Category Archives: Technology 101

How to Use @Wetoku in Your Online Business

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I love online video.  In fact, I love any kind of video but when I get to see live, streaming video of my favorite Internet people, it just makes my heart feel good.  The unfortunate downside is that not everyone embraces video the way I (and others) do.  For the longest time, we had some really solid options for video.  For pre-recorded, uploaded video, you could use YouTube or Vimeo.  For live, streaming video, you could use Ustream or Justin.tv or Blog TV.  Now, we’ve got an awesome tool for co-hosted, live, streaming video… Wetoku.

I met one of the founders / creators / masterminds behind Wetoku at WordCamp Montreal.  After I was introduced to what they were doing, I was hooked.  I primarily used the service for my eThusiasm edited video podcasts but knew that eventually, I would have additional ways to tap into what they were doing.

Some of the things I mention below are things that not even I am doing yet but I figured it might be helpful for you to see what my plan is with Wetoku so that you can join in the fun!

  1. Produce a co-hosted live podcast with a colleague, a client or a friend. For this particular project, make it a regular occurrence.  Set a date and time every week, every two weeks or once a month and schedule it around certain topics.  Make it lively, interactive and fun!
  2. Invite guest speakers to come on to a timed segment that you can edit into a longer, more ‘produced’ video for your website. This could be something that is done off air without community involvement.  Interview people and edit those into longer videos that are all centered around a specific topic.
  3. Have your social media community interact with you and a colleague in a real-time conversation for fun – not recorded, just off the cuff sort of conversation. This will begin to create a voyeuristic look into your business, who you are and what you do.  Let people in, let them engage and interact.
  4. Host your own version of ‘Ask Erin Live’ but invite audience members to come live and ask you questions. This is a great idea as it moves you away from the “two experts on a panel” approach and into a very intimate setting where people get to have some face time with you.

As we begin to get more comfortable with video, people will be embracing this as a new way to connect and share information.  It will allow people to connect with you via an authentic experience rather than a static, written one and you won’t be doing the sharing alone.  There is a real collaborative spirit hitting up the business community and tapping into that early will definitely make you a trend setter.  Invite your colleagues and friends to join you in creating your next venture… It will be a lot more fun that way!

Taking Screenshots on Your Mac with Paparazzi!

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A little under a year ago, I switched to using my Mac full-time.  I had a PC laptop and PC desktop alongside my iMac but never really used the Mac for anything other than audio and video editing.  When I finally decided to make the switch full-time, I packed up the PC desktop and put it in the basement for storage and I sold the PC laptop.

I have to admit, the transition was a little jarring at first.  The reason?  Applications.  When you’re on a PC or a Mac full-time, you get used to the software that you get used to.  For me, I had all sorts of utilities and apps on my PC that worked well and solved quick problems for me.  Moving to the Mac meant learning about new apps to do all of the things I used to do on my PC.

Luckily, I have access to a large number of Mac users via my Twitter account.  There, I could post a question about the best app to do x, y or z and my followers would step up with suggestions rather quickly.  It was nice to get fast answers!  So, when I asked on Twitter one day, “What can someone recommend for scrolling browser window screenshots?“, the answer was Paparazzi!

I wanted to do a quick blog post about it because it’s saved my life in terms of how I capture certain things for our portfolio.  You can view the screenshots and how they are captured by viewing our portfolio here on the site.

Paparazzi! is different than other screen capture tools because it pulls the information from a URL that you specify.  So, you simply load up the application, paste in your URL and hit the capture button.  Once it’s done, you’ll receive a preview and you can save it or re-size it to suit your needs.

As you can see, the URL I grabbed the screen capture from was a very long sales page which, in preview mode, looks very small but once saved comes out to the same size as on the web.  Now, I don’t have to worry about cutting my screen cap into pieces.

For those of you who are on a PC, the tool that I used before was SnagIt! which worked beautifully!  It has many more features than Paparazzi! does but I still love this app for my Mac.

Video on a Website – Must Have or Live Without?

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A few months ago, I received the following question on Facebook:

Here was my response to Sandra:

Video.  It’s one of my favorite online mediums for sharing and spreading a message but it’s also one of the most feared by entrepreneurs.  Video opens people up to a whole new level of transparency and sometimes, it can feel a bit uncomfortable.  How do I know this?  The topic comes up in 90% of my client calls.  The client will ask me, “So, this whole video thing… do I really need to do it?”  My response is generally the same.

When it comes to video, I think the impact it has on your prospects and website visitors is huge.  People love seeing the person behind the schtick and a video allows them to see you – the animated, talking, moving you.  Video creates an instant connection as it makes the person feel like they are really immersed in a conversation with you.  It also helps to build the know, like and trust factor up much more quickly than plain copy would.

However, that being said, if the person doing the video is uncomfortable, it will show and the video could be counter-productive.  You know those moments when you’re driving in your car and you come across a road accident and you want to look away but you can’t?  Even though you feel super uncomfortable, there’s almost an unseen force keeping your head pointed in the disaster’s direction.  That’s sort of what it’s like watching someone on video that clearly doesn’t want to be there.

So, I think adding video to your website is really important – if it’s done right.  If you’re the type who doesn’t mind being on camera, absolutely do it.  It will solidify your message, your brand, your authenticity and help to create bonds with your prospects.  If you’re not the type to be on video, consider having a video produced that doesn’t contain you in it.  It could be photos of work you’ve done, it could be text and music… whatever you can use to convey your message in a visual way will help your audience connect more with what you are doing.

Lastly, video doesn’t have to equate to big bucks.  You can easily shoot your own videos in your home or office by using a Flip camera and a tripod.  Set yourself up a nice background area and shoot a video!  You can even send that video to a virtual assistant to be edited with intro titles, music and more!

Hopefully this helps bridge the gap between doing video and not doing video.  If you have any questions, leave them as a comment!

Adding Music to YouTube Videos to Avoid Copyright

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A lot of people want to add music clips to their YouTube videos but often come up against copyright issues and a warning e-mail from YouTube.  To get around this, YouTube introduced something called “Audio Swap” a long time ago.  This allows users to take their videos and add eligible music to them from a sampling of YouTube music.  I figured it would be helpful to introduce to you all how this is done in case you want to add music to your own videos.

  1. Login to your YouTube account.
  2. Click on “My Videos” from under your account name (top right).
  3. Find the video you want to add music to in your video list and click on “Audio Swap.”
  4. Choose the audio file you want, preview it and when ready, hit publish.  It will take about 12-24 hours to appear (even though they say it can take a few hours… it’s generally longer).

Here are some screenshots to illustrate:

Video Detail Screen

Audio Swap Screen

Attach Your Photo to Blog Posts & Comments

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If you spend time on blogs, you might have noticed that some people have their own photos as their avatar next to posts and comments.  This is more apparent on WordPress based blogs and generally those that aren’t using the Disqus commenting system plug-in (those using Disqus require people to setup accounts and individuals can attach their photos in their Disqus accounts).

However, if you’ve ever seen a blog post like this (borrowing from our client, Stacy Karacostas’ The Unchained Entrepreneur – we’ve added her photo since this screenshot but grabbed it as an example before we did!) you might have noticed that your photo did not appear but rather the lovely default avatar that WordPress assigns:

To prevent your comments and posts from being tagged with the anonymous grey figure, here’s what you’ll want to do:

  1. Go to Gravatar.com.
  2. Sign up for a new account here using the e-mail address you use when commenting / posting on blogs.
  3. Once your account is setup, upload a photo you would like to use and create your avatar.

Now, when you post on blogs around the Internet, including your own, using that e-mail address, your avatar will pop up instead of the grey anonymous one!

RSS Feed Reader Solution – Google Reader & Feedly

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I’ve been looking for an RSS feed reader solution FOREVER…  Something that worked well, didn’t overwhelm me and showed me the latest news so that I could gain blog inspiration and keep tabs on what was happening in the social sphere.  It wasn’t until I was sitting at home one night, on the computer per usual, when I messaged my good friend Josh Schnell over at Macgasm.net to ask him: what RSS feed reader do you use?

His response was simply: Feedly with Google Reader.

So, following his lead, I setup my Google Reader account and my Feedly account.  Let me quickly take you through that in case it is new to you!

Step One: Setup Your Google Reader Account

To do this, go to http://www.google.com/reader/.  Here, you want to login with your existing Google account or setup a new Google account.  It’s a good idea to use the same login that you use for Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. if you do already use the services because it makes it a whole lot easier to remember!  Once you’ve logged in, you don’t need to do anything else inside of Google Reader.

Step Two: Go to www.feedly.com and Download the Extension for Safari

Now, this part is a little bit complex.  First, you need to make sure you are running at least Safari 5.0.  Then, you need to go to your Preferences -> Advanced tab and make sure that the “Show Develop Menu in Menu Bar” option is checked.

Once you’ve done that, click on the extension plug-in link (option #4) at http://blog.feedly.com/2010/06/10/feedly-for-safari-5/.  They have the steps outlined nicely here for you as well.

Your extension will install onto Safari and you will have to restart your browser.  Once the browser re-opens, you can navigate to http://www.feedly.com/home to pull up your feed center.

Step Three: Setup Feedly

Here is where the power of Feedly starts to form.  Using “pages”, you can setup mini-newspaper feeds of specific categories that you choose.  For my own reader, I’ve setup a few categories including: social media, marketing and business, clients and tech.  This will allow me to keep up-to-date with blogs in these specific categories.  To add a page, first click on “organize sources” and then click on “add a source.”  Both of these options appear at the very top of Feedly.

In the “add a source” box, you can put the URL of any blog or RSS feed that you wish to track.  Once it is added here, it will appear in the grouping of uncategorized sources.  To create a “category” or a “page”, drag and drop the source into the shaded box where it says “new page.”

Once you add a source, it will prompt you to add a name to this new page.  Go ahead and categorize your source.  Now you can click the little pen beside new sources (or existing sources inside of your account) and add them to specific categories / pages.  These new pages will appear on the right-hand side navigation.

The Beauty of Feedly

The reason that I love Feedly so far is that it creates a newspaper feel to my feeds.  Here is a screenshot of an aggregate of posts in the social media category I setup.

It also allows me to easily share content to many different platforms.

There are many, many more reasons why I am digging Feedly which I’ll explore in an upcoming blog post.  For now, I’ll leave you with the idea that you should get yourself setup this way if you aren’t already!