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CI 310: an Interview with Cedric Hohnstadt.

October 7, 2010 in Interviews, Marketing and Promotion, Podcasts, Social Media by bobostromstudio

Bob interviews professional illustrator Cedric Hohnstadt. In this episode Cedric and Bob discuss marketing techniques, networking, social media and self promotion.

Cedric is an extremely talented character designer and humorous illustrator who specializes in mascot design, cartooning, animation, logos and other forms of marketing entertainment. Some of Cedric’s clients include Disney, DreamWorks, Wal-Mart, Target, Crayola and many, many more.

If you’d like to see some a Cedric’s art please visit his site at:
http://www.cedricstudio.com

or his blog
http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/.

Cedric’s Downloadable portfolios:
http://www.cedricstudio.com/portfolio-download.html

More about Cedric:

http://www.cedricstudio.com/bio.html

CI-309 An Interview with Carlos Castellanos

August 13, 2010 in Interviews, Podcasts by bobostromstudio

Play

Bob welcomes Carlos Castellanos back to the show. Carlos is a wealth of great business and marketing information. Whenever we have Carlos on the show we make it a point to get out out our notebooks and take notes so I don’t miss anything… We know you’ll want to do the same. So grab a pencil and some paper and check out the latest episode of CI. We know you’ll be glad you did.

CI 308 An Interview with Sparky Firepants.

July 22, 2010 in Interviews, Podcasts, Social Media by bobostromstudio

David Billings AKA Sparky Firepants

Bob and illustrator Sparky Firepants (AKA David Billings) talk about marketing. David shares some of his surefire marketing techniques including, slowing down, networking, using social media, and the importance of forming strong and trusting relationships with your clients.

Davids hilarious new comic Botpreneur

If you are not familiar with Davids work you can find him at SparkyFirepants.com. (don’t forget to sign up for his newsletter). You can also find him on Twitter.

Along with all the other great things you can find on David’s site he also has a new comic out called Botpreneur.

CI 307: Creative Independence goes Haywire! Rip Haywire, that is.

July 1, 2010 in Interviews, Podcasts, Posts by Chris

The Rip Haywire "Danger Badge"This episode is full of comedy and adventure! Come along for thrills, chills, explosions, guns, fisticuffs and hilariously sarcastic retorts. Join us as Dan Thompson, creator of the syndicated cartoon strip Rip Haywire talks to us about his journey to get his strip syndicated and published. While we think he’s got a real winner here, his journey is littered with trial, error, dead cartoon strips and great discoveries along the way.

One of Dan’s first syndicated cartoon was Lost Sheep:
http://content.uclick.com/content/lost.html

Here’s a collection of Lost Sheep Sunday strips
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/lost-sheep-sundays/2081730

Dan’s Blog:
http://riphaywire.com/

The Rip Haywire daily strips:
http://comics.com/rip_haywire

Contact Dan @:
twitter: @riphaywire
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RipHaywire
email: riphaywire at aol dot com

Other comics/sites mentioned in the interview.

Comics Sherpa
http://www.comicssherpa.com/site/index

GoComics
http://www.gocomics.com/

CI 306 An Interview with Dani Jones

June 23, 2010 in Interviews, Podcasts by bobostromstudio

If you’ve been on twitter, Ustream or any of Dani’s many websites you know what an amazing and talented artist Dani Jones is. Chris and I had the privilege of interviewing Dani a little while back. It was a fantastic interview unfortunately the sound quality was so poor we weren’t able to release the episode.

Dani was kind enough to grant us another interview. In this episode she talks about social media, twitter, her blog, her on line comic My Sister the Freak and much, much more.

Here are a few of the many places you can find Dani:

CI 305: Another Twitter Episode

April 11, 2010 in Podcasts, Social Media by Chris

General Text Messaging definitions

There are scores of places on the web to find the definitions for this texting shorthand that is developing around short-form messaging, but here’s a decent on to start with:

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

Twitter Tags – what do they mean?
@<username> – Use this tag when you want someone <username> to see your post, such as when you’re talking about her or asking her a question.

.@<username> – If you want everyone to see the post regardless of whether or not they follow <username>, don’t start the post w/ @. You can use anything, even a simple period to accomplish this.

D<space><username> – Use this if you want to send a private message to a user.

#<keyword> – Use this if you want a tweet to be picked up by twitter search for a topic.

RT @<username> – Use this when you want to pass a tweet along and want to give credit to the originator.

Twitter Searchhttp://search.twitter.com/

Setting up email (for MAC)

Go to http://search.twitter.com/set up your search term. Find the RSS feed link. From the options “Subscribe to this feed using” select applications. Under applications find mail. Hit subscribe. Apple mail uses an RSS feeder to send alerts. They’ll show up just like an email.

If you want to have search terms sent directly to an email address there are several 3rd party apps you can use.
If you have a favorite please let us know which one you are using and why you like it.

Setting up rss reader alerts:

The easiest way to follow search results is to add a search column to Tweetdeck or whatever Twitter application that you use. However, on the results page from http://search.twitter.com/, you can grab the RSS Feed link and add it to whatever feed reader you use, such as Google Reader.

Trending Topics

Use trending topics to find out which topics are hot in a specific area. Especially if you use current events to draw attention to your blog, or for inspiration for your comics, art, writing or what have you, trending topics is a great tool to see what might be relevant.

Listed

Dunbar’s Number is a concept that basically states that most people can only handle about 150 people/connections in a single organization before you get too big to really manage. Lists helps you break down a large group of people into more easily manageable sets, and also lets your followers know who’s who in your follower list.

By putting someone in a list, you define why you follow them, and let people know who you feel is worth following in a certain topic. You and your friends can all list each other to help other people find you.

Favorites

Favorite tweets that you or others make that you want to remember or be able to more easily find again. I’ve been told that there is also some Google juice to this, but I’m not entirely sure of that.

Retweeting

When passing along tweets that you particularly like, use the tag RT before a username (for instance – RT @username) to give them credit. Its polite, good web karma, and will keep people from thinking of you as a plagiarizer.

Creative Independence Twitter Page

http://twitter.com/thecinetwork

CI 304: This Episode is NOT about James Cameron’s Avatar

March 16, 2010 in Marketing and Promotion, Podcasts, Social Media by Chris

Gravatar logoHey, guys, just a short one this week to keep things moving along in a positive direction while Chris and Bob play Skype Tag.

In this episode, Bob takes a quick breather and Chris steps in to talk about a couple of interesting tools for managing your online social activities.

Avatar Management:
Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatars) http://gravatar.com/

Comment Management System:
Disqus http://disqus.com/
Cocomment http://cocomment.com/

Not mentioned in the show itself are the differences between Disqus and CoComment that Chris feels are relevant.

“First, Disqus tracks comments based on your email address, but unfortunately, can only track one email per account at this point, so if you use multiple email addresses, like me, you have to open multiple accounts. However, Disqus also does a lot of other things better than Cocomment, such as being able to pull your Avatar from Gravatar, Twitter, Facebook and other places.

“On the other hand, Cocomment uses a Firefox browser plugin instead of email addresses to track comments, so you can track ALL of your comments in one account. However, this means that if you use more than 1 machine regularly (I use 3) you need to install the plugin in all of your machines. Also, the plugin is currently limited to Mozilla-based browsers, like Flock or Firefox, so if you tend to favor another browser, you have to start up Firefox and make the comment from there. Cocomment does have a bookmarklet option for other browsers, but that tends to be a bit more work than I’d want to have to do.”

“I have accounts with both, but I tend to favor Disqus, and simply hope that at some point in the near future, they’ll let me manage all of my email addresses under one account.”

Dan Thompson’s Rip Haywire online comics.com: http://comics.com/rip_haywire/
Dan’s personal blog: http://riphaywire.com/

CI 303: A Twitter Episode

March 8, 2010 in Podcasts, Social Media by Chris

Twitter Button

140 Characters

So, maybe if you’ve been living on a deserted tropical island or under a rock you haven’t heard of twitter. This episode, Bob and Chris talk about the basics of Twitter and go through the process of getting you set up and branding your account. Twitter helps you reach clients and grow your business 140 characters at a time.

WordPress 2 + WordPress MU = WordPress 3: http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-291/

I answered Marty Qatani from MartyToons.com‘s follow up questions about Linked In on the Creative Independence group on Linked In. Also, sorry Marty, I believe I called you Marty Quintas in the show.  Besides my answer to that question, there’re also a slew of great tips for improving your Linked In profile and even a way to post video to your account.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=2489632&discussionID=10647783

All of our original Answers for Freelancers! episodes have been migrated and archived at http://AnswersForFreelancers.CreativeIndependence.net/

http://twitter.com

http://twitter.com/artisttarareed
http://twitter.com/brendaboo

twitter: geotagging applications
http://foursquare.com/

Want to find out when people’s homes are empty? This site brought to you courtesy http://pleaserobme.com

Find Bob and Chris on twitter at:
http://twitter.com/bobostromstudio
http://twitter.com/aithene

CI 302: Bob visits Wake Tech

February 5, 2010 in Podcasts by bobostromstudio

Short show this week. Bob does a quick recap on his way to visit a group of art students at Wake Technical Community College. Home work assignments for this week will be collected with the release of the next episode. If you haven’t done your assignment yet there’s still time. Just head on over to Linked In and sign up for an account. If you’ve already signed up or have an account find the CI group and join up. Say hello to our group and introduce yourself.

Links for this episode include:

My new friends at Wake Tech

If you’d like to leave us a message…our call in number is (919)766-0737


CI 301: Interview with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing

January 19, 2010 in Interviews, Podcasts by bobostromstudio

Small Business Marketing Expert John Jantsch

Small Business Marketing Expert John Jantsch

A few years ago I had the good fortune of finding John Jantsch‘s podcast, Duct Tape Marketing Radio. John is an expert in small business marketing. His podcast and blog site have completely changed the way I think about my business and how I market myself.  In this episode I talk with John about some of his marketing strategies and about his latest coaching program,  Social Media Pro.

I’ve recently completed the course and highly recommend it. John does a fantastic job of presenting the material in an easy to understand step by step lesson plans. Lessons are presented in a video format as well as written content and downloadable PDFs. If you would like to learn more about John you can find him at Duct Tape Marketing. If you would like to learn more about his latest coaching program you can find it at: DuctTapeU.com . Johns podcast is also listed on iTunes.