by Caroline Leach | Nov 25, 2016 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
Podcasts are a powerful way to share your story.
But what exactly is a podcast?
It’s “a digital audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series, that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer,” says Dictionary.com.
Podcasts are taking off. From 2015 to 2016, podcast listening was up by 23%, Jay Baer reported from Edison Research‘s work.
What’s driving the growth? People enjoy greater mobility with smartphones and tablets, Baer says, rather than being tethered to a laptop. Podcasts are easy to listen to on the go.
This is why podcasts have become part of my own personal learning plan and drive-time strategy. Although I’m lucky by Los Angeles traffic standards, I spend more than 60 minutes commuting each day.
That’s a perfect chunk of time for learning. And with lifelong learning being both a pleasure and an imperative, what better time to listen to a podcast?
Data analytics and social media are at the top of my learning agenda. I’ve been enjoying FiveThirtyEight, Freakonomics and Social Pros.
It’s easy to get started. Just search topics of interest on iTunes, download your favorites and start listening.
My work colleague Doug Magditch first got me thinking about podcasts. He invited me to be in his Life at AT&T series, one of his Corporate Communications initiatives.
(This is where I note that opinions expressed here are my own.)
Doug’s conversations with colleagues show how employees are delivering on the company’s mission to connect people with their world – everywhere they live, work and play.
With a degree in mass media, Doug began his career as a reporter and multimedia journalist. His creative skills as a storyteller, his editing skills weaving together a narrative and his on-air presence make Life at AT&T a hit.
He invited Eliska Paratore, Joan Marsh and me to share what it’s like to be a woman in a leadership role at the company. Timing it with election season, he framed it as hearing about leadership “from the veeps.”
This was my first experience with a podcast, and I learned a lot in the process. Here are 10 tips for a perfect podcast.
BEFORE
What’s the best way to prepare for a podcast? Become familiar with the format and give yourself plenty of interesting material to work. This helps with responding naturally and spontaneously during the recording session.
- Listen to previous podcasts in the series. Understand how the format works. Identify what worked well and what you’d like to emulate.
- Talk with others who’ve been featured. See what previous participants recommend for preparation. This is a step I wish I’d taken.
- Think about the subject and what you want to say about it. Brainstorm and jot down ideas. Then narrow the focus to 3 key messages.
- Gather ideas, anecdotes and data. Chose those that support your key messages. Look for ones that add interest and provide credibility.
DURING
Many of these tips came from listening to myself after the podcast came out and thinking about what I could do better next time.
- Relax and have fun. Conversations are fun and sharing expertise is fun. Recording a podcast should be the same.
- Stand up. The advice for standing up during a phone call to give your voice more energy translates well to a podcast recording. People sound more confident when they stand.
- Use short sentences. This will help your listeners get your key points, not to mention making the editing process much easier.
AFTER
- Promote your podcast. Tell your social communities about it and why they’d be interested in hearing it. In my case, that meant sharing the podcast in LinkedIn and Twitter, including retweeting Doug.
This was easy, thanks to our company’s Social Circle. It provides great content about our brand, ready for sharing by interested employees in their personal social networks.
Inside the company, employees commented on the podcast in an internal social space. When the podcast was released, I visited the page a few times a day to read comments, like and respond to some, and bring additional colleagues into the conversation.
If you’ve recorded a podcast, what worked for you? And what podcasts do you recommend?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 20, 2016 | Careers, Change, Learning, Social Media
Social media got a bad rap during this year’s election process.
Fake news, Twitter trolls and cyber bullying came under fire.
Among American social media users, the Pew Research Center reported that 65% expressed “resignation and frustration about online political conversations.”
It’s enough to make anyone want to quit social media for good.
But don’t do that.
Why?
Because of your 100-year life.
What’s that about, you ask?
Well, more than half of babies born in developed nations in the 2000s can expect live to 100 or beyond, according to the medical journal The Lancet. And if you were born before then, your life will likely be a lot longer than you think.
A new book called The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity got me thinking about this.
Authors Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott are from the London Business School. They look at how anyone at any age can and should plan for their greater life expectancy, turning the extra time into “a gift and not a curse.”
When lives were shorter, people lived a three-stage life – education, work and retirement. These stages were compartments that didn’t overlap.
As early as 1978, Richard Bolles wrote about them in The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Work/Life Planning. He advanced the idea that you needed to incorporate all three stages across your entire life.
He also wrote What Color is Your Parachute? It was chosen as one of the 100 All-TIME best and most influential non-fiction books published since 1923.
With how quickly the world is changing, Bolles’ advice was and is spot on.
- We need to embrace lifelong learning, actively developing new skills as technology and globalization accelerate.
- We need productive work to provide purpose, meaning and economic sustenance throughout our lives.
- And we need leisure time to enjoy our lives and the people in them, and to refresh and renew ourselves.
Gratton and Scott explore this concept in writing about the interplay between tangible and intangible assets. They define an asset as “something that can provide a flow of benefits over several periods of time.”
Tangible assets “have a physical existence” and include things like housing, cash and investments. Intangible assets are things like “a supportive family, great friends, strong skills and knowledge, and good physical and mental health.”
The authors say that intangible assets are “key to a long and productive life – both as an end in themselves and also as in input into tangible assets.” They divide them into three categories of assets – productive, vitality and transformational.
One of these intangibles – a productive asset along with skills, knowledge and peers – is your reputation. “When a company has a positive brand, or a person has a good reputation, it is much easier for others to interact with them,” the authors say.
“A good reputation can be enormously important as it enables your valuable stocks of skills and knowledge to be really utilized in a productive way,” they continue. “It can also have a profound impact on your professional social capital.”
Why? “A good reputation will be one of the assets that enable you to expand your horizons,” the authors say. “It is the combination of portable skills and knowledge and a good reputation that will help bridge into new fields.”
They go on to write that “over the coming decades, it is likely that reputation will be based on a broader range of inputs. As future careers embrace more stages and more transitions, then inevitably this will create a broader range of information.”
Enter social media.
“Social media will increasingly broadcast your image and values to others and allow others to track and monitor performance,” they say. “So it is inevitable that you will need to curate a brand and reputation that covers far more than just your professional behavior.”
Everyone will need to signal their skills, their capabilities and their values during a longer life that potentially has multiple transitions. And transitions can take many forms – from one functional area to another, from one company to another and from one type of work to another.
Social media makes it easy to do this.
Over time, you can share your skills and abilities through many platforms – a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel, an Instagram stream, a LinkedIn portfolio, a Snapchat story or a personal blog. And these platforms will continue to change and evolve, with new ones emerging over time.
If you want to make your life’s transitions easier and more fulfilling, then social media is a must. And this doesn’t mean being on a few platforms to share photos with family and friends. A deliberate strategy and a plan for your personal brand in social media is imperative.
But where do you begin? Which social media platforms should you use? How do you curate and create content without it taking over your whole life?
Those will be the subjects of several upcoming posts.
by Caroline Leach | Oct 28, 2016 | Leadership, Learning, Social Media, Work/Life
Have you ever spent a day trying not to cry?
For me, there are always moments that prompt tears. Our national anthem at a school event. The doxology at church (with the gender-neutral, more inclusive lyrics for me). Pomp and Circumstance at a graduation ceremony.
Thank goodness for sunglasses. Because one of the last things I want to do is reveal my emotions in public.
After this week’s experience, though, I wonder if that’s because I go to extremes to avoid being labeled as an emotional woman.
But it may be pointless to try, because as a woman I’m going to be labeled anyway. And I can’t control that.
I can only control my own thoughts and my own actions. And there’s power in that.
What made me want to cry for an entire day this week? None other than the TEDWomen 2016 conference. Phenomenal speakers with ideas worth sharing took the stage, with the theme of “it’s about time.”
I was drawn to TED for many reasons. As a communicator. As a lover of ideas. As someone profoundly saddened by our national conversations – on race, on religion, on gender, on guns, on others.
As in, people who don’t share the same worldview. People who can’t or won’t listen to each because they’re so busy screaming about how the other group is wrong. And not even wrong, but deluded, dumb and not deserving. Of a voice. Of dignity. Of empathy.
What if our conversations in the world could be more like what I saw, heard and felt on the TED stage?
- A famous singer talked about channeling her pain from the abusive household where she grew up into her music.
- An actress shared how she fought back against cyberbullying and violence.
- A couple who work to improve a Nairobi slum spoke of the randomness of how privilege or poverty are bestowed.
- A journalist and author talked about the death threats she received when she came out as a lesbian.
- A rape survivor and the perpetrator shared the stage and their agonizing experiences.
Throughout each electrifying talk, a common question emerged: what can I do?
What if I made it a point to seek out different points of view? To listen to a different newscast or podcast. To get out of my social media stream and hear different voices. To seek out people with more diverse backgrounds and life experiences.
What if I spoke up more forcefully to inappropriate comments? The next time someone says something offensive about another group of people, I will ask why they think that and why they would say that.
What if I was more curious about people and their stories? What has their journey through life been like? What experiences shaped them? What do they struggle with? What brings them joy?
What if I used every means of power available to me for good? How can I encourage people to reach higher? How can I help people expand their networks? How can I empower people to open doors to more opportunity?
What if I took action? While I don’t know exactly what that is yet, I do know it starts with better educating myself on multiple perspectives about what’s going on in the world. Kimberle Crenshaw‘s eye-opening #SayHerName is where I’ll start.
Hearing from so many inspiring people reminded me that each of us can make a difference in the lives of others, every day.
As Kennedy Odede said during his talk with Jessica Posner Odede, “We can’t walk in each other’s shoes, but we can walk together.”
Who are you walking with?
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