Inside PR 3.69: Behind-the-Scenes of Spin Sucks

April 18, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

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We have a very special guest on today’s Inside PR.

She is someone near and dear to my heart, both personally and professionally.

She was with me in Toronto a couple of weeks ago for Third Tuesday and we caught up with her to talk blogging, editorial calendars, and community.

That person is the one and only Lindsay Bell-Wheeler, the content director for Spin Sucks.

Lindsay and I have worked together for nearly two years and have evolved the blog from a top 25 contender to one of the top (or the top, depending on which list you look at) PR blog in the world. She also manages the strategic content direction for our clients and coaches a team of writers and editors.

I let Joe and Martin lead the conversation, but managed to get in a few quips of my own.

She didn’t know she was going to be a guest on the show (I know how stressed out she would have made herself had I told her) so her comments, jokes, and wit are completely off-the-cuff…and brilliant.

I’m excited to introduce you to her and excited for you to learn more about the behind-the-scenes happenings of the crazy place we call home.

Enjoy!

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the FIR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 368: Spin Sucks!

April 7, 2014 • thornley • Inside PR, PR

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Spin sucks! You know it and I know it. And Gini Dietrich knows it. But even more, Gini has written a new book, Spin Sucks, in which she shows us how to replace spin with authentic communications that your community will find informative, entertaining and useful.

Spin Sucks the Book has just launched. And in this week’s episode of Inside PR, Martin Waxman and I talk with Gini about the book, what it tells us, and her innovative approach to marketing the book. (If you know Gini, you wouldn’t expect anything less from her than to turn the launch of her book into a marketing experiment. She’s always thinking of how to do things better.) This included a Brand Ambassador program to spread the word about the book so that Gini could maintain a much more limited travel schedule to promote Spin Sucks than she had to maintain when promoting her previous book, Marketing in the Round. Over 800 people applied to be a Brand Ambassador, agreeing to buy the book and write a review to coincide with the launch date. Ultimately, she selected over 200 of the applicants to be Ambassadors.

If you wonder what type of results Gini got from this approach, check out the quality of the reviews on Amazon.com. High quality, Well written, persuasive reviews from people who’ve read and loved the book. (At the time I write this, there are 76 reviews of Gini’s book. Sixty five are 5 star and eleven are four star. It doesn’t get much better than that.)

Gini will be launching Spin Sucks in Canada at Third Tuesday Toronto on April 7 and Third Tuesday Ottawa on April 8. There are still a small number of tickets available. So if you’d like to meet Gini and get a signed copy of the book click on one of the following links to register for Third Tuesday Toronto or register for Third Tuesday Ottawa.

Also this week, we had a listener comment from Charlene Burke about the use of LinkedIn.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 367: Reflections on SXSW and PressFriendly

March 27, 2014 • Martin • PR, social media

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Martin here.

When we recorded this show, I’d just returned from SXSWi and I offer my thoughts reflections on this year’s Festival.

There’s no doubt SXSW remains a one-of-a-kind event with a unique laid-back energy and excitement for all things tech and social. That’s something you see first-hand watching the featured speakers and keynotes and in many of the smaller sessions, too.

And while there weren’t any big new platform launches in 2014, there was a lot of big thinking.

SXSW is still a defining event. Yet with so many people and ideas in one place it can seem a bit overwhelming. Before you go, do your homework and figure out what you want to see and do and who you want to meet; the Festival offers such a friendly, open vibe, you can meet anyone.

And if you’re looking for a more intimate conference with the South-by feel, check out the second annual SXSW V2V in Las Vegas that happens in July.

You can read more about my SXSW highlights on the TFC blog.

Oh and here’s Kevin Bacon’s hilarious video explaining the ’80s to millennials.

In the second part of the show we talk about PressFriendly.

After receiving a pitch, Gini asked Laura Petrolino to test out the product and Laura wrote about it on SpinSucks. Essentially PressFriendly helps automate media relations. It’s aimed at startup entrepreneurs who are frustrated with the PR experience and want to try it on their own.

Gini feels they have the right thinking but that it’s difficult to automate relationship-building. She also wonders if reaching out to media and bloggers is the best use of an entrepreneur’s time or if they’d be better off hiring a professional.

Joe’s not sure building a media list should be handed to the most junior person or to an algorithm. That can lead to spammy pitches that hurt the reputation of the entire industry.

Finally, I mention that one of the students in my UTSCS hybrid Foundations Course produced a video, Joey Loves Water, and it went viral. It was part of her class assignment and as of this writing, she has nearly 200,000 views.

Joe notices the video has been picked up on a lot of cat sites as well as on Huffington Post. Once it got on the circuit, he observes, you can almost trace its virality by seeing which sites help amplify and pass it along.

The lesson? Ditch the corporate spokesperson and bring in a cat. Or…maybe not.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 366: Kelly Blazek, LinkedIn Connections, and Proper Communication

March 19, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • social media

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Martin Waxman is back and we are grateful because he is much better at the intro and closing than Joe Thornley and me.

We kick the show off by talking about the Kelly Blazek crisis situation that happened a couple of weeks ago.

As a quick refresher (or the story, for those of you who missed it), the 2013 Cleveland Communicator of the Year received an email from a young professional who is moving to Ohio and searching for a job.

Because Blazek runs the 7,300 member marketing job board for the Cleveland area, this young woman sent her a LinkedIn message, explaining who she was, her business expertise, and what kinds of jobs she could do. She then asked to join the jobs board.

What she received from Blazek, in return, was both unprofessional and … strange … for a communicator.

While we don’t beat this horse to death, it did create an interesting conversation about LinkedIn and how we each use the tool.

As it turns out, we have three different uses for it: Ambivalence, referrals, and contact management, which makes it an interesting look at how there really is no right way or wrong way to use social media. Except to not take your bad day out on someone asking or help.

Martin also mentions he hates the generic LinkedIn requests. You know the one. The, “I’d like to add you to my professional network” with no mention on how you know the person or why you’d like to connect.

He also talks about his pet peeve, which is people who have never worked with you asking you to write a recommendation.

After you listen, we leave the floor to you. What are your personal rules about LinkedIn connections?

P.S. While Terry Fallis’s new book, No Relation, doesn’t come out until May, as is his modus operandi, he is podcasting it for you ahead of time. Check it out!

************************************************************************************************

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 365: MasterCard ties one on, Facebook going mobile and the New Klout

March 12, 2014 • thornley • Inside PR, PR

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Gini Dietrich and I do a two-hander in this episode as Martin is on a train with only spotty online access.

This week we talk about MasterCard’s aggressive PR tactics around the Brit Awards, more evidence that we’re all going mobile and the New Klout.

MasterCard ties one on

Gini pointed to MasterCard’s efforts to tie coverage of MasterCard to access to the Brit Awards. Dominic Ponsford detailed exactly what happened, from the PR company’s suggestion that access would be tied to agreement to mention MasterCard through the reactions to the Twitter backlash.

Ponsford published the text of an email to a reporter in which MasterCard’s PR company asked reporters to agree to tweet MasterCard messages in their feeds. The PR company went so far as to suggest content for tweets before, during and after the event:

Pre event – e.g. Really excited to be heading down to @BRITAwards tonight with @MasterCardUK #PricelessSurprises

Event night – live tweeting from the event including @MasterCardUK handle and #PricelessSurprises and to retweet @MasterCardUK tweets throughout the night where appropriate

Post event – tweet directing followers to @MasterCardUK BRITs YouTube videos

Needless to say, this prompted a backlash, with Twitter comments like this:

Good press coverage is hard to bribe. For everything else there’s Mastercard. #PricelessSurprises

— Felicity Morse (@FelicityMorse) February 19, 2014

The managing director of the PR agency didn’t back down, arguing that:

“The role of the PR agency is to pursue all coverage opportunities on behalf of its clients. This includes providing accurate brand references from the outset, for use across all platforms. It is a two-way conversation between the journalist and the PR in order to reach a mutually beneficial outcome. Editorial control always remains with the journalist.”

Gini and I discuss our views about this type of tactic. Gini sees this as an illustration of the fine line between legitimately promoting an event and the questionable offering of a benefit for coverage.

I see it as a clear example of tied coverage. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. You give me reference to my client and I will give you access to the awards.” Yes we have seen this before. Think of auto journalists flown to exotic locations to review new cars. But in recent years, the trend has been against these kinds of junkets, with many news organizations telling their staff to refuse the benefits. “You can’t blame a guy for trying. But you can blame the other guy for playing along.”

What do you think of MasterCard’s media relations approach? Too cheeky? Or taking fair advantage of the an opportunity. Or somewhere in between.

Canadians go mobile with Facebook

The world truly is going mobile. New stats out of Facebook Canada indicate that Facebook Canada is making more money on mobile devices than on PCs and stationary devices. Of Facebook’s nineteen million Canadian users, ten million check their Facebook account once a day via mobile versus only four million who check it daily from non-mobile devices like desktops.

To me, this just underscores the importance of think mobile first. If you are thinking about communicating with people primarily in front of PCs or laptops, you’re failing to follow the audience where they’ve actually gone. They are looking at the mobile devices in their hand.

Gini cautions against following an overall trend without looking at your specific circumstance. In her experience, many sectors are lagging behind in the move to mobile, with many of her clients’ sites continuing to receive the majority of their traffic from desktop applications. It’s important that you know where your traffic is coming from. So check your analytics.

A New (Improved?) Klout

And finally, we discuss the new Klout. Gini finds it useful, because it surfaces content from people with whom she already engages. Gini also finds the measurement tab to be useful in that it’s suggests which individual pieces of content have generated the greatest engagement. For my part, I find the metrics to be even more dumbed down than they used to be and of the dubious value. It appears to me that Klout is positioning itself as a tool to assist content creators in competition with established players like HootSuite or Buffer.

What do you think? Is the new Klout a step forward or moved to irrelevance?

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 364: Our PR loves

February 21, 2014 • admin • PR

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Martin here.

Because we recorded this episode on Valentine’s Day, we decided to talk about our PR loves – as in the tools that help us do our jobs better – not the people. The idea came from a Spin Sucks post by Gini and her team.

Martin’s loves:

Twitter for connecting, sharing/curating, sending quick messages and generally finding out what’s trending.
Evernote – the place where I keep all my notes, random thoughts, blog posts, ideas and to do lists. They’re organized, searchable and accessible on whatever device I happen to be on.

Joe’s loves (two pairs):

Feedly for news, tagging and follow-up and Diigo to store, annotate and keep track of posts he wants to reference later. Joe says that as communications professionals, we need to have the facts at hands when writing and both these platforms help with that.
Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule and share stories easily.

Gini’s loves:

Talkwalker, a new app that works like Google alerts. Gini likes it even more since its Hootsuite integration, which lets you schedule or tweet out alerts.
Scrivener the app Gini uses for writing books and other long-form content. Not only does it help keep you organized, it develops your table of contents and index, and it’s searchable so you can easily find various parts of a manuscript during your writing.

What are the tools you love that make your day easier?

We end the show with a question from Daniel Francavilla, a student of mine who owns his own design business. Daniel wondered about the importance of design and visual identity in communications.

Joe says (and we all agree) that it’s often the differentiator. We’ve gone from a world where the big choice used to be selecting a template in Word to one where design is integral to our work and the people who want to be competitive are those who design for a multimedia experience.

Thanks Daniel.

One quick reminder: For anyone in Toronto and Ottawa – the next Third Tuesday features data analyst Jim Sterne on the human side of analytics – #3TYYZ February 26 in Toronto and #3TYOW February 27 in Ottawa. Hope to see you there. And here’s Jim Sterne’s song parody, Modern Data Analyst.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 363: Where Does Social Media Belong?

February 12, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

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First things first, be sure to wish Martin Waxman a happy birthday in the comments!

Now on to the slightly less important stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, Sam Fiorella wrote a blog post called, “Why Your Social Media Team Should Be PR Professionals.”

As PR professionals, it makes sense we’d be curious to read more (and you will want to, as well).

If you’re like us, you’ll find yourself nodding all the way through his blog post.

Yes, PR pros know how to manage crises.

Yes, we are trained to manage reputations.

Yes, we know the right questions to ask to create a calm before the storm.

Yes, we can train pros in other disciplines to manage themselves appropriately online.

Yes, most of the knee jerk reactions that happen in social media are done so because the community management is handled by someone without these skills.

Now go to the comments and read what Danny Brown said.

“Disagree. Two words – Justine Sacco.”

We recently talked about the Sacco saga. She is a communications professional. She knew better. And yet…

Read the blog post, read the comments, and listen to what we have to say about where social media belongs.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Special edition: The ABCs of podcasting at CPRS Ottawa’s Re-Boot Camp for Communicators

February 5, 2014 • admin • Inside PR, PR, Shownotes

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Ashlea here, your Inside PR podcast producer…

Today Joe and I took part in a high-wire feat at CPRS Ottawa’s Re-Boot Camp for Communicators.

Together we demonstrated the basic steps of producing a quality podcast, talked about the hardware and software you need to get started, and published this edition – live.

If you’re listening to this episode now, it means we’ve successfully completed our act! Can you hear the applause?

In all seriousness, CPRS Ottawa’s Re-Boot Camp was a lovely time; thanks for having us!

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 362: The importance of conflict in video storytelling

January 30, 2014 • thornley • PR, social media

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So you’ve made a video. And you’re disappointed that it just sits there, with few viewers and little discussion. Why do so many videos made by companies and organizations fall flat? In many cases, its because they lack an essential component of effective storytelling – conflict.

Think of any story you love and you’re sure to find conflict at its core. That’s what Mike Edgell, the Video Creative Director at 76BrandFilms, tells Martin Waxman and me in this week’s episode of Inside PR.

What are the essentials of storytelling? A hook, context, conflict, build, and resolution. Omit any of these and the viewer is lost, the narrative falls flat. Of these, the essential component, the one that drives the story, is conflict. And this can be a problem for brands who hear the word conflict and immediately run the other way. Who take a black and white view of conflict.

In fact, conflict arises in virtually every situation and with a nuanced approach, it can be built into virtually every video story. So, how does a brand do this? Mike has some tips.

1) Find a conflict that the organization can overcome. An internal challenge can ring true and does not run the risk of pitting the organization against outside forces.

2) Have empathy. Be sure that the conflict relates to the interests of your target audience. Don’t start with what the organization wants to talk about. Start with what the audience fears, wants and cares about. If tell your story with the audience in mind, your content stands a higher chance of resonating with them.

3) Finally, make sure your conflict has some significant risk. There has to be a consequence to failure. Otherwise, why should a viewer care about the story? This risk can embrace both the loss of something and the continuing absence of something desirable. In both instances, tension can be built up and the situation resolved, providing the audience with a satisfying experience.

Simple rules often overlooked.

Listen to the full podcast as Mike develops these ideas and illustrates them with real life examples of videos that met the challenge of incorporating conflict to engage audiences.

Gini Dietrich fans, don’t despair. Gini couldn’t make this week’s recording, but she will return next week.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 361: Justine Sacco, poor judgment and the mob mentality

January 22, 2014 • admin • PR

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Martin here…And as I said on the podcast, I was waiting for Google to write this post for me…

We start 2014 talking about the mob mentality you sometimes experience in social media.

Picture this. You’ve had a busy year and it’s almost the holidays. You’re traveling halfway across the world to head home for some much-needed R&R. It’s a long and maybe a bit of a dull plane ride. There’s no Wi-Fi, so you’re unplugged. The perfect way to unwind.

Sounds tempting.

But when you land…you notice something’s different. Strangers recognize you. Are they pointing fingers? You get reconnected only to find out you’ve been fired with no warning – over a tweet. The decision had been made when you were in the air.

I’ve just described what happened to Justine Sacco, who was a senior communicator for IAC. As in, past tense. The reason for her firing was a racist tweet she posted before leaving on the flight.

Let’s be clear, we don’t condone any racist remarks and this was clearly a case of very bad judgment (just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should). If you followed the story, you’ll know it blew up when she was in the air and didn’t have access to Wi-Fi, there was an avalanche of critical posts, hashtags, a twitter storm and, of course, she abruptly lost her job.

Now that we’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the situation from the perspective of a few weeks, we thought we’d discuss these questions:

– Is it wise to let the community do your thinking for you?
– When should you wait to make a decision and when should you react immediately?
– How do you deal with a mob mentality when you’re trying to make a change?
– If you react quickly, is your decision strategic or just designed to stop the noise?
– Do you dump first and then ask questions later?
– Shouldn’t everyone have an opportunity to answer for their actions before they feel the consequences?

It’s a complex and multi-layered issue, as you’ll hear in the podcast. Have a listen and let us know where you stand.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.