ZimmComm – New Media, LLC

We wish you and your family a very happy 4th of July celebration.

Stay safe and enjoy the fireworks wherever you are.

It’s been a long month of road blogging so I haven’t posted much here. You can see how a blog can become a great daily online window into your organization or event by checking out either Domestic Fuel or AgWired. Several different organizations have been employing our services to blog their event. There’s more to come on both these websites over the coming months as well.

I’ll continue to draw your attention to new media ideas here as we work on developing them ourselves.

In the first post in this series I wrote out a list of all the hardware and software I use with links to all of them. In this post I’m going to address what I do with all that. There are any number of ways to blog and everyone will develop their own style and processes. A lot depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. For example, on several of our blogs like AgWired, I’m posting as a reporter and often on location from an event. If all you’re trying to do is an infrequent post about your company you may not need to use many of my techniques. So take what you will from this and email me if you’ve got questions or suggestions.

So let’s get started:

To begin with I normally post while I’m online. Some people may compose their posts offline and save them until they get online. I see no need to wait most of the time and am ready to publish my posts as soon as I compose them. With my computer online I then open up my blog admin panel (WordPress). Then I’ll open up Outlook, Photoshop, Ipswitch FTP_Pro and Windows Explorer. I’ll usually have several windows of Internet Explorer open too. This let’s me search for websites to link to and check my post quickly to make sure I didn’t mess anything up. Continue Reading…

For those of you who are thinking about how you get into the blogging mode I’ve decided to write a couple posts on this subject. This is part one of a 2 parter. Expect part 2 sometime in the next week. I’m going to start by describing the tools, things like software and hardware that I use. They I’m going to go over my technique and how I approach a post.

So let’s take a look at the tools:

Blogging Software: It’s WordPress and that’s all you need to know if you want to be serious about blogging. If you have any other questions about this call me. With their new Widgets and all the plug-ins, this software does it all. Continue Reading…

While a lot of people are sitting around wondering if this podcasting things is going anywhere and if anyone is listening, one company is doing research to find out. Podtrac, which claims to have the largest database of demographic information on the people who listen to podcasts just released the results of their quarterly survey. Here’s some interesting findings:

According to their survey, over half (56%) of the podcast audience is listening and viewing podcasts on their computers, 46% on a portable device, and the vast majority (88%) listen or view the entire podcast episode. The survey also found that podcast awareness continues to grow as 41% of U.S. online adults were aware of term “podcasting” at the end of Q1 2006 versus 32% at the end of Q4 2005.

I don’t think anyone can discount the marketing mania that Apple has generated with their product. I just posted an example of this on one of our news blogs. Now’s the time to get your message and information out “there” which of course means in your customer’s and member’s iPods.

via Podcasting News

I just finished a blogging and podcasting workshop with the Porter Novelli agency in Adelaide, Australia. I only wish I had been able to be there in person. This fine looking group did send me a picture from during the presentation. I had control of their computer with NetMeeting and we were on speakerphone.

Like many agencies I’ve had the honor to present to, they wanted to see some real world examples and talk about what I’ve learned from over a year in the new media world. I hope it was helpful. We looked at various blogs and podcasts that I’ve been involved in or know of and all with an ag focus.

If you’d like a workshop of your own please feel free to contact me.

I’m able to announce another upcoming event I’ll be blogging. This time it’s the Country Music Association Fan Fair in Nashville. I’ll be blogging it on AgWired for New Holland.

New Holland has an on-going promotional campaign that involves country music star, Michael Peterson who has a new album out that’s only been available at New Holland dealers. At the Fan Fair on June 11 he’ll be presiding over the first ever Michael Peterson/New Holland Celebrity Tractor Race. Additionally, all the pictures, interviews and video I shoot will be loaded onto a video iPod to be given away in a contest for people who enter at the venue. Very cool promotional idea if you ask me. Here’s some more details on the event from the CMA Fan Fair website:

Sunday, June 11, spotlights the Michael Peterson/New Holland Celebrity Tractor Race from 1:00–3:00 PM. Country Music artists and celebrities will race against the clock through an obstacle course on a New Holland compact tractor. A New Holland Boomer compact tractor will be signed by all participating celebrities and auctioned off at a later date on eBay, with proceeds to be divided between the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and to the winner’s charity of choice. Participants include Deborah Allen (Curb recording artist); Bering Strait (Universal South recording group); singer/songwriter Woody Bradshaw; singer/songwriter Bekka Bramlett (former member of both Fleetwood Mac and Bekka & Billy); The Honorable William J Chatfield (Director of Selective Service); actor Alan Dysert; actor Scott Getlin; Craig Hentrich (NFL punter with the Tennessee Titans); Janet Ivey (creator of “Janet’s Planets”); Robert K Oermann (noted Country Music historian and journalist, as well as former judge on the USA Network’s television series “Nashville Star”); singer/songwriter Bobby Pinson; singer/songwriter Colt Prather; and singer/songwriter Billy Yates.

I thought I’d provide you with an example of the way I like to conduct event coverage via blog. This week I’m attending the Indianapolis 500 and my primary coverage is on our Domestic Fuel website. The following is one of the posts from Thursday that shows you a good mix of media types that can be done. This was posted to the website before the afternoon was over. Think of how you can do this (or outsource to us) for your events. Let me know if you’d like more information. Here’s my post:

After the Ethanol Summit program was over, it was time for a ride around the track. USDA Under Secretary Tom Dorr is inside the truck you see here on his second lap.

I got to ride in the truck afterward. They allowed 3 of us to ride along with the driver. I interviewed them all as we were making our laps today in the Chevrolet Ethanol Pace Truck.

The guys in the truck with me were Dan Edwards, Indy Track Racking Operations Director (driver), National Corn Growers Association Chairman, Leon Corzine and Waitt Farm Network Director, Emery Kleven. Emery took the picture of me in the back seat with Leon. You can listen to the interview here: Indy Pace Truck Interview (3 min MP3)

Just to make it interesting I also shot video clips. The first one here is a Pace Truck drive-by with the USDA Sec. inside. The second one is my ride inside the truck while doing the interview you can hear above.

Pace Car Drive-By (1 min wmv)

Pace Car Laps (3 min wmv)

If you subscribe to our website you’ll get lots of information about new media, especially blogging and podcasting. To kind of put it all in perspective in one document, Eric Schwartzman, founder of iPressroom has just published a white paper titled, “New Media Marketing Communications.” You have to register to receive a copy but it’s free and easy.

There’s lots of good stuff in there. In the summary he says that “New media marketing communications programs represent the channels by which organizations may leverage the web to reach their marketing and PR objectives.” That’s exactly what they do. They work in unison with what I would call the traditional media marketing communications programs. Together you can have one extremely powerful marketing program.

If you’re serious about wanting a new way to communicate with your customers or members then podcasting will certainly provide you with a new avenue to do so. To learn more about it I recommend a conference like the Corporate Podcasting Summit. Of course you can call your friendly ZimmComm New Media rep (that would be me).

I like this line describing the event, “How to integrate the podcast into your full suite of marketing activity for profitable gain.”

Look here for the agenda and here for the blog about it.

Once you have a high traffic blog that’s been up a while with commenting allowed the spammers find you. It’s just like the spam you get in your inbox only it comes in to your blog. I would love to get my hands around the throat of one of these little $%*^&(‘s. Can you say, “comment spam rage?”

Almost 4,000 spam comments in the last 3 days on ZimmComm blogs. Amazing! It’s one of the hazards of being so popular I guess. To combat it I just installed Akismet on the blogs. It’s a nice little WordPress plugin that’s simple to install. Since I’ve been marking the comment spam as “spam” and that was putting it into a folder, Akismet can look at that and learn from it. Now they’re all in the Akismet spam folder which it automatically deletes after 15 days unless I do so manually.

I am seriously hoping this helps.