Are you using live streams or podcasts to get your message out and attract people to your products and services?
You can leverage the differences between live videos and podcasts to multiply your audience and influence.
I use the Power Podcasting Practice to get my message out to LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRADIO, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more.
I have been using this to put out information about my Writing For Fun Adventure I started from scratch just over a week ago.
You can see the results by searching for ‘Greg Dixon writing‘ on Google Search. I am not the only Greg Dixon and there are other Greg Dixons who are writers, yet the first two pages of search listings are mostly mine.
How do you show up in searches?
The Power Podcasting Practice
Here are the tools and practices that I use.
Create a splash image like the one at the top of this page. I use screen captures and PhotoShop. Canva and other programs can create images for your branding and messaging.
Set up a LinkedIn Live Event.
Upload the splash image.
Provide a compelling title.
Write show notes with a link to the next steps for the audience.
List guest speakers
Set the time.
Submit.
Invite guest speakers through LinkedIn.
Set up StreamYard Studio Live Broadcast. Restream would work too.
Choose the destinations for the live stream. I use LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook Profile, Facebook Pages, and sometimes Instagram and X.
Often, when discussing reasons to write and publish a book, I say that writing itself can be fun, cathartic, and rewarding.
By writing, I mean any form of writing ~ not just books. Novels, poems, songs, screenplays, courses, articles, blog posts, marketing copywriting ~ anything!
So I have launched a program called Your Writing for Fun Adventure, including a website, blog posts, podcasts, broadcasts, a book, and weekly group discussion sessions to encourage people to write and explore a range of writing projects for fun or for profit.
One of the easiest story projects you can do yourself or with my help is to create a slide presentation with photos and captions identifying the people and events.
I have created dozens of these presentations for birthday parties, weddings, and memorials.
The most recent was a tribute to Rocket Norton at the recent Rock Beats Cancer benefit concert. The five-minute presentation is mostly photos with some video.
A happier project was to put together family photos for my son’s wedding. He grew up in North Vancouver and his bride grew up in the Maritimes with the wedding and reception in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
The photo slideshow with a music background started with baby photos of each and pictures of activities as they grew up separately (with many interesting parallels).
I included photos of parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins with captions for the names, relationships, and events. It was an excellent way for each family to learn about the other family.
We looped the video on a large TV at an Aunt’s house between the wedding ceremony and the start of the reception. Many people watched and commented on relatives they had not seen recently.
We also projected the video as part of the reception.
We used Google Drive to collect the photos from both families.
I used PhotoShop to crop and restore the photos, though Canva and other photo editors will work for this.
Today, I will use Apple FinalCut Pro to assemble the photos with transitions, captions, and music. Any video editor would work for this.
I can put it together for you. I will need the photos and notes about each photo for the captions sent by email or uploaded to a Google Drive folder.
The finished presentation can be embedded on a web page or played on most modern televisions from a USB Memory Drive.
Memory Refresher for Seniors
A great use of these family presentations is for seniors and others who are experiencing memory loss.
The photos and videos with captions and possibly a voice-over can be a fun way to refresh memories of family members and events.
Digital Photo Frames
There are many ways of presenting these photo presentations, including inexpensive digital photo frames for your loved ones.
I have used Atticus to format books for clients and for my own projects for a few years.
Atticus does a great job formatting all of the standard trim sizes for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark, as well as an eBook format for Kindle and other readers.
The Atticus platform is also great for writing. It is chapter-oriented, and reorganizing chapters is as simple as dragging up or down in the side panel.
Using Grammarly or other writing assistants provides a powerful writing and editing environment.
There is no extra step between the writing and formatting stages. All done with grace in Atticus.
Collaboration
Atticus creator Dave Chesson said he was working on the ability to collaborate on book projects. It has been on my wish list for a long time and would simplify the editing and review process.
A few weeks ago, Atticus sent a notice about a major update to the software. Dave Chasson didn’t say what the update was but said we could probably guess.
Sure enough, that was it was the collaboration feature that was new.
While it is too late for this year, here is how the collaboration feature would have saved A LOT of time and trouble with Tales From The Turkey Table by Bill Allman.
Bill called me in late November last year to say he was ready to go with Tales from the Turkey Table.
Given that we often were able to take a finished manuscript to formatted and submitted for printing in a few days ago, I said we could do a quick edit pass and format for printing.
Given that Bill is a good writer and editor himself, we assumed it was ready to go. And for what we were doing, it was.
The writing style and punctuation was quirky, but very readable. I certainly was not going to be heavy-handed with editing.
Although the formatting was tricky, I created PDF that I sent out for review.
Some of the most minor things like the table of contents not fitting on a single page became a sticking point.
Then various friends started complaining about minor things. Editing by committee is usually a bad idea because people have opinions that are often wrong and not helpful.
Assuming that the author had done a thorough read of the review copy and considering the time crunch, we submitted, printed, and sold copies.
After Christmas, the author decided to do a close review and edit to make it better.
Nearly a year later, he said he was done with the edit comments in a PDF with comment tracking enabled.
I spent a good week applying some 550 minor changes.
Now we have time to print for Christmas and get into retail shops.
Now that the collaboration feature is available, here is what we could have done last year and this year that would have saved much time and trouble:
I would have set up the author and editors as collaborators and reviewed the text and formatting within Atticus.
Atticus would track and report changes and comments.
The author could have made most of the changes himself, which is far easier than explaining the changes.
All collaborators and editors can review the formatting within Atticus and export PDFs for closer review.
Once approved, the formatted book will be ready for submission and printing.
Working With Book Clients Moving Forward
The writing and formatting features of Atticus are all I need for my books.
The collaboration feature makes working with new book clients easier regardless of stage. I can help with book development, writing, editing, and formatting.
So I will encourage, if not insist, to get the book project into Atticus as soon as possible and collaborate there. That means that the author and editors would need their own Atticus accounts.
Linda Hollender commissioned us to capture her father’s life story. We usually shot videos, but Robert was reluctant to speak on camera.
Instead, we used a microphone and a smartphone to record his story, which we transcribed and assembled into a book with photos that he gave away to friends for his birthday party that year.
Last year, Linda gave away copies at his memorial service.
See tellyourstory.productions/robert-hollander/
The Rocket Norton Vault
I worked with Vancouver musician and author Rocket Norton for decades on many projects, including concert promotions, publishing his books, selling his How to Coach Baseball to Kids video course, and driving a Lincoln Town Car for his driving service.
Much of that I collected into a multimedia portal called The Rocket Norton Vault.
I also helped promote three cancer benefit concerts related to his battle with cancer. Rocket organized and performed at the first two concerts. The one this year served as a memorial.
I had the honour of creating a memorial video shown at the concert.
Preserve Your Personal and Family Stories
My encouragement is for you to capture the stories of your loved ones while they can still share. Our time on earth is fleeting.
You can start with taking photos, video, and audio with your SmartPhone at family gatherings. I have created videos on the process in the past and am working with new resources to help you.
I am also available to craft new and existing content into story productions.
You can create folders on Google Drive to start organizing the media for sharing and using for Story Productions
You can name the folders something that makes sense to you.
Here is a sample:
Aunt Martha Miles
Notes
Videos
Early Days
Wedding
Adventures
…
Photos
Category 1
Category 2
Audio Recordings
Document
Story Productions
When you are ready, you can assemble the photos, video, audio, and notes into media for sharing.
I have created presentations in the following forms:
Print Book
eBook
FlipBook
Video clips
Audio
Slide presentations for weddings, anniversaries, and memmorials.
Multimedia Digital Experience Edition
Website
Blog post
Social media posts.
…
Story Production Tools
I use a lot of tools, including PhotoShop (images), FinalCut Pro (video), ClarityScribe (transcription, AI writing), Atticus (writing, print and eBook formatting), Heyzine (flipbooks), Kartra (membership portals, email, video hosting), WordPress (websites), and others to create Multimedia Story Productions.
Greg Dixon Is Available to Help
I am available to help coach you through the collection of the stories and crafting them into story productions.
A real tree is a true miracle of creation and life that transcends human description, including poetry and sacred texts. The discussion here is limited to symbolic analogies.
First, let me share my appreciation for the Tree of Life symbol, such as this Celtic-inspired AI image provided by satheeshsankaran on Pixabay.
The Roots
The roots connect with Earth and all life on Earth.
Years ago I visited the Theosophical Society Headquarters in Adyar, India. The centre has many original manuscripts and artifacts from all religions and philosophies in the world.
The had a tree in the garden that was a sapling from the Bodhi tree where Siddhartha achieved Enlightenment.
I sensed that the tree was still connected to the original tree through the earth and through a spiritual connection.
The roots in all trees help the tree withstand the weather, provide a base, and provide nutrients.
Marketing Analogy
The roots can be the base that sustains your business, including your education, experience, and your network of connections.
Your mailing list, professional connections, business systems, and support network all support you like the roots of a tree.
Build Strong Roots To Thrive.
The Trunk
The trunk in the Tree of Life represents Strength and Unity.
Marketing Analogy
You can see the trunk as representing you and your business. Your strengths. Your processes. Your unique offers.
The Branches and Leaves
The branches and leaves of a living tree reach out to collect energy from the sun and perform many gas exchanges and chemical processes that enable the tree to thrive.
And without the oxygen created by trees and plants, we would not be here.
Symbolically, the leaves and branches could represent reaching out for knowledge and experiences.
The tree branches can also represent past and future family relations or our evolutionary tree.
Marketing Analogy
The branches and leaves of the tree can represent the connections of you and your business to other people and businesses.
Also your public face and active marketing campaigns.
The 7 Essential Elements of Sales Success come into play here:
Your Golden Offer
Compelling Offer Presentation
Effective Online Profiles
Searchable Articles and Posts
Contact Capture
Engagement
Expansion
Networking, advertising, speaking, and public relations are all ways to expand your reach into the world, like the branches and leaves of a tree.
The Golden Circle
The golden Celtic circle that unifies and connects all of the components of the tree in a continuous strand.
Perfection ~ Unity ~ Connection ~ Divinity ~ Flow
The perfect model for your life and business.
Greg Dixon can help you implement your Tree of Success.