WTF guys - why only on Facebook? RefreshFriday

[Alex Snyder]

We get that question from time to time. As people divorce Facebook the request to put RefreshFriday on other outlets grows. On top of that, we'd love to have an archive of all shows in more places.

@Jeff Kershner and I have researched simulcasting services that allow us to stream in many places, but the ease and cost of Zoom has been a major hurdle to get past. It might be time to use Vimeo Premium and a lesser level of Zoom to accomplish this.

Before going through the efforts to make this happen I wanted to check with the community. What do y'all think?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

We are also interested in knowing how many of you would like to have the option of having the audio portion of RefreshFriday folded into a Podcast as well? The original intent was for RefreshFriday to be a weekly podcast, skipping the live/recorded video. I'm not a huge fan of being on camera to begin with, however one of the pros of going live on video is the real-time interaction you receive from the community watching. Many dealers either don't have quite enough bandwidth or access to facebook to watch live every Friday.

Would love some suggestions...

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Zoom has very decent functions at low-level pricing. Upload that to YouTube and you'll be set!

 

[Alex Snyder]

Zoom has very decent functions at low-level pricing. Upload that to YouTube and you'll be set!

We did that for a while. The problem is time. Something to keep in mind is DealerRefresh is a side-hobby for Jeff and me. We do it for fun while our main jobs pay the bills. That means there are many days where we have to jump right off of a RefreshFriday show into a meeting or deadline or car deal.

The process for Zoom to Youtube =

• 12:45 PM we fire up Zoom and work with guests to smooth out any technical issues on their end.
• 1:00 PM go Live on Facebook.
• 2:00 PMish the show ends
• 2:30 to 3:00 PM Zoom finishes transcoding the show into a video and audio files (love this feature)
• 3:00 to 4:00 PM cut out initial recording chatter, fix audio levels on the guest, and add intro in Final Cut Pro. Maybe cut a few smaller clips out.
• 4:00 to 5:00 PM upload to YouTube and add SEO-friendly title, etc. YouTube uploads of a 1 hour-long video take time.

That can be a 5-hour process

Or, continue to use Zoom, without the webinar feature, to push to Vimeo Premium. Vimeo simultaneously live casts to YouTube, Facebook, and an embedded area on DealerRefresh where the recording lives without the need for any editing. In theory, it saves one of us 3 hours a week and earns us two more places to share the show.

I think I just sold myself on Vimeo.

 

[Brittany]

We are also interested in knowing how many of you would like to have the option of having the audio portion of RefreshFriday folded into a Podcast as well? The original intent was for RefreshFriday to be a weekly podcast, skipping the live/recorded video. I'm not a huge fan of being on camera to begin with, however one of the pros of going live on video is the real-time interaction you receive from the community watching. Many dealers either don't have quite enough bandwidth or access to facebook to watch live every Friday.

Would love some suggestions...

I totally support it! The real time action is great, but sometimes (like last week) I miss the live version, and a podcast would be much easier to listen to.

Plus, I feel like podcasts also extend the life of your videos. It definitely gives new people, like myself, a place to access all of the older content you have in an easy way!

 

[Marc Lavoie]

How many average live users do you get throughout the whole Episode? Is it worth it being live?

Here's what you should do

1) Consider non live content
2) Transform the Video Content to a Podcast and text transcript to put on the blog
3) Have me as a Guest

Seriously, you should consider outsourcing repetitive & editing tasks to freelancers.

That's what I'm currently doing for the Autobahn Academy Podcast.

Repurpose everything!

 

[Alex Snyder]

Seriously, you should consider outsourcing repetitive & editing tasks to freelancers.

That was done at one point in DealerRefresh history.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

I'm guessing it didn't go well

 

[Ryan Thompson]

We are also interested in knowing how many of you would like to have the option of having the audio portion of RefreshFriday folded into a Podcast as well? The original intent was for RefreshFriday to be a weekly podcast, skipping the live/recorded video. I'm not a huge fan of being on camera to begin with, however one of the pros of going live on video is the real-time interaction you receive from the community watching. Many dealers either don't have quite enough bandwidth or access to facebook to watch live every Friday.

Would love some suggestions...

Why not reach out to Jasen Rice and see how he grabs the audio from his FB live's and turns into a podcast?I actually listen to his quite regularly on the drive to work.

I'd LOOOOVE a Refresh Friday pod.

It's hard to find 40 mins to plop down and watch a refresh friday on FB.

Love that you guys are doing this on the regular. Keep it going boys.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Glad to hear that @Ryan Thompson :thumbup:

We have the audio file already broken out in the Zoom recording. It is more a matter of time (much like Youtube uploading) in getting those up to our podcast account.

Unfortunately, Vimeo was a nogo. We gave it a try only to discover they will not simulcast to Facebook and Youtube because Facebook doesn't allow it. As a workaround, we played with continuing to live stream through Zoom, but the audio wouldn't take on Vimeo when we did it. On top of that Vimeo still requires a separate program to share a window/desktop so we can show our guests. For the $900 a year cost it didn't make sense.

Now I'm on the hunt for Youtube batch uploading services and one that can do the same for podcasts. We'll continue to live stream to Facebook with Zoom and will hunt for the simplest way to have a library of episodes in many consumption flavors.

I was really liking Vimeo's simplicity and it seems Facebook is the bastard in this whole endeavor. Maybe we can find another way to use Vimeo in some of the batching work because it directly integrates with Dropbox and operates off of changes to specific folders