Ever since we first got asked to come to Vermont as part of the book tour while we were looking for things to do in Iowa, we knew this meant one thing: ROAD TRIP!
Ann and I were excited to be part of Burlington, Vermont Social Media Breakfast and with a beautiful 3-4 hour drive to get there we thought it would be fun to video the whole thing and make a fun piece of content out of it.
As life often does, schedules change and special props that were suppose to make this trip even cooler never came through, but as with everything we just rolled with it.
I decided that even going solo, I’d still make the video as a good challenge to get better shooting on the road. As you’ll see, the story of the road trip took a strange twist as Mother Nature decided to throw tornados at Massachusetts and directly at my house and family.
Except for the fact that copies of our book did not arrive due to being out of print, the event went off without a hitch and I guess I should mark my calendar to return back in two years to keep the streak alive.
One of the most common questions we get asked lately is, “when will the audiobook of Content Rules be coming out?”
We are happy to say that both Ann and I have spent quality time at Elephant Music Group recording it with awesome producer Kenny P.
While we don’t have a release date yet, it hopefully will be soon and of course as soon as we know so will you.
I was in the studio today finishing up my re-records for various flubs and other mistakes and thought I’d share some photos so that you could see what it looked like.
Last Sunday instead of chilling out in my PJs with my coffee and iPad in front of the morning news programs, I jumped on the computer to be a guest on HubSpot’s Inbound Now.
I wrote about my Full Sail experience on my own blog, but I wanted to share it here as well because they’ve just posted the recording of my speech and we know that while we’d love to come to every town in the world, that isn’t going to happen.
This way, you at least get a flavor for what a book tour stop might be like. We hope other venues capture them as well so that we can share as many as possible since each time we get in front of an audience it is a bit different.
If curious, the setting was a lecture room with over 150 students, professors and guests in the room. They were also live streaming it, where another 300 or so people were watching and asking questions. Before I knew it two hours had gone by.
If we were playing a word association game and I said “B2B webinar promotional video,” what’s the first word that might come to your mind?
“Boring?”
“Dreary?”
“Ho-hum?”
In most cases, you’d be right, I’m afraid. Most companies create promotional videos that are all of those things, plus maybe “mind-numbing” and a “waste of time,” too.
But every once in a while, someone decides to have a little fun. I’ve talked about this before: ExactTarget brought a sense of energy and fun to its Connections 2010 promotional videos, too. And here, FOCR (Friend of Content Rules) DJ Waldow brings more of the same energy to a promotional video we shot for an upcoming webinar C.C. and I are doing in a few weeks with Blue Sky Factory.
If you watch closely, you’ll see that this video has all the hallmarks of a solid promotion.
Short? Yup.
Tie-in to live event? Check.
Call to action? You bet.
But what it lacks is something valuable, too: That deadly boring bit.
Our friend, and fellow Wiley author Scott Stratten , took some time out of his busy life to crank the tunes and review our little old book.
If you have not read Unmarketing yet, I can’t recommend it enough. I wrote a review for it when I first read it and still quote him all the time. Every marketing and PR professional needs to read it.
The Content Rules Book Tour might have taken a break for the holidays, but it is about to get in full swing as I am headed to Las Vegas, Orlando, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Then both Ann and I will be going out to San Francisco for an event. ALL of this in January!
But, before we hung the stockings and popped the champagne, I headed out to Portland, Oregon to give the opening keynote for the Portland State Digital Marketing Conference.
While there a couple of interviews were shot and both of them hit the web today.
Up first was an interview backstage immediately following my keynote. They were filming them with all the speakers and I was still wired from being on stage and that energy carried forward into this.
The second was filmed as a short interview with both myself and Brian David Johnson who is the futurist for Intel, the author of Screen Future and was the conferences closing keynote. I’m still glowing from what he had to say about Content Rules.
We are really looking forward to all the people we are going to meet on the tour and are psyched to hear that so many of you are enjoying and learning from the book.
With my first event behind me, the book tour is officially underway for Content Rules and I know that Ann and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
There was something perfect about the indie theater vibe, complete with set pieces around me on stage. Some speakers would freak at the set up, but I actually thrived in it. Being someone who loves to act and doesn’t get to be on stage nearly enough as I’d like (in the acting sense) I think I might have had a permagrin on my face the whole time.
I’m still digging through the tweets, but it looks like people left inspired, energized and ready to tackle the content beast and that is what I had hoped for.
Thank you to Ernst & Young for sponsoring the event and a special thanks to SMB Ottawa organizers Rob Lane, Ryan Anderson, and Simon Chen for making this event happen. The hospitality (and campfire building skills) of the people in Ottawa really shined through and it is a city I hope to return to again.
