Inside PR 3.29 [ 16:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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 insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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 3.19 [ 15:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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 270 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley talk about Intranets and the recent changes to Facebook.

Joe’s company’s Intranet is built around a Wiki to host content, Present.ly to support publishing and linking to content and Windows Live Messenger to enable one to one video calls. He encourages people to use these three tools to divert content from emails (we all suffer from inbox glut) and to channel communications from broad publishing through to one to one communications via video.

Martin points out that we have so many “places to go,” so many channels of communication, that managing these different channels can become a challenge unto itself.

And then there’s Facebook. We received a comment from Liza Butcher, who suggested that, “With the changes made this past week, I believe facebook it is trying to be too many things in one space, and ostracizing generations of people that may not be as tech savvy as others. … Facebook was a place for everyone, and now it is becoming too technical for the masses.”

Gini and Martin talk about their impressions of the most recent Facebook changes. Gini points out that it will be important to decide what you want to include in your timeline. Sharing everything won’t be for everyone. And it’s important to be aware of what the timeline automatically shares so that you can filter out the info you wouldn’t want to see there. Martin suggests that we all should become familiar with the “view activity” panel that will enable us to remove content from our timeline. Other neat features: the cover photo we can add to our Facebook profile and the ability to add “milestones” to fill in our timeline.

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Reminder: Inside PR will be recording live from the PRSA International Conference in Orlando on October 16 and 17. We’ll also be interviewing speakers and participants. So, if you’re planning to be there, let us know and we will grab a sound bite with you.

Inside Pr 2.56 [ 18:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The spring conference season has ended so we’re all back in our offices, podcasting from our desks, and talking about what we’ve learned the past couple of months.

Before we get to that, though, a HUGE congratulations to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. They just recorded their 600th episode. I did the math. If they recorded once a week, that would take 11 years to achieve. But they’ve cut that in half…six years; 600 episodes; twice weekly podcasts.

It’s no easy feat, either. They use Google Wave to begin brainstorming each session, adding commentary, links, and other information to enhance the story. They spend a lot of time bringing you relevant and valuable information. And that’s why it’s one of the most respected and highest listened to podcast in our industry.

If you’re not already subscribed, do it now by clicking here.

If you missed it, there was a really good comment from Keith Trivitt, associate director of public relations at PRSA, on the Burson-Marsteller/Facebook issue.

We talked for a couple of minutes about Keith’s response and the responsibility of all PR professionals, no matter their PRSA membership.

And on to the show!

A few things each of us learned throughout conference season:

• The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, Mike Michalowicz, talks about not calling yourself a PR firm, but to focus on what makes you special. That allows you to take yourself out of the rate discount discussion and get paid for your expertise.
• Bret Werner talks about really understanding your niche, figure out which companies you really want to work with, and which clients you need to take to get you to those gold star companies in the next three to five years.
• Jay Baer is a great speaker, who also knows how to speak in tweets, he said the goal is not to be good at social media, but to be good at business using social media.
• Jay also said, if you suck, Twitter is not your problem.
• Jen Prosek, author of Army of Entrepreneurs, has a great philosophy on training and onboarding new consultants.

One more thing: Barbara Nixon, we talk about the difference between Facebook groups and Facebook pages for you!

Do you have an idea for a topic you would like us to discuss? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.47 [ 19:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, we record on Monday rather than Friday which gives us an extra two days to make the podcast even more timely…

Gini starts off by noting Twitter is planning to cut down on spam, and that includes those #FollowFriday or #FF tweets with long lists of @names and nothing else.  She says people will have to look at new ways to approach #FF. She chooses to write a weekly blog post featuring reasons to follow someone, like this one for Shel Holtz.

She goes on to mention Facebook’s new questions app, which apparently everyone has but Martin. Joe asks a question on FB and within four minutes gets 11 responses. (Note: by responding to Joe’s FB Q, Martin’s feature is enabled).  The way it works is you can pose a question, add answers folks can select, or let people provide their own answer. Gini feels it could be a good tool for market research and points out one change similar to a Quora feature: no one should be able to edit your question or answer. Currently, Facebook questions allows other users to edit the question and answers, this can result in your question longer representing your original point. Joe says he likes the social element of Quora and isn’t sure about the value of the FB experiment.

Martin recaps a recent post about what to look for – and what to avoid – when you’re choosing an agency. Joe mentions he feels the post points out that social media is in the broader context of overall effective communications, which is where it should be.

Joe announces that (sadly), our talented producer Yasmine Kashefi is leaving Thornley Fallis to go client-side. Yasmine has done a superb job on the show and we all want to thank her and wish her all the best!  We’ll miss you and hope you’ll send us some comments and thoughts.

Do you have comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.45 [ 15:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley are all here for this week’s Inside PR. We talk about a couple things this week – community-driven events and online sharing.

Are unconferences and community-driven events dying out?

We look back one more time at our great experience at this year’s highly successful Podcamp Toronto. It takes a huge amount of effort to organize this type of event. And as professionally organized events have moved into the social media space, have they lessened our appetite and the pool of volunteers willing to organize unconferences? Do the professionally organized conferences cause us to have expectations of a conference that a community-based, volunteer driven conference can’t meet?

What’s happening in your community. Are there still vibrant unconferences or other community-driven events where you live? Are they becoming more frequent and more successful? Or rarer? Less well attended? We’d love to hear from you about this.

Sharing is Forever

We also talk about online sharing – or over-sharing. Martin starts the conversation by pointing to two sites that let you share your clickstream. Wow!

Would you want to share with others all the sites that you visit? Do you use the Web for work-related research? Is this an idea for a business that simply won’t work – at least if people appreciate the value of making conscious decisions about what we share.

Often, a choice to share is forgotten or poorly understood. We’ve already seen how Facebook’s frequent changes of their terms of service leads to people sharing information they hadn’t consciously realized they were sharing. Or think of Tumblr. How many people shared information on Tumblr, became bored with the platform and forgot that it is still spewing information about them. As Gini says, The Web doesn’t have a “Forget” button. Sharing is forever.

Do you have comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.42 [ 20:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

David Jones (and so will you) will be very happy that Gini Dietrich got a new recorder. Now MUCH better sound for you!

A few newsworthy things we discuss: The ban on UberTwitter (which has now been lifted) and this image of the social media Bermuda Triangle that Petya Georgieva sent to us.

This week, Martin Waxman talks about his 10 commandments for public relations, which Joe Thornley notes we tend to forget. These are eternal truths and include:

1. Don’t lie
2. Don’t spam
3. Don’t overpromise
4. Don’t pretend something is what it isn’t
5. Be creative
6. Remember yours isn’t the only story out there
7. Know where you stand in the grand scheme of things
8. Do what you say
9. Smile
10. Say thank you

These commandments are ethical-based and are a great reminder that spin sucks and bad PR is bad PR. Smiling goes a long way, which Gini discovered when a University of Michigan study was released showing bad moods are as contagious as the common cold.

It’s so easy to spread your bad mood around through email and the social web and we talk about how, as leaders, we need to be very cognizant of how we behave not only affects the people in front of us, but also morale and culture that can have a last effect. When is online conversation appropriate and when is it better to get out of your office and actually talk to people?

Don’t forget we’re recording live at PodCamp in Toronto THIS Saturday! We hope to see you there.

Do you have comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, or message us @inside_pr on Twitter. Or connect with Martin Waxman, Joe Thornley, and me on Twitter.

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

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.38 [ 16:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, visit the Inside PR Blubrry site, leave us a comment on the Inside PR show blog or message us @inside_pr on Twitter.

This week on Inside PR, Martin, Gini and Joe talk about the three questions that need to be asked before accepting a controversial client.

0:27 Martin opens the show.

0:49 Joe is recording from Calgary as he is accompanying C.C. Chapman on the Content Rules Third Tuesday digital media meetups across Canada.

2:04 Gini has been following along and recommends that everyone check out Joe’s blog for interviews with C.C.

3:27 Joe starts off this week’s topic: how to approach controversial clients.

5:01 Martin believes that everyone deserves to have their voice heard, however, he feels he has the right to decide which clients he wants his agency to represent.

6:43 Gini draws from experience earlier in her career on working with tobacco clients. However, she notes that as an agency owner, she has a say as to who she wants to work with and is in a unique position.

8:15 Gini adds that it’s also incredibly important to look at the entire organization when taking on a new client because you want to benefit the company as whole.

9:25 Martin feels culture and leadership are also important things to consider when taking on a controversial client.

12:01 Listening to your organization as a whole is important. Early on when Joe had first started his agency with Terry Fallis, they chose not to work with certain businesses for personal reasons. As the agency grew, there were other opinions to consider.

12:30 Joe recently wrote a blog post on three questions you need to ask before accepting a controversial client. He talks about them.

15:06 Martin closes the show.

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

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.35 [ 18:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, visit the Inside PR Blubrry site, leave us a comment on the Inside PR show blog or message us @inside_pr on Twitter.

This week on Inside PR, Martin, Gini and Joe kick off the new year by talking about what they think will be the next big thing in 2011.

0:24 Martin opens the show.

1:36 Following up to the previous episode on Inside PR, Martin mentions that this week, they will be talking about three things that may be on the next big thing in social media or PR.

3:40 Using the example of Facebook raising 500 million dollars from Goldman Sachs, Joe wonders if this trend will lead to companies rushing to sell rather than thoroughly develop their product.

6:16 Gini feels like it’s 2000 again with all the money being thrown around these days.

6:35 Joe hopes that government will go past the experimentation stage with social media and really embrace it.

8:05 Martin wonders if the WikiLeaks controversy will affect how governments approach open data.

8:55 Joe points out that WikiLeaks wasn’t the result of a social media problem, but rather a leaky employee problem.

11:05 Gini talks about the FCC’s decision on net neutrality and how there are two versions of the internet now.

14:00 On the CBC Spark podcast, Barbara Van Shewick was interviewed about internet architecture and innovation. Joe recommends listening to it as the interview explores interesting and complex issues.

17:15 Martin closes the show.

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

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.34 [ 21:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, visit the Inside PR Blubrry site, leave us a comment on the Inside PR show blog or message us @inside_pr on Twitter.

This week on Inside PR, Martin, Gini and Joe finish discussing the trends of 2010 in their final episode of the year.

0:30 Martin opens the show.

1:36 Joe continues on the discussion by talking about his next trend, the social networking darlings: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

3:32 Gini references a chart by Business Insider that demonstrates how Twitter is being used.

4:00 Joe cites two Canadian examples of how Twitter is being used as a newswire of sorts.

6:16 Gini brings up the next trend: The PR industry talks about measurement a lot but we don’t really seem to know how to do it.

7:31 Joe mentions a post by Jeremiah Owyang on the subject that he recommends checking out.

8:35 Martin doesn’t think algorithims can explain it all. We need a human perspective.

9:00 Martin talks about a new trend: Too many PR practitioners are focusing too much on broadcasting and not enough on building relationships.

10:06 Joe talks about his final trend for 2010: The drop-off of unique, interesting voices in the blogosphere. He mentions a blog post by Brian Solis on the state of the blogosphere in 2010 on the importance of blogging.

13:26 Gini fears another dot-com burst with all the Google-Groupon type deals taking place.

16:05 Martin announces the last trend of the episode: The reemergence of Wikis.

19:40 Martin recaps the trends discussed in this week’s episode.

20:35 Martin closes the show.

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

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.