Inside PR 462: Books that last

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Books for communicators

On this episode of the Inside PR podcast, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about books that had lasting impact on us and that we would recommend to others:

What Would Google Do, by Jeff Jarvis, an annual read for Gini. Always inspiring. “It’s fun to watch the progression of my own business since I first read that book,” says Gini.

Spin Sucks, by Gini Dietrich. Martin says, “I’m not sucking up. I put it on the reading list for my social media course.”

Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, “A book written about how people were losing their social connections as they cocooned during the television age,” says Joe. A must-read to understand what social media freed us from.

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle. The other side of the social media and handheld device revolution. When can we be alone in a crowd?

Disruptive Power, by Taylor Owen. A contemporary take on how these trends have led to the era of non-hierarchical collective action.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman writes in an accessible fashion about how and why we make unpredictable decisions. A primer on behavioural economics that we can all understand.

Built to Sell, by John Warrillow and Bo Burlingham. Gini found this book invaluable in helping her to conceive of how to turn here services business into a process driven company that is scalable and less dependent on her personally.

The Art of Strategy, by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J.J. Nalebuff. Martin read this book when he was selling his business. It helped him sort through his thinking about what strategy really is and how it differs from tactics and how to manage through situations in which people are acting on very different strategies.

These books made a difference in our thinking. And we return to them repeatedly. So, we recommend them without hesitation.

#IPRMustKnows

Also, on this episode, we cover:

  • A recent study underlines the persistent problem of people not being able to discern the distinction between native advertising and  editorially-independent news on publishers’ websites.
  • Snapchat adds to its content with a deal with Turner to develop original shows for Snapchat based on TBS programs.

 

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.

Inside PR 382: Considering Native Advertising

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This has been the summer of native advertising. More and more of it is showing up on more and more outlets. And it’s even broken through to our consciousness via mainstream media, thanks to John Oliver.

This week on the Inside PR podcast, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I talk about native advertising and the questions that have been raised about it. Is native advertising simply “disguising your ads to make them look like new stories?” Is it something insidious? Is it something with a short lifespan or a permanent fixture of the new media economy? How do we do it in a way that preserves the integrity of the news organization and the trust that we can place in it?

Yes, this week we’re all about native advertising on Inside PR. We hope that you’ll listen to and enjoy this full episode discussion.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 McGrath.

 

Inside PR 376: A Native Advertising No-No and Panda Preys on News Release sites

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In this episode of Inside PR, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley discuss two news-related topics: one newspaper’s reported intent  to assign staff reporters to create native advertising; and the impact of Google’s Panda 4.0 algorithm changes on news release sites.

Reporters required to write native advertisements?

First, we give a shout out to Jesse Brown‘s Canada land podcast. In a recent episode, Jesse interviewed Giga Ohm’s Mathew Ingram about an apparent move by Toronto’s Globe and Mail to require regular reporters to make themselves available to write native advertisements. If you care about the state of journalism, the Canada land podcast is a must-listen.

Panda 4.0 preys on news release sites

Google has never really been happy with the news release and news release services. For some time, Google has advised content creators to put no follow tags in the links in their news releases. They view this as a paid link, not an organic link, and do not want authority to transfer via such paid links. It appears Google decided that voluntary action was not sufficient. Shortly after its Panda 4.0 algorithm changes were implemented, news release sites such as PRWeb, PR Newswire and Business Wire experienced a significant sharp decrease in the traffic they received via search engines.

How are you adjusting your promotion programs to compensate for Google’s moves on the news release sites?

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Inside PR 354: PR Gets Native Advertising and Sponsored Content

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In this week’s episode of Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about native advertising and sponsored content. Martin and Joe watched a smart panel of advertising and media people at the Mesh Marketing Conference talk about native advertising. We were struck by the absence from the panel of public relations practitioners. And that serves as a departure point for our conversation with Gini.

Also this week: Big news. Inside PR is affiliating with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson‘s FIR Podcast Network. We talk about this initiative and what we hope will come from it. We hope that our association with Shel and Neville and the other smart podcasters in the FIR family will bring you even more great content that will prove to be of help to you as a communicator.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

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

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 3.39: A Change for Native Advertising

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The FTC recently sent a letter to Google, Yahoo!, Bing about native advertising and how they must require their users to show what is paid and what is not, in terms of content.

This changes the stage a bit for native advertising. In what started out as a paid play that looked just like the content shared on the site, it now must be disclosed it is actually different than everything else because it was paid for or sponsored.

Not unlike adding “advertorial” or “paid advertising” across the top of content in magazines, this new rule follows the FTC disclosure guidelines they’ve been aggressively promoting for years.

As PR professionals, we lean toward the editorial side, but because native advertising wants to look and feel and sound like valuable content, it is quickly becoming our jobs to figure out how this will play out for our organizations or our client’s organizations.

But native advertising is not a trend started by the PR industry; it was started by our advertising colleagues, but it also serves the needs of media outlets who are on a one-way street. Because of that, communications professionals need to experiment to help journalists make this work. It becomes about how we create content that serves our audience, is not an intrusion, is fun, informative, and increases value of earned media.

It is, in fact, not unlike what the ad agencies are doing with longer form videos that serve as shareable commercials.

Also during this episode, learn about the mistake Martin Waxman made during last week’s podcast and what Richard Edelman shared at IABC about the future of PR.

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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, Joseph 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 and Ashlea LeCompte.