INTERNET AUDIO GUY MIKE STEWART INTERVIEWED

Transcription

1 INTERNET AUDIO GUY MIKE STEWART INTERVIEWED

2 WHO IS MIKE STEWART WHAT SOFTWARE MAKES IT EASIER TO RECORD AND EDIT THE SOUND FILES YOU CREATE? AUDIO MARKETING TIPS VIDEO MARKETING TIPS AMAZON S3 TO REDUCE BANDWIDTH COSTS BY LANCE LOVELADY RESOURCE PAGE

3 WHO IS MIKE STEWART? Mike Stewart is president and founder of Soundpages Inc., a complete multimedia production facility located in the Atlanta area of Georgia, USA. Mike has composed countless radio jingles, television scores, and produced or performed on music heard all over the world. He has worked with world famous musicians such as Tommy Roe, Joe South, The Shirelles, William Bell (Georgia Hall of Fame Recipient), Isaac Hayes, Eddie Floyd, Bertie Higgins, and Bill Anderson: The list goes on and on of Georgia performers who's who. He owned and operated a recording studio for over twenty years working in all facets of digital audio and video. In 1996, Mike became passionate about the future of the Internet and how small businesses could benefit from the web if they just understood how to make it work for their company. He saw how the broadcast of audio and video information on a website was no different than the television/radio industry he had been a part of all his life.

4 Since that time, he has become very successful consulting with small business owners on how to set up their worldwide TV stations and broadcast their unique marketing message to the world. Soundpages focused on Internet technologies that allowed audio and video to be streamed over the Internet. We developed distance training web sites, e- commerce projects, and audio/video intensive web projects utilizing Flash programming. He didn t stop there, but was constantly striving to be on the cutting edge of technology always searching for better more efficient ways of achieving his goals. After listening to a set of audiotapes in 2000, he attended his first Internet Marketing Seminar. Initially Mike was a student himself. Soon he was hired to record seminars, events and teleseminars. Through techniques he learned from the seminar speakers and promoters he was able to create his own software products that made the process easier.

5 While he had spoken to many groups, associations, and business organizations throughout the years, his first Internet Marketing Seminar speaking engagement was in Since then he has attended and spoken at many events worldwide. Mike teaches attendees the benefits of owning the right equipment and utilizing it to record themselves to make quality multi-media audio and video information products that can be marketed for high profits. He is always on the lookout for new innovative ideas, products, hardware and software to benefit his clients. His hands-on customer service approach outshines most and he creates in-depth audio and video tutorials to enhance the products he sells. WHAT SOFTWARE MAKES IT EASIER TO RECORD AND EDIT THE SOUND FILES YOU CREATE? For pc there are all kinds of audio software, there are free to very expensive. No one computer makes a better MP3 file it all depends on the input equipment, the microphone the audio interfaces that turn the sounds

6 into digital numbers that the software records that you edit. There is a free piece of software called audacity, it is downloadable from the internet. The software I personally use is Sony Sound Forge Audio studio. Sony has been in audio business for a long time ever since I can remember and is a trusted name in broadcast. This is a PC based program and works incredibly. Sony makes a suite of audio and video products and for audio the Sound Forge studio is incredible. Adobe now has Adobe Audition it is a great program that works well. You can search the internet for recording programs there are complex ones some they are called multi-track, for an information recorder all you need is one that records a single track that allows you to edit out your mistakes. The bottom line is learn a program to save your audio as a MP3 format at a resolution of sample rate, 16 bit is acceptable for voice, stereo or mono. AUDIO MARKETING TIPS We are all aware of the power of audio and video marketing messages on tv and radio but we tend to

7 forget about it when it comes to our websites, blogs and other online marketing messages. The internet is the online on demand version of TV and Radio and this puts the power of audio and video marketing in the hands of every business and website owner. Previously production music was out of reach for the average consumer and they could not create nor afford to have it created. With the advent of royalty free music and powerful desktop computers and inexpensive audio hardware this capability is on anyone s hands. Here are a few examples of how you can use music and audio in your marketing messages online in multiple ways; CD audio products Audio book downloads Website audio buttons and messages Podcasts & blogs DVD products Online videos, You Tube and Video downloads Google Audio and Video Ads Webinars

8 Live video streams like Ustream & Stickam For web audio buttons and audio sales message streaming use AudioGenerator.com As an example; Imagine watching The Tonight Show with Jay Leno without the opening theme music. It would seem strange, wouldn't it? The opening theme music sets the tone, brands the show, and gets the audience ready to laugh with Jay. This same principle works for teleseminars and audio content you create. VIDEO MARKETING TIPS Never use Youtube for your business websites and blogs Why? Here are 10 reasons why! 1- YouTube logo says you don t know how or are too cheap. It indicates you cannot afford to host your content on your website or blog (more on this later). 2- You are stuck with the default YouTube player. Cannot customise it to match your website.

9 3- There is no way to auto start or do a URL redirect to your sales page. 4- You cannot put in your video in membership sites as content is public and not protected. 5- There is no way to do tracking links so you can track from where your visitors are coming. 6- YouTube puts search boxes in the video that take your visitor away from your website.these can be links to related videos who may be your competitors. 7- In a YouTube there can be clickable links in the lower 3rd of the screen - Google Ads - that take your visitors to other websites, possibly your competitors. 8- YouTube can change the rules at anytime, and no matter how much you whine, they could care less. 9- What if you had 1000's of videos that make you money on 100's of websites and YouTube ran Super Bowl commercials for Miller Beer, and you had an AA Alcoholics blog or website...not good for your audience. 10- You basically have no control over the video you produced.

10 REDUCING YOUR HOSTING FEES AMAZON S3 This can be done using Amazon S3 platform. What they have done is provide a cloud computing system that a lot of people are using to host all kinds of content from large amounts of documentation to audio and video files for streaming or to download. Depending where the most traffic originates you can store your content closest to that region to improve performance. Regions are; US Standard (automatically route to Northern Virginia or Pacific Northwest EU (Ireland) US West ( Northern California) Asia Pacific (Singapore) This e-zine was stored on the Amazon S3 platform and all of ExpertpodCastInterviews audio and video content is stored there as well. Pricing is very competitive and with the high level of service guaranteed a shrewd way for any website with audio and video content.

11 To sign up go to Amazon S3 sign up using your amazon account. Select Amazon Cloudfront option or tab and then setup a distribution method. For audio and video content use the streaming option. Once that has been setup you create a bucket (container or folder), select your region where the most traffic is expected and then create folders under that. To simplify this first create the account on the website, then download the Cloudberry Explorer application and do the rest of the setup from within the application. Once you have set your folders up you can upload your content and add links to your webpages for videos or audio web buttons.

12 You can even integrate this with Wordpress blogs by installing the Amazon S3 plugin and this way easily integrates your content with his inexpensive storage. There are other uses for the Amazon S3 platform but this way ordinary people can leverage the vast infrastructure they have at a fraction of the costs compared to how it has been done previously. RESOURCE PAGE Software Adobe Audition & Sony Sound Forge Audio Amazon S3 Cloudberry Explorer Amazon S3 desktop client AudioGenerator.com Audio streaming service for audio sales letters and content To find out more and get access to all of the resources about Audio Creation for Info marketers or how to use within your own business come to ExpertPodcastInterviews.com sign up and learn about this and more