“BIGG Success is an e-learning, coaching and small business consulting firm. We provide educational resources to entrepreneurs, professionals and the organizations that serve them, like Chambers of Commerce and community banks.
It’s your place for entreprenurturing™ — a learning community built around winning in life and business. We help you fight the fears and frustrations we all face on the way to finding freedom and fulfillment. That’s BIGG success!”
Despite the fact that I often talk about attaining raises and promotions in your career, I don’t often discuss their ramifications to both your work and your personal life. The fact is, when you move into an expanded role, especially a managerial role, the expectations of those around you are going to rise. Each new position brings about a new level of control and commitment. If you ignore this, your transition into the new role can be more difficult than it should be.
It is important to remember that when you receive a promotion or a raise in pay, you are accepting new roles and new commitments. You might not think it at first, but your manager is going to expect something more in response to your new status. Promotions and raises aren’t so much a reward for past service, but more an incentive for future services. Managers are going to expect you to “step up to the plate” and take a more active role in projects and day-to-day issues. Unfortunately, though, they often don’t take the time to explain exactly what their new expectations are. Too often, they simply assume that you will know how to take on the new role, even though it hasn’t been well defined or, perhaps, even described to you.
In order to keep your career on track, you need to take the initiative to clearly define any increased expectations. This can range from the simple realities of new meetings you should be attending to the specifics of who you should be supervising and mentoring within your group. Have this important conversation with your manager as soon as possible after your new promotion is announced. Otherwise, you will find yourself in a sort of limbo between positions.
I am sure you have seen newly minted supervisors who spend their first few weeks wandering around in a daze, trying to figure out their new place in the organization and the expectations of those around them. You want to insure that your transition is as smooth as possible, though, so you can start being effective in your new role from the very first day.
Subtleties
Beyond your official work role, there are more subtle expectations that can effect your work life. These can be even more troublesome than the issues above, as there are fewer guidelines available to you and they can have an insidious effect on your work life if they are ignored.
First, there are expectations about who you will associate with in your new role. I am sure you have heard stories about rank-and-file workers suddenly elevated to a supervisor or manager role. Suddenly you are no longer one of “us”, you are now one of “them”. This can be a crushing blow for some people, as it removes the work support structure carefully built over the years. Worse still, this happens before you have built any sort of support structure in your new role. You can feel adrift as you try to navigate the passage between the two. That said, you need to understand the unique culture of your company. In some cases, there won’t be a problem with you continuing to lunch with your former peers. In other companies, this will be seen as a social faux pas of the highest degree.
Second, the subtle cues of work attire are almost sure to be an issue. Jeans and polo shirts might have been appropriate in your past position, but now, suddenly you are elevated into the world of suits and ties. Again, it depends on your individual company, but you are well advised to be aware of these expectations, as well. While I personally detest the affectations of business dress codes (perhaps this is one reason I work for myself), you ignore them at your peril.
Finally, not only will expectations rise in your new role, but you should also expect them to rise. It only makes sense that new positions will bring more and different responsibilities. Any attempt to ignore this fact will hamper your transition into your new role and could derail your career entirely. While your work performance is certainly the most important part of your career, you must also deal with the more subtle world of the expectations of those around you.
Career Conversation: Jennifer Oliver O’Connell of Tuesdays with Transitioners
Douglas talks with Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, founder and leader of Tuesdays with Transitioners, a job group in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California. We talk about career transition, some misconceptions about transition and even how employers can work with transitioners to find great employees.
More information on Jennifer Oliver O’Connell and Tuesdays with Transitioners:
I recently produced a series of video testimonials for a client and they are now available online. We shot 3 videos over the course of the day, dodging the jet noise coming out of Burbank airpot and the home improvement projects of the next door neighbors. Video production “out in the wild” is always a bit of an adventure, but I think these video turned out quite well. I am working with the client to get some bette thumbnails chosen for the video — always a bit of a pain with YouTube videos. We will need to create custom thumbnails for each video to make it look its best.
Subscribed is my series highlighting the Podcasts, YouTube Channels and Blogs that I follow on a daily basis. Check out this entry, and past entries, for some great New Media Content — Douglas
Lots of great New Media advice to be had here on Tod’s site. Blog posts on improving how to you set up and use YouTube, blogs, podcasts and more. It is always a pleasure to find Tod’s content in my RSS stream.
Recent blog posts:
The Secret of the Red-Bold Email
CBC Radio “Real Life Chronicles” Shows
Switching from WordPress.com to the Self-Hosted WordPress
YouTube’s Secret Link That Will Boost Your Channel Subscribers
FromTod’s web site…
“Tod Maffin is one of North America’s leading digital marketing experts, specializing in viral and ROI-based campaigns for sectors from human resources to real estate to education.
Maffin, president of engageQ digital, is one of the country’s go-to commentators on the impact of accelerated technological change and innovation on the business and economic environment and can speak to every aspect of technology and resulting implications for the world in which we live.“
We were happy to visit with Douglas E. Welch today on The Bigg Success Show today. Douglas is an expert on building the career you deserve and spreading the word about your talents using social media. Among other things, he’s the host of two great blogs and podcasts: Career Opportunities and Careers in New Media. Here’s a recap of the conversation:
As part of my new work focus, I started a new New Media project last week with a trip to the Palm Springs area to record author introductions for the Authors Marketing Agency. These 3 videos are the first results of that project.
I think that authors (and anyone who seeks to build their business or sell their products) needs to be producing videos of all sorts in order to fulfill my mantra of “Showing people what you do and how well you do it.” In today’s world, this is the best way of attracting opportunity TO you instead of constantly having to seek them out.
Videos — and blogs and podcasts and newsletters and more — work for you 24/7, even when you are sleeping. They are your surrogates in the online world — explaining your concepts, detailing your products, sharing your knowledge — even when you can’t be there in person.
Whether you create your online content yourself, or hire someone to help you with it, it is so important that you create and share it. If you would like assistance in marketing your books, please contact the Authors Marketing Agency for assistance.
This is the beginning of a new series for Careers in New Media, “New Media Vocabulary.” Here I will try to make sense of some of the New Media terms that get tossed about, but which might be confusing to those new to the New Media world. — Douglas
New Media Vocabulary: SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO (Search Engine Optimization are tactics, procedures and practices designed to increase the profile of your web site properties in the various Interest search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo Search and more. These practices can range from “white hat” style SEO such as producing good content, informative and attractive headlines for posts and judicious keyword usage to “black hat” tactics where software is used to attempt to manipulate the search engine algorithms to artificially inflate a web site’s profile.
The main goal of SEO is to place your web site in the top page of search results for a particular set of search terms. Such placement can result in large amounts of web traffic and that, in turn, can result in large revenue from that web site.
Podcasting/New Media Advocacy Group – A Public-Facing Group Designed to Promote Podcasting and New Media Content to the Public
One of the things I have always found lacking in the Podcasting Community is a public advocacy group dedicated to promoting podcasting (and other forms of New Media such as YouTube Channels) to the general public.
While this group, and others, do a good job of podcasters supporting each other, we all seem to be left on our own wen it comes to introducing our shows to the public, as well as the concept of New Media in general.
With advances like the AppleTV, Roku, Boxee and smart TV’s, it should be easier than ever for podcasters to get their shows before the non-technical public who are just interested in good content. I have often said that one item required for podcasting to grow into a more powerful medium is to “get on the TV!” By this I don’t mean get purchased by a television network, etc, but rather “get on the box” that is in nearly everyone’s home already.
In that regard, I am proposing the creation of a New Media Advocacy group specifically to promote podcasting and New Media to the general public. If there are other interested people, we can set up some online structures to start this journey and begin got move forward as 2013 begins.
I can offer some more thoughts on this topic if people are interested. It is something that has been on my mind since 2004.
I am in the midst of reading this book and enjoying it a lot Shirley seeks to provide some background as to why people volunteer their time and energy on various Internet-conncected pursuits as varied as online communities, sharing Instagram photos and raising money for charities online. I am finding that I am highlighting quite a few sections to consider later, as I read.
From Amazon.com…
“The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us for the better.
In his bestselling Here Comes Everybody, Internet guru Clay Shirky provided readers with a much-needed primer for the digital age. Now, with Cognitive Surplus, he reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind-expanding reference tools like Wikipedia, which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence in real time. Cognitive Surplus explores what’s possible when people unite to use their intellect, energy, and time for the greater good.”
I am a very happy use of Apple’s iPhone products. I have a 3G, an iPhone 4, an iPhone 4s and soon, an iPhone 5. All of the past phones have been passed down to other family members over the years and, at risk of jinxing myself, I haven’t broken a screen yet.
I am a Mac users for many years now, and I find that iPhone carries the same benefit at as my Mac. As I describe it to my friends and my clients, “The Mac/iPhone works the way that I do.” I understand it. It integrates well into my work flow and daily life and, for me, it works well overall as a piece of ubiquitous technology. it allows me to be productive no matter where I am, which is very important when you are a freelance consultant like myself. I can grab a few minutes with email while I wait outside a client’s house, or sit in a coffee shop and catch up on the latest news and events over my Cafe Americano.
The iPhone 5 can be a New Media production studio in your pocket. You can record audio, shoot and edit video, upload to YouTube and blog the results.
To sum up, it works for me. It might work for you. Check it out!
I have been spending a lot of time working on my YouTube channel lately, mainly due to my observation of how various gaming channels have created some amazing programming there. With gaming the #2 category on YouTube, many of the channels I am subscribed to are supporting their creators as a full time job. It isn’t easy, of course. Extremely popular channels have to constantly be populated with new, entertaining content, and their creators will be the first to tell you how challenging it can be. I have been watching these producers very carefully and noting the methods they use improve my own YouTube channel.
Still, as a long time podcaster, more and more I am seeing the need for every podcaster — whether predominantly audio or video — to create and maintain their own YouTube channel.
For me, podcasting and YouTube are complimentary and can work quite well together. Combine this with live streaming options that tie into YouTube (TwitchTV and Google Hangouts are 2 examples) and you could have a potent source of new audience members and even income to help you grow your show.
Every podcaster needs a YouTube Channel
Ease of monetization
Monetizing podcasts can be difficult. There is no podcast equivalent of Google Adsense, so producers are forced to become their own advertising salesforce. Finding advertisers and/or show sponsors can be extremely time consuming and frustrating. It is also a never-ending burden as you are constantly having to find new advertisers and sponsors for your show. Also, since podcasts are downloaded directly to the computer of your audience, there is no easy way to include dynamic advertising or create web links to products and sponsor web sites.
YouTube, on the other hand, can provide a solution to nearly all these issues.
Using the Google Adsense model, Google sales reps find the advertisers, assist in creating the advertising and manage the system that dynamically inserts that advertising into your YouTube videos based not only on the content of your shows, but also on the interests of the viewer.
As has been seen with Adsense revenue on web sites, Adsense earnings are nearly directly proportional to the number of readers/viewers that your content. In most cases, creating content that attracts viewers drives higher earnings and further growth while allowing you to focus on the content of the shows, not ad sales.
Further, the built-in rating engine and other metrics used by Google to suggest videos to users, can create its own feedback loop of support and audience generation. Together this creates a monetization model that can hold large potential benefits. with little work on the part of the podcaster.
Introduce your show to an entirely different audience
People often forget that YouTube is, at its heart, a social network much like all the others. While some of your current listeners and/or viewers night also follow you on YouTube, you will be introducing yourself to a large, new audience that has never heard of you — or your show — before. This is true of ay social network. Yes, there will always be some overlap, but there will also be a significant amount of new potential audience members in the mix. Go where you audience (or potential audience) congregates. In today’s world, YouTube is one of the most important places to be seen.
Current video podcasts easily re-purposed on a YouTube channel
If you are already producing some video content, a YouTube Channel is a great way to gain more exposure and audience with very little extra work.
Work as a companion to audio podcasts
Printed text can be an intimate connection between the writer and the reader — witness how many people cry at the end of a Harry Potter book. That said, as most podcasters have found, audio can be even more intimate. I often describe audio podcasting as “whispering in the ears” of my audience. This creates a deeper connection with your audience has they hear your voice, its inflections and tone. Still, video is more intimate still. The ability to see your face, your expressions, your movements bring an entirely different level of intimacy to the equation. If you are doing only an audio podcast, I would highly recommend creating some small video companion pieces which you can share via your regular podcast feed and also as part of your YouTube channel. In some cases, you might be about to repurpose your existing audio shows by “enhancing” them with graphics, photos and other supporting material. You can even use technology like QR codes and audio cues (See “Using Chirp to…) to add interactive features to your audio shows.
In a reverse example, I am seeing video podcasters and YouTube producers also creating audio only, long form, content as a companion to their shorter video presentations. In one case, Eric Rochow from Gardenfork.tv was producing short videos on food, farming, beekeeping and more for his video podcast. Like many producers, though, he saw the need for content his viewers could consume while doing other tasks like working in the garden or driving a vehicle. (one great advantage of audio podcasts). He also wanted to explore topics more thoroughly and more easily invite guests in for discussions. To fill that need, Eric created Gardenfork Radio, a fairly traditional talk radio show with segments on all his typical topics, a co-host with which to discuss these topics, interview guests and more. I see Eric’s combination of the video and audio as an excellent example of how podcasters can make use of both audio and video to reach a larger audience will also providing more in-depth information in a longer form show.
Consuming YouTube (and other) video via mobile now infinitely easier than before
In the past, when bandwidth was expensive and mobile bandwidth was slow to non-existent, it was difficult to consume video. Podcasting, due to its download model, allowed users to easily download content while and home and sync it to their mobile device for watching and listening wherever they might be. Due to the increasing speed of mobile bandwidth and the stability of various streaming alternatives for both audio and video, podcasting has lost a bit of its advantage. Yes, there are still times when podcasting can shine — such as when you are away from reliable cell phone coverage or on a limited bandwidth data plan, but the podcasting download model holds less advantage than ever before. In this case, I think that streaming technology has “won” over podcasting in some ways. Yes, I still use both methods for accessing my favorite content, but as apps like Stitcher and Apple’s own Podcasting app have show — listeners want to be able to stream your content as well as subscribe in the usual podcast fashion.
What are your thoughts about YouTube channels and how podcaster might make use of them?
Use the comments here to let me know and continue the conversation.
I definitely agree with some of what this article has to say. Non-mainstream podcasts have the potential to change things dramatically, but without a unified method of discovering and monetizing podcasts most languish in obscurity. Apple’s podcast directory is woefully inadequate and dominated by mainstream radio and it contains no way to monetize podcasts through subscriptions or advertising. Secondly, there is no unified ad market where podcasters can turn for monetization. YouTube, with its connections to Google Adsense and easily monetization options is a far better environment for making money with your podcast — if you happen to produce video and not audio-only programs.
For greatest chance at success, it has to be as easy to watch or listen to podcasts (and discover them) as it is to turn on the television or radio. Until the time that there is some parity between entertainment doing from a variety of sources, podcasts will always be second class citizens of the media world.
Podcasters are to radio what bloggers are to newspapers: independent voices taking attention away from mainstream media. At least that was the theory, when professional podcasts and blogs were getting started in the 2000s. But unlike blogs, podcasts by indie voices have not gone on to seriously challenge the mainstream media incumbents. Where is the Ariana Huffington of podcasting? Can you name a political podcaster who’s had the same impact as Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo blog? Sadly, there are no podcasting stars – and it’s all radio’s fault.
It deals a host of new social media tracking reports that provide an amazing amount of detail on how various social media sites are driving traffic to your web properties i.e. blog, web site, store.
You can find the new reports under Standard Reporting, Traffic Sources, Social…
It can be a bit daunting to locate and use these reports, as powerful tools can often be a bit hard to use. Still, I was able to reach in an tease out some very detailed information about which sites are sending traffic to my web site and exactly what they articles they are linking to. You can slice and dice the information in a number of ways which I have only just begun to discover.
If you use Google Analytics, check out these new reports. I am sure you will find a wealth of information there about how social media is effecting your web efforts.
An interesting acquisition, but I wonder what Discovery is getting out of the deal. Are they looking to do more web-based entertainment or are they basically hiring a bunch of web video talent to create new properties for Discovery or bolster their existing properties. Only time will tell. I wish them the best and hope that they can find a fit within Discovery.
Discovery Gets a Web Video Arm, Courtesy of Revision3
“…Here’s a proof point: Discovery Communications, parent of the Discovery Channel, has purchased Revision3, a Web video start-up that makes and distributes its own shows, like “Tekzilla” and “Epic Meal Time.”…”
More information on Jennifer Oliver O’Connell and Tuesdays with Transitioners:
