They may not be spending money to advertise there, but they are still using Twitter posts to promote themselves, their products, and their causes.
Why?
Reflections on the media and world.
They may not be spending money to advertise there, but they are still using Twitter posts to promote themselves, their products, and their causes.
Why?
Leadership when combined with management is both an art and a science. Leaders should never knee-jerk their reactions and always think their responses through for the secondary and tertiary ramifications is possible courses of action.
Vaccinated people can still contract the virus, and while this usually does not lead to hospitalization for them, the effects can still be staggering. I know people who have COVID despite being fully vaccinated and are struggling physically and psychologically.
So what does wearing a mask, or not, REALLY mean? We can answer this by drawing on religious, patriotic, and ethical teachings.
I've been podcasting for some time now and listening to podcasts for a lot longer. There are some great podcasts out there but also some stinkers.
1. Don’t have any clear subject matter for your podcast. Be all over the map.
Listeners seek out podcsts because of the content they are looking for. As a result, your podcast needs to have a clear niche. If listeners can't predict what your next episode might be about, they are unlikely to subscribe, or stay subscribed very long.
You need to "brand" what your show is about and preferably make it about something that 147 other podcasts are not also about.
A narcissictic "it's about whatever I want" subject won't attract much of an audience, other than maybe your family and close friends.
2. Use bad video and off-mic sound.
Theorist Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message." If you are an audio-only podcast, you need excellent audio quality. Sounding like you are a yard away from the microphone will turn off listeners fast. You don't necessarily need expensive professional microphone equipment, but use what you have professionally, which means having your microphone close to your mouth, recording in a quiet location, and avoiding distractions like "Popping Ps".
If you are also doing video, you also need a well-composed screen for each participant and good lighting. Weird camera angles and bad lighting appears unprofessional and ruins your credibility.
3. Ramble and use free-association as you talk.
You need to have a solid plan for your episode and stick to it. At least have a rundown of topics planned in advance so all particiants can keep track as you record. Many podcasts use a relatively complete script, written in advance.
And plan to edit your podcast before posting it. At the very least, remove most (or all) of your "UMs" and generally tighten up the flow. If you did end up wandering away from topic, maybe it's best to cut that section out. The common professional audio editing software is Adobe Audition, but the Open Source (free) package Audcity will also do everything you need.
4. It’s great to have multiple people all talking at once.
No, it's not. Only one person at a time should be talking and you should not be interrupting each other. Whoever the "host" is for this episode should also be the discussion leader and moderator. When you're verbally stepping on each other's toes or talking over each other, it doesn't feel professional and, again, blows your credibility.
5. Laugh uproariously at your own jokes.
Humor is fine in a podcast, but remember that your focus has to be your audience, not your own narcissism. You aren't entertaining yourself. You are entertaining your audience. Be like the late-night talk shows - if you are telling the joke, you're the "straight man" (or woman or other gender choices, of course). Your side-kicks may respond, but nothing is more of a turn-off than people laughing at their own jokes
6. Spend at least 20 minutes talking about your personal lives before you get around to the announced topic of today’s episode.
This takes finnesse. Some talk about yourselves (self-disclosure) can help make connections with the audience, but too many podcast people take way too long to get to the point of the episode. Best is to make any opening small-talk short and sweet. Also remember that people may be listening weeks or months into the future, so references to today's events need a light touch.
7. Monster files are no problem, even if they take ages to download.
Save your finished podcast file in a way that is easy to download quickly. For audio-only, that means as an MP3 file, but wait, there's more.
Unless you MUST have stereo, save your final as monaural. It will be smaller and will download faster. A sample rate of 44,100 Hz 16-bit is plenty of quality for a podcast that is mostly voice. Try a format setting of MP3 192 Kbps. If you use lower than these numbers, listen to test recordings critically in headphones to ensure quality. If you use bigger numbers, you probably won't hear an appreciable improvement in voice quality.
8. Violate copyright - nobody will notice (probably).
The biggest point here is that you need to be REALLY careful about what music you use in your podcast. There is no way to blanket-license your podcast to play commercially-recorded music (although a few companies are cautiously getting their feet wet). So if your podcast actually plays the music by name recording artists, you may easily be subject to copyright infringmenet legal actions.
There are ways to find royalty-free music to use for your opening and closing themes and transitions, but beware. Many of the sites that claim to have royalty free music offer it only for personal use, and a podcast available to the general public is NOT personal use. Be sure to read their terms of service.
9. Believe that "if you podcast it, they will come."
You need to not only produce a podcast with good technical quality and engaging content. You need to promote it. Get it listed with many podcast hosting sites as you can, promote it on social media, get yourself a professional-looking website, and promote, promote, promote still more. When podcasts instantaneously go viral, it is usually a freak occurance. How to really succeed at promoting would take tens of thousands of words, but promotion needs to be an importnt part of your planning.
I hope that this reverse psychology format has generated some ideas for your podcast. A podcast is not something to start on a lark. Those who do usually close down again soon. Your podcast doesn't have to exist to make money (although that is possible, once your audience grows some) but you should still treat it as a professional undertaking.
It is one of the benefits of American democracy that the public has the power to pull the country back when they perceive it has gone too far in one direction or another.
I created this graphic at the beginning of Donald Trump's term to show that over multiple presidential administrations, our course first tacks one direction and then another, but generally speaking, the long-term course remains in the middle, toward the better.
History is likely to conclude that the last four years pulled us toward white supremacy, isolationism, limiting rights, and general divisiveness. The next four years will likely lead us in different directions. It may well be that historians 50-100 years from now will see the Trump Administration as revealing a deep darkness in American society that had mostly been hidden. Maybe we needed Trump's authoritarian tendencies, chaos, and bluster in order to learn important lessons and "reimagine" who we are as a society, what kind of country we were meant to be.
For example, the Obama Administration was pretty dramatic in terms of the liberal/progressive agenda. The electorate decided it was time to take a break (not counting questions of election meddling).
Now that we have experienced the opposite direction for a while, the electorate has decided it's time to take the next steps in addressing importing things like climate change, health care, the tax code, and meaningful immigration reform.
American democracy often doesn't "get it right." Bad decisions get made and sometimes it takes a long time to correct them. But elections allow the electorate to correct the heading and preserve the long-term course.
Before the premiere of Star Trek Discovery season 3, pretty much every article about the series was saying words to the effect of "the producers are no longer bound by Star Trek continuity." The theory seemed to be that conforming to 50+ plus years of "facts" within the Star Trek universe is limiting.
The president violated every lesson in crisis communication when he downplayed the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year.
His claimed intent was to prevent panic, which is a worthy goal, but how he did it is NOT what ANYBODY with experience in crisis communication would do. What should he have done?
All over the place right now we hear name-calling and ad hominem attacks (attacks on who the people are, as opposed to the policies they support).
But arguments like that are a great way to alienate voters "in the middle" who have not yet made up their minds, because you are not just insulting the top-of-the-ticket candidates. You are insulting the undecided voters, themselves.
When you say things like:
You are un-American for supporting _______,
If you support that candidate, unfriend me.
You are gullible if you believe those lies.
If you do/don't wear a mask, you are stupid and maybe evil.
Who raised you?
Do you think you will shame people into changing their minds? It's not likely to happen.
If I tell you that you are stupid, does that open you up to new avenues of understanding? No, it makes you stubborn and it makes you close down and avoid different ways of seeing things.
Name-calling is satisfying because it allows you to express anger or fear, but it is not good persuasion. Attacking the candidates for their personality or background does nothing more than add further polarization in the minds of the people you are trying to persuade.
If you want to get people to change their minds, you need to engage with them and use evidence. People (such as voters) will use every tactic they can to AVOID admitting that they were wrong. Good persuasion opens the door to greater understanding, and greater understanding opens the door to changing ideas. Insults and attacks close down pathways that might change ideas.
If you want to change the ideas of people you know, don't insult them (or the candidates they may be considering). Engage with them and introduce them to persuasive evidence. Ask questions so you know what their actual perceptions and concerns are and focus your evidence toward these things.
Of course, phrase your questions so as to challenge their assumptions and point in the direction you want to go. More about that in another upcoming blog post.
1. Years ago, when I was a development officer for the USD Foundation, we had a prominent alum retire. I won't name him, but he was the chief financial officer for a major corporation that you would all realize. In reflecting on his retirement for the USD alumni newsletter, he named a business faculty member who he said had a profound impact on his career. When the teacher was asked, he didn't recall his former student at all, i.e. the guy hadn't been much of a standout in class, but he had been influenced anyway.2. I am also reminded of a movie few people will remember from 1980 called The Competition. In it, a character played by Lee Remick lists her pedigree as a piano teacher:"Ludwig Von Beethoven taught Carl Czerny, who taught Leschetizky, who taught Schnabel, who taught Renaldi, who taught me."