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Podcast Anniversary Milestone Worth The Wait

By Cheval John

February 7th, 2018

Today’s episode of What’s The Word? featuring Kate Frappell, Design Lead at ManageFlitter is a very special show.

Kate is also the co-host of It’s A Monkey Podcast and is the producer of the popular twitter chat, #socialroi, hosted by Madalyn Sklar.

This episode marks the fifth year anniversary when I started the podcast on this very day.

I basically used my cell phone to host the show because I felt at that time I did not have the resources to spend on a microphone or editing type of equipment that goes into podcasting.

The platform I still use to this day to launch this show, blogtalkradio, made it simple for non-tech people like me to schedule the show and allow me and the guest to dial into the platform.

From there, the show goes live as an online radio show and then they process the interview and turn it into a podcast feed to distribute to iTunes (now apple podcasts), stitcher and google play music.

I honestly had planned to start the podcast in january after I had created the account with blogtalkradio.

However, the guest basically changed her mind and let me know she could not be a part of the podcast.

This taught me a lesson which I basically would recommend to anyone who is thinking about starting a podcast.

Never ask someone outside of the people you know very well to be a guest on your show if you are just starting out with a podcast.

Most of the time, the outside people will be nervous because they do not know what to expect if you are launching a podcast for the first time.

It is much better to have a track record of your show when you are pitching to most of the big name people because they want to make sure that your podcast fits their business or their brand.

My first guest was a professor at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), who had served in the white house during the ford and reagan administration.

I will admit that a bit of miscommunication led to a shaky start in the early going of the show.

But when the guest arrived, the show went well and had over a 1,000 downloads to my surprise.

In the first year and a half of hosting the show, the majority of my guests were professors and college coaches from S.H.S.U.

From there, the guest became more diverse due to the fact that publicist were reaching out to me to interview their clients and even from building long term friendships on social media.

Then the live stream revolution changed the direction in how I host the show.

Meerkat was launched in february of 2015 and was introduced at South by Southwest the following month of the same year.

Ironically, Periscope was launched in March of that same year and became an “instant hit” with consumers.

The live video platform, blab, was launched around mid-summer of 2015.

This app was the first to host entirely on computer and not on smartphones which gave people like me who did not own phones with apps at that time to participate in the live streaming revolution.

It also had the ability to record the live stream which would be saved as an mp4 video and a mp3 audio which made it easy for me to upload to blogtalkradio.

This also made me realized that I would need a quality microphone to make the live stream work.

So I bought my first microphone and jump right in the live streaming revolution.

As the saying goes, social media changes in an instant.

And that is what happened to the live streaming apps.

Meerkat disappeared within a year and blab basically disappeared in that same time frame.

While Periscope later integrated with Twitter and Facebook Live was officially launched in early 2016.

What is interesting to note is that the smart video companies have pivoted their services to be as compatible with the bigger social media platforms which are dominating the live streaming revolution.

Platforms like Zoom and Blue Jeans Network, which has been in business for years before the live streaming revolution, integrated their platform with the likes of YouTube Live and Facebook Live.

So now I am recording all of my podcast using facebook live via blue jeans network and today’s episode is part of it.

In this episode, you will hear:

-how Kate decided to become a designer
-how she became the lead designer for ManageFlitter
-what inspired Kate to live in Canada for an extended period of time
-the importance of live streaming
-why businesses should embrace social media

This episode was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network in January of this year before ManageFlitter’s one year anniversary of hosting the #socialroi chat.

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full Episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.katefrappell.com

Twitter: @katefrappell

Quotes from Kate Frappell on:

STARTING THE #SOCIALROI TWITTER CHAT

I think mainly we just wanted to get the manageflitter name out there and better build relationships with our customers and our audience.

From our point of view, get inside the minds and find out what products they are using, how they are using them, why they like certain things and learn from them so that we can implement it into the internet social as well.

It’s been really good.

When I first started, I was like, “Oh, I’m not sure this twitter chat thing is all about” and now, I really like it.

I think they’re great.

I’ve met a lot of great people through twitter and joined all sorts of different twitter chats and had opportunities like this to talk on podcasts.

It’s been really good.

Great exposure as well.

That’s sort of the journey for #socialroi.

BUSINESSES HOSTING OR PARTICIPATING IN TWITTER CHATS

Twitter chats are an opportunity to log in and chat with other like-minded people or people who know more than you.

If you are an entrepreneur and you want to learn about, let’s say, social media marketing, you could jump on the #socialroi chat and find out how you can improve your return on investment using social media.

Everybody in the chat talking about the same thing.

We have different topics every week and you can just learn so much as an individual or as a small business.

You can meet people who give you business opportunities.

It’s sort of a never-ending cycle.

I think it’s really worth putting the time into networking.

From a personal point of view, I mean a lot of entrepreneurs starting out are very busy and there is a lot of networking events that you physically have to attend.

But for a twitter chat, you just have to log in.

You do not have to even leave your desk.

I think it’s fantastic.

LIVE STREAMING

I think it’s still growing to be honest.

I do watch some live streams, but they are not the first thing I go and look at.

If I log into facebook, I’m sort of just scrolling through my newsfeed as I am used to.

But, I will click on the occasional live stream and they end up being very valuable.

So I think it’s just a matter of time before people kind of adopt and get use to watching these live videos and understanding who’s behind the businesses that are hosting them.

I think I read recently that 80% of people would rather watch a video than read something, especially people on social media.

I think it’s gonna be good.

I think it’s really going to take off.

The other thing as well is it’s evergreen.

For example, even if someone’s not watching this video right now, it’s going to be on your facebook page and people can come back and watch it at any time.

PODCASTS

Podcasting is becoming more popular definitely.

Even if you look now at the amount of softwares that are out there to help with podcasting.

One of the big problems we have with the monkey podcast is not getting enough analytics.

The fact that Apple is actually building this software to look into the analytics of podcast listeners is saying a lot like where podcast is going, how popular it is, why people are listen to it.

Business people and entrepreneurs are going to need it if they are going to take on podcasting.

It has a lot of potential especially with mobile devices now.

It’s nice to listen to something other than music sometimes.

WORKING REMOTELY

We use slack internally.

That makes it super easy to message each other.

Slack made a huge difference in opening that communication online.

Plus, the time zone is not terrible.

9 a.m. in Sydney, Australia is about 2 p.m. pacific time here in the west coast of Canada.

So I have the morning by myself and then the afternoon, everybody is online.

It’s basically like working in Sydney, Australia in the afternoon.

It’s been really good.

Twitter obviously helps as well.

Everybody is on twitter quite a bit because the whole product surrounds twitter.

I would say that there’s e-mails as well and a little bit of skype.

Really, I just have to credit slack.

ON MOVING TO CANADA

What led me to come over here was I’ve always really liked Canada for some reason.

My aunt would give me travel guides to Canada for Christmas.

In 2015, I did a lot of traveling to New York, East Coast Canada, West Coast Canada and Alaska before going back home.

I got a taste of the different parts of Canada and most of the highlights which is sort of the nature of the bus tours.

I really like the west coast of Canada and knew I wanted to come back here.

I kept working and saved money.

Then I was like, “You know what, I really want to go and live there.”

I applied for my visa and I got it.

I had a chat with Kevin (Garber), who is the boss of Manage Flitter and he thought about it for a bit and said, “Look, we rather you keep the job and work remotely than quit.”

I said, “Thank you.”

I really like the team.

It worked out really well.

That’s how I ended up here.

BUSINESS OWNERS OR EMPLOYEES WORKING REMOTELY

I would recommend it in the sense.

If you have not worked remotely before, it’s a whole new adventure.

Make sure you put the time into your day and have the discipline to work, but also have the discipline to switch off because you can just stretch your work day out forever.

I’m finding a good balance and the flexibility is amazing.

So sometimes, if I want to do something fun in the morning, I can and then I can start my day a little bit later and I’ll be online when everyone in Australia is online and I can work a little bit late into the night to make up for that.

It’s a huge learning curve from a working career perspective.

If you go to a new place, it’s a whole new culture to learn.

You make a lot of new friends.

You have to put yourself out there.

It sort of pushes you outside of your comfort zone which is really important I think.

Who would you like to be a guest on What’s The Word? in the future? You can leave your comment below.

Dr. Karen Freberg, Associate Professor at University of Louisville

By Cheval John

November 15th, 2017

Today’s episode features Dr. Karen Freberg, associate professor at the University of Louisville.

She is one of the most innovative professors in higher education due to being a pioneer in the teaching of social media.

Dr. Freberg has spoken at conferences around the world.

She has build her online presence via social media which gave her insights into preparing her students for the real world.

Her #freberg17 class created and implemented a social media marketing plan for the Louisville Bats.

This episode was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network.

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.karenfreberg.com

Twitter: @kfreberg

Quotes from Dr. Karen Freberg on:

Being Active On Social Media

I feel like social media is a passion of mine and I absolutely love it.

I also feel like for college students, if I am asking them to do certain strategies on social media, I have to do them as well just to kind of show them like, “okay, here’s kind of the strategies that I have been able to learn through the process.

I feel like instead of being like a top-down model for my classes, I am more of a participant too.

So there is definitely strategies I can definitely articulate, share and teach my students.

I am constantly learning each and everyday new things, new trends, new ways of approaching certain softwares for social media.

ON CREATING THE SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY PROFESSORS FACEBOOK GROUP

I would say it actually came from a research project I was working on this past year.

I was talking to one professor who was teaching social media at a university in Utah.

He was talking about how he really wish there was a place where professors who were teaching social media could come together and share some ideas.

He said, “I go to these other conferences, but they are really just advertising conferences or public relations conferences.”

“There was really no central place where we could all share our thoughts on certain trends in social or what are things that we are facing in terms of expectations from employers about our students skills and books we were using to teach social media.”

So I got the idea of creating a group where we just came together and share our ideas.

The group started last year in October and we have over 360 members (my update: the group is now over 450 members) from around the world.

We are all struggling with some of the same questions and same concepts.

We talked earlier before the show about this perception of professors who teach social media.

We get criticized all the time with “We don’t know what we are talking about, higher education is a waste of time. We are not ahead of the trends or we don’t know what we are doing.”

So it is nice to come together as a group and say, “Okay, here’s what we are doing. Here’s how we are going to show future employers our students are getting the necessary skills and education.”

It is a very great community and I have been really happy to see everyone sharing their ideas.

I also wanted to create a place I wish I had when I started out as a professor.

ON COVERING THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF COLLEGE GAMEDAY IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

I got approached from Front Office Sports about taking over their instagram account for college gameday.

I’m like, “Great, this is so exciting”

I realized, “Oh, I have to do what I have been preaching to my students and making sure I was basically following the same guidelines and best practices.

It was a lot of fun.

It was a different mindset where you have to think about what would the audience for front office sports want to see.

I had a lot of people that were really excited to see the clemson social media team.

So I made sure I got some coverage there and then the behind the scenes of college gameday.

Always make sure you have extra battery backs for your phone.

You can leave your comments below if you like or disliked this post

Is Blogging Still Worth It?

By Cheval John

May 24th, 2017

You might be wondering if it’s worth it to have a blog after seeing these stats

There are over a billion websites in the world- Internet Live Stats

About 2.7 million blog posts are published everyday-Hosting Facts.com

The answer is yes because your blog is the home base for your website

Here are more stats about blogs:

Websites with a blog have tend to have 434% more indexed pages-Impact

43% of marketers who work for business to business tells everyone that blogging is very important for their companies-Social Media Examiner

81% of businesses consider their blogs to be an important asset to their businesses.-Search Engine Journal

Out of the millions and millions of blogs, the top hosting sites for blogs are Tumblir and WordPress (WP).

Though Tumblir host 175 million blogs, I am honestly not a fan of the platform.

WP hosts 75.8 million blogs in the world.

You might not know that WordPress has two different platforms for blogs.

There is WordPress.com, the free hosting site, and WordPress.org, the self-hosting software.

Before we get into the details of WordPress.com and WordPress.org, I want to chat about another hosting site that emerged over the last few years: Medium.

Medium was created in 2012 by Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter.

The vision for Medium was to create long form content in the manner people could express themselves more since Twitter has a 140 character limit.

People who creates an account on Medium via Twitter or Facebook will automatically increase their audience depending on the number of followers on either platform.

For example, Rachel Rofe, who is the author of 50 plus books, created her Twitter account in 2007 and built a strong community.

When Rachel started using Medium in 2014, almost 1/3 of her Twitter audience “followed” her to the blogging platform

This is an advantage for those who are looking to start blogging for the first time.

And you also keep the blog content according to the people at Medium.

With the above being said, here are the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

Pros of WordPress.com:

It is free

You can interact with fellow bloggers on the platform and build a community

Your blog could be discovered

Cons of WordPress.com:

You have limited features which can hinder you from expanding your blog

Pros of WordPress.org

You have access to the plugins which can improve your website

You can design the website which fits your business

The website is yours forever

Cons of WordPress.org

You have to pay a hosting company to run your website

In reality, it is not a con because they are hosting companies which are compatible with WordPress.org and are very affordable for small businesses.

The two hosting companies I highly recommend for hosting your website using WordPress.org are
Blue Host and Host Gator.

(Disclaimer: I use host gator for my business blog and I am not getting a commission at all.)

If you have to choose between wordpress.com and wordpress.org if you are planning to start a blog, I would select the latter.

When you built an audience over the years using wordpress.com and you want to switch to a self-hosted site using wordpress.org, you will end up “losing” the total number of views for your blog.

It will also cost you between $129-$200 to transfer your content from wordpress.com to wordpress.org.

I started this blog on wordpress.com in 2011 while simultaneously blogging for the collegiate newspaper and myself during my time in graduate school.

When I was placed on probation from graduate school, I decided to buy the domain name and upgrade the blog to vallanomedia.com using wordpress.com in January of 2012.

A couple days later, I formed the company as an llc and continued to blog about sports, travel and current events.

After looking at articles from experts like Nathalie Lussier regarding blogging platforms, I knew I had to switch my site over to wordpress.org.

So on October 1, 2012, I paid around $140 to switch my blog over to wordpress.org.

I had no idea at the time I was going to “lose” over 3,900 total viewership I built before switching from wordpress.com.

In conclusion, I want to add having a blog is important because it is your main real estate.

The social media platforms are just rented land.

If you want to build your business via blogging, you must do your research on which platform is right for you.

Here is a quote from Sonia Gregory, Owner and Creative Director of FreshSparks, which sums up the importance of having a blog:

“A blog is an opportunity to shake hands and introduce yourself. You can gain a reader’s trust through quality content.”

Are you planning on starting a blog? You can leave your comments below.

Don’t Write Off Social Media

By Cheval John

The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who are willing to learn new skills that will help them to expand their business.

The above statement is true for the business professionals, professors and anyone else who are making a living for the better.

The ones who believes that they know everything are doomed to fail.

The reason is that the “know it alls” are blind to the ever changing world of technology and the changes that are happening in their respective industries.

Take the example of a statement from many professionals who “believed” that “social media is just a fad and it will go away.”

They are now losing out on quality business because they fail to see the importance of social media.

They also fail to realize that the millennial generation will not purchase a product or service if they don’t trust a particular brand.

For example, the Sacramento Kings are dominating the NBA due to their willingness to engage with their fans.

D.J. Ramirez shared her experience about taking over Sacramento’s snapchat account

Dr. Karen Freberg and Dr. Ai Zhang are leading their universities students by example by building their own audience on social media.

Dr. Zhang in particular has built her Twitter audience to over 3,000 due to her hard work and willingness to interact with their audience.

So if you still believe that social is still a fad, then I wish you luck because you will one day end up like Nokia, who end up getting acquired by Microsoft due to their failure to adapt to the changing world of technology.

Creating A Winning Culture In Your Company

By Cheval John

November 19th, 2016

The #HTownTakeOver reignited after the University of Houston (UH) football team defeated then No.5 Louisville 36-10 in front of a record 42,822 fans at TDECU Stadium on Thursday night.

The football matchup was broadcast in front of a national television audience on ESPN and a national radio audience on ESPN Radio.

This Tweet by KPRC 2 sports reporter, Lainie Fritz, who captured the storming of the field after UH’s victory.

And ESPN had one of the best live streaming thursday night viewership this season due to this matchup

The campus has been a scene of a winning culture since Houston’s coach Tom Herman took over the team in December of 2014.

Since Herman’s arrival, UH has a record of 22-3 with an American Athletic Conference championship and a Peach Bowl win over Florida State University.

What is more impressive is that UH’s success has taken over the city of Houston

In a city that has plenty of professional sports teams, UH has found a way to get their football team into the spotlight.

UH has had success under previous football coaches like Kevin Sumlin and their softball team have been extremely successful since they began in 2001.

However, the recent success of UH’s football team seems to be in another level.

One could argue that UH’s recent rise to prominence started when they achieved the Tier One Status in 2011 by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education under the leadership of Chancellor Renu Khator.

With the Tier One status, UH were able to bring in world class professors and recruit future college students who were elite in their respective high schools from around the world.

From there, they were able to secure the funds to build the 40,000 seat TDECU stadium over the same grounds of the demolished Robertson Stadium in time for the 2014 football season.

That first year in the new stadium, Houston finished with an 8-5 record.

However, the season was considered disastrous due to the inaugural home opening loss to UTSA resulting in the firing of Tony Levine.

UH administration understood that if they wanted to take their football program to the next level in their new stadium, they had to bring in leadership who would bring in a culture of winning.

That was why they hired coach Herman to lead their football program because he played a role in helping Ohio State win a national championship under the new College Football Playoff format as an offensive coordinator for coach Urban Meyer.

Coach Herman instilled a winning culture at UH and the entire university community was onboard with the #htowntakeover movement.

The average home attendance at TDECU stadium have increase from 33,980 in 2015 to 38,953 this year.

UH administrators are trying to keep their coach from leaving the football team as major collegiate football teams are trying to hire him away from their school.

University of Texas seems to be the front runner to poach coach Herman away according to this ESPN report that the Longhorn’s most powerful boosters are trying to get Charlie Strong fired

Though UH have already increased coach Herman’s salary to $3 million a year, it seems like the money will not be enough.

The UH fans can hope that coach Herman will stay due to the stability of the UH administration who only want the best for their faculty and staff.

The above story showcases that as a business owner, you must:

1. Create a winning culture in your company

2. Allow your employees to shine in their respective roles

3. Avoid a power struggle (like the University of Texas boosters) that could tear your company apart

When you create a culture that allows your employees to shine in their roles, you will end up winning in the long term because they will go out of their way to promote you.

In the same manner as UH, customers will see your company as a place where people can grow their skills and positive recognition from outside sources will find you.

Have you created a winning culture like UH? You can leave your comments below.