It’s been one heck of a week. I became a Grandfather on Monday morning. His name is Carter and as hard as I try to be a badass tough guy sometimes, this little booger melted my heart the moment I laid my eyes on him and I instantly fell in love with this little guy. He’s why I haven’t been too busy on Blogger Lens lately.
Back to business now. I implemented something new on my hyperlocal site this week, MonroeScoop.com, that I think is pretty cool and should add a lot as far as multi-media goes. It is something that I think you should consider doing on your hyperlocal blog also. Through the use of Google Voice, I added 2 telephone interviews in the body of my articles. You can check out my earlier Google Voice Review. Google Voice gives you a very easy option to record your telephone conversations by simply hitting the number 4 on your keypad. To stop the recording, press the number 4 again. The recording will be stored on your Google Voice page and you can simply hit the play button to listen. Very, very cool in my opinion.
At this point your work is not over. When you record with Google Voice, you will hear a prompt that your recording is started and ended. You do not want your listeners to hear this if you place in one of your articles. You have to do a little editing at this point. As of now, Google does not give you a way to embed the recording through the use of a widget, you have to get it there yourself. Here is what I do.
- I play the recording on my computer (Mac) and I record the internal audio as it’s playing. I record as a QuickTime movie. Those files are .mov
- I then go in and trim the ends of the recording and take out what I do not want to be there. If you have QuickTime Pro, you will have the ability to do this. If not, you can purchase QuickTime Pro from the Apple website for around $30. You can also do this with Garage Band.
- Next, I covert the recording into an “aif” file from my QuickTime menu.
- Next, I import the recording into iTunes.
- Next step. Convert the “aif” file into an .mp3. (easy to do).
- Upload the .mp3 file to your web host
- Embed the recording into your article using the PodPress Wordpress Widget.
If that seems a little hard and a lot of trouble, it isn’t. Those steps only take a few moments. If you are using a Mac (you should be) it’s a breeze. Do it once and you can do it with your eyes closed from then on. If you are using a Windows PC, I cannot instruct you on how to do it. I’m sure it can be done however.
Here are the benefits as I see them.
#1. I can drink beer while I’m doing a telephone interview and no one knows what I’m doing.
#2. I can scratch myself if necessary.
#3. I can pick my nose and can’t be seen. I do not have to leave my house.
#4. Save gas. I don’t have to drive anywhere.
#5. I can…well, you get the idea.
Here is an example of how I used this on my own site. I placed a headshot photo of the person I spoke with. Yesterday I spoke with the Marketing Director of our local shopping mall and I also spoke with the Executive Director of our local Red Cross. Getting these type interviews are very easy once you have gained the trust of these people in your community. I’ll talk about trust in another article but it’s important that as you build your hyperlocal blog, you determine your mission and you gain the trust of the leaders in your community if you want to invite them to be part of your website. I doubt that many folks in your community would be willing to display themselves publicly unless you have built the trust with them.
Here are the 2 telephone interviews:
[display_podcast]
You can visit my site to view these also. Monroe Scoop.
I can tell you right now what Allyn Hane will say about this feature. He will tell me to use it for paid interviews and articles from local merchants. What if a local car dealer or store was having a blowout sale and needed the extra publicity that you could provide? An article and a telephone interview could land a few extra $$ in your account. What do you think? Who would like to hear me interview Allyn Hane by telephone and play it here?
I hope this helps and gives you some additional ideas to use on your hyperlocal blog. Be as creative with your site as possible. There are no rules. No idea is stupid unless you figure out it doesn’t work. If you have some more ideas regarding this, please share them with the readers, I’d love to hear them.
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