Inside PR 395: The chat app is the medium

• • Inside PR

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Martin here.

Happy New Year and welcome back! We hope you had a fun and restful holiday.

In 2015, we’re planning to reinvigorate IPR by making it more topical and dealing with an issue or two a week. Stay tuned…

We start by congratulating Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson on the 10th anniversary of For Immediate Release! Here’s (hears?) to many, many more! We’re thrilled to be part of the FIR podcast network.

We also have some sad news. Michael Herman, a senior PR agency leader we know from Counselors Academy, passed away suddenly on Saturday at his home in North Carolina. Michael was the consummate PR pro, received PRSA’s highest honour, the Gold Anvil award, taught PR and never stopped learning, asking questions and helping people. Gini shares a personal memory of Mike on Pinterest and how they used to trade recipes. Here’s a moving tribute from Peppercom founder, Steve Cody. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to Mike’s family and friends. 

Now onto this week’s main topic. Over the break I noticed a number of what’s ahead roundups – including TechCrunch, AdAge and GigaOm – highlighted the renewed interest in chat apps as a key way for people to communicate and connect.

Which leads to the question: how can professional communicators, who participate in public conversations, navigate in the world of chat?

Gini: A big issue is anything you post online can and will be used against you. In other words, private isn’t necessarily private, anymore.

Joe harkens back to the early days social media where you had people talking to people versus brands talking to people. Now that marketers are monitoring public interactions, he believes ordinary people, who may not trust commercial accounts, are turning to messenger apps as a way to communicate.

Private or public messages? Which will be your default in 2015? We’d love to hear what you think.

One last thing. Many of you listen to us on iTunes and it would be great if you could leave us a comment or rating. Thanks!

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.

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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 Ashlea McGrath.

IPR special edition: Rob Biesenbach on telling stories

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Martin here. I’m getting ready to head off to PRSA Counselors Academy’s spring conference and thought I’d catch up with one of the presenters, Rob Biesenbach. Rob is a communications expert, speaker, writer and actor who is ‘fighting to end dull ordinary communications in our time’.  (But he doesn’t have a cape.)

At Counselors, Rob’s going to be talking about how to Unleash the Power of Storytelling to build trust and win business.

He says most people play fast and loose with the definition of story and don’t understand its distinct structure: a character, in pursuit of a goal, in the face of some sort of obstacle.

Stories aren’t a quote from Winston Churchill or a customer testimonial.

Rob likens our job as communicators with acting: both require you to connect with your audience, tell a story well and express yourself. Too many businesses compare themselves to other businesses – when they should be looking to and learning from show business, where the most powerful stories in our culture can be found.

Rob is also doing an Ingnite style presentation based on his new book, 11 Deadly Presentation Sins.

He talks about the three he thinks are the worst:

  • Failure to connect with an audience
  • Failure to focus
  • Doing a data dump rather than a story that’s filled with emotion.

And when it comes to PowerPoint, he cautions us that when you see ‘insert text here’ on a slide, it’s a suggestion, not a command.

Want to hear more? You can catch Rob at Counselors Academy or check out his website.

And if you’re interested in Counselors Academy and the other presenters, you can follow the hashtag on Twitter #CAPRSA.

Gini and Joe will be back next episode.

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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 Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 3.25: Roy Reid on Outrageous Trust

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It’s Valentine’s Day and while we certainly don’t know the secret to romance, we do know that no real relationship can survive without trust.

And that brings us to today’s topic. We caught up with Roy Reid, APR, one of the partners in Consensus Communications, at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco. Roy had just given a presentation on trust – well, actually he went beyond simple trust to describe something he called outrageous trust.

Here are three actions Roy recommends to achieve outrageous trust:

1. Take responsibility for the relationship.

2. Build from the inside out. That means always acting with integrity and producing excellent work.

3. Be consistent in your communications.

Gini references the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer and the fact that while trust in organizations is no longer falling, it’s still low. She agrees with Roy and says you can’t be trustworthy externally unless you’re trustworthy internally too.

Joe mentions Naked Conversations and the notion that we trust people we know and can talk to and are generally skeptical of business. And if organizations haven’t spent the time to engage with their community, they won’t have much credibility or support when a crisis occurs.

We go on to talk about two recent online crises in the restaurant industry, at Smith and Wollensky (scroll to the end to read what the police had to say) and the tipping brouhaha at Applebee’s.

What do you think organizations need to do to attain the state of outrageous trust with their customers and communities?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 3.18: An eclectic look at different cultures, a new digital strategy certificate and an NPR experiment

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The team is back together and catching up on some exciting events that have happened in the past few weeks.

Gini Dietrich shares her stories of her trip to the great land of Holland. She regales us with tales of her journey to Amsterdam. You will get a little chuckle when you learn why she was thrown out of the red light district.

Gini’s trip also sparks the conversation of how different cultures respond to people in different ways. The hosts talk about the art and culture of listening in different parts of the world, and the importance of being a good and active listener, especially in the industry of public relations and communications.

Martin Waxman announces that he will be part of a new digital and social media program created by the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. They will be launching a three-course Certificate in Digital Strategy and Communications Management in January 2013. The classes are geared to communications and marketing professionals who want to fine tune their skills and learn how to adopt a strategic approach to digital and social networks. You can read his blog post on the program here.

And last, but most certainly not least, Joseph Thornley shares an NPR Facebook experiment that determined what kinds of local stories drive engagement. The result were the following nine type of local stories: place explainers, crowd pleasers, curiosity stimulators, news explainers, major breaking news, feel-good smilers, topical buzzers, provocative controversies, awe-inspiring visuals.

This study can help your organization determine what kind of stories to share to ensure engagement with your local audience.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 3.14: Content Marketing Secrets from Lee Odden

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Following up on our last episode, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley, talk about another great interview they recorded at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco.

This week, we feature Joe’s discussion with Lee Odden about his successful approach to content marketing.

Odden is the author of Optimize – ‘How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing’. He is also the CEO of @TopRank Online Marketing, a Minneapolis based digital marketing agency specializing in strategic internet marketing consulting, training and implementation services including: content, search, email and social media marketing.

Joe and Odden talk about the book, the ‘people’ behind the SEO, and how to strategically integrate other distribution channels beyond social media and email marketing to promote your content.

Lee Odden is one of the featured speakers at the 2012 meshmarketing conference in Toronto on Nov. 7.

Inside PR will also be there to talk to more thought-leaders and digital innovators and keep you up-to-date with digital trends in our industry.

Watch the video interview on the Inside PR YouTube channel:

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.