether for business or pleasure. We came to the realization that our online personas often reflect our offline ones. I am essentially a sociable, chatty person who is always ready to extend my circle of friends and acquaintances, while they only like to socialise within their small group of friends. I did try to explain that you could choose who you did or didn’t follow/listen to very easily, but I have not converted them.

I love to communicate with people and social media offers me that opportunity. It certainly beats sitting on a cold bench in the city centre chatting to anyone who may walk by and show an interest!

Jason just keeps piling on the value with this package, which essentially is a guide to Internet video marketing. The main focus is on how to get more traffic to your videos by using certain optimization tips and hijacking other people’s video traffic, but there is so much more in the members’ area: how to get started with creating videos, videos/interviews with marketers such as Frank Kern, Harlan Kilstein and Jeff Walker, free extra training and resources (including Jason James’ Audio Video Riches), and access to a mastermind/forum area.

There’s loads to take in – too much for one video – but I’ve tried to include the highlights:

You can get access to Jason’s free video from his Mass Control presentation by clicking here: http://www.hijackvideos.com.

Within the video (and on YouTube) I’ve used some of Jason’s tips – if you spot them, feel free to use them Obviously, I didn’t manage to stick to his tips on video length (which is to keep them short). I’ve never been good at keeping things brief!

Firstly, I have created a new blog and I feel ready to unleash it on the unsuspecting world (well, you guys anyway). I have been thinking for a long time that I should have a blog separate to Audible Marketing for my more Internet Marketing oriented blog posts, as well as to develop more personal posts and topics that do not relate to the world of audio marketing.

The result is IM Geek Girl.

If you want to learn more about why I set up the IM Geek Girl blog and my plans for it, please head over there and read the first few posts, starting with IM Geek Girl is Go! I should warn you that this is definitely more personal and tells you more about my life and some of the obstacles I have faced this year (and explains why my voice hasn’t been blasting out at your quite so much as usual).

My other blogging first involves a series of posts I have written for Alice Seba’s Internet Marketing Sweetie blog. She is currently taking it easier after the birth of her 3rd child (although I’m not sure taking it easy is an appropriate term) and asked for people to apply to be guest bloggers. I was one of those accepted and have written a series of 8 blog posts about getting started with creating online audio. The first of those posts was published this weekend – Online Audio 101.

Blogging for someone else’s blog was a whole new experience for me and one that was much harder than I ever expected. Each blog post took at least 3 times as long as my own blog posts do to write and involved much more editing and re-reading. But I think it was an excellent exercise and helped me to become more focused in planning my blog posts.

So please take a look at both the IM Geek Girl and Internet Marketing Sweetie blogs and let me have your comments and feedback.

Thank you,

Lisa

Recently I have been a Beta tester for 2 tools that have got me really excited. The first is Market Samurai, which I was able to Beta test as part of the Immediate Edge and is now being used within the Thirty Day Challenge. If you aren’t a part of either of those communities then you will get the chance to buy it soon and I will explain more about it then (incidentally, when it’s released it looks like they are majorly undercharging for it – this tool is outstanding for keyword and market research).

The second tool I have been Beta testing is called Traffic Android. This has been created by a talented young guy called Nathan Ridley to make the process of social bookmarking a whole lot easier.

One of the problems with social bookmarking is the time it takes to manually bookmark a web page to a multitude of sites AND make it appear natural and organic. The temptation is to go crazy with the bookmarking and post to every site in a short space of time because otherwise you forget to return to it, or you lose track of where you have and haven’t posted.

Social bookmarking is a useful method for getting search engines to notice your blog posts and web sites (and in some cases attract referral traffic) but the sites need to be used in a natural way in order to avoid being labeled as spam.

Traffic Android has a number of things going for it that I haven’t seen elsewhere:

• Creates a timeline for posting to each social bookmarking site based on your preferred time delay (you can spread it over a whole week if you want)

• Shows you which sites you will need to manually post to (due to their anti-spamming measures) and enable you to do this by bringing the security captcha to you

• Saves all your information in project and campaign files so you know what and where you have posted (this alone is a gem for me, as it avoids having to keep pages of notes or create spreadsheets)

• Posts to each site while you are happily getting on with other tasks

• Enables different account profiles so you can spread your bookmarking among a number of accounts

• Offers a choice of which sites you bookmark to, with information on each one, such as which have follow and no-follow links.

All you need to do is fill in a little basic information on your web page, as well as a short description.

At the moment you do need to create your own profiles with each of the bookmarking sites, but Nathan is working on automating that for you too. In fact, the best is yet to come. More features and bookmarking sites are being added all the time and buyers receive all future updates.

Now for some technical info.

Traffic Android works on a .net framework so it does require running a Windows program (which is possible on some Macs). The interface is very clear and easy to use (being a technical dummy myself I asked Nathan to make sure the instructions was extremely clear).

I’ll warn you now that this is priced at $197, but there is a free trial in order for you to assess its usefulness. I think you have to weigh the price against what you would normally spend on your bookmarking. Not just the financial cost (if you outsource this, it will cost you upwards of $10 a time for one user account to approx. 30 sites so you’ll be breaking even pretty quickly) but also the cost of your time.

Traffic Android definitely has my seal of approval and I have used it to bookmark a number of different web pages now with great success.

The answer, which might have been surprising for some viewers, was “no!”

The main reason for this is that in the world of the Internet things change very quickly and by the time any book can be written and published through a traditional [read: long] process, the information is usually out of date. Even self-publishing can take far too long for the latest Internet Marketing tips and tricks. There are some Internet Marketers who have published traditional books (Joel Comm, Rosalind Gardner, Perry Marshall) and, while the books do offer good general marketing advice alongside their techniques (whether Adsense, Adwords etc.), they’re designed to establish the marketer as an expert in their field and act as another avenue for attracting prospects (IMHO).

The books that were recommended are not Internet related – they are simply good marketing, psychology and writing books:

Made to Stick – Chip and Dan Heath

On Writing – Stephen King

A Whole New Mind – Daniel H Pink

Something that struck me, that wasn’t mentioned, was that even online material – ebooks, training courses etc. – were not recommended and I think there are 2 good reasons for that.

1. People who want to learn about Internet Marketing believe it is something different from real-world business. They think there is some special “voodoo” involved and as soon as they learn this they will be successful online. The truth is that Internet Marketing is simply marketing but on the Internet (who would have guessed?). Good marketing skills are as relevant online as they are offline, and the same rules of building a profitable business apply. Yes, there are some tools and techniques you need to learn in order to work online but strong marketing foundations will serve you better than anything else.

2. What you do learn about Internet Marketing can be subjective. The Thirty Day Challenge will teach a particular approach to researching and creating an online business. The method they teach will be grounded in good research and tried-and-tested techniques, but it will be specific to Ed Dale and Dan Raine (and their team). Other marketers will teach in a different way and possibly completely different techniques. Is one right and the other wrong? NO. It’s simply that there are many training approaches, methods, techniques, tips and tricks and each marketer is going to be slightly different. There is no point starting to learn from one marketer for 10 days and then switching to the Thirty Day Challenge – you could end up with conflicting ideas and a lot of confusion. Personally, I believe what works best is to learn everything you can of one approach and put it into practice. If it works for you then you can seek out the teaching that will improve you business further (for example, you may want to learn more about Adwords or SEO techniques or blogging). If it doesn’t work for you, you try to discover where things went wrong and change them or you move on (but only once you are certain you have followed the process through to the letter).

Some other books that I would recommend or that Ed and Dan have mentioned are:

Influence: Science and Practice – Robert B Cialdini

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive – Robert B Cialdini

The Back of the Napkin – Dan Roam

The Art of Learning – Josh Waitzkin

Brain Rules – John Medina

Group Genius – Keith Sawyer

And finally, and probably more important than most of the books mentioned, is The Gary Halbert Letter which is the ultimate (free) online resource for learning copywriting.

Wow! With less than 7 days to go, that’s a lot of reading. You might want to save some of them for after August and get plenty of sleep and family time before the challenge instead.

INCREDIBLE GOOGLE NEWS – MUST WATCHGoogle just changed the game – watch on

This is going to save you a lot of guesswork and research, and is exactly the reason I recommend the Thirty Day Challenge (free) and the Immediate Edge. Ed and his team jump on this stuff straight away and test everything, using proven keywords (a luxury many of us, especially those just starting out on the Internet, don’t have).

This was simple. I used the 1 Pixel Out Audio Player WordPress plugin. Once you have plugged it into your wordpress site and activated it, you can change the colours of different aspects of the player. So I just checked my theme for the main colour codes and played with the audio player options until I liked what I saw.

As for the comments box, this just comes as part and parcel of the WordPress theme I use from Copyblogger. There’s lots of changes I could make to the blog, especially if I downloaded the Organic theme, but I’m happy with this for now.

Finally, where do I find time to do it? That one’s not so easy to answer. I just make time when I can. I should blog more often than I do – I’d like to blog here at least once a day – but I do as much as I can and try not to sweat it too much if I miss a day or two (or more)!

Please feel free to add your own questions or make comments below.

This year I thought we should do it differently. This is partly because the pressure is on to be more creative than last year – eek! – but also because I thought it would be great to harness some of your creativity.

So, the plan is that we open it up as a competition and ask you to come up with your most creative scripts for this year’s Thirty Day Challenge podcast introduction.

If you feel up to the challenge, get your creativity flowing and write a script for me. The best one will be turned into an audio “masterpiece” and will have the honour of being heard by Thirty Day Challengers throughout the world (I’ll even send you a copy for posterity).

Now, because this is also to help you experience the reality of creating online audio, there are going to be some restrictions. Much as I would love you to be able to use any music, any voice actor and any creative concept you would like, this is not going to be possible due to costs and copyright laws.

So, this is the framework you need to work within:

1. Script to record should be between 30 and 90 seconds – any longer and it gets a bit tiresome (in fact, a minute of tightly written copy is preferable to 90secs with unnecessary padding)
2. You can use either a male or female voiceover or both but you are restricted to Jon Iles and/or Sally Williams (click on their names to listen to their showreels). This is simply because I work with them and know they will be happy to participate in the project. Jon is able to do some character voices and that fantastic deep movie trailer voice. If you don’t know whether something is possible with those voiceovers, include it anyway and I’ll see what I can do.
3. You cannot specify a particular music track as this is likely to cost a fortune in royalties, but you can say that music should be in the style of, for example, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Titanic etc. Or, you can simply specify that you would like it to have romantic music or sci-fi music. And, yes, you can have more than one piece of music on the podcast.
4. You can use sound effects (but please don’t make them too tricky to find or create – the sound of a specific Ferrari engine while travelling at 100 mph may be beyond my capabilities )
5. You can’t completely rip-off someone else’s work. For example, much as Ed would like a Kung-Fu Panda theme this year, it will probably breach copyright and have Dreamworks suing our a*ses quicker than you can say “Prepare for Awesomeness” Writing a script that completely mimics a film or tv script is a no-no (as well as being uncreative) but the occasional quote or referencing a film or tv show should be OK.

Once you have your ideas, please write them down in a script. Start with a brief paragraph explaining your overall concept, and then write your script, making it clear what is said by the voiceover, where the music comes in and where any sound effects are required.

The more detail the better, but don’t go overboard and write a screenplay! You’ve got 10 days to get your entry in (I’ll stop taking entries at midnight on Saturday 12th July), which should allow time to create the intro in time for the main challenge starting on August 1st. And if I really get my stuff together I will film some of the creation process too so you can see what’s involved.

Paste your script into an email and send it to lisa.hartwell (at) gmail.com. Include your real name, your forum name and a contact email address.

Oh, and if you aren’t already a Thirty Day Challenge participant, please sign up so you can get to grips with the concept of the Challenge before your write your script.

I think that’s everything but feel free to ask questions here on the blog or over at the relevant thread on the Thirty Day Challenge forum.

If this is your first year of the challenge and think I am speaking another language when I mention podcast intros, then take a listen to these previous ones for some ideas.

This was the intro in 2006 (remember it was originally created for the Smackdown battle between Ed Dale and Frank Kern in their UltraUnderachievers program):

Download audio file (Thirty_Day_Challenge_Podcast_Intro_2006.mp3)

and this was last year’s:

Download audio file (30DC-podcast-intro.mp3)

Time to get creative!

Firstly, just over a week ago John Cow announced the results of his Cowpetition, and guess what? I won first prize! Woo Hoo! A copy of David Cavanagh’s 52 Week “Getting Started On The Internet” Program – including 52 weeks of live conference calls, 1 on 1 coaching and membership site. Also includes 4 day live workshop in Pattaya Beach Thailand ($9,997 Value). I got started in the Internet quite a while ago now, but I’m really looking forward to David’s coaching as there is always something new to learn and different perspectives to see.

About 7 hours after this was announced I logged into Twitter and saw Jason Moffatt (http://twitter.com/jasonmoffatt) make a Tweet offering a free subscription to Easy Video Sales to the first person who Twittered back. I sent a Tweet and, lo and behold, I won! Thanks Jason. Again looking forward to this as Jason is doing great stuff with video online.

Well, deciding I was on a roll, I bought a Euro Millions ticket that day (a very rare occurrence for me as I don’t usually go in for lotteries) and guess what? Yes, I won again! OK, it wasn’t the £34 million jackpot, but £22.50 isn’t to be sniffed at (that’s about half a tank of petrol at the moment).

I started a new Twitter survey (if you aren’t following me on Twitter yet, you can find me at http://twitter.com/Lisa Hartwell) to find out what people would most like to know about creating and using audio online. PollDaddy.com offer a free service to create polls on Twitter and you can also add that poll to your website/blog. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please add your preference to the right of this post. At the moment, most people seem to want to know more about the technical stuff, so I will definitely be dealing with that in future posts (I feel some videos coming on).

I’ve left this a bit late, but Yanik Silver has released the latest Underground Online Seminar DVDs. You only have until tomorrow to get your hands on them (sorry for the late notice). I have attended 2 of Yanik’s seminars and bought the DVDs/CDs for all of them because he manages to find some of the best and most successful people in the Internet world (and usually people who do not speak at conferences as a rule). Much of the information divulged at these conferences is groundbreaking and stuff you can run with straight away (not just lofty ideals but concrete methods). Yanik is an excellent copywriter too, so check out what he has done with the sales pages for this launch (and when Yanik says that something is limited, he means it).

And finally, we are well into Pre-Season over at the Thirty Day Challenge but there is still time to get onboard. The pre-season videos so far have covered loads of flocking good advice on using the Flock browser and how to use Google Reader to save a huge amount of time out of your day. The actual challenge starts August 1st so there is plenty of time to get involved and catch up with the pre-season training, but it is best to do it NOW while it’s fresh in your mind. I’ve already used the word groundbreaking in this post but I am going to use it again – the (free) teaching over at the Thirty Day Challenge is almost always groundbreaking and worth checking out even if you’ve been working online for a long time, or you have an offline business and want to see how the power of the Internet can be harnessed to improve business.

Don’t forget you can add any thoughts and comments here on the blog or feel free to Twitter me (just add @audiomarketing to your Tweet and I will see it).