Archive by Author | Cheval John
November 10, 2017  

Give Your Audience Access To Your Creative Process

By Cheval John

Today’s post is a case study of former ABBA member, Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s, “Frida”, solo album, “Something Going On” and what we as entrepreneurs can learn.

ABBA was on top of the charts consistently during their time together (Agnetha Faltskog was married to Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson was married to Frida prior to the group forming of course).

Many were drawn to their acapella sound.

The success of the band led to the strain on their marriages.

Frida wanted to do a solo English album which would have a different sound from ABBA.

So she choose Phil Collins, who is a drummer as well, to produce her first solo english album.

She listened to Collins’ first solo album “Face Value” for eight months.

The record label, Polar Music, sent out messages to major publishers around the world about Frida’s solo project.

In an overwhelming answer, they got 500 songs.

They then listened to all of them and choose the eleven songs for her album.

Collins and the session players flew into Stockholm and recorded the album tracks.

They added the trumpets from Earth, Wind and Fire’s Phenix Horns to some of the tracks.

They also added the orchestra sound recorded at Air Studios in London, England.

It took them a month and a half to put the album together.

As a result, “Something Going On” was a huge hit worldwide.

The single,”I Know There’s Something Going On” hit number one in Switzerland, Belgium, Costa Rica and France.

It was also number fourteen on the Billboard 100 and became one of the best selling singles in the United States in 1983.

Before the advent of social media, publicists would book musicians on major media leading up to the launch of their album because those outlets have the largest audience.

What made Frida’s success different?

She gave Sveriges Television (SVT), a national Swedish broadcaster, access to the making from start to finish of the album, “Something Going On.”

SVT edited the recordings to make it into a one-hour television special.

It is safe to say Frida understood her audience very well.

She knew it was history in the making because she was venturing into the unknown from her association with ABBA.

That is why it is important to showcase the behind the scenes of your business and share the “secrets” to your success.

It is not like someone will go and knock you out of business due to sharing your secrets.

Your audience will appreciate you because of your willingness to take them on your journey to success with your business.

They will even go out of their way to share your finished product with their friends and family.

For example, you can allow your listeners to see the entire recording process of your podcast via live streaming.

In the same manner of television shows which records in front of a live studio audience, you can be that business or person which live streams your recordings to your audience.

You can let them know in advance that this live stream recording will last about 30 minutes while encouraging them to leave comments.

Once the live stream part of the recording is over, you can answer their questions as part of the post-production show.

If your podcast is interview based, this can allow your audience exclusive access to ask your guest questions in the comments section during the post-production.

This strategy can help you boost your podcast which is part of your business.

With third party applications like Blue Jeans Network, Zoom, and Crowdcast.io, you can simulcast your podcast recordings to either facebook live, periscope or YouTube Live.

So go out and allow your audience access to your creative process in the same manner as Frida did 35 years ago.

What are your thoughts on the case study?

November 9, 2017  

Deirdre Breakenridge, Owner of Pure Performance Communications

By Cheval John

November 8th, 2017

Today’s episode of What’s The Word? features Deirdre Breakenridge, founder of Pure Performance Communications.

Deirdre has written many books on public relations and social media.

Her recent book “Answers for Modern Communicators: A Guide to Effective Business Communication” deals with how professionals and college students can be successful communicators in a business environment.

She is also the host of #prstudchat, a twitter chat which speaks about how college students can learn more about the public relations field and how they can prepare themselves once they graduate from college.

In this episode, you will hear:

-Deirdre’s process in writing her first book

-The importance of live streaming

-On why she started the podcast, “Women Worldwide”

-On hosting “The PR Influencer Show” on Nasdaq

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

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full Episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.deirdrebreakenridge.com

Twitter: @dbreakenridge

Quotes from Deirdre on:

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public relations has changed so much because of social media and the way businesses have to be more flexible.

People would go online at any time and if they wanted something, we had to be there.

If you are going to support a business, you have to be ten steps ahead and to understand and listen and know where the pain points are in the market and with the customers to be able to help that business.

NEW MEDIA

I knew we had to embrace new media.

It was a different way of communication and how we approached, not just traditional journalists, but different types of media and where people wanted to receive their news.

In 2003, I had a huge wake-up call.

My team went in to pitch a CEO and his team on a tech product and we were probably a little over-confident.

We thought we knew exactly where we could get the message out through what channels.

After we pitched on how we were going to launch this load balancer product, he kind of looked at me and said, “Okay, that was good, but where’s all the new stuff that’s really going to excite our end users? Where are they going to embrace things?”

What he was saying was why aren’t you talking about blogs.

I had written about that in my second book, which is really ironic that I was writing about blogs, but not pitching that.

I went back to my agency that day and said, “No matter how ahead we think we are, we are not.”

“We are now going to start opening up technology for our public relations professionals. They need to be hands-on in the back end of websites and content management systems.”

“I want public relations people to upload news releases and photos. I want them hands-on with technology.”

They thought I was crazy.

That was the start of “We have to be flexible, we have to move, there’s new things out there.”

Public relations people have to embrace and move forward.

BRANDS BEING MEDIA COMPANIES

They are content machines and they are not just sharing content for the sake of getting their messages across.

They are educating and becoming thought leaders.

They are having other people come in, be correspondents and share news and information and do interviews.

It is a whole new dynamic.

I was sitting with a financial services company recently.

They now have an in-house studio for video production because they are thought leaders in their space and they are going to be doing interviews.

We see this a lot more.

That is the kind of storytelling and brand journalism you want to bring to the table to be a media company.

LIVE STREAMING

I think it is a great opportunity.

It is almost the no bull crap way of getting out some really good transparent information.

You are talking to a person who grew up in the agency world where we would not put out anything.

This is a new way of being able to tell stories and to share who you are and what you do.

To give a piece of yourself as an entrepreneur and to show your passion through a live stream is really important.

If you enjoy this episode, you can share via the social media icons below.

Also, who would you like to be a guest on the show?

November 4, 2017  

Learning How To Build A Business Blog From The Houston Astros

By Cheval John

November 3rd, 2017

On a normal day, going to downtown houston from the northline train station would be a breeze.

Today was not one of those days because the city of houston hosted a parade for their hometown team, Astros, who won their first World Series (WS) championship on Wednesday night.

The people of houston were very excited to celebrate with their team.

By all accounts, an estimated one million people lined up along the parade route leading to city hall.

Half of those traveled by train into downtown to be a part of history.

The Astros brought hope to those who were still recovering from hurricane harvey.

The road to victory began in 2011 when Jim Crane bought the team from Drayton McClane.

The condition to get the sale approved by Major League Baseball (MLB) was moving the team to the American League from the National League the following year.

At the time of the sale, the Astros were on the decline after their previous appearance in the 2005 World Series.

Crane knew they had to rebuild the team from scratch.

The first step in the master plan was hiring Jeff Luhnow, who was the architect behind the St.Louis Cardinals 2006 and 2011 championship teams, as the Astros general manager.

Luhnow used sports analytics to figure out who would be the right fit for the Astros.

In the early stages of the rebuild, the Astros lost 100 games in three straight seasons.

Fans were wondering what was going on with the team.

Many sports pundits thought the whole system of analytics were a joke because they believed Luhnow did not play the sport of baseball.

The criticism intensified in 2014 when Sports Illustrated (SI) declared on their cover the Astros as the 2017 World Series Champions.

Many thought it was a marketing ploy to get more readers.

The folks from S.I. knew they were heading in the right direction.

Signs of the rebuild began to show when they made the 2015 playoffs, where they lost to the eventual World Series champion, Kansas City Royals in the American League Divisional Round.

Though the 2016 season was a failure, the Astros fans were very optimistic for 2017.

The team did not disappoint as they clinched their very first regular season championship in the American League West, went through the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees to win the American League pennant.

Then they went on to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games to complete their dream season.

You might be wondering how the Astros winning the World Series got to do with growing your business or personal blog?

Glad you ask.

Growing a blog takes a whole lot of time and patience.

In the same manner of how the Astros’ general manager had a long term goal to make the team a success, you must look at the long game in building a tribe for your blog and not go after the home run.

No one can build a blog to 500,000 views in six months unless they had learned lessons from their first blog or if they are a celebrity.

You also must stay the course and ignore the outside noise from those who might be telling you to give up.

If you think you do not have the time to put together the words from scratch, here are some business blogs who uses twitter chats to put together weekly posts.

Note: This is not a quick fix at all because it takes a lot of work to host a twitter chat and even more work to put together the recap for the blog.

#ContentWritingChat, hosted by Express Writers

#TwitterSmarter, hosted by Madalyn Sklar

#SproutChat, hosted by Sprout Social

#VCBuzz, hosted by Viral Content Bee

#ContentChat, hosted by Erika Heald

What are more ways you can build your blog from scratch?

November 1, 2017  

Rachel Moffett, Blogger at Define Your Hustle

By Cheval John

Rachel Moffett made an appearance on What’s The Word? to share about her journey to becoming a social media manager for Express Writers.

Her journey began when she started blogging in 2009.

Along the way, she founded her website, Define Your Hustle.

In this episode, you will hear:

How Express Writers’ twitter chat, #contentwritingchat, build a deeper community with their audience

Why blogging takes a lot of work

Why putting a year into blogging does not make you an overnight success

This episode was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network

Snippet on Vallano Media TV

Full Episode on BlogTalkRadio

Website: www.defineyourhustle.com

Twitter: @redheadrachel

Quotes from Rachel:

INFLUENCER MARKETING

I think a true influencer is really somebody who has trust with their audience.

I think there is a lot of misconceptions that just because you have a million followers on Instagram, you are an influencer.

It’s a lot more effective to have a smaller highly engaged audience than a huge audience that is not paying attention and is not listening to anything you have to say.

If they do not trust you, they are not really going to buy into what you are trying to sell or anything like that.

So I do think it really has to do with trust and building a relationship with your audience if you really want to be a true influencer on social media.

TWITTER CHATS

Twitter just makes it so much easier to have a conversation with people in real time.

You could certainly have conversations on Facebook or Instagram as well.

I do feel on Twitter, people are a lot more open to having a conversation and I think twitter chats kind of break the ice a little bit and makes it easier to reach out and start a conversation when somebody might be a little afraid to reach out to someone new.

LIVE STREAMING

The reality is it’s a really powerful way to connect with your audience.

Whether it is live video or if it is pre-recorded YouTube videos, your audience gets to see you and hear you.

It is like they are right there with you and interacting with you in a way.

On a blog, they are just reading written content.

While that is great and I love reading blog posts, I think there is something really special about that connection you have where you can have a real time conversation with somebody over a live broadcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, would you share it with your friends and colleagues.

Also, who would you like to hear from on this show?

November 1, 2017  

Newsletter For November

By Cheval John

Can you believe we are almost done with 2017?

For some of you who lives here in Houston, you saw the Super Bowl and the World Series.

The rest of you became more prominent in the social media space.

To finish this year on a high note, here are some articles for this month’s newsletter from trusted sources

4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Embrace the Next Phase of Digital Maturity, ‘Cognitive Transformation’-Jaimy Szymanski, guest writer at Entrepreneur.com

5 Things To Think About When Starting A Blog-Catriona Pollard of C.P. Communications

Elon Musk, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman Explain How to Learn Anything Faster-Jessica Stillman, Contributor at Inc Magazine

9 Be’s: Successful Blogger Secrets You Need to Know-Rebekah Radice of Rebekah Radice Media

How to Create and Analyze Instagram Stories for Business Accounts-Kristi Hines, Contributor to Social Media Examiner

How To Turn Views Into Leads On YouTube-Jessika Phillips of Now Marketing Group

Later today, you will see a blog post from the podcast episode featuring Rachel Moffett, Founder of Define Your Hustle as this newsletter falls on a Wednesday.

And keep on eye out for blog posts every Wednesday and Friday.

Also, there will be a podcast recording at approximately 4 p.m. eastern, 3 p.m. central on the business page of this company on Facebook Live with guest Laurie Ann Nilo, Social Media Manager of Simply Measured

Have a great day everyone.

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