hitRECord and Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Crowdsourcing Talent

He’s come a long way since the 3rd Rock From the Sun. You might notice he is everywhere: in every movie, TV appearances, the Internet. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the “it” man of the hour.

Gordon-Levitt came into my radar, no, not just because he’s Robin (see The Dark Knight Rises) but because of a Wrap post that reminded us he once had a lull in his career. Yea, I didn’t believe it at first, either. Especially when there is a dedicated fan page calling him the coolest actor of 2014.

When you read the Wrap article, it shows what he did to get out of his funk. There is a good lesson in this man’s career for all of us.

We don’t have to be an A-list actor or Internet star to do some of the things he’s done. All of the tools and creativity are at our own fingertips. Just click on a new link and put in the right search tools and — whola! Your future is now.

Pay close attention to Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord. It is a crowd-sourced production company he founded. Think of it as a free business plan to marketing and engagement and you don’t need a big budget, or any budget, to initiate it. He has produced an Internet TV show that utilizes on-stage material, pulls the audience into the production, culls his following for content creation, and every element distributes the end result at the same time it is live. That is interaction at its best. The Huffington Post calls it The Art of Collaboration.

It's genius. Get the audience invested in your project by pulling them in as storytellers. And yes, they do get paid.

You have to admit, that’s as cool as Batman.

A Digital Footprint Is Your Connection to the World, and to Life

Google is not always your friend, but digital and social networks are. Why? You can't control what gets said about you on your Google search but you can control what shows up on your Facebook.

Smart Insights published global social media statistics for January 2016. I urge you to click the link to see the whole comprehensive report.

There are 3.419 billion global Internet users, to which 2.307 billion are active in social media. There are 3.790 billion unique mobile users, and 1.968 billion of them are active in social media.

Facebook has the highest penetration of users between ages 18 to 34, then Snapchat and Instagram.

The most popular networks are in this order:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Google+
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr

Social media isn't just a fad. It isn't just a personal thing. It is your connection to the world. How you use it will determine your experience.

If you shut everyone out except the people who are in your immediate circle, you miss out on personal growth and connections that could make the world a great big beautiful place.

If you use it to exclusively flog your wares, send a bunch of group direct messages, spam your friends with direct messages to "like" your page, you'll lose connections in a hurry and the ones you keep will just put you on mute.

If you keep an open mind and connect with people you don't know, even if you don't have any mutual connections, you never know what will happen. Of course, you can vet those requests by looking at the profile to see if there is any information that might flag them as a fake account. But connecting with people outside of your sphere can bring you many wonderful treasures: friendship, great and inspiring images, educational and informative posts, business leads, and close friendships that can even move offline.

I vet people by not only if they're a suspected fake profile (usually the army photo is a dead giveaway), but also by what they post on their timeline. If they post continual negative and racist/bigoted links, I will pass on connecting. It is my profile, my platform, and I get to control what I see in the feed. I've done a pretty good job. I don't get a lot of trash or people I have to unfriend.

Social media provides a true digital footprint because you control the outcome of your profile page. Your social pages determine the public's first impression of who you are as an individual. It determines if you are approachable. Will people regret trying to reach out to you? Or will you welcome their social sphere and allow others to champion you?

Your digital footprint in a social media world from Anton Koekemoer

The Millennial Market Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Millennials are not who you think they are. They are individuals. They are a collective group within a group. They are real people.

The one thing you need to know about this demographic is that they will not fit inside the box you have made for them. And guess what? This is now the largest generation, surpassing the baby boomers in numbers just this year.

The term millennial represents people who are aged between 16 and 36. That right there tells you that what a 16 year old likes is not going to be the same as a 36 year old. You're going to need a bigger transmedia marketing boat. You're also going to need to be in different platforms to reach each end of the millennial scale.

Especially for those who were born after the baby boomer generation, how you reach people will determine the success of your marketing campaign. You'll find a ton of statistics, like this Goldman Sachs infographic, that fall within the Bell Curve, which groups all millennials into an average age.

There are some things that cross the age groups for likes, passions, and must-haves. Take Marvel movies, for one, Pokémon Go for two. Music tastes might even be similar across the board, but not always. 

Platforms may differ. While we know that 78 percent of U.S. social media users are on Facebook (Statista), you can bet that Tumblr and Snapchat might be more popular for some, and by the time this post gets published, the younger ones will have found another app that none of the adults have yet tried to make their own.

When it comes to traditional media and where people get their news, the millennials cannot be fit into a Bell Curve. This is where you will have at least two different camps. The cord cutters -- the ones who never look at a television, get their news in their phone, and their shows on streaming platforms; and the ones who still watch shows on TV and get their news in their phone and in other sources (but may or may not be watching network news).

To reach millennials (and other demographics) your marketing plan could use a couple of must-haves in order to increase its likelihood for success: turn them into disciples and get them excited about sharing your content; make it easy to share, connect, and do what you want them to do; be genuine because their bullshit detectors are way better than yours; let them have a say in the direction you want to take; and for goodness sakes, be mobile-friendly.

Video Platforms, the Essential Storytelling Tool, Are Ever Evolving

Blab

Spreecast sent a notice to all of its users that it is closing its doors this month of July, and Blab's most avid users are leaving the platform. These are two interactive live-stream video platforms set up for talk TV. Both similar in that you could have four people on the broadcast in one screen. Both shareable through Facebook and Twitter before, during, and after from inside a broadcast. Both great at building interactive communities, where users meet up on other platforms to engage.

The fate of these and other platforms that have gone before them represent the one true thing about the Internet: everything is evolving and few things are a sure thing.

That said, the video platform is an essential storytelling tool and a must-have for the transmedia toolbox. A webcam is all that is required, whether it is an external or from a laptop, desktop, or mobile device. Point and shoot or get a bit more productive with annotations and creative editing. Make movie and book trailers, let your characters take the audience deep inside the story, interview people who work behind the scenes. Video is where it is at. People tend to be more inclined to consume a video over sifting through a website or reading a blog. No matter what your project or business is, chances are you can use video to your advantage.

The big enchilada and the queen of all queens is YouTube. While it is indelibly linked to Google Hangouts and Google+, there have been many changes that I'm still trying to figure out, but setting up a YouTube Live Stream event cuts out the middleman Google Hangouts on Air, even though they still connect with each other.

The best way to figure out a platform is to just do it. Play around with it and worst-case scenario you can always delete the video if you hate it that much.

Besides YouTube, there are several other platforms for video that can be used in lieu of, in conjunction, or mirrored.

No matter what platform you decide to try, download the MP4 of your content so you have a backup of it, just in case. I have downloaded some Periscope, Facebook Live, and Blab videos and posted them to YouTube. Personally, I now choose only to use video platforms that allow me to download and be able to keep my own content.

The following are some of the many choices for video platforms. They each have their own audience, so you can never assume a video can be one size fits all.

Maker TV requires a minimum monthly viewership before you can be accepted to the site, but once you are, there is an opportunity to grow your YouTube channel.

Vimeo is used by a lot of filmmakers and music artists. The platform only allows original material that you played a role in creating and hold the copyright to.

Facebook Live is a live streaming option from your Facebook page. In Canada, so far you can't use it from your personal page. There is an icon that shows up in the post options that allows you to post instant videos.

Dailymotion has a copyright filtering system that will flag anything you try to upload that isn't your own.

Vine videos are six-second shorts that can only be posted from a compatible mobile device.

Instagram videos can be a minute or less, and must also be posted from a compatible mobile device.

UStream is one of the first interactive live-streaming video platforms on the market and is still kicking.

Twitch is a popular live streaming platform for the gaming community.

Periscope is a live streaming mobile app owned by Twitter.

YouNow is a live streaming video chat platform that has a younger participating membership.

Now get filming and have fun!

The Creatures of Yes

Brooklyn's Puppeteer Jacob Graham has come up with a brilliant video series called The Creatures of Yes. It's a show about puppets discovering things for the first time and learning to interact. No, it's not a knockoff from Sesame Street. It's a 1970's flavored puppet show brought to a streaming video platform. It's simple, vintage, and delightful. This Vice review offers a good overview.

Besides its YouTube channel, there is a website: creaturesofyes.com that gives you that 1970s vintage feel. (Oh my God, is 1970s considered vintage?!)

On the Instagram channel, you can see how Graham has carved a niche for himself using liquid lights, lasers, and analog synthesizers.

So as we look at the collective platforms The Creatures of Yes appear on, each intertwine with each other, but many of the posts tell a different story, and collectively, they make up the sum of the whole. That's transmedia in action.

How to Use a Podcast as a Transmedia Platform

You have a story that centers around a screenplay. That script may turn into a movie, a play, or even a podcast.

Maybe the story is a movie, that can be turned into a book, that can be turned into Vine vignettes or YouTube clips. The podcast may flush out the story even further, but how?

First, let's visit the concept of a podcast. The Wikipedia definition is this, "A podcast is a form of digital media that consists of an episodic series of audio, video, digital radio, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded automatically through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device."

There are numerous host sites where you can house your podcast. The best thing to do is research them and find out which format you like the most. SoundCloud, Podomatic, and PodBean are just a handful of venues. I've used both SoundCloud and Podomatic free versions. Podomatic can also be used as an aggregate site to get your podcast onto iTunes. 

The benefit of a podcast is that you don't have to have a regimented schedule like you would need for a radio broadcast. It can be whatever you want it to be. Here are some examples for that screenplay:

• The mechanics of writing a screenplay.
• A stream of consciousness from one of the characters from the screenplay.
• The writer interviews various people about different topics that are related to the screenplay.
• A day in the life of a movie producer.
• Behind the scenes.
• Do's and don't's as an actor.
• Narrating scenes in the script.

You can find more podcast ideas here and some unique ideas here.

Turning Your Book Into a Transmedia Project

The publishing industry. It still creates the dream of having a book in hand, but we can also just do it ourselves. Even so, a book isn't going to miraculously make you famous or rich just because it's done. Ask any author, even a bestselling one.

Nope. A book is only the beginning. Now that you're published, what are YOU going to do to get eyeballs inside the covers?

Face it. Nobody collects books because of who published them (unless they're Whitman Publishing vault books; those are works of art). They collect books for a) subject matter and b) who authored them. Can anyone really recall without looking who published Stephen King's last book? Yea, me neither.

Even if a publisher forks out the dough to design, print, and distribute your book, the onus is still on the author to sell it. The publisher's marketing efforts are pretty limited, so an author has to be invested in his or her book.

Today, the transmedia tools are at your fingertips. Don't look at the book. Look at the STORY. Look at the topics, the characters, the things that make the words worthwhile to read.

Even if you don't have a proper video camera, if you have a smartphone, tablet, or a webcam on your computer, create your own trailer. YouTube is full of book trailers. Just search out some that seem feasible for your skill set.

Do you have a compelling lead character? Maybe a female Captain America? Bam! Facebook page and write your posts as if they are being written by that character. Or maybe your book is non-fiction and helps people use alternative methods to fight tooth decay. Boom! Facebook page on How to Fight Tooth Decay Without Seeing a Dentist.

Is your topic, character visual? Start an Instagram and/or Pinterest account. Blog about the tooth decay tips that are in your book and take it further with more up to date information. Use Blogger, like this one you are reading. It's free. You can dress it up and customize it, and it is linked to Google, the largest search engine in the world. So make sure you also do a kick ass bio with links.

There are many things you can do to move your characters and book message around the web. The key is to make sure the storytelling is unique to each of the platforms you use.

How to turn a book into an entertainment franchise.