Author Archive: Tom Martin
Hollywood in your pocket: 7 tools for creating killer web content with your iPhone
Last year, Tom interviewed 45 digital leaders for Talking with Tom.
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For the last year, I’ve been managing my video blog Talking with Tom using nothing other than an iPhone. I’ve been interviewing digital thought leaders and then sharing those video interviews once a week via the site. That’s right: shooting video, pictures, writing posts and publishing the entire thing using nothing but the iPhone.
I’ve learned a whole lot about what an iPhone can and cannot do. Along the way, my iPhone has become one of my favorite blog content creation tools. And today, I want to share seven of the most valuable tools I discovered along the journey.
A picture is worth 1,000 words
Easily the biggest advancement in the iPhone 4 was the camera. With the iPhone 4, you can actually shoot pretty decent photographs and HD video. But if you really want to kick it up a notch you need a few extra toys.
My go-to app for on-phone retouching is Photogene. The app lets you crop, alter colors, reduce the “noise” in a photo and basically take a normal shot and make it look pretty darn cool. So if you’re running a food, travel or hotel blog, where pictures really are worth a thousand words, you might want to consider exploring all of the photo retouching apps in the app store.
My second favorite photo app is Big Lens. I’m a big fan of photos that use depth of field to place parts of the photo in focus while other parts are out of focus. The iPhone’s camera doesn’t give you that ability, but with Big Lens, you can. You can take photos through the app, or just pick photos from your camera roll and select which part of the photo to place in and out of focus. You can even adjust the fStop to increase or decrease the amount of blur. If you’re in the food business or restaurant business, this one is a must-have on your iPhone.
Can you hear me now?
The problem with native iPhone audio is the microphone. It’s just not that good. The good news is this is easily fixed.
First, to ensure optimum audio, you need an external mic. For basic audio interviews, where your intention is to use the entire iPhone like a microphone and point it at your interviewee while they speak, pick up Brando Mini Directional mic. This little gem is small, lightweight and perfect for conducting one-on-one interviews at conferences and meet-ups.
You’ll like this mic because it is small enough to comfortably carry in your pocket and just snap it into to the headphone jack when you’re ready to record. Then, just point the mic in the direction of your subject and start recording. What you’ll get is audio that is much better in terms of loudness and clarity. But, I also find that it amps up all of the audio. So, while it is directional, you still need a pretty quiet place to record.
To get the best audio, you’ll need a professional grade microphone. The problem is, the iPhone can’t accept regular microphones that use the standard 3.5mm jack. To solve the iPhone’s microphone incompatibility problem, you’ll need to buy a KV Connection iPhone Microphone Adapter. It runs about $20, but with it, you can attach any microphone (that has a 3.5mm plug) to the iPhone – this includes wireless lavaliere microphones like the one I use for all of my stuff.
Once you’ve got this little gem, just find a professional grade microphone that you really like and you’re off.
Shooting like Spielberg (sort of)
Probably my favorite use of the iPhone (at least for blog content creation) is its video capabilities. While Apple’s built-in video recording tool will give you basic trimming capabilities, you’ll have to spend a few bucks to bring the world of video editing to your phone.
For all of my Talking with Tom videos, I’ve used iMovie. iMovie makes it easy to trim, split and edit clips. You can add a voice-over or soundtrack, even insert title slides (jpegs) or in my case, sponsor slides, and apply titles and transitions – all on the phone. Then you can render and publish directly to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, CNNiReport (for which they even offer a video template for titles and such) or just send it to your camera roll to be imported to your computer. If you’re a big Vimeo user, Vimeo came out with their own editing app, but I’ve found it a bit buggy thus far. Lastly, if you are shooting in a place where you just can’t get good lighting, try picking up the Flare app, which also gives you the ability to zoom while you video (can’t do that in the iPhone’s native video app) as well as apply HDR effects, etc.
You’ll also want to keep that iPhone steady, which can be hard as the iPhone doesn’t have a native mount for hooking it up to a tripod. No worries, though: order a Glif. It’s a Kickstarter project that resulted in a nice, small, simple way to mount your iPhone on any standard tripod.
And that’s it – my seven favorite tools that led me to creating better content with my iPhone. If you want more, feel free to grab a copy of my 28 Tips and Tricks for Creating Killer Content with an iPhone presentation from BlogWorld.
What do you think? Do you have any tips for using your iPhone to create better blog content? Any cool new iPhone content creation tools you’ve seen that I haven’t? Do share!
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Tom Martin is the founder of Converse Digital. Tom works with companies and agencies to help them monitor, create and engage in digital conversation to grow market share and increase customer loyalty. He blogs at Positive Disruption and can be reached by email at Tom@ConverseDigital.com.
Hiring the right clients
Beyond the RFP: new techniques for pitching and selling
The founder of Converse Digital, Tom Martin is also leading the Emma-sponsored Talking with Tom video project.
That combination determines an agency’s ability to “break out” or “go big.” Unfortunately for most of us, the traditional biz dev route (which includes RFP hell) is counterproductive to this goal.
Personally, I loathe RFPs and the whole pitch process. I’ve always felt it an incredibly flawed way of selecting one of the most important business resources a company has – its marketing partner.
I mean, I dated my wife for a year before asking her to marry me. But the vast majority of companies today want to get hitched after just a few dates. But much has been written on that subject, and I’m quite sure that most readers of this blog would agree with me. For those that don’t, the comment section is at the end of this post. Fire away.
Stop being hired by clients
For those that do agree, I encourage you to try a new route. Stop being hired by clients and start hiring them. Stop waiting to receive an RFP or mailing hundreds of clients four to six times a year to stay “top of mind.” Instead, pick the folks you really want to work with, regardless of how big they are or what agency they currently work with. But do your homework. Don’t just pick those marquee brands or brands that seem cool. Study the company, its people, its press, its social media streams and try to figure out if you’d really want to marry them. If you don’t, then move on, I don’t care how cool or hip they seem.
But if you decide that yes, you really could fancy a life of working together, go ahead and invest some time understanding their business and marketing challenges. From there, dream up something truly brilliant — something they would be complete idiots not to consider, much less do. Then call them and offer to share the idea with them. Find the CEO, CMO, Ad Director or whomever you can get an audience with and ask for 15 minutes to share with them a groundbreaking idea that addresses [insert their business/marketing challenge here]. Then be brilliant and succinct. If they have an existing agency relationship, let them know that you are not asking them to fire their current partner — but that if they like your idea, you’d expect to be allowed to execute it.
If they truly are a smart marketer, they’ll take the meeting. If they don’t take the meeting, call their biggest competitor and make the same offer – assuming of course you’d be just as happy to hire them as your newest client.
The 15-minute sell
So why 15 minutes? Two reasons. First, it isn’t a lot of time, so the “risk” to the prospective client is pretty small. Second, it isn’t a lot of time. So you and your agency shouldn’t have to spend a ton of time prepping fancy presentations. You’ll just need an idea and an easy, quick way to explain it.
I recently took my own advice and dreamed up a project that I thought would make sense to any company that sells technology to other companies. I even went so far as to begin producing the project myself. After a few weeks, I got a chance to talk about the project during a speaking gig, and I spoke at some length about how it represented the future of what’s known as “invitation marketing.”
In the audience was a member of an email marketing company. She came up after, we talked, we emailed and we had a few conference calls with the team. During that time, I had a chance to gauge what they’d be like to work with and whether I wanted to seriously pursue having them sponsor the project. Long story short, within a few weeks I had a new client. You might know them … a little company based in Nashville, Tennessee, called Emma.
Now had Emma not liked the idea, I’d still be ahead of the game because I could have just gone directly to their competitors or to another technology services or information company. In fact, while interviewing the Chief Content Officer of just such a company, that person asked if they could sponsor the same project. By the way, if you’d like to see the project, visit TalkingWithTom.com. Once there, you’ll hear from 52 digital thought leaders all answering one question: what’s next. But I digress.
The main point is this: As you prepare to enter the all-important third and fourth quarters, where the pace of traditional pitches always seems to pick up, step back for a moment and ask yourself if you really want to spend your time getting hired or hiring. Your decision and your willingness to stick to it could mean all the difference to the growth of your agency.
About our esteemed guest blogger
Tom Martin is the founder of Converse Digital, a social media marketing firm that works with ad agencies and their clients to create integrated content marketing platforms. The firm is based in New Orleans, LA. You can follow Tom on Twitter (@TomMartin) or email him.
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
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