Screen grab from the Quick Guide to Content Outsourcing pdf

Have you ever tried to create of an independent journalism agency while maintaining an active freelance career? Hahaha! Yeah, I laugh to hide the pain, lots and lots of painful pain. The good news? That pain investment is about to pay. You see, the agency’s processes are packaged and priced, the new website is functional, and our online “broadcast” system is in place. It’s time to launch!

We’d launch next week, but mid August isn’t exactly known for being the best time to catch the attention of business folk. So we’re holding fire until the day after Labor Day. In the mean time we’ll be developing relationships and polishing our online presence. Gotta look sharp for the big day. Ohhh, I’m so excited.

Did someone mention pain? What pain?

-Jack

Draft version of the Elements of Persuasion template.

The frame work of the Pixelwiremedia site is complete, so we’re uploading our original content to it. This is a really exciting time here because we’re anxious to share what we feel is some great stuff. Take the Elements of Persuasion template for example. We deliver everything you need to know about human persuasion in a 2 page pdf. We think it’s such a great tool for content creators that we’re giving it away for free on our homepage as one of our calls to action.

Homepage "call-to-action" button for the Elements of Persuasion pdf download

The best part? This single document provides the basis for a 12 post step-by-step blog series on content marketing. The pdf is a guide to human persuasion in general, so it’s not online specific. Adapting the template for use in the cyber world is what the series is all about.

My first job out of college was selling dictation equip in downtown Boston. It was brutal. It was just when executives were switching to personal computers. Anyway, the silver lining was the legendary sales training that I got from Lanier. A couple years after I left, I decided to put everything Lanier taught me about selling onto a single sheet of paper. Turned out it was a 11×17 sheet, but I did it.

The resulting document covers a lot of ground, but it is concise in each area. It’s something of an old school selling methodology, but it’s general enough to work for almost any situation, making it a handy planning guide.

Download it from the www.pixelwiremedia.com homepage, and look back here for the first post in the new series asap.

-Jack

Screen capture of new pixelwiremedia homepage

Approaching the finish line on the new Pixelwiremedia website. Very excited to be launching.

Mock up of Pixelwiremedia's new website.

Hello all,

For two weeks or so, I have been building relationships as Pixelwiremedia on the major social networks to get the ball rolling for the upcoming brand launch. The result has been a sizeable uptick in visits to my placeholder site, this blog, and my social media portals such as my youtube channels. These placeholders were never promoted, I created them months ago as part of an online exercise to develop the Pixelwiremedia agency plan. Now that many of my new friends from Twitter and Facebook are visiting those placeholders, people I want to impress may be getting a poor impression of the Pixelwiremedia online persona.

One quick solution was to set the URL in my twitter bio to the Pixelwiremedia Facebook info page. Finding the 300 or so words required for a detailed information section on Facebook is much simpler than creating a content packed website.

Folks, we have been busy creating content that online marketers will enjoy and use, and hopefully spread around. In fact, we’ve developed five packed content sections for the “real” website, this blog being one of the five. Each section is taking shape nicely. For the blog, we have mapped out an editorial calendar that begins with a unique multi-post series on Human Persuasion. Of course we will also use the blog to post the details of our announcements and updates, and some other stuff we’re still noodling over at the studio.

FWIW, Setting up a content marketing agency is not easy. It takes time to develop the processes for each of your service offerings. Another challenge has been weaning myself off of my freelance business. So many interesting and lucrative jobs that I couldn’t refuse came my way the last few months. Unfortunately, all that non-agency work slowed down my progress on Pixelwiremedia. It’s not all bad though. My sincerity in sales meetings will be evident when I tell people, “look at some point you have to jump in and do it, or you’ll be spinning your wheels for ever.” Oh, I’ll have stories to back that up.

-Jack

PS. Don’t look too carefully at the homepage mock up above, as a few items have changed since that was created. Still the same basic layout though. Btw, please note that we’re no longer using Latin to write our copy.     ; )

Screen grab of Boston Sport's Then and Now blog, which is managed by Blogapalooza organizer Joe Gill

Successful sports blogger Joe Gill can add successful blogging event promoter to his CV. Joe put on his second Boston Sports Blogapalooza at the Baseball Tavern in the Fenway yesterday. Billed as a networking opportunity for Boston’s sports blogger community, the event brought together the legacy media like Comcast Sports Net (CSNNE.com) and the foot soldiers of the new media with over one hundred bloggers in attendance. The bar definitely helped to loosen up the crowd for some enthusiastic participation in the networking sessions, panel discussions, swag raffles, and live entertainment.

Pixelwiremedia got involved with Joe’s event through our involvement with Kevin Youkilis’ Hits for Kids charity. Kevin’s charity was a beneficiary of the event and charity staffer Casey Mosca sat on the social media panel. Naturally, we’d want to get that covered, so I was glad when Joe approached me about attending.

Joe is high energy. He is almost as enthusiastic about the possibilities of the new media as he is passionate about the past present and future of Boston’s sports. When he combines the two he creates a lot of buzz. I’m going to let the movie or movies that we produce from the event speak for themselves, a big part of the edits will be the interview that I did with Joe. If you’re a fan of sports or social media, you’ll want to see and hear Joe do his thing.

In the mean time I just want to thank all of the great bloggers who took the time to do on camera  interviews for Pixelwiremedia. Boston is a great sports town, and these new media writers are truly adding insightful and unique perspectives to the conversations we Boston sports nuts are having on a daily basis. Thanks Boston Sports Bloggers!  – Jack

Screen grab of Pixelwiremedia's ustream channel during a live iPhone 3Gs broadcast. Notice the screen grab dialog box being captured by the iPhone camera during the broadcast.

We’re setting up a uStream channel to broadcast our how-to-series, “Practicing What We Preach”. Of course we had to do a little branding on the channel page’s background. Look for the series to begin in a week or so. Until then, the 1st Live Broadcast video is available to watch on the channel. It’s a minute or so. Just a little piece of history. -Jack