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On today’s Inside PR, we have three topics: The Vocus/Cision merger, Copyblogger shutting down its Facebook page, and a cool new tool called Slidebatch.

Vocus and Cision

As it happens, I was in Washington, D.C. for the PRSA International Conference. I attended the happy hour with Vocus and Cision to learn of their new name and what their plans are, now that the merger is complete.

They will keep the name Cision and will be headquartered in Chicago (which makes me happy), but it sounds like Cision clients will now have access to Vocus tools (PR Web and HARO) and Vocus clients will now have access to Cision tools.

But it is an interesting look at what is happening in the PR industry. Joe asks if we’re shrinking and what that could mean for our livelihoods.

Copyblogger and Facebook

Then we tackled the big announcement from Copyblogger that they shut down their Facebook page, even with 36,000 fans.

We talk about whether this is a publicity stunt (that clearly is working because everyone in the industry is talking about it) or just a really smart decision.

Though the algorithm at Facebook has changed and engagement, reach, and comments are down across the board, it still drives a significant amount of referral traffic for each of us.

It would be interesting to see if Copyblogger lost a significant amount of referral traffic when they did this.

Slidebatch

SlideBatch is going to change the look and feel of your newsrooms forever.

No more manual updates to the newsroom every time a story runs.

Instead of every time a story runs about your organization or about one of your client, you have to create an image, write a couple of sentences to entice people to click, and then link to the original story, you can create a Batch.

We talk about other uses for it and why we think it’s a nice tool for every PR pro’s toolbox.

We’d love to know what you think about these topics!

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.

P.S. I was riding my bike (stationary – not outside!) while we recorded this, which is pretty evident when I listened to the show. Oy! I won’t do that again.

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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.