One of the big differences is in your presentation. When connecting with someone in real life, most of the time you try to establish common ground with the person first. Whether it be sports, politics, beliefs, etc.  This works online, in certain situations. When I contact people to interview them, I don’t necessarily find something I have in common with the person. I usually cut straight to the point and tell the person about myself and the reason why I’m contacting them. Now if your looking to make a friendship with the perspective person, then I would suggest finding common ground. But if you need to interview a new person every week, then you may not have time to do this.

Another thing I’ve learned is if you contact the person via social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, your likely to get a quicker response. I personally usually find it strange to be contacted by someone by email before I hear from them via social networks.  I believe the reason for this is because social networks are for just that, networking. Now there are exceptions to this “rule”. If the person you would like to contact hardly ever checks their social network profiles, then your probably better off with contacting them via email.

How about you? Do you have any tips for connecting and making contacts online? Let us know in the comment section below.

Speaking of video jobs, I’m hopefully going to be working with The Batavian and producing some video ads for them. It’ll look nice on my portfolio and will be a nice source of income.

I’ve also been working on promoting and setting up a facebook profile picture competition with my friends. You can see the video ad I made for it below.

Earlier this month I started my newest project the Young Entrepreneur Podcast. After interviewing Mandee Widrick, we discussed the idea of her becoming my cohost. By the next episode she WAS my cohost. We’ve done several episode since then, the newest of which will be posted this coming Monday.

A couple days ago I was contacted by a man who helps run the LEAH convention in Rochester. Their interested in having me produce some video’s for them. I plan on giving them a call tomorrow to work out some of the details. I hope it works out, since it would be a great experience and tons of fun.

I ordered a two feet by 5 feet banner for Just Passing Thru Productions earlier this week. It’ll hopefully arrive tomorrow morning. I’ll post pictures when it arrives.

Thats it for now! God Bless!

Earlier this month I asked everyone to vote for my video on the “Brown Bailout” contest. Unfortunately I didn’t win. But as a sort of ‘consolation’ prize I’ll be receiving $100. Which given the fact that I shot and edited to video in less then 20 minutes isn’t bad.

I’ve also been producing content for The Batavian on a regular basis. Thats been a great experience. It helps get my name out there and gives me a chance to meet people in the community. Two weeks ago I did a piece on a local schools efforts to celebrate veterans day. Next week I have two stories to cover. One I’m doing on a local girl scout troupe who made pillows for local charities and the other is about a community thanksgiving dinner at a local church.

Thats about it for now. God bless!

Last week I spend some time redesigning JPT media’s website and I’m very happy with the way that turned out. I just took a cool theme and changed it up a bit and made it look more like a website then a blog. I’ll probably be adding some plugins to make that install of Wordpress even more of a CMS.

A couple days ago I was hired by The Batavian to film a football game. Filming was harder then I thought and I learned a lot. Howard Owens (the owner and publisher of The Batavian) gave me great feedback and advice. So next time my video will hopefully be much more polished and smooth. Editing took a couple of hours, and I ended up messing up a couple of the shots, but it was fun. Next time I’m going to make sure I watch the entire video twice before I render. And since the team we filmed won their game, I’m going to be filming them play again this Thursday.

Well that’s it for now! I’ll hopefully keep the blog more updated next month.

Ethan

Ethan