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Data Science in the Wild. Danny Sullivan checks out. Snapchat? Snap Maps.And are audiograms the next big promotional tool for podcasters? Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are together for another episode of the Inside PR podcast.
Data Science “in the wild”
We start out this week’s podcast by looking back at last week’s discussion with Alex Sevigny about data science and PR. All of us learned something from Alex. In fact, Joe saw much of what Alex had talked about “in the wild” when he attended the Data Power Conference at Carleton University last week. He came away convinced that PR people with a background in the social sciences or communication can play in the data science pool, just as Alex had suggested. Our conversation with Alex was on Inside PR 478. If you haven’t listened to it yet, we do hope that you will take the time to download and listen to it.
Danny Sullivan checks out
After 21 years researching and writing about search engine optimization and founding two companies dedicated to covering the area, Danny Sullivan is leaving the business. During his more than two decades in SEO, Danny was the go-to journalist who could be relied on to dig into the arcana of search engine operations and translate that into explanations that could be understood by the ordinary person. As such, he had tremendous influence over people like us. Danny, thanks for two decades of insight and inspiration.
Sullivan’s departure also prompts us to reflect on how PR pros can, in fact need to, embrace constant change, whether it’s through job changes or changes while staying within their current organizations. Depth and specialization are important. But they become most valuable when placed in the context of broader, relevant experience. And we have to develop that for ourselves by constantly reinventing ourselves.
Snap Maps
A few years back, Foursquare addicted many of us to checking into physical locations and then checking to see which of our friends were there. Foursquare has shifted its focus from check-ins, but the database it accumulated provides the basis for a viable business providing data to other services.
Now, Snapchat proves that we really do progress recursively, with the introduction of Snap Maps. Martin is loving it. Gini is intrigued. And we hear her discover something new in her Snap Map for the first time during the show. Based on her reaction, this may actually be a winner.
Audiograms help podcasters build audiences
Last year, NPR open-sourced their code for audiograms – a new way to embed excerpts of your podcast in social media. Recently, Martin was approached by a Toronto developer, Neal Pollock, about testing his new audiogram creation app. We’ve been testing the service for the past week – and believe that it has real promise to better engage people with our audio content. You can find a couple of our tests here and here on Twitter and here on Facebook. The service was intuitive to use and Joe was able to create and publish audiograms with less than 10 minutes work per instance. We’re going to continue experimenting with it and watching our traffic to determine if it brings us new listeners.
Neal and his partners are looking for testers who will try the service and provide feedback. It is in alpha phase. So, there are some rough edges. But if you are a podcaster and would like to test it, you can sign up for an account.
It’s your turn.
We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.
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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 Joseph Thornley.