Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

Videos

Storing Social Media Assets in Evernote

On the wonderful Audiobooks at Sea cruise yesterday, narrator Jess Moran gave a detailed and inspiring presentation demonstrating how she intentionally and thoughtfully develops things to share on social media without making life’s work out of each post.

Someone asked how to store and catalog all the assets that you create. Our fabulous host Joel Froomkin suggested that Evernote would be a good tool for this purpose.

He’s right!

As I’ve previously written, I love Evernote because it synchs across my devices and is always accessible to me. It offers tremendous flexibility in how you store info and search for it. You can use tags, the title, key words, and dates in your search.

You can add videos, photos, and audio to a note. Evernote also will transcribe your media, including your handwriting!

A Google search revealed plenty of apps for the specific purpose of holding your social media components. Airtable would also work well for this task, but I don’t know whether or how well you can use your phone with it for uploads.

I didn’t want to buy another app or test Airtable. I use Evernote for everything and wanted to try it for this purpose.

As an experiment today, I used my iPhone to:

  • capture some images and videos during my day in Grand Cayman
  • create a folder in Evernote named Social Media Assets
  • add a single note in the folder for each picture or video. You could add multiple media to a single note, but I want each thing to be a separate unit for searchability.
  • edit some video clips together in iOS iMovie

The ship’s Wi-Fi is horrendously slow. I also found that it often timed out or logged me out on my phone, especially when I was uploading the videos. I had much steadier reception using my laptop.

Since it was so problematic, I uploaded the images from my phone to an iCloud folder. I then signed onto the Wi-Fi with my laptop and imported the media into my Evernote notes.

I wouldn’t have any issues in uploading videos and pictures straight from my phone into Evernote using regular cellular service or land-based Wi-Fi.

Here’s the 2:26 explainer video I made in iMovie. It doesn’t highlight screen taps as I normally would show in a video I produced at home. However, I think you can get the gist and see how quick and easy it is to use Evernote to catalog your clips and photos.

When you’d want to use the asset you’ve stored in Evernote, you could Open it and Share it to another app, or download it. I’d rather Open and Share it from within Evernote so I don’t have multiple copies of the thing.

A better option might be to store the resource you’ve made somewhere in the cloud like Google Drive and add its Share link to Evernote in addition to or instead of the asset. You then could use Evernote for inventory and search and always have a link to the component.

This Evernote note has the intro clip that we filmed after breakfast that I used in the video demo. I corrected the date and transcribed the video. The video doesn’t load for me on ship, but it should be available and will probably download if you’re on land.

I recorded this tip for cruisers:

If you want to see the notebook containing all the clips I created today, please send me an email. Note that I will process the requests after I get home.

Want to learn more about Evernote? I created a 10-module video course for members of NarratorsRoadmap.com. I show Evernote’s basic features and how I use it for my Customer Relationship Management (CRM) records.

I also want to mention that when I write anything substantive on a social media platform — whether my own post or comments on someone else’s — I copy it from the platform into Evernote so I might repurpose it later. My words belong to ME!

I found in today’s experiment that I took far more pictures and videos than I usually would in a month! Plus, I learned how to do some things; for instance, I’d never used iMovie on my phone. I also learned the importance of uploading videos to YouTube rather than my WordPress site!

The biggest benefit to the experiment was that I felt more creative throughout the day as I was specifically looking for interesting things that I might want to include in my private journals, articles, and social media posts.

Thanks so much to Jess Moran for explaining your system and giving me a new approach to documenting my life!

PS. We had a great time shopping in Grand Cayman! I saw this sign as we walked around and couldn’t resist sharing it here!

 

 

 

How to Download Clubhouse Replays

Last updated 10/10/23

 

I’ve recently enjoyed participating in several Clubhouse chats. In fact, I held an Ask Me Anything on the site on 9/16/22 to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of NarratorsRoadmap.com.

If you click the link above, you’ll see it goes to an Evernote page that has the Clubhouse graphic and audio recording of the chat, as well as an AI-generated transcript from Sonix.ai. (Please see the additional comments about the transcript in the notes below.)

When creating an open Clubhouse room, you can choose to turn on Replays. The Replay is created automatically once you open the room and will be available on Clubhouse until you delete it. Replays let your audience hear the discussion at a later time, share the link to the chat on and off Clubhouse, skip to the next speaker, and make 30-second clips.

Just as — perhaps even more — importantly, Replays can be re-purposed in other ways, such as in part or whole on other social media sites. You know I LOVE to re-purpose content! For instance, I could transcribe one or more recordings and copy my words to a blog article. I’ve also extracted clips to make audiograms to promote the replay in between live events. I’m thrilled to announce that my Clubhouse shows are available on NarratorsRoadmap.com with AI-generated transcripts and on podcast platforms like Apple and Amazon/Audible!

[Read more…] about How to Download Clubhouse Replays

ACX U – Acting With Intention

Most of this blog’s readers know about the audiobook production site ACX.com. Each year, ACX produces educational programming called ACX University. I had the great pleasure of being a guest speaker on the topic of Acting With Intention in one of the 2018 ACX University sessions.

 

 

During and after the video broadcast, I chatted with viewers. As usual for the Queen of Links, I shared a number of resources in that chat session. I also answered a number of questions.

While the chat is embedded with the video, I wanted to post all of the ancillary material and discussion here on my blog to make it easier to reference. That way, you can watch the video and not worry about missing anything.

[Read more…] about ACX U – Acting With Intention

Why Use Evernote for Audiobook Pronunciation Research

Recently, several audiobook narrators discussed in a Facebook group how we do our pronunciation research. Like many narrators, I use the iAnnotate app for the text since it allows us to read the book from a tablet and noiselessly turn pages.

Most people in the discussion either added their pronunciation research to the PDF in iAnnotate or copied it to an Excel spreadsheet.

My method is different because I store all of my pronunciation research in Evernote.

Evernote is described as a note-taking app that works on and syncs across all of your devices. The more notes you enter into it, the more powerful it becomes. You can find no shortage of tutorials to learn how to use it, including on Lynda.com. As a reminder, I advise that you find a library that includes access to Lynda.

I’ll tell you why and show you how I use Evernote for pronunciation research in this 7:37 explainer video.

Note: You can use iOS Slide Over with iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation), iPad Air and later, or iPad mini 2 and later. Check Settings/General to see if you have a Multitasking option. If so, choose Allow Multiple Apps. If you don’t have a Multitasking option, you’d need to switch between Evernote and iAnnotate with the Home button on the iPad.

You can view the Evernote note used in this demo at:
http://bit.ly/RTTPronunciationList

If you scroll to the bottom of that note, you’ll see that I added branding info. This way, everyone who sees the note will know its owner and can contact me and/or connect with me on social media.

If you decide to get an Evernote account, I’d love it if you used my referral link:
http://evernote.grsm.io/KarenCommins8181

 

 

Updated 7/15/17 to add instruction about Multitasking in iOS

 

A Place For Everything…

…and everything in its place. As you know, I do so love to be organized! In fact, many people have told me that I have an unusual talent for curating, organizing, condensing, and disseminating information that is relevant to them.

With that point in mind, I decided it would helpful to list all of my audiobook-related resources in one place. (Last updated 29 May 2017)

Guides:

Audiobook Resources For Authors is a curated list of articles that are grouped to take authors through the stages of production from thought to final product.

My Audiobook Marketing Cheat Sheet contains oodles of ideas for specifically publicizing and marketing the audiobook edition.

Authors and narrators will benefit from subscribing to 1 or more of my 5 Twitter lists of audiobook people and organizations.

Articles:

My blog articles are separated by those of most interest to authors and those more useful to narrators. Each section has a different sidebar.

I’ve also published a number of articles on other sites of benefit to both authors and narrators.

Videos for Authors:

Setting Sail In Audiobooks: A Guide for Authors and Publishers  

In this 41-minute video, I:

— explore the audiobook landscape (beginning at 2:43)

— explain reasons every author should produce audiobooks of their books (beginning at 7:23)

— demonstrate Amazon Whispersync capability between an audiobook and Kindle ebook (beginning at 10:19)

— offer specific tips about ways to write with audio in mind (beginning at 12:09)

— advise the viewer about the audiobook production process and gives concrete information about using ACX.com to create an audiobook, including payment for production costs and distribution options (beginning at 22:04)

Demo of Kindle eBook and Audible Audiobook Whispersync (3:04)

Videos for Narrators:

I always run this test to check for graphic romance scenes in books before I audition. (1:18)

In this 2:26 video, I demonstrate how my editor and I use iAnnotate software during the corrections process.

If you’re editing your own audio, I show how to remove mouth clicks in this :41 video.