Gary Vaynerchuk started off the convention with Thursday's keynote. Gary runs the very successful WineLibrary.tv and is something of an internet celebrity to say the least. These are some of the key points I've taken from his presentation.
If it's not in your DNA then you're not going to be able to do it
As a podcaster I should be creating podcasts which include 'parts of me'. If I'm into Sci-Fi, or travel, or Eurovision (!) then I should include these idiosynchrasies in what I do. This makes the podcast more 'me', and theoretically that's what attracts listeners and fans. The key word is authenticity: don't try to be something you're not.
I guess this in many ways puts into words exactly what I've been doing for two years (and indeed throughout my teaching career): the lessons I teach - and the content I produce - have always included a bit of 'me', especially in terms of my music, and indeed the cheesiness of the podcasts sometimes!
Content may well be king, but marketing is queen - and the queen runs the household!
Marketing your brand is the key to success and recognition. Marketing can be both traditional marketing with advertising etc., but it can also mean simply 'becoming part of the conversation' by joining discussions, posting on forums and blogs, and becoming a recognised source of opinion or information.
We have done very little 'marketing' as such with Coffee Break Spanish, and our other podcasts. Indeed, we haven't really 'needed' to so far in that iTunes drives so much of our traffic and our prominent place on iTunes helps to maintain this. Of course, relying on iTunes or any other one source of traffic can be dangerous. What happens if iTunes stops pushing podcasts? We need to look seriously at the bigger plan for marketing, but that's not really for this public blog at the moment.
Editing? Screw editing!
Gary doesn't believe in editing - it slows up the creative process and holds back publishing. Indeed in a recent episode he needed to verify the cost of a bottle of wine he was discussing so he left his place in front of the camera and went to check the price online, leaving the camera running. Apparently his viewers enjoy this because it's real.
I think there's definitely a place for this kind of production. However, I'm not 100% sure if it fits into what we're doing. On the one hand, we can easily produce that kind of 'live', raw content, and I'm sure that it would be successful, assuming we had the correct host and the correct location, be it studio or otherwise. However, I think the wider non-tech appeal of language-learning content may mean that our production needs to be higher standard. This needn't necessarily mean that we go back to the type of Buongiorno Italia production, but perhaps the best solution would be a show which "feels" live, but which is actually produced deliberately to achieve that effect. Perhaps something along the lines of Walk, Talk and Learn!
There were undoubtedly other pieces of wisdom covered by Gary during his presentation, but these were just a few of my thoughts. I'll add to these once I've heard the podcast version of the keynote.
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