Inside PR 3.52: Buffering an online crisis

October 30, 2013 • Martin • PR

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What would you do if you discovered your site had been hacked and your community’s data had been compromised? Would you hide and hope the situation would quietly fade away? Let users find out about the issues themselves on social networks? Or proactively inform your users?

It’s hard to believe how many organizations might opt for – or at least consider – the first two options.

With the speed of social media, we all know how quickly issues can turn into full-blown crises if not dealt with immediately and honestly.

And social media platform Buffer chose the proactive approach to deal with the crisis they faced on the weekend when they found a security breach on the site.

This week, we discuss some of the things Buffer did to fix the situation and restore their customer’s trust and the company’s reputation. Their approach is almost a case study in best practices in crisis communications 2.0

Here’s a recap of their actions:

– Buffer apologized and took responsibility early and often. They assumed a leadership role.
– They didn’t make excuses.
– They informed people about the situation with regular emails and posts.
– They spoke candidly about what happened, what they’re doing to correct things and what users needed to do.
– The communicated back to customers often, issuing ongoing updates and status alerts and using email, their blog, Facebook and Twitter.
– They were transparent.
– When things were fixed, they provided instructions about what to do to get reconnected.
– They continued to issue genuine apologies.
– They were focused, well organized and first and foremost paid attention to the needs of their users.

From many of the comments on their blog, it seems as if customers appreciated their honesty and straightforward approach.

What do you think? Are you a Buffer user? How do you think they handled the crisis? Would you have anything else to suggest?

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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

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

Inside PR 3.49: Jay Baer wants companies to be more useful

October 11, 2013 • Martin • PR

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We’ve talked to author, digital strategist and speaker extraordinaire Jay Baer on Inside PR a few times before. In fact, the first time was after the 2009 PRSA Counselors Academy Conference in Palm Springs that Jay references in the beginning of his new book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, Not Hype (highly recommended by Martin).

Jay is the closing keynote at Meshmarketing conference in Toronto on November 7, so we thought this is a good time to catch up with him and discuss what’s new.

Jay defines youtility, the theme of his book, as creating marketing that has so much intrinsic value people would pay for it. He says many companies are embracing this principle because it helps them break through the clutter we face today.

He encourages businesses to ‘market their marketing’ by developing a launch strategy for their content that leads people to it.

The competitive landscape has altered the information we consume into a mashup of personal and professional sources and Jay he believes businesses need to develop relationships with customers that are similar to the relationship people have with their friends. He calls that friend of mine awareness.

Jay says the PR industry, which became active in social media early on because it understood the importance of stories and relationships, now has to change the way it executes and move from being talkers to skilled makers of content like infographics, videos and white papers. Most PR agencies don’t have makers on staff and have to outsource too much of that work.

Joe experienced the concept of Youtility last week and references a number of blog posts from trusted sources on what we need to know about the new Google algorithm; he received useful information in real-time that helped him.

Gini is surprised businesses are still not creating launch plans for marketing the content they produce in order to help amplify it.

Joe talks about how he’s moved Thornley Fallis into an agency of makers with video, web design and creative people in-house. However, he’s noticed some clients aren’t including PR agencies when they’re looking to develop an integrated campaign and we need to change that.

Gini, who also transformed her firm into a maker agency, agrees and says there’s some confusion on the client side on what we, as new PR agencies, can do.

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We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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

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

Inside PR 3.48: Transparency and Disclosure in Media Relations

October 9, 2013 • thornley • PR

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On this week’s Inside PR podcast, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley tackle an issue raised by Gini in a post on Spin Sucks: disclosure by PR agencies of business interest in media relations pitches. Gini kicks off the conversation by asking the question, “Should media disclose every time they work with a PR person in preparing a story?” Martin tells a story of a lesson earned through experience and Joe argues that the real issue isn’t the activity of PR agencies, but the notion that PR agencies are attempting to influence objective news gatekeepers. And we go from there.

Also this week, Martin also recommends that PR practitioners should take a close look at Google’s recent Hummingbird search algorithm changes.

Finally, in this episode, we talk about taking Inside PR on the road. We’ll be covering MeshMarketing which takes place in Toronto on November 7. If you are a marketer near or in Toronto, this is a conference well worth attending. You can find details on the schedule and registration here.

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We would love your thoughts.

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

Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 3.37: You can’t judge a presentation by its cover

July 2, 2013 • thornley • Inside PR, PR

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June was a month of wall to wall conferences. And those conferences brought Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and me together in two cities – Austin and Ottawa – and pulled us to opposite ends of the continent.

So, you spend all that money and time to attend a conference. And now you’re sitting in a presentation and you’re deciding whether you made the right decision. What makes it worthwhile?

Gini applies the Chile Con Queso Test. She loves chile con quesos. And she judges a restaurant by their quality. If they’re great, she’ll keep going back for more. Gini’s Chile Con Queso Test for conference presentations? Does the presenter provide her with at least one idea for a blog post? “If I can go into your session and come away with a blog post idea, I’m going to think you’re the best speaker on earth,” says Gini. On the other hand, “If I can’t get at least one idea to create content around, I’m not going to think you’re a great speaker.”

If you’re a speaker, how can you deliver the goods for your audience? I saw Lee LeFever talk about this at the recent Fireworks Factory organized by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo. Lee, who is best known for the explainer videos he has produced through his company, Common Craft, says that you must start from a position of empathy for the audience. Focus on what we care about, not what you want to present. Frame your topic in terms to which we relate. Suggest a commonly experienced problem to which we all relate. You’ll know you’ve done this is you see our heads nodding. Once you’ve established the shared space, focus on “why.” Why does this matter? Why will you approach it in this way. And then, and only then, move on to the “how.” How do I do this. Think about the presentations you’ve seen recently. How many of them failed because the presenter plunged directly into the “how” section, providing minute detail of what they did, while you were still stuck at, “Why do I care about this?”

Martin calls this the importance of appealing to the audience’s emotional senses. He points out that this often can be achieved through story telling, in which a motive is established and listeners are drawn into identifying with the subjects and storyline. Gini agrees with the power of this approach, pointing to a 52N (five minutes to engage, a variant on Ignite) presentation delivered by Abbie Fink at the recent PRSA Counselors Academy Conference in Austin. Abbie’s presentation consisted of reading a letter to her recently deceased family dog. At the end, she left many in the room in tears and everyone considering the nature of relationships. A story that appealed to our emotions. That appealed to the pet lover in all of us. That didn’t explain the why, but relied throughout on it. (Pity the poor presenter who followed Abbie – Martin Waxman!)

I attended a presentation recently by a speaker who gave me not just one good takeaway, but nine. Nine takeaways in an hour long presentation. And that speaker was … Gini Dietrich! Perhaps because Gini listened for takeaways in other speakers, she deliberately packages takeaways in her presentations. “When I write presentations, I write them long form. But as I do it, I write sound bites that I know people can tweet. You have to think about the key takeaways. Is someone going to get enough to pass the Chile Con Queso Test? And are they going to be able to tweet about it?” If you achieve these three objectives, people will come away with something to think about over the long term as well as content that will prompt immediate tweets and conversation.

Finally, there’s one huge no-no for conference presenters. What makes the audience groan and flee the room in droves? Martin calls it the “You can’t judge a presentation by its cover” problem.” You decide to attend a presentation on the basis of the description in the program only to hear the speaker lead off with the statement, “I’m going to talk about something different from the advertised topic…” Sadly, that’s not uncommon at conferences. Not just the small regional conferences, but even larger conferences. The kindest interpretation I can put on this it that because of the long lead time between the time that the conference topics were set and the actual presentation, the speaker decided that the topic was outdated and decided to offer more up to date thinking. The unkind interpretation is that the speaker just said yes to the organizers’ invitation and then realized that he didn’t really have anything worthwhile to say about the topic. Either way, it can be a real let down if you showed up keen to learn and discuss the advertised topic.

Gini sums it up: “We’re all busy. We all want to find value in the things that we are attending. We’re spending money to attend these things. And if we can’t get something out of it to bring back to our careers or organizations, then it’s not worth the time.”

So, after a month of conferences, these are our takeaways for presentations that are worthwhile. What are your thoughts? What makes a presentation worthwhile for you?

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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.

Inside PR 3.25: Roy Reid on Outrageous Trust

February 14, 2013 • admin • PR

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It’s Valentine’s Day and while we certainly don’t know the secret to romance, we do know that no real relationship can survive without trust.

And that brings us to today’s topic. We caught up with Roy Reid, APR, one of the partners in Consensus Communications, at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco. Roy had just given a presentation on trust – well, actually he went beyond simple trust to describe something he called outrageous trust.

Here are three actions Roy recommends to achieve outrageous trust:

1. Take responsibility for the relationship.

2. Build from the inside out. That means always acting with integrity and producing excellent work.

3. Be consistent in your communications.

Gini references the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer and the fact that while trust in organizations is no longer falling, it’s still low. She agrees with Roy and says you can’t be trustworthy externally unless you’re trustworthy internally too.

Joe mentions Naked Conversations and the notion that we trust people we know and can talk to and are generally skeptical of business. And if organizations haven’t spent the time to engage with their community, they won’t have much credibility or support when a crisis occurs.

We go on to talk about two recent online crises in the restaurant industry, at Smith and Wollensky (scroll to the end to read what the police had to say) and the tipping brouhaha at Applebee’s.

What do you think organizations need to do to attain the state of outrageous trust with their customers and communities?

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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.

Inside PR 3.13: The importance of participating in real life

October 26, 2012 • admin • PR

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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.

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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.

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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 3.03: The gang’s in Toronto

August 15, 2012 • admin • PR

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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!

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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

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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.

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

Inside PR and PRSA present: 2012 Best of Silver Anvil Awards Winner

June 24, 2012 • admin • PR

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Inside PR and PRSA present a special interview with the 2012 Best of Silver Anvil award winner: IBM’s ‘Centennial Celebration of Public Service’ featuring Lisa Lanspery, manager of Corporate Communications, IBM and Esty Pujadas, partner and director of the Global Technology Practice at Ketchum.

Last year IBM turned 100, a rare milestone for a technology company, and the organization wanted to mark the occasion with a year of celebrations. Looking to their values and heritage for inspiration, they created a comprehensive corporate social responsibility program that focused on activating and engaging employees to share their skills in projects around the world.

IBM has over 400,000 employees globally and all were encouraged to contribute at least eight hours of their time. The corporate communications team and Ketchum developed an integrated communications strategy inviting staff to give back through active participation in hyper-local programs that provided a direct benefit to the communities involved. And they wanted to provide a platform that enabled staff to share stories and visuals about the positive impact their work produced.

Central to the program was a digital map of the world showcasing the various activities. The employees’ stories offered a glimpse into their dedication and the breadth of the volunteerism whether it was engineering and computer projects or personal donations of time. What made it stand out was the human element – how the company empowered employees to help.

For its anniversary, IBM wanted to make a difference its staff’s efforts and their results were impressive: 80 per cent of IBMs work force volunteered on programs in 120 countries and touched the lives of 10 million people.

And it was captured and amplified via social sharing and traditional media, with a message to spread the word to others to volunteer.

It’s an innovative and inspiring initiative and we want to congratulate IBM and Ketchum on their honor. And the volunteerism from within IBM continues.

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

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.