I was recently featured in a video with a few other local entrepreneurs about the freelance lifestyle.
You can watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/66341017
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Cool Tool: Transcriptions
Whether you’re interviewing someone for a blog post or trying to capture insight from customers for internal use, recording a conversation is usually the best way to ensure quote accuracy and context. (It also spares hand cramps from aggressive note taking.) After recording the interview, the next step is transcription, which usually involves opening a text file on one half of the screen and an audio player on the other and pausing/rewinding frequently while typing feverishly. There are, of course, tools you can use that automatically convert audio into text, but I am forever skeptical of them from an accuracy standpoint and insist on doing things manually.
BUT that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cool tool for the slow-and-steady way of doing things. It’s called Transcriptions, and it basically combines my above-described scenario of text document and audio player into one handy window that adds timestamps to lines of text as you enter, which you can then double click to jump back to that point of the audio file. It’s a super lightweight program, and free! It’s Mac only, though.
Great moments in speechbubble history, volume 5
I was invited to speak on a panel about social media at the Ohio Growth Summit this week.
Posted without further comment:
How to not suck at live Tweeting a conference
You’re at a conference. There’s a giant screen showing all the Tweets from the conference hashtag. You suddenly feel like you HAVE TO BE ON THAT SCREEN. #allofthetweets
Plus, the conference organizers and the speakers themselves keep encouraging you to Tweet the crap out of everything they say. Of course they are. The organizers are incentivized to get new people to come next year. The speakers are incentivized to get their name out there so they can sell books or get clients or speak at more conferences, rinse, repeat.
But you, oh conference attendee, are someone who is beginning to believe in the power of sharing quality content on social media, so your incentive should be to NOT WANT TO SPAM YOUR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS WITH USELESS DRIVEL. Posting lots of generic quotes from speakers helps the conference, helps the speaker, but probably does nothing more for you than to annoy your followers.
Is there a place for live tweeting conferences?
ABSOLUTELY.
These ain’t it:
Heading into ReallyAwesomeSession! Looking forward to learning! #boringconference13
Learning lots of great things at the conference! #boringconference13
Jimbob Marketschmace says SEO is important. #boringconference13
Writing new blog posts every day is a good idea. #boringconference13
Here are things that would actually be valuable to Tweet on a conference hashtag:
1) Any real, actionable items or key take aways. You probably can’t fit these into 140 characters, sorry. You could try Twitlonger.
2) Any additional or complementary resources to a presentation, so that folks who aren’t at the conference can partake in the learning, and folks who are can continue the learning.
3) Attempts to get people to eat and or drink with you. Seriously. The whole “networking” aspect of a conference is the best part.
Cool Tool: Edit Flow WordPress Plugin
If you manage a blog with multiple authors, like our client Drink Up Columbus, it can be a challenge to keep track of who’s working on what and when.
The free WordPress plugin Edit Flow has a TON of tools that make group blogging easy and efficient. Custom statuses allow you to define key stages of your workflow – for Drink Up Columbus, it’s Pitch, Assigned, In Progress and Pending Review. The Editorial Comments allow the Editor to send messages to writers about their posts (particularly useful for the “Pitch” and “Pending Review” stages.) Notification emails instantly alert the writer/editor when a post changes status – telling the editor when a post is now in progress or is ready for review, and telling the writer when their content is live.
Other features of Edit Flow include a convenient month-by-month calendar look at your content, editorial metadata to keep track of the important details and user groups to keep users organized by department or functional role.
Cool Tool: Remember The Milk
If you need to manage complex projects, use a project management tool. But if you need to manage lots of tasks that don’t really require dependencies and all that fun stuff, try Remember the Milk.
Remember the Milk is a great, simple solution for task tracking.. Typing “Client Z proposal due in 3 weeks” schedules the task for three weeks out. Keyboard shortcuts let you postpone, prioritize and tag tasks quickly, and a mobile version lets you update/add tasks on the go.
Best of all, it’s free – they DO have a paid version ($25 a year, still crazy cheap) but the additional features, which are mostly related to the mobile apps, aren’t enough to entice me.
Also, look how cute that cow is. D’awwa.
Great moments in speechbubble history, volume 4
On a recent rainy Thursday afternoon, one of speechbubble’s community management clients received the following @reply on Twitter.
@woodlandsbkyard Will be there for a work HH… You’ll know exactly who I am by my pants…
— Jake (@jakenick06) April 11, 2013
A foreboding message, but the sender and the bar has a brief fun exchange, and went about our respective days. Well, I was at the bar later that evening because 1) spending time at the bars we work with is important and 2) I like beer. I spotted a fella at the table behind me wearing bright blue pants with cowhide pockets. Hmm.
@woodlandsbkyard YESSSSSSS
— Jake (@jakenick06) April 11, 2013
At this point the blue panted gentlement was so excited that he showed the dozen or so people he was with the conversation, and looked around frantically searching for the identity of his partner in pantalones.
The exchange could have ended there, but when I was discussing the incident with the owner we decided to step it up and buy the blue man a shot – a blue shot, naturally. Delivered anonymously with an inscribed bar napkin.
(Use of the the phrase “bitchin’ pants” was NOT my choice.)
