If you haven’t heard of @FeliciaDay, you’re missing out on the next Carol Burnett. She’s what I call a next-generation storyteller – and here’s why.

Of course she’s beautiful, hysterically funny, and wickedly clever, but more importantly: she understands what technology will do for her. It’s not what you’ve got, but how you use it.

Day’s Wikipedia entry reads like someone much older than her youthful 30 years. (Like, turned down acceptance to Julliard? Whoa.) A master of a number of art forms, she is an accomplished violinist, opera singer, dancer, screenwriter, actor and scholar. Her real new media fame came in 2007 when she embraced web video for her project “The Guild”, which is a web comedy available for viewing and download on a variety of web video sites, including iTunes.

But, what makes her a “next-gen storyteller”?

Two things: extension and technology. It’s not just that she has a trendy web show based on computer gaming – it’s waaaaay beyond that.

Day makes high quality and often personal connections with her audience, both real and virtual. She regularly mingles with fans at various conferences (such as ComicCon in San Deigo each year) and many live screenings and non-profit events. She understands that the story extends off the screen, however small it may be. Then, she uses all technology mediums available to her to extend this story, including a wide variety of social media outlets, and even a music video (“Do You Wanna Date My Avatar”) in which she sings and dances to a song of her own composition. (To-die-for-funny: $1.99 on iTunes.)

Check out this timeline:
- 2007: releases first season of “The Guild” loosely based on her own experiences as an avid player of online games. The primary outlet is YouTube, and it’s free. Halfway through this year, she grabs a Twitter ID and starts posting.

- 2008: At least partly thanks to exposure from The Guild, Day is cast in a variety of other parts, including the genre-defining “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” (another web comedy).* She even has a guest spot on the TV series House. She also releases Season II of The Guild, and works on another web project with her Guild co-star Sandeep Parikh, Legend of Neil. MSN makes a deal with The Guild to expand releases to XBox Live, MSN video, and Zune, and suddenly, Day is earning money from this venture.

- 2009: The third season of The Guild is released to its’ now rabid fans, and Day herself achieves one of the most coveted social media trophies: the #3 most-followed person on Twitter. (As of now, she’s somewhere around #50.) She also continues to guest star on a variety of mainstream TV shows like Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.

Just three crappy years, and it appears that she’s so busy doing web video that she no longer has time to pursue work in film, which is much more risky and far less fun.

Day uses all that the web has to offer: iTunes is just the tip of the iceberg, even though for most this would be considered killer bread-and-butter distribution. The deal with MSN is freakin’ brilliant, allowing her to penetrate even deeper into the community that has supported her from the beginning: online gaming. She’s every Gamer’s dream girl.

Like Madeline Kahn and Mae West before her, she plays down her obvious beauty, and writes, directs, acts, and allows her comedic nature to help her story. She is one of those multi-talented women that has been allowed to explore her creativity – and we love her for it. She is still warmly received by her community, and often pokes fun at the roles she’s played, and any possible criticisms of ‘selling out’ (Parikh: “Where’d you get all this money? We make a web series..??!!??”) by making even more content with that community.

I have to admit, my favourite part of this story is the music video. Again, quality rules: the crossover only works because it’s actually a good song. It offers the other cast Members a chance to really strut their stuff along with Day. (Wow – check out Parikh’s backflip, and it turns out Okuda is a fantastic dancer.) Her people love her, and she loves them right back.

Can anyone replicate this recipe? Of course. If you can’t cook, ally yourself with people who can: Felicia allies herself with technology experts (even though, importantly, she has a strong grasp of the technology herself) and with other actors and creatives.

The NG Storyteller never goes it alone, but they boldly blaze the trail for those that support them.

*DHSAB is a creation of the brilliant Joss Whedon, inventor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (where she has previously guest-starred), Firefly, and a string of other mainstream and web hits.

Don’t spend valuable time creating your viral marketing video until you examine these simple-but-important tips. All of them are FREE, but essential.

If you’ve heard about video marketing, but are unsure how to really hit the streets with it, all that we’re talking about is creating a small video that helps to generate awareness and enthusiasm around your book, ebook, or other product. You can easily create videos yourself, or hire the pros to do it for you. The video is then distributed through social media channels like YouTube (and other video outlets), FaceBook, Twitter, on blogs, etc. The idea is to use the video as an automated sales device, driving buyers back directly to you or your retailers. You can read an earlier article I wrote about this subject by clicking here.

1. Display the URL on every single frame. Any simple video editing software (yes, including Windows Movie Maker) will allow you to do this in one way or another such as a simple band across the bottom of every frame that displays the URL where people can go to purchase the book.

2.Be sure you have a landing page in place before you release the video. It’s no use inviting traffic unless you have a place to drive that traffic. Simply driving traffic to your standard website is not enough – be sure that you create a page or mini-site especially designed to sell your book.

3. Keep it short and sweet. Videos with long, useless intros or dragging scenes that frustrate the viewer are wasted screen time. Chop them out. The entire video should be less than 90 seconds, and 30 seconds is ideal.

4. Include the techy stuff. In the book universe, people need to know stuff like page count, ISBN, distributors, etc. A teeny splash page at the end is enough to convey this clearly. All products have some sort of techy details, like pricing, style and size choices, etc. Be sure to give the basics for interested potential buyers.

5. Take into account multiple audiences. Authors need to direct the video at not just readers, but also booksellers, reviewers, librarians, etc. These may have many of the same needs, but including a few different details to address each of these viewers is important. This can be done carefully without diversifying too much.

6. Use humour. Who wants to watch a boring, dry, video? Unless your video is about the stress of bankruptcy or the death of a loved one, there’s always a way to use a gentle hand with a bit of a smile. Your goal is to keep them watching until the end. (And in the case of death or bankruptcy, the smile comes from the relief you provide.)

7. Don’t neglect the metadata fields. In YouTube (98% of all viral web videos are distributed by YouTube*) there are fields that you can add a description, keywords, and other behind-the-scenes stuff that gets picked up by the search engines. This is what makes the video viral – it gets found when people search. Do your keyword research and get that stuff nailed down before you even start creating the video.

See a future article very soon about keyword research, which should be the first thing you do before you even think about creating your video.

* See this additional article for similar stats and info.

I had a lovely chat today with Alexa Clark, of Plethora Press in Ontario. Alexa is the clever taste tester behind the Cheap Eats series that has become so popular in Ottawa and Toronto, and she is now also the creator of MiniBookExpo.com.

Alexa recently started to follow me on Twitter, and when I backtracked to find out what she was up to, I was very interested in MBE, and how it works. Essentially, Alexa’s site provides a link between interested bloggers and those who create interesting books. Publishers offer their books through her site, bloggers claim a copy to read (which is then sent to them free of charge), and then once the blogger has finished reading their copy, their job is to talk about what they read. Not a review, per se, but a friendly discussion a la social media. Neato.

Our conversation was cut short by a local power outage, (oh brother) but Alexa has kindly agreed to let me interview her later this month about MBE, and her thoughts on book marketing. This will be an .mp3 of our phone interview, and will be released by July 28th at the latest, here on this blog. Be sure to subscribe at right, and you’ll be updated when it’s available.

I had such a great time tonight at the Vancouver chapter meeting of the eWomen Network, in BC, Canada. What a great bunch of gals! Thanks so much for making me feel welcome, and I was really enthused by all of your contagious energy!

The presentation that I made this evening was a bit over the time allocated, (sorry about that, Gail!) and it sounded like Members had more questions after I was done. So, let’s start a conversation here, on this blog, that carries over from tonight’s presentation. You can post questions using the comment form (in the bits below this post, there’s a link in the word “Comments” – just click it and type in the boxes that appear) and I’ll respond to them on this same spot. You might want to bookmark this page so that you can come back to it over and over again.

I’m sorry that there’s a delay in making the Private Resources page available for all of the attendees to use, but I promise it will be up by Monday when I get back to my office. Thanks for your patience. The postcard you received at dinner had a password on it, and you’ll need that to get to the page. The button mentioned on that same postcard will be available on this site by Monday.

Remember all that talk we had about feeds, and other magic words? You might want to subscribe to my site’s feed right now, by putting your email address in the boxes at right. That way, when new posts happen, you’ll get them delivered to your email inbox, without having to remember to come back to this page. And remember to Google yourself! (Yes, Google is a verb! Type your name or company name into the search bar, and see what happens!)

In addition to the Private Resources I promised, I’ll also include a set of overhead slides on the password-protected page that corresponds to tonight’s presentation. Just in case you didn’t take notes, there’s probably something there that will jog your memory.

A special thanks to Gail who was kind enough to fit me into your group’s schedule. I’m really glad that everybody got something out of the presentation. Hope to see you all again soon!!

P.S. – One of the winners of the door prizes didn’t pick up their book. If you had a blue Kitty Sticker on the back of your postcard, and you didn’t get your prize, please email me using the links at right. Thanks!

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be delivering a new talk about my company’s use of Social Media Marketing at the eWomen Network’s Surrey Chapter the evening of June 12th, at Coyote Creek Golf Club on 152nd St. in Surrey, BC.

The subject of my talk will be an in-depth analysis of the results of a marketing experiment that I’ve been conducting for the book Words in Action, by local Author Jeri-Lyn McCrea.

The talk is titled: “The Social Media Diet”, after a blog post I made here a while ago, which started a discussion and a number of comparisons to marketing and dieting. (Bottom line: both of them take a bit of figuring, but if you stick to it, the results can be astonishing.)

Here’s the description of the talk that is being promoted to Members: “Social Media Marketing is very trendy right now, and although we’re bombarded by a flurry of terms and tools, the mechanics of it still seem a bit fuzzy. How do you do it, and what does it really mean for you and your business? This discussion documents a live experiment that my company conducted, using SMM tools and techniques to promote a current book on our roster. What we learned was surprising, and these lessons can apply to almost any product or service.”

To make this discussion even more interactive, we’re inviting you to submit your questions about this topic in advance. I’ll address your actual questions that you submit as comments below, here on this page, during the live discussion on June 12th.

To submit a question, simply submit your question as a comment to this blog post. (Click here, or there’s a link below in the grey bar.) All comments are moderated, but they will be posted publicly here as they are approved. We also welcome general comments.

See you on June 12th!

For many years, I’ve been a subscriber to the newsletter (now turned blog) of Elliot Masie of the Masie Center, an eLearning thinktank based in Saratoga Springs, New York.

I like Masie – he’s got a clever, out-of-the-ordinary way of looking at the way people learn and communicate. Masie is a very readable writer, and he communicates complicated ideas in a simple and easily-assimilated manner. He might be a training nerd, but he does it with style.

Therefore, I was pleased today to receive the most recent edition of “LearningTRENDS“, his newsletter. His headline? Follow him on Twitter as he participates in the Harvard Kennedy School event on Presidential Leadership Competencies.

For those of you not already on board, Twitter is a handy-dandy little website that allows you to broadcast one-liners, or “headlines” of content to a a list of your subscribers. It’s another one of those things that falls into the category of Social Media Marketing. People can subscribe via email, or even on a cell phone. We’re only talking about a short string of text – messages are capped at 140 characters, so most people will stop and read it, even if they don’t have time to read your blog.

The caution here is that Twitter must be used carefully to avoid “burning”, or over-messaging your subscribers, and making them want to leave the list. It’s about serving the needs of people who have taken the trouble to sign up to hear what YOU have to say.

Masie announces, “If you would like to get a taste of RealTime blogging, I am using Twitter to send all-day-long “blog” objects: quick notes about comments from Joe Klein, David Gergen, Ken Blanchard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and more.” He calls this “small-burst blogging”, and invites people from all over the world to listen with him on this important leadership conference.

By following him on Twitter, I received several stimulating headlines throughout the day that made me stop and think. Items like “How will you create an environment for innovation within your leadership team?” and “Evaluate your campaign as a case study in leadership — success, failure, personal learnings” can easily apply to almost any business leadership situtation.

So, I’m taking note: THIS is how Twitter should be used. To stimulate, to question, to inform, and most of all, to keep people wanting more. Masie understands the needs of his audience, and he has really maximized the use of this channel. I’ve seen some really poorly-utilized Twitter feeds, which turn into personal rants about the weather, or comments about being unable to get a taxi. What does your reader really need to hear about all day long? Industry news? Updates from a conference? Cool new products you’ve seen at a trade show? Only you know what will be of greatest benefit to your readers. So, unless you’re the weatherman, no rants about the rain.

I’m always amazed at what will turn up on eBay. While shopping for something as incredibly shallow as shoes on eBay this evening, I found this fundraising auction for teenage amputee Joe Alexander. The auction is for the right shoe to a pair that Joe can no longer use.

Check out news video about the accident here.

19-year old Joe’s story is heart-wrenching, as his leg was torn off when he was dragged by a train near Webster Groves, Missouri, USA, on February 28th – not even a month ago as I write this entry. He managed to make his way alone from the middle of nowhere to a more visible area 50 yards away so that he could get help. This is not a guy starting out with too many advantages in life, and the family that loves him is trying to help him avoid worries about money, on top of everything else.

With my recent research into social media marketing, it strikes me that there’s a HUGE opportunity here for the blogging community to generate some traffic to either Joe’s right shoe eBay auction, or to the website setup to help him by getting donations, at www.WeLoveJosephAlexander.com. (This URL redirects to http://www.freewebs.com/welovejosephalexander/.)

Like blog traffic, every little bit helps.