Inside PR 2.82: Social media resolutions

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This is the last show of 2011 for Inside PR. It has been another great year with Martin Waxman, Joe Thornley and Gini Dietrich.

The group has recorded 82 episodes. However, Inside PR has been around for over five years with other hosts such as Terry Fallis.

This week Martin, Gini and Martin talk about their social media resolution.

Joe’s resolution is to be present, publish more often, and try to increase comments and engagement online. He will start by posting on Google+ and if there is more substance he will do a blog post and make people aware of his ideas on Twitter. To measure success, Joe will measure the amount of engagement he experiences on all his social platforms. He is looking for people to come back more than just once.

Martin’s resolution is to make the right choices. He has a hunger for a lot of things, but he can’t do all of it, and needs to focus. To measure success, Martin will measure engagement, meaningful interactions and meeting more great people.

Gini’s resolution is to take all that she has learned from her clients, all the digital tools and implement them for Arment Dietrich to drive sales. Gini will determine success by measuring good ol’ profit margins.

We’d love to hear from you. Send us your social media resolutions.

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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.81: On Google, Twitter and Marketing in the Round

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First:
Listener comments responding to our discussion on ‘mean girls in PR’… Thanks to Jessica Suter from The Change PR, Lizanor Barrera and our own producer, Kristine Simpson, who submitted an audio comment (and graciously edited it in). The consensus from everyone is there are a lot of good, honest and ethical women and men working in the profession (and yes, there are a few stinkers, too…).

Next:
We officially announce Gini’s new book, Marketing in the Round, co-authored with Geoff Livingston. The publication date is May 2012, but it’s available to pre-order on Amazon and other sites (just in time for the holidays).  It will be launched in Canada at Third Tuesday (Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver).  Congratulations, Gini!

Then:
We move on to talk about some recent changes to Twitter and Google.

Joe sees the new features/updates as an example of how innovation is still occurring rapidly in social media; Twitter is looking more and more like a user friendly service.  Martin admits he still likes the Twitter.com platform because he feels at home there.

Joe is disappointed by the changes to Tweetdeck, because it has fewer features and will now carry only Twitter and none of his other social feeds. He’s going to revisit Hootsuite.

Gini mentions Market Me Suite as another alternative.

Martin says he’s been a Hootsuite user for a while and likes the functionality. He wishes they would let users customize column width in order to see more streams at a glance.

Google introduced Currents, a magazine reader (not yet available in Canada) and is integrating Gmail with the Google+ platform.

Joe likes the quality of the interaction on Google+. He says you can describe Google+ as a place you go for ideas, Facebook, as a place to interact with friends and Twitter where you find out what’s going on. Within that model there’s lots of room for each platform to survive and thrive.

But what about LinkedIn?  Martin believes many LinkedIn features could be integrated into Google+ to make it a good business networking and information resource.

Joe feels too many people on LinkedIn are promoting themselves as they look for jobs; what’s missing is the culture of generosity.

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We’d love to hear from you.

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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.80: Relevance Drives Influence

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We had so much fun at the PRSA International Conference in Orlando because we got to talk to so many smart people.

This week we have another smart person to share with you: Pierre-Loic Assayag, the founder and CEO of Traackr.

Martin Waxman had a chance to chat with him in the Traackr booth about what they’re doing, how relevance drives influence, and what types of analytics are now offered through the tool.

During the conversation, Martin asked Pierre-Loic what three pieces of advice he had to offer to PR professionals.

He said:

  1. 1. Be open-minded. The new media list looks a little like the old media list, but it’s not. Be open to the new influencers you aren’t used to seeing and welcome surprises.
  2. 2. Nothing replaces hard work. This is one we really like because he talks about how what they do makes the repetitive process easier, but they’re not replacing good PR.
  3. 3. There is no silver bullet. As easy as it is to want to rely on some of these tools to automate our jobs, there is no silver bullet to online influence. In order to engage people in a meaningful way, you have to rely on good old relationship-building skills.

He also talks for a few minutes about the alpha list they just launched, which is a way to give control to influencers so they can define their own lists.

At the end of the episode, Martin, Joe Thornley, and I discuss a blog post that is making the rounds right now, “Are Women In PR Just Grown-Up Mean Girls?”

I thought it would be interesting to get the opinion from my male counterparts, but Joe was too chicken to say anything beyond, “No! That’s not true!”

The point we all agreed on, though, is our industry is so focused on media relations, which is just a tool and not everything that we do, that it’s hard to escape that notion.

Enjoy the show!

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We’d love to hear from you.

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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.79: Defining PR & Divining Google+

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Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about the PRSA’s initiative to develop a new definition of public relations on this week’s Inside PR.

The PRSA’s current definition: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” The public is invited to suggest the elements of a new definition using a ” fill in the blanks”  form on the PRSA Website.

Joe isn’t sure that the PRSA’s “fill in the blanks” crowd-sourcing approach will yield the type of definition that truly reflects the enhanced role of PR in the era of social media.

Gini Dietrich suggests that whatever definition is adopted, it will only be useful if it can be readily understood by the general public. And she believes that right now most people believe that PR amounts to little more than media relations.

Martin argues that the public relations profession should define itself through the lense applied by Jeff Jarvis when he asserts that “In a world of publicness which allows us to connect to each other, to information to actions and to transactions, links, i.e. linking up, help us organize new societies and redefine our publics.”

Also in this week’s podcast, we continue to experiment with Google+. Gini Dietrich has set up the Spin Sucks page on Google+. Take a look at it and let her know what you think of it.

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We’d love to hear from you.

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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.