Inside PR 3.19: Lots of news in the social space

December 16, 2012 • admin • Inside PR, News, PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

In this week’s episode of Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about a number of things that caught our eye this week.

Google+ Communities

Google has added Communities to its Google+ Network/layer/thingamabobby. Think Yahoo Groups. Discussion groups you set up to discuss specific subjects.

We’ve set up a Community for Inside PR listeners on Google+. If you like the podcast and would like to suggest future topics or discuss each week’s episode, click over to our Google+ Community and join the conversation.

Twitter upgrades(?) with Filters on Photos

Gini Dietrich points us toward Twitter’s move to add filters to photos.

Both Martin and Gini wonder whether Twitter is on the right path – or undercutting itself by moving away from the universal publishing platform to one that emphasizes its proprietary solutions and services.

Facebook drops its commitment to user democracy.

Does anybody care? Was this ever a real thing or did Facebook’s thresholds so high that it simply fed a feeling of powerlessness from the outset?

Lots of questions in a great discussion.

********************************************

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

December 7, 2012 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

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.

********************************************

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 3.17: On content marketing and extreme reuse

November 30, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

This week, our episode is short, but sweet (well, we can at least guarantee the first part). We recorded this show before US Thanksgiving and Gini’s trip to Amsterdam to give a talk to the PR community there. We’ll hear about her adventures next show.

We continue our discussion on producing and sharing remarkable content and Joe mentions an article Aaron Dun wrote for Marketing Profs on why creating a single blog post on a particular subject is no longer good enough. You need to learn how to re-purpose your content – in a major way.

Dun recommends an approach he calls ‘extreme reuse’, that is building out and spreading one idea across multiple platforms. He suggests you start by considering everything you do as fodder for content, whether it’s a call with clients, a brainstorm, an article you read, a conversation, trends… Then figure out how you can take your concept and adapt it to other channels including blog posts, slides, webinars, Google hangouts, infographics, video, email marketing, etc.

Gini talks about all the content she creates – and how she doesn’t know where she’ll find the time to do any more…

That’s where having a talented and diverse team comes in. In order for extreme reuse to be effective, organizations need people with different areas of expertise to add their perspective to a story and bring it to life in various media.

Martin suggests we should also look at things strategically and realize not every idea is a big enough to merit that much reuse. So be selective.

Is content marketing something you can do on your own or do you need partners who are good at other things and who can create a series of social objects around a subject or a theme?

We’d love to hear what you think.

********************************************

Inside PR 3.16: Measurement – Shonali Burke style

November 22, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

Martin recaps meshmarketing 12. Among his highlights are singer/songwriter David Usher’s creative presentation that combined storytelling, images, video, and illustrating his points in song; and Kristina Halvorson’s observation that much of what passes for content on websites is online garbage. She urges us to start thinking more strategically and stop polluting. Watch for the upcoming video interviews we’re producing with Lee Odden, Kristina Halvorson and David Usher.

This week, we feature a PRSA International Conference interview with Shonali Burke, VP, Digital and Marketing at MSL Washington and creator of the Waxing Unlyrical blog. Shonali talks about one of her favourite topics: measurement and why it’s important to communicators.

She advises us to shift our mindsets from output to outcome and embed this type of thinking into our programs in order to demonstrate how our work actually achieves business goals.

She encourages communicators to perform measurement tests and present the results to clients as a way to educate them on how PR and social media programs can correlate to business outcomes.

Looking ahead, Shonali thinks we must all pay more attention to measurement and understanding analytics ; we should focus on storytelling – that is going back to what PR is really about and; we must learn how to become community managers and tell our stories directly to the audiences we’re trying to reach.

It’s always a real pleasure catching up with Shonali!

And on behalf of Gini, Joe, Kristine and me, we want to wish all our American friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!

********************************************

Inside PR 3.14: Content Marketing Secrets from Lee Odden

November 5, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

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:

********************************************

Inside PR 3.13: The importance of participating in real life

October 26, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

It’s fall and, like many of you, we’re on the learning circuit. Now, I’m not talking about formal post-secondary education (of course, that’s valuable too). I mean attending conferences and events, gaining insights from speakers and meeting new people. We were recently at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco and will be featuring audio and video interviews we did over the next few weeks.

And, on November 7 we’ll be at meshmarketing in Toronto to talk to more thought-leaders and digital innovators.

On this week’s show, we discuss some of our PRSA highlights and feature an interview with Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, and one of the keynote speakers at meshmarketing.

PRSAIcon

This year’s conference was filled with standout content and lots of lively interaction between sessions. Highlights include a keynote by Twitter founder Biz Stone, who said ‘creativity is a renewable resource’, sessions on story marketing, a panel let by the CEOs of several major PR agencies looking at where the business is heading and presentations by Lee Odden, Shonali Burke, Shel Holtz.

One takeaway Joe observed is that we’re living in a post-social-media world and looking at a PR industry that’s positioning itself to compete with advertising and digital. We’re interested to hear your thoughts on how the profession is evolving.

Kristina Halvorson: content as a complicated beast

According to Kristina, the web is content. That’s one of the primary reasons we go online, whether to consume or create content. Businesses are waking up to the fact that we need to be focusing our time and energy on it – and it’s not easy; content is a complicated beast.

That’s because many organizations aren’t properly structured to identify the kind of content that’s needs to be created, how it’s all going to work together, who’s going to develop it, where it’s going to be published and who’s going to maintain it over time.

She believes companies need to start by having a group therapy session; a series of candid conversations where they can share their challenges and work toward a shared solution to create a more effective content strategy with clear goals.

You’ll be able to hear more from Kristina – and Lee Odden – at meshmarketing.

********************************************

Inside PR 3.11: We’re baaaack…

October 13, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

Well, it’s fall 2012, our extended summer vacation is over and we’re excited to be starting a new season of Inside PR.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our collection of interviews and want to thank our listeners for being patient and to welcome all of you back.

This week, we catch up by mentioning a few of the changes that have happened since our last recording including the fact that Google has eclipsed Microsoft as the second largest technology company by market cap. Byng is getting closer to Facebook and that’s making it a more relevant search engine. And Twitter’s closing the gates to their API and leaving some of the developers who’ve helped build the service behind.

As many of you know, Gini has just finished 25 weeks on the road, launching her new book, Marketing in the Round and she talks about some of the things she’s learned.

She said she was most surprised by the length of the process – a full year to sign a contract, write, edit, publish a book and then another few months for people to start reading and talking about it and for the authors to know if they’re making an impact. That’s very different from the instant gratification we get from blog posts and online social interactions.

She also found traditional sales measurement lacking. It takes a couple of weeks to receive reports and they only track hardcover sales and not special sales or ebooks. She says she’s used to working in a fast-paced world and publishing is more traditional and slower.

So what’s on the horizon for Inside PR? We’re happy to be partnering with PRSA again. Joe and Martin will be at the International Conference recording video and audio interviews with some of the speakers and thought leaders. Martin’s also presenting a session called Social Media Barometer. So if you’re there, please say hi.

We’re also excited to be sponsoring MeshMarketing 2012 in Toronto. We’ll be talking to some of the presenters including Kristina Halvorson and the organizing team and will be roving reporters at the event – which always features innovative thinkers in the social and digital space.

And we’re interested to hear from you and any ideas you have about what you’d like us to discuss.

********************************************

Inside PR 3.05: June Cotte, PRSA International Conference keynoter, on ethical consumption

August 27, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

This week, Martin talks with PRSA International Conference keynote speaker, June Cotte, associate professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario and the school’s George and Mary Turnbull Fellow.

Professor Cotte studies consumer behavioural and purchase issues, also the subject of her presentation, ‘When Will Consumers Pay to Be Good’.

Cotte and her colleagues conduct research on socially conscious consumption including recent experiments where consumers are exposed to certain purchase conditions and then asked to respond in order to determine how and why people behave the way they do and when they’ll pay more for ethically produced products.

In addition to paying a premium for ethically produced products, she found consumers will penalize brands by paying a lower price for goods when a company’s corporate behaviour is in question. Consumer attitudes are cyclical and Cotte observed that ethical consumption was important in the ‘70s though less so in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The current prevailing sentiment toward socially responsible behavior began to emerge again in the 2000s. She contends a cultural zeitgeist drives the change and that is where PR can come in, to explain the story and the benefits of an organization’s positive behaviour to consumers. This is especially important in an economic downturn where price becomes more of a consideration.

And because firms can get into trouble when they oversell a claim, communicators can help organizations strike a balance between explaining what they’re doing and the effect it has and help them deliver the story in the right tone.

It’s a fascinating study and you can hear more at the PRSA International Conference, October 13 to 16, 2012 in San Francisco.

Gini, Joe and Martin will also be at the conference and we look forward to meeting you there.

********************************************

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 3.03: The gang’s in Toronto

August 15, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

When we record our ‘one-track-pony’, Gini, Joe and Martin are all in Toronto and about to watch Gini talk about her new book, Marketing in the Round at Third Tuesday Toronto. Here’s a link to the event Twitter feed on Storify.

The night before Gini was at Third Tuesday Ottawa and the following day, she and co-author Geoff Livingston are at Social Mix 2012. Busy? Why would you ask?

This week’s topic centres on the post Gini wrote about Ryan Holiday’s new book, Trust Me, I’m Lying. Holiday claims he’s a media manipulator. To prove it, he and his assistant conducted a test where they posed as sources and responded to reporters who were looking for experts to quote in articles. Holiday made up lies that were included in various publications. He claimed this demonstrated how few media do their homework and how easy it is to bamboozle them with false information.

The three of us agree this is unethical behavior that casts a shadow on the communications industry and reinforces negative stereotypes about PR that, in the majority of cases, just aren’t true.

Joe says that in journalism and PR mistakes do happen or something falls through the cracks, but that’s the exception and not the rule and that Ryan is a publicity-seeking outlier who’s out to sell books.

The situation reminds Martin of P.T. Barnum, a promoter and publicist (among other things), who would do anything to get attention. But it runs counter to our industry and the ethics many of us practice every day.

Gini contends it’s not unlike the get rich quick schemes that people fall for and wonders if you need to lie to succeed.

Have a listen to our discussion and let us know what you think.

This is our last recording of the summer. But we’re not going on a full hiatus. We’re featuring podcast interviews from PRSA Silver Anvils, Social Capital Conference, PRSA International conference and more. We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming mid-September.

So stay tuned… And thanks for listening!

********************************************

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR 3.00: Happy birthday to us!

July 12, 2012 • admin • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

[display_podcast]

This is our 300^th episode! So we thought we’d take a few minutes to celebrate reminisce about a few of the highlights from years past.

Inside PR started out in 2006 with Terry Fallis and David Jones as creators/hosts – the early days of podcasting. They came up with the idea and vision for the show. We wouldn’t be here without you, Terry and Dave.

In episode 201, Terry and Dave were joined by Julie Rusciolelli, Keith McArthur and Martin and had a grueling recording schedule – Sunday evening at 10:30 p.m. (we’ve since moved it to Friday afternoon).

Gini got introduced to the podcast four years ago during Martin’s first foray as a roving reporter at Counselors Academy, ‘have Zoom, will travel…’

Joe recalls that in episode one, Terry and Dave did a shout out to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, whose podcast For Immediate Release inspired them – and is still going strong today. They also talked about a new philosophy for media training – authenticity versus the message machine.

Martin mentions that the more we change the more we stay the same and that some people in our industry are still focusing on message and control rather than two-way communications.

Special thanks to our talented and dedicated producers, Chris Clarke, Kyra Aylesworth, Samantha Lovelace, Janna Guberman, Sarah Laister, Yasmine Kashefi and our current producer – Kristine Simpson. If we had our sound machine, now would be the time for some cheering and applause!

The first episode the three of us did was on April 27, 2010: we talked about what we were going to talk about and asked for listener input. And we decided to shorten the format. It took a few weeks for us to figure out the chemistry and flow (and along the way each of us forgot to press record…)

2012 is the year of the interview where we’re highlighting conversations with leading practitioners and thinkers, thanks in large part to our partnership with PRSA.

As always, a big thank you to all our listeners for hanging in there with us, and sharing your comments and stories. We would love to hear what you’d like us to talk about in the coming year and, if we choose what you suggest, we’re going to invite you to come on the show.

And, finally thanks Kristine doing such a great job editing the blips, keeping our sound waves balanced and including a special effect where we need it most. We want you to come back on the podcast again soon! And all the best with your Young PR Pros podcast.

Hopefully, we’ll have more exciting times ahead. Stay tuned.

********************************************

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.