Shared Visions Unlimited

Help with Creation, Marketing, Publishing, and Story Productions

Category: Multimedia

Simple Photo Presentations to Refresh Family Memories

December 29, 2024 /
Simple Photo Presentations to Refresh Family Memories

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.

Digital Photo and Video Frame

Tabletop Books

The photo presentation could also be adapted to a create a tabletop book.

There are many services to create these including VistaPrint, Walmart, and others.

Creating a book available for your family members to order from Amazon would also work. Publishing books on Amazon is one of my main services.

I am working on a Story Projects book and workshop series for creating Story Productions like these for people who want to do it themselves.

Let me know if you want me to help with your family story productions now.

Consider Creating a Website as a Publishing Destination for Your Book

October 26, 2024 /

Emphasizing the Unlimited part of Shared Visions Unlimited Publishing, I encourage and help you to publish your book in multiple formats on multiple platforms, including:

  • Printed Book and eBook through Amazon and IngramSpark
    Put your book out far and wide forever and possibly make some money.
  • FlipBook
    Easy distribution and support for multimedia elements. Help people, build authority, and increase influence.
  • Digital Experience Edition
    Secure multimedia portal for your book content and support material. Great potential for direct sales.
  • Audiobook
    A market for those who prefer to listen.
  • Video Versions
    Illustrated readings, training, …

Today, I suggest adding a blogging website to the mix and possibly starting by writing and publishing your book on a blogging website.

Why You Would Consider Publishing Your Book As A Website

This is for you if your reasons to write and publish a book are along these lines:

  • You have joy in the creating and writing process itself.
  • You have insights or stories you want to share with the world.
  • You want to increase your authority and influence.
  • You may want to use a book as a lead magnet for your products and services.
  • You want to engage your readers with your content and get feedback to improve the print book.
  • You collaborate with an editor or writing coach.

This is not for you if you are a perfectionist who
wants everything perfect before sharing.

I build high-performing and search-engine-optimized WordPress sites for marketing and various other purposes. Here is why this approach can work for your book and why I am going to use this approach for my own books:

  • WordPress provides a great platform for writing and collaborating on posts and articles.
  • Attention to Search Engine Optimization and submitting to Google Search Console can boost your search presence.
  • The pages can have rich multimedia content and links to related resources.
  • WordPress provides a good search function for the site itself. This is fabulously useful.
  • The Google Translate plugin can translate the site instantly. I still think this is amazing! Check out the language selector at the bottom-right of this window.
  • You can invite feedback and comments for your content as you go.
  • Sharing to social media platforms is easy.
  • Linking back from social media platforms and YouTube is easy.

Writing Live and Testing Content

I have a few books in mind: The First Book of Lazy, All My Relations, Adventures in Moving, and The Golden Publishing Sales Machine.

I will create a website and start writing at least one of those books live soon.

Here is the plan:

  1. Register a domain name with the working book title.
  2. Create a website with key plugins, including Yoast SEO, Google Site Kit, and Ultimate Blocks.
  3. Create a home page with a book description and a working outline of topics.
  4. Write the first chapter.
  5. Submit the site to Google Search Console for indexing.
  6. Write a chapter regularly. I will aim for at least three a week.
  7. Post a link to each chapter on social media.
  8. Consider doing a broadcast for each chapter.

I use Grammarly to keep my writing somewhat under control!

If I get readers and interest, I will combine and publish in some or all formats such as a print book, eBook, flipbook, audiobook, and Digital Experience Edition.

At the very least, I will have fun writing and publishing the chapters:-)

Want to try it for your book?

Let’s chat about the possibilities.

Greg Dixon, Chief Cheerleader
Shared Visions Unlimited Publishing

Kartra and Cloudways for Your Complete Content and Marketing Success

June 13, 2024 /

The Kartra All-In-One business platform combined with WordPress sites hosted on the Cloudways cloud hosting program.

This article explains why I use this combination for many of our publishing and marketing clients and why you would consider these platforms for your projects.

What Kartra Brings to the Table

I was part of the Kartra Beta Test program and customer since 2018.

It was good from the start and keeps getting better.

Similar programs that I have looked at include ClickFunnels, Keap (InfusionSoft), New Zenler, SamCart, Kajabi, and others. Each has its strengths, though my clients who try them usually come back to Kartra.

I can help clients who use other platforms, though I will always recommend Kartra first. I am likely one of the top Kartra experts in the world and call myself The Kartra Whisperer.

While Kartra is relatively easy to manage for individual steps, it is like a cargo container load of Lego parts that can be combined in many ways.

Kartra also has a rich set of design options for a tremendous range of branding possibilities.

Typical Uses For Kartra

Here are the things I use Kartra for:

  • Sales Pages. A simple sales page with some text, image, video or audio, and a buy button is all that is needed for things like concert tickets, theatre tickets, or goods and services people want.
  • Payments. I joke that ‘Kartra’ is an exotic Asian goddess of commerce. There are tons of options for flexible and creative payment options and also self-management for your clients.
  • Funnel Campaigns. The simplest funnel is a landing page with an opt-in form, thank-you page that subscribes the person to one or more email.
  • Marketing Automation. Kartra can chain together a lot of things to happen automatically to generate sales, including evergreen webinars.
  • Email Marketing. Send broadcasts or sequences to people selected by lists, tags, or behaviours.
  • Video and Other Media. Video, audio, images, and files can be used in Kartra assets or shared on their own.
  • Membership Sites. One of the reasons I chose Kartra in the first place was to host courses and memberships in a multimedia portal that can contain almost anything and connect with other Kartra tools. This is the Digital Experience Edition included with my Golden Publishing Sales Machine.
  • Calendar. Kartra provides a good and very sophisticated Calendar system.
  • Quizzes and Surveys. The quiz and survey tool took years to release and was worth the wait. Good for marketing and courses.
  • Integrations. Kartra has native implementations for many services like payment processors, SMS, Google Calendar, and more. It also integrates with Zapier, which can connect Kartra to almost anything.
  • Affiliate Program. Much of marketing success is based on referrals and affiliate promotions.

Kartra provides embed codes to use on websites and other places for flexibility.

Kartra Swiss Army Knife

What Cloudways Provides

I am a prolific writer and something of a Zen Master for getting things in searches.

WordPress is by far the best platform for writing and blogging a lot of content.

Also easy to have the clients and team members collaborate on creating and publishing content.

While WordPress can integrate almost anything through plugins and use different themes for different looks, I stick to the fast and attractive Hemingway theme with a lot of emphasis on blogging.

Most of the many hosting platforms I have used in the past were good until they were not anymore. And many were slow and expensive.

Cloudways allows me to register a name in Namecheap and have a fast, secure, and managed WordPress website up in a few hours.

I have not needed to call customer support yet.

As an Agency, Cloadways allows me to add new sites for little more than the cost of registering the domain.

Namecheap has enough options for domain management and email formatting to provide the necessary services.

I am only hosting WordPress sites on Cloudways at the moment. The platform also supports:

  • Laraval
  • Magneto
  • WooCommerce
  • PHP
  • DataOcean
  • Linode
  • Vultr
  • AWS
  • Google Compute Engine

Why Combine Them

WordPress provides the fastest and easiest way to get an online presence with fabulous support for blogging and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Embedding landing pages and other Kartra assets on the WordPress website takes advantage of all Kartra has to offer from the client’s Kartra account or from my Kartra account.

It is an unbeatable combination.

Let’s Discuss Your Project

Add a Digital Experience Edition to Your Journey ~ Make Sales!

November 29, 2023 /

A Digital Experience Edition is for you if ANY of these apply to you:

  • You plan to publish a print book.
  • Your current books could use a boost in attention and sales.
  • You have multimedia content that could be made into books.
  • A course or membership program would fit your content.
  • You have stories to share!

What is a Digital Experience Edition?

A Digital Experience Edition is a structured collection of multimedia elements made available in a content portal.

Access to different parts of the content can be restricted by access levels.

What are the Benefits of a Digital Experience Edition?

Here are some of the advantages over printed books alone:

  • You can test your content early in the process by giving trusted reviewers access.
  • Videos, audio readings, downloads, exercises, and other elements can create a great experience for the reader.
  • You can start selling and marketing the Digital Experience Edition early in the Book Journey process.

Examples of Digital Experience Editions

Here are video tours of different uses for the Digital Experience Edition.

Tales from the Turkey Table by Bill Allman

This is a full-on Publishing Journey including a Digital Experience Edition, Paperback, and Kindle version.

The Rocket Norton Vault

This is a collection of most of musician and writer Rocket Norton‘s lifetime creative output, including books, recordings, videos, photos, and courses,

The Digital Experience Edition with Marketing Success Playbook

This package is for you if you have books, courses or other content that would go well in a Digital Experience Edition.

Includes:

  • Organizing your content into a Digitial Experience Edition.
  • Sales Landing Page.
  • Marketing Success Roadmap.
  • Launch Marketing.
  • Ongoing Content Expansion and Marketing Support.

$488 for the first month, plus $188 per month for ongoing hosting and marketing support.

We meet weekly to prioritize actions.

Limited Packages Available

If you want the Complete Book Journey with the Digital Experience Edition, published books, and comprehensive marketing, the Publishing Sales Machine may be for you.

What is the Publishing Sales Machine?

We combine the content collected during the book development process to create a Digital Experience Edition, Marketing Assets, and Sales on the journey to publishing the print editions.

This makes the Book Journey fun and profitable early in the process.

Is the Publishing Sales Machine Right for You?

Let’s chat.

Copywriting and Multimedia Marketing for Your Creative Abundance

September 20, 2023 /

Both Betty Withrow and Greg Dixon have done a lot of writing for an amazing range of projects. Whatever is needed to get the job done.

Betty’s niche of choice is helping writers create their books and longer-form writing projects.

Greg has a lot of experience with various kinds of copywriting for training and marketing.

Betty Withrow often says that the time to start marketing your book is when you decide to start writing it.

The same is true of courses, memberships, and other creations.

Copywriting

While almost everything humans create and communicate involves words (writing), the kinds of copywriting we do include:

  • Blog Posts
  • Emails
  • Newsletters
  • Social Media Posts
  • Presentations
  • Networking Introductions
  • Training
  • Demonstrations
  • Product Descriptions
  • Landing Pages
  • Video Scripts
  • Chat Scripts
  • Songs
  • Audio Books
  • …

Multimedia Components

With the exception of text-only emails, virtually all writing for marketing is combined with media such as an image, video, or audio.

Text and media work together for the greatest impact.

Even blog posts like this use an image to display when shared on social media.

Integrated Marketing

Betty Withrow and Greg Dixon include copywriting and multimedia with the projects we do for clients.

Greg Dixon offers two comprehensive retainers.

One is a monthly retainer to do whatever is needed for your success until cancelled. That could include the Golden Publishing Sales Machine.


The other is a one-and-done deal to implement something like the Publishing Cash Machine one time.

See Kartra's New Features

Publishing, Marketing, and Memberhip Cash Machine for Authors.

© 2025 Shared Visions Unlimited

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑