Gain Work Outside Boating

Gain Work Outside Boating

BWI Director Lenny Rudow is joined by wide-ranging freelance writer Charles Plueddeman and long-time magazine editor-in-chief John Wooldridge for an educational webinar titled “How to Score Work Outside the Boating Industry.” “The idea isn’t merely on how to get more and different work, but specifically on how to grow your boating writing in general market publications and get assignments on boating-oriented topics with magazines or web sites serving other segments of society,” Rudow explains. For example, how to get a boating story in a local newspaper or general travel magazine. “If we can do this effectively, it’s a win-win for both us and the industry as a whole, so everyone stands to benefit.”

This is the seventh BWI educational webinar made available through the support of Dometic Marine.

Video Basics: Improving Your Presentations

Video Basics: Improving Your Presentations

“Video Basics: Improving Your Presentations,” covers cameras, audio, shooting techniques and editing. Everybody’s clients seem to have an insatiable appetite for videos and many writers are responding. Yet many home-schooled video creators recognize they could be doing a better production job.

Presenting is BWI member Ed Kukla, who recently combined his experience and love for cinematography and boating into a new venture, Starboard Films. He’s worked as a professional cinematographer for over 20 years and been involved in a variety of projects including documentaries for the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, A & E, HGTV, as well as marketing and promotional videos for Fortune 500 companies. Kukla has been shooting sailing and boating videos since 1986.

This is the sixth BWI educational webinar made available through the support of Dometic Marine.

Re-purposing & Syndicating Writers’ Work

Re-purposing & Syndicating Writers’ Work

A presentation by Alison Yesilciman, founder of Media Cooler Innovations, explains the online tool that helps freelancers syndicate their new or previously published content. This may be a way for writers to re-purpose some of their existing work and reach out to publications beyond the boating industry. With MediaCooler.com a freelance journalist can showcase and sell content to publishers around the world. Writers set the selling price and retain all of the rights to the work. The online marketplace brings editors to writers work and manages the business process.

This is the fifth BWI educational webinar made available through the support of Dometic Marine.

Writer Contract & Legal Issues

Writer Contract & Legal Issues

This webinar addresses legal issues with a focus on contracts, specific clauses in contracts that affect writers and how to address them, concerns such as establishing legal liability corporations, copyright protection, and more. It was presented December 15, 2011 by Milton Toby, writer/attorney/head of the Contracts Committee for the American Society of Journalists and Authors. This was the fourth BWI Educational webinar made available through the continued support of Dometic Marine. (Listener note: there is an audio gap of about 2 minutes approximately 40-minutes into the presentation.)

Conducting Successful News Events

This webinar is designed to bring writers and vendors together to improve press coverage of new marine products and boats. The idea for the presentation emerged from a meeting of the BWI Directors where concern was expressed over the high volume of news conferences and product introductions at boat shows making it difficult for writers to participate and glean all they needed from marine manufacturers

Subjects included in the outline of the webinar include:

– The need to keep presentations brief, focused, factual, useful, and if appropriate, quantitative.

– Learning to test the concept from a reader/subscriber perspective and ask, “Is this helpful or interesting?”

– Writer preference for take-away formats – paper releases, flashdrives, or other packaging to best disseminate news.

– The practice of handing out “chotzskies” and if so, what’s appropriate?

– A reminder to focus on video and how to prepare to “be recorded.”

– Honoring appointments and allowing enough time for reviews or tests.

– When enough information is enough and how to minimize the “marketing speak” for better results.

BWI Director, commentator, and columnist, Alan Jones, lead the webinar based on long-term experience of reviewing and writing about boats, new products, and the boating and fishing lifestyles.

Conduct Successful News Events & Better

Webinar: Drive Traffic with Social Media

“Drive traffic to your site with social media,” covers using Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, how to create and best use accounts with each social media site to promote a media outlet you work for or your own company, plus how to gauge whether your efforts are working.

The webinar is conducted by Diane Byrne, one of the best-known and highly respected yachting journalists worldwide, who founded MegayachtNews.com in 2007.

Webinar: How to Start a Blog

BWI’s first educational webinar, “How to Start a Blog for About $10,” was conducted by Kim Kavin, the former president of BWI and the owner of the Charterwave and BoaterMouth websites. It is sponsored by Dometic, leading supplier of dedicated systems and equipment for recreational and commercial boats.

The webinar covers domain name research and selection with Google tools; domain name registration and forwarding with GoDaddy; basic WordPress blog software setup; and introductory WordPress features, such as photo uploads, video uploads and widgets.