Inside PR 2.95: Richard Binhammer on social business

May 4, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley speak with Richard Binhammer at Dell about social business, moving forward and the roll of PR firms. We want to thank all those who send in their comments. Last week, Petra Opelova commented on last week’s episode. She agrees with Gini that webpages are still very significant. She also liked Matthias Lufkens’ approach of treating our customers as your friends. Adapting this approach not only humanizes your customers but also humanizes your company in the eyes of your customer.

As an early pioneer of social media, Richard was at Dell six years ago when Dell first came alive to social media. Today he is a director of Dell social media campaigns. Richard Binhammer was the second keynote at the PRSA’s Digital Conference. Joe caught up with Richard just before he went on stage to discuss social business and the role of PR firms in corporate social media accounts.

After the interview, Joe mentions that the relationship between business and PR firm is more than just tactical, the businesses are smarter and know how to use social media. As PR firms we need to support businesses from a strategy perspective.

Gini mentions that PR firms are being hired for different reasons today compared to five years ago. PR firms used to own relationships, especially with reporters. Today, we no longer own that relationship and we now have to redefine ourselves. With the social web, crisis is an emerging threat to businesses. PR agencies should be able to help on strategic crisis management.

Martin thinks that PR professionals need to acquire new skills. For example: amature video production, audio production for podcasting, and more. This will help us create, tell and distribute stories.

If you are out and about travelling, don’t forget to check out the Inside PR team in a couple weeks at PRSA’s Counsellors Academy in New Orleans.

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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.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.94: Matthias Lufkens on Davos and social media

April 19, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week we feature an interview with Matthias Lufkens, former social media director for the World Economic Forum in Davos, who tells us about the organization’s use of social media. We caught up with him at PRSA’s Digital Impact, where he was one of the keynote presenters. Over the next few week’s we’ll be sharing more interviews from the conference.

Matthias has several takeaways from his presentation:

1. The number of visitors to your own website is less and less important; organizations now have to be everywhere, on all the social sites.

2. Start by sharing riveting content.

3. Being active in social media means ceding control and letting people comment and share your content.

4. Create communities and then engage and lead them.

He has an additional piece of advice for communicators: look at online communities as your friends and that will change the way you build relationships with them.

Joe cites a KPMG study on how much social engagement activity emanated from Davos this year and how social media really opened the gathering to the world.

Gini calls out Matthias’ comment about having a small team and says with social media, a few people who know what they’re doing can accomplish a lot. She doesn’t agree with his point about traffic your site being less relevant and believes social channels should drive people back to your site.

Martin mentions Matthias’ point about thinking of customers as friends and having that inform the way we communicate with them by avoiding the hard sell.

Want to meet us in person? Gini, Joe and I are going to be attending the PRSA Counselors Academy conference in New Orleans – Gini’s a keynote presenter, Joe’s doing a roundtable and I’m conference chair. We’re recording a show at the conference and doing more interviews with some of the smartest entrepreneurs in PR. And everyone who attends gets a copy of Gini’s new book, Marketing in the Round. Hope to see you there.

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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.

Special edition of Inside PR: talking Digital Impact with Eric Schwartzman

April 2, 2012 • admin • PR

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PRSA’s Digital impact conference is happening in New York April 2 and 3 and we’re pleased to announce Inside PR is the official podcaster.
Martin talked with Eric Schwartzman, digital marketing consultant, entrepreneur, author, podcaster and founder/co-chair of Digital Impact about this year’s program. Now in its fourth year, the sold-out event is designed for PR professionals, marketing communicators, speechwriters and even entrepreneurs who are trying to integrate social into their strategy. Its focus is earned media through social communications and it’s tailored to the PR community.

This year’s keynote lineup features:

Caryn Marooney, vice president technology innovations, Facebook, talking about How to Thrive in a Connected World.
Matthias Lufkens – chief communications person for the World Economic Forum in Davos, speaking about the Role of the Social Media Architect.
Timothy Jordan – one of the key developer advocates for Google+ presenting the business case for having a Google+ page.
Richard Binhammer – Dell’s director of social media and community discussing how to build in social networking across an entire enterprise and connecting employees to customers.

Other sessions include a panel on PR and Wikipedia and whether or not PR people should be allowed to make changes on pages they manage; a communications professor talking about copyright, trademark and what you are and aren’t allowed to share; and several sessions on understanding influence, which tie directly into this year’s theme, ‘Influence and Persuasion’.

You can follow the hashtag #PRSADIconf Twitter.

We’ll be recording interviews with some of the presenters and keynotes. And if you’re in New York, please drop by to say hi.

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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.

Inside PR 2.92: Is it social media or social business?

March 27, 2012 • admin • PR

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We start with some exciting news about Inside PR’s new partnership with PRSA. We’re heading to New York in early April to join them as the official podcaster of the PRSA Digital Impact conference. They’ve got a great line-up of speakers and we’re planning to record a number of interviews with social media influencers that we’ll use on future shows. Stay tuned for more details…

This week, we feature an interview with Giovanni Rodriguez that roving reporter Martin conducted at SXSW. Giovanni is the person who introduced both Joe and Martin to social media at Counselors Academy in 2005. He’s been the managing partner at his own agency and is currently a consultant at Deloitte. And he’ll be presenting at the Digital Impact conference.

Giovanni talks about social business and what differentiates it from social media. He believes social media as a term was always limiting because it forced the discipline into a marketing corner.

He goes on to say that social business is more inclusive in that it asks the question, how can people use these technologies and best practices to engage and empower their constituencies? These could include anyone in your network, your customers, employees, partners in your ecosystem.

He’s seeing new type of professional emerging; one that will offer offers a suite of services similar in scope to management consulting: strategy, discovery, benchmarks and road-mapping.

And Giovanni wonders whether or not intermediaries – that is, the role played by agents – will be eclipsed by trusted counselors and advisors.

Gini agrees the role of PR agencies is changing and that we need to move beyond impressions, understand an organization’s goals and develop programs that drive business results.

Joe thinks PR people are well positioned for the change Giovanni describes as we’ve been involved in monitoring and measurement, analysis, insight and strategy for quite some time and have a good understanding of the landscape and how to navigate in it.

What do you think?

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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.

Inside PR 2.87: We won’t delete your comments

February 9, 2012 • admin • PR

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It’s been an interesting week around the web with lessons about good and not-so-good communications. Gini mentions the blog post she wrote about the Susan G. Komen Foundation and how its decision to unplug their funding from Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screenings created a huge outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood and a reputation issue for Komen.

She talks about how poorly Komen handled communications around the issue including deleting comments from its Facebook page. She and a few people tried a test where they posted comments – from benign to negative – and took screen captures of their posts. The organization removed them all. She wonders why Komen didn’t consult with its communications advisors in advance to develop scenarios, messages and a crisis plan.

By now most of us have heard that based on the outcry, Komen reversed its decision.

We all agree deleting comments after the fact is one of the worst things organizations can do and they should decide at the outset whether or not they’ll accept comments and build trust via an open conversation.

Joe talks about Radio Royal York’s public video welcome to Blissdom organizers who were visiting Toronto. He hasn’t decided if it’s a mistake or a good way to engage with a customer and asks if anyone else had seen something similar. However, the situation is somewhat moot. At the time of writing, the video has been removed.

In case you missed it, our last topic is the upcoming Facebook IPO and the company’s disclosure that the majority of its revenue comes from ad dollars.

In fact, the big three social media players – Facebook, Twitter and Google+ – are all media companies of sorts and have finally figured out now they monetize their innovations – by selling us (and our data). There’s no doubt they’re great networks that extend the scope of our relationships, but we are still the product.

Martin wonders how they’ll deal with large policy issues like freedom of speech and feels governments should monitor the situation to ensure we keep the Internet open. Joe isn’t happy with that type of intervention – he’d rather see governments focus on education and standards.

Next week is Social Media Week in various cities around the world. Here’s where to get a full list of events. And if you’re in Toronto on February 17, Third Tuesday Toronto is hosting a breakfast event on open government featuring Tony Clement, M.P., President of the Treasury Board of Canada. It should be a lively discussion.

And that’s a wrap! We’ll talk to you next week.

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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.

Inside PR 2.85: The Pluses of Google

January 25, 2012 • admin • PR

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Search is changing.

This week was a big week for social media, especially Google. Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman start the episode with talking about Google’s new search algorithm. Google has changed in search algorithm to make it personalized to the person logged on. Twitter and Facebook are not too happy about this change and believe that Google is not giving an accurate search result. The gang talks about how consumers are being affect and how we are stuck in the middle of a feud between two big corporations.

The pull between personalization and standardization increases with this new search algorithm, pushing standardization further and further outside of the picture. We will no longer all get the same search results. The team talks about what this means for consumers and communicators.

This issue also invokes change for communicators and marketers and how we promote our company’s online, the key words we use and how we publish content.

What do you think? Will Google continue to be the number one choice for search?

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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.

Inside PR 2.84: Are your measurement goals quantifiable and time-bound?

January 13, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, we feature another interview from the PRSA International Conference. We talk to our good friend Shonali Burke, communications strategist and author of the Waxing Unlyrical blog, about PR and social media measurement, a subject all PR people should pay attention to because it demonstrates the value of our work and whether or not we’ve achieved our goals.

Shonali calls out three problems in the way we approach measurement:

The concept of measurable objectives has been lost – our objectives must be quantifiable and time-bound.
Buzz is not a goal – because people don’t know what they’re trying to achieve, they’re not approaching communications strategically.
People overcomplicate. Don’t focus on the tools but on what you’re trying to track and how.

Shonali mentions the Blue Key campaign, which asks Americans to donate $5 to raise awareness and support for refugee issues and how they track the program using custom URLs, Google Analytics and other tools to identify emerging trends.

She’s tired of PR professionals saying they’re not good at numbers and advises us to, ‘stop getting freaked out by math!’

Gini mentions that it’s not impressions or ad equivalencies that are important, but how we deliver the kinds of results that mean something to a client’s business. Joe adds that being in PR, we’re dealing with digital data all the time and need to get good at that. Martin suggests that as professional communicators we are all in business and, as such, should learn and understand the fundamentals of business.

Are you measuring your programs effectively and in a way that demonstrates real value to your clients or organizations? Do you have any thoughts or cases to add? We’d love to hear from you.

And thanks Shonali.

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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.

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

December 15, 2011 • admin • PR

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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.

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 2.78: The plusses of Google+

November 24, 2011 • admin • PR

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We recorded Inside PR 2.76 on the day Google+ opened its pages to businesses and watched as companies developed their G+ presence in real time.

Now it’s a couple of weeks later, and we thought we’d take a closer look. Gini kicks it off by referencing her blog post on the topic. She calls out Google’s transparency in admitting they helped several companies build their brand pages in advance of the launch. However, she’s noticed some of those organizations haven’t grown their followings or done much posting.

She goes on to say while the social media bubble may have wanted G+ to be a Facebook slayer, that’s not likely Google’s intent. She believes it’s to give us a social reason for using Google and that will provide them with more data.

Martin likes the interface, that you can share directly from Google Reader and that Google docs, calendar and Gmail are all there. He wonders if there’s more of a business application to the platform because G+ is so open and when you’re with friends you want to be in a less public environment – a private room with the doors closed, like FB.

Joe calls out the ability to organize circles by interest. And in his circles for journalists, marketers, web design and PR, people continue to publish interesting discussions. Joe uses the platform to follow posts on an industry by industry basis.

Martin suggests it could be a mini-blogging platform without the constraint of 140 characters; a place for companies to start a larger discussion.

Some recent updates: G+ can be managed by third-party apps like Hootsuite. Right now, there’s only one administrator allowed for business pages – that’s going to change in the new year, but currently it’s a drawback.

And finally, we want to wish all our American friends and listeners a Happy Thanksgiving!

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We’d love to hear from you.

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

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.