Are You the Next TV Star? Internet TV for Your Business with Roxanne Darling
Denise Wakeman: Hi, this is Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad.
Patsi Krakoff: And this is Patsi Krakoff.
Denise: And you're listening to "Blogging and Beyond," the show about how to leverage the Internet to attract, sell, and profit. For the next 30 minutes, we're going to be talking to you about how to use the Internet to build your business. Now, we have a little glitch here today because we're scheduled to talk about video blogging and Internet TV and how you can use it to grow your business. Our guest is Roxanne Darling, host of "Beach Walks on the Rox" no, "Beach Walks With Rox" but unfortunately she's not on the line with us. So she could be showing up any minute. She may be having trouble dialing in. We're not really sure. Right now we are not in our normal homes either because we are at the Hilton Hotel in Irvine, California, at the Attracting Clients Like Crazy Marketing Boot Camp. So, Patsi.
Patsi: I was thinking that perhaps since Roxanne is lost somewhere we might give...
Denise: No, I think she's here now.
Roxanne Darling: Hello!
Denise: OK, we thought maybe you might be having trouble calling in.
Roxanne: Nope. I'm right here and listening. You're in Irvine. Attract Clients Like Crazy, sounds like fun.
Denise: OK. We were just about to introduce you, and we're looking forward to hearing what you have to say about Internet TV and video blogging. Patsi, do you want to go ahead and introduce Roxann.
Patsi: Right. I can't wait to hear what Roxanne has to say about this emerging Internet tool. After watching one of her daily shows posted over at www.BuildABetterBlog.com, I felt like I'd been on vacation in Hawaii. So I can hardly wait to find out how she creates these video clips and adds them to her blog. I'm sure our listeners do, too.
Denise: If you've been following the posts on BuildABetterBlog, we'll get that introduction in a minute, but I just want to say then you know that Rox has been giving out clues. Later in the show, the first caller to respond to the secret question is going to win a box of Hawaiian goodies. Why don't you go ahead and introduce Roxanne and then we'll get going with this.
Patsi: Absolutely. Roxanne Darling is the host of "Beach Walks With Rox," a daily Internet TV show direct from Hawaii. She's also the co founder of Bare Feet Studios, a web development and new media company. So welcome, Roxanne.
Roxanne: Welcome, and in Hawaiian we say "E komo mai."
Patsi: E komo mai. Very pretty.
Denise: So, Roxanne, thank you for joining us, all the way from Hawaii. I'll bet it's a beautiful day out there, isn't it?
Roxanne: It is actually. We had a very, very long winter, we skipped spring, and it's now summer.
Denise: I think in California we've had summer straight since last summer. Anyway, tell us about "Beach Walks With Rox." What is it? Where? Why? When?
Roxanne: Yes, indeed. Well, "Beach Walks With Rox" is a daily we call it any number of things, but we'll call it a daily video blog. It takes about five minutes. What I do is I walk the beach with my dog and try to spread a little bit of aloha, which means say something positive. Basically a stream of consciousness talk about what's on my mind. We started it about a year and a half ago, mostly to play with the technology because that's our business.
We of course did like a lot of people, "Well, what is our show going to be about?" We tried to come up with all these clever ideas. None of them really stuck. Then I said to my partner, secret cameraman, I said, "You know, I go to the beach every day. We have this beautiful environment that so many people are curious about. Why don't we just do something from there?"
I, for better or worse, have the gift of gab. We really thought it was just going to be a short lived experiment, and really it has a life of its own. We love it. We have viewers all around the world. As it turns out, the sunshine and the warmth and beautiful scenery really are a stress relieving tonic for people.
Denise: Well, it's an exquisite background for sure. When I've been watching for the last few days, of course I want to get all those clues. I've just been thinking, "Oh, I wish I could be in that water!" So I bet a lot of people feel that way.
Roxanne: Yes. Well, it's a funny thing because deep in the heart of winter, people in the really cold northern climates told me that it really helped them lift the dog days of winter. I thought watching something like this in the middle of Minnesota in the middle of February would make me more depressed, not less, but in fact people like it.
Denise: OK. Now, you call "Beach Walks With Rox," an Internet TV show, but you've also called it video blogging, and then there's IPTV, and there's podcasting and YouTube. Can you talk about the definitions here?
Roxanne: Yes, and I'll try not to get myself in too much hot water because many of my colleagues have very personal definitions that they like to use for each of those. Video on the Internet has been around for quite some time. People can post a video clip and put it on a web page. What changed in late 2004 was this phenomenon of RSS, which is Really Simple Syndication. I'll go into that in a second. This ability to add a file to the RSS feed.
So that means in addition to just being able to subscribe to news sites or sites that deliver text information, people could subscribe to sites that deliver audio and video information. Hence the term podcasting was born.
Initially it only worked for audio files, but in a few months time it began to work for video files. So we have audio podcasting, video podcasting. Pretty much by definition there that means that it's not just a random file stuck on a page, but that the page that it's on has this RSS feed or an ability for people to subscribe and get those shows delivered to them automatically without having to go visit the website.
Now, beyond that then we have blogging that's taking place in a parallel universe. Similarly, blogging is based on an RSS platform. It started with text, and then you add audio. Some people call audio blogging the same thing as audio podcasting. The purists in the community really think of a video blog as being something that is more personal. Much like a blog is a personal website, a video blog is a personal website that delivers video content featuring primarily that person.
Denise: OK.
Roxanne: But there's a lot of people out there who say, "Wow. This is cool. Why can't I use this technology to create a serial program?" So for example, we have shows like Galacticast, which is a couple in Canada, Rudy and Casey. They produce their own sci fi show every week. It would probably be classified as IPTV, or Internet TV, and/or video podcasts, more so than a video blog.
Denise: OK, and why would that be?
Roxanne: Well, because they've taken it from being something that's a personal site into really an entertainment medium.
Denise: OK, but as you know, our audience are business professionals, author/speakers, independent service people, small business people. Blogging was once thought of as a personal expression, like a personal journal, diary, and yet now every business should have a blog, and many businesses do.
Roxanne: Yes.
Denise: So couldn't you have a video blog that's business oriented?
Roxanne: Well, definitely. That's why I prefaced part of what I said, with what the purists would call.
Denise: Right. OK.
Roxanne: People definitely have on several of the mailing lists that I'm on, there's been literally discussion ad nauseum with the emphasis on the nauseum part.
Roxanne: About how do we define what it is we do? How does that definition affect how other people receive or perceive what it is we do?
Denise: Right. OK.
Roxanne: So I love the point that you make. Of course, we work mostly with businesses. You know, it's curious.
"Beach Walks" is very quirky in that it doesn't fit any of the typical genres. So even when we submit our site to other video sites, we aren't strictly a pure entertainment play. We aren't purely business. We aren't purely personal. We aren't purely travel. We actually cover all of those topics if you watch enough shows.
It might take you 30 days to cover that amount of territory.
Then secondarily, even though we did this as a test, it's turned out to be a real proof of concept, in terms of how you build a community. Which many businesses are interested in. How do you build a community around your product or service? How do you use the technology to demonstrate the expertise that you have that other people might be interested in purchasing?
Denise: So is that why you call "Beach Walks with Rox" Internet TV versus video blogging?
Roxanne: To a certain extent, yes. And because we also were signed up by a service called Akimbo, which actually delivers Internet content to your TV.
Denise: Oh, OK.
Roxanne: Now we're actually into another realm of this, which is that the technology is now enabling us who create content that used to only be able to be accessed via the Internet, can now be viewed on a television. With Apple TV, it's even easier.
Denise: Oy. The mind boggles.
Roxanne: Yeah. It is. So really, the hardware is becoming somewhat irrelevant. It used to define everything. If you were a magazine, you were sold on the shelves in the stores or it was delivered to your mailbox, and it was printed. If you were a television program, you had to watch between 7:00 and 8:00 on Wednesday to get ABC "Lost."
But now, Lost is in iTunes. Lost is on TV. Lost is on some people's TiVo to be watched whenever they want. Some people watch it on their iPod at the beach.
Denise: Right. With Rox.
Roxanne: Yes.
Denise: So, you touched on this a little bit, that the genre of "Beach Walks" isn't really easy to pinpoint. I'd like to, if you don't mind me asking this. Is there a business model behind "Beach Walks"? Or is it something you're using to attract clients? How does that work for you?
Roxanne: Yes. Yes. Well, there is a business model, though it's the cobbler's shoes situation at the moment. Because we have, inadvertently and by accident, built quite a substantial audience, and people really want this to continue; and we love doing it, which is just as important.
We are now looking at ways to build a business model around it. So the things that we are looking at are to have typical display advertising on the website and to try and identify sponsors who might want to sponsor particular episodes or different aspects of the website.
We are a little bit fussy about that, because and we were approached by a number of video, online content aggregators to be a part of their stable. Where we would be able to benefit from the bulk advertising deals that they sign.
But most of those deals were really targeted at companies that are not really in sync with what it is we're doing in terms of the content of our show.
So we're taking a slightly harder route to find sponsors ourselves.
But we have such an amazing audience. First of all, we have an incredibly loyal audience. We have a very educated, polite, respectful, edgy audience. We really have the cream of the crop for certain kinds of companies.
So companies like Whole Foods or the Life is Good guys, who make the t shirts and the clothing line. There are a number of brands out there that we think are very compatible with our show, that our audience has told us they'd be willing to hear from. Not only willing, but interested in hearing from.
Denise: Right. So you've got a highly desirable demographic.
Roxanne: Yes.
Denise: OK. Patsi, did you have a question?
Patsi: Yes. I know that it's become fairly user friendly and easy for people to add audio files to their blog. How easy is it to add a video file to your blog?
Roxanne: Well, it's not too hard. The harder part really might be creating the video, because it just takes a lot more time. That's really the only, the main differentiator here. With the new digital cameras and the free iMovie software that comes on Macs. There's comparable things on PCs.
You can take video and you can edit it in one of your low end editing programs. You can tell it to save for the web and it will do the encoding for you. You can host your files for free at blip.tv. They will do all of the technical coding for you.
So really the question then becomes, what do you have to say? Do you have the time to say it?
Denise: Right. Well, that's something that I've been wondering about. How do you do this every day? Is it Monday through Friday or is it seven days?
Roxanne: Well, when we started, we said, how often are we going to do this? We didn't know. So we just started doing it every day. We said, let's not say we're doing it daily. Let's just see how long we can last.
We lasted 402 episodes.
Where we didn't miss a single day. We thoroughly exhausted ourselves. Everyone kept saying, especially the people who do this and know how incredibly hard it is. They were just, thought we were nuts, and we were.
So now we do it five days a week, and I do an audio podcast on Saturdays, and then we take Sundays off.
How do we do it? One, we have a pretty simple format for our show. It's one take only. If I screw up, that's too bad. It has to go out the way that it is.
We have a template that we've built in our iMovie, so the music's already in there with the fade ins and the fadeouts. Our copyright is already in there, so literally all we have to do is drop in the new footage and do a little bit of editing.
Unless it's a special show. That can take us several hours.
Roxanne: But I actually just posted Chris Brogan, one of my friends and the founder of the PodCamp series, put out a request to people to write out their workflow for other people to learn from.
Denise: Wow.
Roxanne: So I posted it recently on our Barefeet blog, if anyone's interested. I can put some links up afterwards.
http://www.barefeetstudios.com/bfs/blog/detail/video-podcast-work-flow/
Denise: That would be terrific.
Roxanne: We can point them over to see our process and how long it takes us each day.
Patsi: We need to take a quick break here and remind you that you're listening to "Blogging and Beyond" with the Blog Squad. Denise Wakeman, and I'm Patsi Krakoff.
Today we're talking with Roxanne Darling, host of "Beach Walks with Rox" and co owner of Barefeet Studios, a web development and new media company. You can find out more about Roxanne at www.barefeetstudios.com and www.beachwalks.tv.
You can get information about the Blog Squad at www.blogsquad.biz Be sure to write down this number if you want to take a shot at answering the secret question, or if you have a question for Roxanne. Call in to 718 508 9559. Again, 718 508 9559. Or you can send an IM message via Skype to "dwakeman."
Now back to "Blogging and Beyond" and our conversation with Roxanne Darling about Internet TV.
Denise: OK, I just want to correct that. There's no Skype availability since I'm not at my regular computer. So no Skyping me. Just calling if you want to participate. OK, Roxanne.
Roxanne: Great.
Denise: By the way, do you prefer "Rox" or "Roxanne"?
Roxanne: Oh, I like them all.
Denise: OK. One thing I also want to commend you on, having watched quite a few of your videos, is one, you said you do it in one take and if you screw up. But I see very little screw up. I don't see that happening, so you're obviously quite comfortable and capable in front of the camera.
Do you rehearse or write out what you are going to say, or is it just spontaneous when you get out on the beach?
Roxanne: It's pretty spontaneous, and thank you for the compliment. I think now that I've got 400 and almost 30 episodes, I've had a little practice. It certainly helps.
That's probably a tip for people who are thinking of starting this themselves. We all tend to feel awkward and silly at the beginning. There's just nothing like getting your feet wet and learning as you go. The Internet space is very, very forgiving right now. People actually appreciate it when it's not so polished.
Even yesterday. Yesterday, the show that's up today at the top of the list, that we filmed yesterday. It was very crowded at the beach, and I said afterwards, to secret cameraman, I said, "Oh, I was horrible. I was so distracted. I was tripping over my words. I don't want to come when it's this crowded."
He said, "I didn't really notice anything."
Roxanne: So my experience of it was really very uncomfortable.
But he said, "Oh, you did the same you always do."
Denise: Actually, that's what makes it kind of interesting, too. You see people walking behind you. You see your dog is off doing whatever he's doing. Then there's somebody swimming. I was very impressed with the one where you were in the water, and watching you dive down. It was, wow, this is really cool.
Roxanne: We try to mix it up a little bit. To keep the variety. To keep it fresh and keep it live.
But I really want to encourage people that it doesn't matter. Contrary I did have some Toastmasters training I will admit to. I just heard myself say that "uh" and had the little reaction.
But contrary to Toastmasters, people really don't minds the uhs and the stammering and the stumbling. That makes it real. There's such a high value right now for a real, authentic person talking about what they know. That being so utterly compelling and believable.
As compared to the highly polished, hello, this is Roxanne Darling, and you're coming . That kind of phony radio or TV voice that people have really come to mistrust.
Denise: Right. Right.
Patsi: Which is good news for us newbies and beginners.
Denise: Or those of us who don't have any training and background in broadcasting.
Roxanne: Right.
Denise: Can you give us some examples of how online video or Internet TV is being used to support existing businesses? How people are using it for their business?
Roxanne: Well, one of the best examples is Robert Scoble, who was the very, very famous blogger at Microsoft. He was lured away by a startup, PodTech, in Silicon Valley. PodTech started their it's a startup company with venture funding.
Originally thinking that there was going to be an explosion in the audio podcasting, and very quickly they saw the huge impact of video.
So Scoble has his own video show. Because of his name recognition, he has tremendous access to the thought leaders in the technology industry. So he has a very compelling video blog, Internet TV show, call it what you will. Where he goes around and interviews these people, gets the inside scoop on their technology, on their workplace, on their workflow.
He's sponsored by Seagate Technology. PodTech also has a lot of sponsorships with Intel. So there are a number of companies that are playing the game here. In that, one, they're getting covered by Robert, which is editorial coverage, which is you couldn't pay for that type of exposure.
Denise: Right.
Roxanne: Combined with the companies like Seagate that are sponsoring him that he talks about most lovingly on his shows as a sponsor. So it's a very different kind of business relationship, even between the sponsors.
We've recently been contacted by a large Fortune 500 company who wants to do a niche video blog site for their market, hiring me as the talent, and we'll help actually write the episodes. So it's going to be a site that's focused on a topic that is funded and brought to you by XYZ Company, but it isn't going to be an advertising vehicle for XYZ Company.
They said very directly that they want it to be conversational, warm, intimate, the way "Beach Walks" is. But talking about this particular issue that will help them sell their products, and where they, through their research, have found that there's just a paucity of information about in the marketplace.
Denise: That leads me to my next question, which was what sort of impact "Beach Walks" has had on your company. Now you're being hired as a spokesperson. Talent.
Roxanne: Yes. Yes. We're being hired to help other people develop their video blogs. We've got a number of proposals in the works at the moment. Then we won three Bloggies last year at the first ever video blogging award ceremony.
Denise: Wow. Congratulations.
Roxanne: Thank you. That's actually gotten us quite a bit of traction for other things, too.
Denise: So before you started doing "Beach Walks," video wasn't really part of your mix, your product mix.
Roxanne: No. No, it wasn't. As it turns out, it's the thing because it's such a hot thing right now, it's what people are interested in. So people are finding us because of that. Not necessarily because they want to hire us for that.
Denise: Right. So what would you say a company needs to think about when it's considering blogging and audio and video? Should they do all? One? Part? Is it right for everyone?
Roxanne: That's one of my favorite questions, because we learned this ourselves through trial and error. I think that's probably how a lot of people are going to learn it.
But some people are just natural communicators through the keyboard, some through the microphone, and some through the video camera. I think it's hard to know which of those media is really going to be the one where you're most comfortable.
I've heard you guys say that to expect a CEO to text blog is highly unlikely, because a lot of these people don't type. They grew up with secretaries.
Denise: Right.
Roxanne: But you put a microphone in front of them, and they'll go to town. They're not going to do the encoding and all that. You still need a support team. But CEOs, by definition, have that support team. Then the same is true for video.
The main thing is, text blogging, is really easy. Really fast.
Audio is in between. Not so easy, not so fast, but very portable. In other words, people can put that on their iPod and listen to it in the car or at the gym. They can't be reading your blog while they're doing that. Video then, kind of in a third tier where slower and harder to produce but definitely so far and this is where YouTube comes in highest return on investment because just you can't take your way through it. It's just very compelling.
Patsi: It's just a great way to build relationship, isn't it?
Roxanne: Yes, it really is. People can read a text blog and completely misunderstand what you're saying. They don't understand your tongue in cheek sense of humor, for example, but video is the most transparent.
Denise: Right, because you get all the body language and the intonation and that sort of thing.
Roxanne: Yeah, yeah.
Denise: Well, before we go to the secret question and I know we're almost about at the half hour but we do have a few extra minutes, if that's OK, we won't be cut off. I just want to ask quickly if somebody is interested in getting started with the video blog, how would you tell someone to get started?
Roxanne: Well, there are couple of things I would suggest. One is there's a site called www.freevlog.org, which has a lot of tutorials there for people more on the technical side of how to get started. On the practical side, I would suggest they go to some of the video aggregation site and spend some time looking at what other people are doing. Some of the ones that I like are www.blip.tv, www.fireant.tv and www.network2.tv. That's network was the number two.
Denise: OK.
Roxanne: So these are sites that what they do is they aggregate the RSS feed from a lot of other video producers. So you can go through one site and you'll find Beach Walks on all those sites and you'll find hundreds of other shows that you can watch and even subscribe to and they're categorized by business, technology, travel, those kinds of things we talked about earlier.
Then you get a sense of the kinds of things that people are doing and the tremendous range of content and production values to be able to put out and then I would say just start playing around with it. Get yourself a camera, even the small still digital cameras will now take video clips so you don't even need a 'video camera' to get started.
Denise: Do you have a video camera that you recommend for the newbie?
Roxanne: Yeah, a lot of people are using, I think it's an Xacti.
Denise: OK.
Roxanne: And there's a SONY, wait a second, I really don't mind, a little SONY mini DV that's under $300. I don't have the model number for that and the main thing I would say would be to pay attention to sound. If you're going to be filming outside, wind noise on the condenser mic is really, really bad, challenging and so that means you want to look for a camera that will have a mic input and lot of the low end cameras don't.
There is this Canon Mini DV that does have a mic input that's $278. I just had a sticky note on my computer because I saw a message about that on a message board yesterday and I had a chance to look up the model number.
Denise: So what does "mic input" mean, just quickly before we wrap up, that mean attaching an external mic?
Roxanne: Yes, plugging a line and mic so that you have, so on "Beach Walks" if you look closely I am always wearing a mic.
Denise: OK.
Roxanne: And so you have to kind of attach a shot when secret cameraman is shooting me from behind and you'll see that little black box, it's hanging on my waist.
Denise: OK, but now how did you do that when you were swimming?
Roxanne: Well that we didn't have. We were using our little handheld still camera and that's why I said in the show notes, we sacrifice a little bit of quality to get in the water. That day there was no wind. So we were able to swim and use just the condenser, the external mic, on that little camera and get halfway decent sound.
Denise: OK, well I know we're getting into the techie stuff here now and that's probably fodder for another time and we did promise that you have a special gift. So do you want to talk about the contest or not contest but the secret question?
Roxanne: Well, what I wanted to do was to take advantage of some crossword linking between our blogs and that I said I would offer free box of Hawaiian goodies, to have food and various little trinkets that I have put together for you for the first person who can call in and tell us where we all met, you and I met. Are there any callers on the line?
Denise: There's no callers yet but let me give that number again. It's 718 508 9559. So the question again, Rox?
Roxanne: The question is: "What were Denise and Patsi and I drinking when we met at the BlogHer conference in New York City?"
Patsi: Can I call in?
Roxanne: We don't get a call in, yes, you, whoever is the first, I'll send you your box to do.
Denise: OK, get that number 718 508 9559 and that's "what were we all drinking at the BlogHer event where Rox, Patsi and I met?
Patsi: I was just going to tell while we're waiting for callers, I'd like to announce who is going to be on next week. Does that sounds like a good idea?
Denise: That's a great idea.
Patsi: All right, next week, "Blogging and Beyond" will be interviewing Liz Goodgold of Duh Marketing. That's right, Duh Marketing, about branding for the small business professionals. So you want to be sure to tune in on May 24 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific time for the show.
Denise: I have a caller, just a moment, let me get them on the line here.
Roxanne: Fantastic.
Denise: OK, the caller in area code 203, are you on the line?
David Peterson: Yes, I am.
Denise: OK, and your name please?
David: David Peterson.
Denise: David Peterson and do you know that answer to the question? What were we drinking?
David: Yeah, you guys were drinking Yahootinis.
Denise: We've got a winner, OK.
David: Rox, I love your show.
Roxanne: OK, David.
Denise: OK, so how do you want David to get in touch with you?
Roxanne: David, if you could drop me an email with your snail mail address, I'll get this off in the mail to you tomorrow and the email for me is beachwalks@Gmail.com.
David: OK, I have it.
Denise: OK.
David: Thank you.
Roxanne: Thanks so much for calling, David.
David: Thank you very much.
Denise: Thank you, David, OK. So we've got a couple of minutes over here. Roxanne, thank you so much for being with us today, and that's Roxanne Darling at www.barefeetstudios.com and www.beachwalks.tv and we thank you for sharing your expertise about video.
Patsi, is there anything else you'd like to add?
Patsi: Well be sure to join us next week and that's it for us. Thank you.
Roxanne: Thank you for inviting me.
Denise: OK, you're very welcome and you can listen to "Blogging and Beyond" on BlogTalkRadio Thursdays at 3:00 p.m. and you can always get the latest information about the show at our blog at www.bloggingandbeyond.com. So remember the time is now.
Patsi: The time is now to attract, sell and profit. Blog on!
About the The Blog Squad:
Blogging experts Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman are known as The Blog Squad™. They have teamed up to help professionals Attract, Sell and Profit by harnessing the power of blogs, newsletters, and ecommerce systems. Between them, they have 17 years of Internet know-how, write on 10 blogs and publish 2 ezines.
Patsi and Denise have co-authored, "Build a Better Blog: The Ultimate Guide to Boosting Your Business with a Professional Blog" and many other blogging programs to address niche blogging.
They host a Blogging and Beyond, a weekly Internet radio show. You can get their free weekly ezine Savvy eBiz Tips at www.SavvyeBizTips.com.
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