On this bi-weekly episode of Inside PR, Joe Thornley, Martin Waxman, and Gini Dietrich discuss the plumbing of the internet, from Feedburner and its replacements to how marketing automation works in the deep dark areas of the web and how video continues to evolve as we adapt.
These are things we all take for granted, sort of like the sewer beneath our cities, but they are necessary for making things work.
And there are things that have transformed the way we’ve done business in the past 18 months. While we certainly used Google Video or Skype or Zoom, it tended to be once or twice a month—at the most.
Now we’ve found that video chat is the primary way work is done and we now all take for granted that it’s the preferred way to communicate.
Even as some organizations go to a hybrid model or even back to the office full-time, there will be times that video is warranted.
And, as schools reflect on the best learning, some students will be in-person while others are at home. Martin speaks to his experience teaching in a hyflex classroom, which is hybrid and flexible.
The classroom is like a studio and students have to sign up to be there in person.
For those that are learning at home, the teacher (Martin, in this case) has a camera that follows them around automatically, capturing the lecture—and then everyone in the class, in-person included, will all Zoom in and any group work will be done through breakout sessions.
It’s a new way of working and, certainly, the plumbing of the internet will continue to evolve as we adapt to new ways of learning, working, and living.
Join us for this episode to learn more!
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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR
Our producer is Jacob Waxman, a talented musician, producer, and recording engineer. Jacob produced the episode and is also the composer of our new theme music. Roger Dey is our announcer.
Gini talks about Facebook’s new mobile app, Moments, that searches your camera roll, groups photos together and asks if you want to send them privately to the people in the shots. You can also create Moments for events, vacations, etc. (Of course, it’s not yet available in Canada 🙁 .)
Joe discusses Facebook’s Media Central studio in NYC that coaches celebrities on how to use the platform and live video. He says good enough video isn’t good enough anymore and we should take video streaming seriously, not just wing it. Soon FB will up the ante when they let people broadcast high-quality live video that can be integrated into their own studio control room.
I mention PRSA Counselors Academy. This year, I’m chair of the organization and our annual conference for independent PR agency owners and leaders is May 1 to 3 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There’s a fantastic program on the business of agency PR including a keynote on creativity from Disney’s Duncan Wardle. Here’s a link for more information or to register.
Our main topic this episode centres on the concentration of digital media and is based on The Game of Concentration by Joshua Benton, a story we read in the Niemen Lab Blog. The author makes the case that journalism used to be spread across North America because you needed a local newsroom to cover local news. With digital, you’d think that would create an even more distributed news world, but the high profile new media companies seem to be clustering in major markets like New York, Washington, LA or Silicon Valley, or Toronto, if you’re in Canada. Which means the media world is getting spikier and not flat. And that’s a challenge to both journalists and PR pros.
We’d love to know what you think.
What does the future hold for local media and PR practitioners?
Will people’s interest in the immediate world around them spark a resurgence of local stories and news?
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.
Martin here and this week, it’s part two of our discussion about apps and tools we like.
But first #IPRMustKnow:
The Twitter 10K – No it’s not a marathon, it’s the chatter that Twitter’s going to increase its character limit to 10,000 (from 140). We’re mixed on what we think about this. Gini feels it’s another replacement for the verbosity of emails. Joe noticed that even with more characters in DMs, he’s getting fewer of those. I wonder if this isn’t another way to keep people on the platform in mobile. OK, we all like Twitter the way it is… but we also don’t want to be curmudgeons.
Peach – the social network flavour of the moment. Peach is a new social network and messaging app created by Vine’s co-founder. Have you tried it? When we recorded this episode, Gini, Joe and I each had two friends on it and (hint) they’re all hosts of IPR. It’s too early to tell whether or not Peach will catch on – certainly the network effect isn’t evident yet. But, like all new social platform, we encourage you to check it out and see for yourself. And feel free to connect with us there.
And that brings us to our main topic – apps we like and use.
Slack
If you haven’t tried it, Slack is a collaborative chat and networking app that helps manage projects and workflow. Among other things, we use it to prep for IPR. You can set up channels for conversations specific to your needs (i.e. client channels, trends, etc.), add and save links, post documents and easily find what you’re looking for through its search. We all like its simplicity and that it gives us the ability to communicate in the moment.
Auphonic Auphonic is an audio production app that we use to produce IPR. It lets us edit, include metadata, equalize sound and reduce hum. And because of Auphonic, Inside PR now has its album art back on iTunes.
What other apps would you recommend? We’d love to hear your suggestions and test them out.
Gini: How do you drive more traffic to a podcast? Eden Spodek, who’s launching her own podcast in a few weeks, suggests posting the audio and an image to YouTube and Gini tried that. We’ll let you know what happens.
Now onto Joe’s conversation with Neville …
As you’ve probably heard, Neville is leaving the FIR Network after 10 years and tells us he’s going to be focusing on creating more written content. In a wide-ranging discussion, he takes us on a journey that begins with the early days of podcasting, or as he calls it ‘home brew radio’. Neville tells stories about what he’s observed and learned along the way. He mentions some of the people who inspired him and shares his thoughts on what makes a podcaster great (hint – curiosity).
And speaking of podcasting… Just a reminder that we kick off our #InsidePRBookClub next week with a discussion of The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. We hope you’ll read it and share your thoughts.
Martin here and I hope you don’t mind if I start with a plug. I’m heading to SXSWV2V in Las Vegas to be a mentor and on a panel called, The Best City in the World May Not Be a City at All. We’ll be talking about what it takes to make the kind of community people flock to live and work in and whether that’s a physical location, online or a creative combination of the two.
Now onto the show with our #IPRMustKnow for this week:
Meerkat introduces Cameo – a new feature that lets you hand off your livestream to other users and offer another angle on a real-time video story.
In our main topic, we discuss a recent Pew Study that focuses on how and where we discover and consume news. Turns out 63% of people on both Facebook and Twitter get news from those platforms. Which helps explain why social networks continue to evolve into media companies.
One stat that stood out: just over 60 per cent of millennials get political news from Facebook and 37 per cent from local TV. The numbers are reversed for boomers. What does that mean? Well, don’t think that millennials will switch to TV when they become ‘mature adults’ – because, hey, that’s what adults are supposed to do. It’s yet another wake up call to mainstream media – and PR – on the need to evolve and transform.
And while we’re on the subject of media, do you get a newspaper delivered to your door? If so, how often do you read it? Where do you go first for information and news – social platforms or MSM?
This week we put on our pop music hats and talk about intellectual property and Taylor Swift.
But first #IPRMustKnow:
Google launches YouTube Newswire to verify breaking video news in real-time. Is the newswire about to be crowdsourced?
Speaking of news…Twitter announces Project Lightning, a curated source for news and major events, assembled by the Twitter media team (i.e. people not algorithms).
Taylor Swift stood up for independent artists and their right to be paid. And Apple Music, which was offering a three-month free trial to users subsidized by not paying royalties to artists, backed down. Swift argued that she personally doesn’t need the money, but independent artists shouldn’t have to lose the equivalent of one-quarter of their income to a profitable corporation like Apple.
Apple is an organization that has gone a long way to define its brand and design aesthetic and cultivated a loyal following. The company quickly realized that when people are deciding which music service to subscribe to, they’d rather be on the side that plays fair, not the one that’s seen to be taking advantage of artists.
Apple made its about-face after listening and being open to Taylor Swift’s POV. Swift is showing herself as a powerful social media force. And she’s smart about the way she does her own PR by creating opportunities for fans and building loyalty and engagement.
The bottom line: You may have to give away some content for free but profitable organizations should value intellectual property and not think of it as license to make money on the backs of creators.
And check out Gini’s rant on the high cost of the free economy!
Martin here and excuse me while I check my phone. I’m having a micro-moment. But more on that in a few, er-moments.
This week it’s Joe and me; Gini’s on the road. And because of our schedules recently, you’ve probably noticed May has been a quieter IPR month. But we’re all back in June.
In today’s episode, we have a couple of topics to discuss – both revolving around Google.
The first is micro-moments, or what Google describes as ‘I want to know, I want to go, I want to buy moments’. I call them the frequent times we turn to our smartphones during the day – often when we’re in the middle of something else – to find out some info, daydream, or take a mini-break from what we’re doing.
These mobile interactions are having a profound impact on the way we discover and consume information and what we do with our idle time.
Many of our micro-moments revolve around watching videos. And according to Google, people who view videos on their phones are 1.4 times as likely to watch ads as those on desktops or TVs and are more likely to talk about the ads they saw. Are the dollar signs lighting up?
The challenge for brands is to learn how to produce video that works for the small-screen. In other words, create for the medium – panorama shots may be amazing in a movie theatre, but don’t work so well on a five inch screen. Think about your audience and what they’re looking for and how you can reach them with the kind of video they want to see at the just the right point in time. Here’s a post from Joe with his thoughts on the importance of creating videos for mobile devices.
What do you think about micro-moments, how they’re affecting our purchase intent and attention spans? And when you’re in the middle of one of these moments, what kinds of video content makes you stop, watch and share?
Martin here and it’s a jam-packed episode this week. But first a milestone: it’s been nine years since Terry Fallis and David Jones started Inside PR and we want to give Terry and Dave a big congratulations and bigger thank you! And thanks to all of you for sticking with us. If you’re interested, head to the archives and listen to IPR #1.
Back to 2015…On today’s show, we talk about three things:
1. When to hire a PR firm – and when you should wait
Gini wrote a post about a startup client whose product wasn’t ready when they hired her firm, so any traffic the Arment Dietrich team drove to the site led to customer frustration since the business wasn’t ready for…um business. Moral: sometimes entrepreneurs need to put the brakes on their PR efforts until they have something to show, solid goals and can afford it.
2. PR generalist or specialist – where is the industry heading?
According to the Holmes Report Card, in recent years PR agencies have been hiring specialists over generalists, similar to the way things operate in the ad and marketing industries. However, data now shows the generalist may still have a role, especially as it pertains to developing strategy. Thanks to Shel Holtz for suggesting this idea.
Martin here. And while this may be episode 404, we’re not sending you to a page like this…
Inside PR 404: Media just keeps on changing
On today’s show we talk about a couple of things: the ever-evolving media landscape and a new app that could turn citizen journalists into live TV reporters.
First – media: GigaOm, the tech analysis, publication announced it was shutting down. There’s been much written about them and why it happened. Here’s a quick recap:
We share our take on GigaOm, what it takes to run a business and how mainstream media’s trying to keep up.
Gini says it’s hard to figure out a workable paid content model and believes we’re on the brink of a content exhaustion point.
I suggest what we perceive success from the outside very differently than what you see when you’re inside and privy to the whole story.
Joe offers a business lesson and comments that venture capital doesn’t like slow and steady growth, but that you can build a business patiently and organically. He references Danny Sullivan’s post on Medium (shared above).
Then we chat about Meerkat, a live video streaming app where you send the feed directly to Twitter. In fact, Joe was testing it during our podcast but since the video is ephemeral, it disappears when you’re done, so you won’t find his feed.
