Inside PR 517: There’s no such thing as “trolling for good”

• • Show Notes

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We have lots to talk about this week on Inside PR 517.

First, a couple #IPRMustKnows, things worth noting and acting upon:

  • WordPress is one more step closer to the full rollout of Project Gutenberg. This week, WordPress pushed out a maintenance update that included a prompt to all users to turn on the Gutenberg update. Gini did this for SpinSucks – and she raves about how great the new experience is. This may be the final release before WordPress 5.0 is pushed out to all users. And with WordPress 5.0, Gutenberg 5.0 will be turned on by default for all users. So, if you publish on WordPress and you haven’t turned on Gutenberg yet, now is your time to try it out.
  • Feedly is, in Joe’s opinion, the best newsreader available for people who want to curate their online information sources via RSS feeds. When Google closed down Google Reader, a substantial part of the Reader community migrated their reading lists to Feedly. That was a time of rocket ship growth for Feedly, which enabled users to access, read and curate their news sources on every device – desktop, tablet and mobile phone. Now the good folks at Feedly have initiated a major rewrite of the Feedly iOS app – and they have invited their community of users to test the app as it is being developed and provide their feedback. The Feedly team have set up a dedicated Slack Workspace for the beta phase, to announce the new features introduced or refined with each week’s release and asking for feedback on these features. And to enable participants in the beta to see that their input is being incorporated in the development team’s work, they’ve gone a step further, setting up a Trello workspace and posting links to it so that the participant community can see the state of work. The Beta program is just about to hit its midpoint. But new users still are joining. So, if you use Feedly and want to make it better, you too can still sign up to participate in the beta. Kudos to Feedly for building their app the right way, co-creating with their community will yield a much better product that meets both mainstream and specialized needs.

We know that many listeners to this podcast speak about their area of practice to conferences and at professional development events. If you do this even once a year, you’ll be interested in a post that Gini Dietrich wrote on the SpinSucks blog, Six ways to generate leads from a speaking engagement. Martin and I both thought it offered practical advice that we would put to work – and we asked Gini to discuss it with us.

Finally, on this episode, we talk about the Sarah Jeong controversy that erupted this week. If you aren’t familiar with this, we’ve posted links to key articles that will provide the backgroud. Here’s a quick recap. Last week, the New York Times announced that Sarah Jeong would be leaving the Verge to join the NY Times as lead writer on technology. And then a Twitter storm erupted as attention was drawn to tweets authored by Jeong that were derogatory of white people. The Times quickly reaffirmed its decision, pointing to the context in which Jeong wrote those tweets and indicating that they would not be acceptable in future now that she has joined the Times. Coming in the wake of the James Gunn and Les Moonves controversies, could we indeed be seeing the a restoration of the balance between nuance and absolutism? As Martin asks, could we be back to a time in which we can admit to a mistake, own it, show contrition, and move on? We can only hope so.

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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.

Please rate us on Apple Podcasts

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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.

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There’s no such thing as “trolling for good” – Inside PR 517 by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Inside PR 473: Feedly Features Filters (repeat quickly three times)

• • Inside PR, Show Notes

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Twitter hooks up with Bloomberg. Feedly features mute filters. Sysomos integrates its services as stacks in a single platform. Yik Yak throws in the towel. And PR agency heads head to Seattle for PRSA Counselors Academy.

After several weeks of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are back in one place at the same time for another episode of the Inside PR podcast.

PRSA Counselors Academy draws PR agencies from across North America

Martin’s off to PRSA’s Counselors Academy in Seattle. And if the expected increased turnout materializes, it will put the lie to the notion that PR agencies are in trouble. On the other hand, we have a feeling that much of the industry is stuck in the traditional media relations niche. And it’s never a good to be tied to a shrinking sector.

Twitter and Bloomberg

Twitter’s partnership with Bloomberg to offer 24 hour video news is a positive move. It makes sense for our news feed to be running curated video news alongside the community-generated news. Twitter may not be the first app that Martin, Gini or Joe opens in the morning. But when news breaks, it’s the place we turn to find out the latest. So, we’re bullish on its new video initiatives.

Feedly features filters

They’re not here quite yet. But Feedly promises users that it soon will offer Mute Filters. And Feedly is going about developing them the right way. They’re surveying users about what they want and asking them to comment on a user interface. Feedly is one of the most useful tools for communications professionals . If you aren’t using it, you should be. Click over right now and create a Feedly account. (No, this is not a paid ad. We’re just big believers in the value of Feedly and want to share it with others.)

Sysomos integrates

Communications professionals have long relied on Sysomos MAP for the data used in communications audits and Sysomos Heartbeat for social media monitoring programs. But Sysomos has been acquiring other services. And now these services have been integrated into a single Sysomos Platform offering several functional stacks: search, listen, discover, publish, engage and analyse. All in one user friendly interface that anyone familiar with Tweetdeck or Hootsuite will find intuitive. It’s a whole new Sysomos. Let’s just hope that it isn’t priced out of the budget range of small and mid-size agencies. Sysomos Light?

Yik has Yakked

When were you last on Yik Yak. Our bet is not recently. And that’s what the company realized too. Users had dropped off steeply. And so Yik Yak threw in the towel. RIP Yik Yak.

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.

Our hashtag is #IPRMustKnow.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

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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.

Inside PR 431: The must-have apps for communicators in 2016

• • Inside PR

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What are the tools that you as a communications professional use every day in your work? The tools that you just couldn’t live without?

This week on Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about the top apps and digital tools that we use and that we recommend should be in every communicator’s toolbox.

First up: Evernote. An amazing app for taking notes, for organizing your ideas, for developing to do lists. It’s an app that syncs across all your devices – desktop, your table, and your phone. Evernote has a range of plug ins and extensions that make it even more useful. Gini has a Moleskin notebook that she uses to handwrite notes, which she then scans into Evernote to make them searchable. I use Evernote’s Scannable iOS App in place of a traditional scanner. Just point it at a document and Scannable will capture the document and import it to Evernote and enable you to share it via the channel of your choice. If you are still taking notes in Word and saving the notes as separate documents, consider trying Evernote. Your thoughts, ideas and images will always be a search away.

Next, Gini tells us about Zoom.us. We recorded this podcast on Zoom.us. It provides great HD audio plus HD video. (Yes, the quality of our audio is not all that we’d like it to be. That’s not Zoom’s fault. That’s because we are using WiFi to connect to the Internet. Clearly, we need to use wired connections if we want the highest quality audio and video.) Zoom.su enables users to set up meetings and invite participants, who can join simply by clicking on a link. Participants can connect to audio via the Web or the phone.  We’ve found this tool to be a far superior user experience when compared to something like WebEx or even Skype.

Finally, this episode, we talk about Feedly. Feedly is our RSS reader of choice. Feedly delivers the content from the sources that matter to us as soon as it is published. And unlike earlier RSS readers, it makes the act of subscribing as simple as copying a URL into the subscribe window. This is important to people who need to follow a specialized subject or a set of experts and who cannot rely on their social networks to tell them about something. Martin looks at Feedly as a “personal subscribe button” that delivers content to one inbox.

We want to know what you think about the things we discussed on this episode.

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

And we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

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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.

Inside PR 375: During a crisis, don’t leave your customers in the dark

• • PR

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Martin here.

On today’s show, it’s Joe and me. Gini will be back in a couple of weeks. And throughout the summer, we’ll be having a few more two-handers when one of us is away – but we’ll keep recording!

We start off discussing the recent DDOS attacks on Feedly and Evernote that happened just before we recorded.

And we remark on how the two companies took different approaches when it came to communicating their situations to customers.

Feedly posted notifications on its Twitter feed and blog but nothing on Facebook.

Evernote updated its Twitter feed and used the same content on Facebook. But the company did not post on either of its two blogs.

Here are a few suggestions for communicating during a crisis that came out of our conversation:

  • Use your owned property – your blog or newsroom – to break the news and continue sharing regular updates there.
  • When posting updates on Twitter, link back to your blog to add details and context to the situation.
  • Personalize your message. Record a video or short series of videos to let people know what happened and the steps you’re taking to fix it.
  • By all means post on Facebook, but if you’re not buying ads, know that not as many people will see your news as on other sources.
  • Take a page from MSM and be consistent with your communications. Let people know when they’ll hear back from you. That way people will know you’re on top of things and more news will follow.

In the second part of the show, I offer my take on the 2014 IABC World Conference that was taking place in Toronto. One highlight was a talk by Leslie Quinton on the human side of crisis communications and how important it is to always remember your moral compass; that is, continue to ask yourself if what you’re doing is the right thing to do.

I also caught up with Shel Holtz who, if you haven’t seen him speak, is always a sharp, insightful and engaging presenter. He talked about visual storytelling and presented a strong case for why all communicators should move in that direction.

If you haven’t been to an IABC World Conference, it’s worth looking into because it offers you an opportunity to meet and learn from communicators around the globe. Next year’s conference is in San Francisco, June 14 to 17, 2015.

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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 3.29: Google Reader, Feedly, and the perils of a dominant competitor

• • Inside PR

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We could call this episode of Inside PR, the “Joe goes on a rant about Google, Reader, single competitor dominance and the viability of RSS feeds” episode.

Google Reader’s pending demise is a big deal for us. Like many writers, we use RSS feeds to be sure that we don’t miss content that passes in the flow at times when we aren’t paying attention. Gini and Joe have shifted to Feedly. And what did we discover? That a Feed Reader could be much better than Google Reader, like switching to full colour from black and white. That the emergence of one dominant provider of any service does not foster innovation.

Joe also wonders what impact does the shut down of Google Reader have on the trust that Google’s most passionate fans have on the company.

Finally, for those who thought that RSS fees are dead, the reaction of the heavy users shows that there is a deep, dedicated user community.

End of rant. (And thanks to Gini and Martin for patiently hearing me out. 🙂 )

Finally in this episode, Martin gives a shoutout to Daniel Davidson and his Pitchin’ Ain’t Easy video.

 

If you’re a PR person, watch it and have a chuckle.

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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.