Inside PR 400: The Social Media Mob

February 18, 2015 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Just a little more than a year after Justine Sacco sent the ill-fated, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m White!” tweet, The New York Times Magazine wrote an in-depth piece on her (and others who have suffered the social media mob) to see where she is now and how this has affected her livelihood.

There has been a lot of subsequent coverage on the topic:

Buzzfeed rehashed the events
Gawker made peace with her (after being the one to break the story)
Even Inside PR covered it in January of last year (and we haven’t changed our stance)

It’s an interesting look at the social media, whether the crime fits the punishment, and how we might all need to chill.

Jon Ronson, the article’s author, even researched how long it has been since society allowed public shamings in much the same way we ridicule online (the 14th Century).

The conversation turns from the social media mob and online lynchings to how we can use humor in our social media efforts without coming across as clueless and insensitive as the Sacco tweet.

Her point was that the tweet was so ridiculous, she couldn’t imagine anyone taking it seriously. She was making a satirical remark on the bubble we live in in North America. But what she learned is, unless you’re Louis CK or South Park, satire doesn’t work so well in 140 characters.

It’s an interesting world we live in. Many business leaders are scared of what happens when an employee doesn’t think and sends a tweet like this, or when a customer is unhappy and doesn’t get his way. There are, of course, ways to deal with critics, but Joe poses the question, “Does it make sense in some extreme cases to go completely dark?”

What do you think?

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.

We’d ask one favor of you. If you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

******************************************************************

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 396: Teens on Social Media

January 14, 2015 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

On Medium a couple of weeks ago, a teenager named Andrew Watts wrote a piece called A Teenager’s View on Social Media. To say it created a conversation is putting it mildly.

Matthew Ingram at Gigaom picked it up…and then he wrote a second piece after Danah Boyd, a sociologist who focuses on how young people use social media, wrote a retort in the comments.

She provided some criticism on how we (human beings) group people into buckets for marketing purposes. We like to generalize. There is a reason stereotypes exist.

During the time that conversation was happening, Andrew Watts published a second article on what teens think about some of the other social networks…the ones he didn’t include in his first piece.

The four pieces are the topic of our conversation today.

We talk about:

Storytelling and how this young man’s piece picked up steam because it was interesting and personal;
YikYak and the advantage of smaller social communities;
How communicators must be open-minded to how different generations use social media and do some testing of our own;
Whether there is a difference between a teenager and a college student (which Andrew Watts is);
Why it’s important not to generalize;
How social media allows us to find direct communication with like-minded people around the globe; and
Different perspectives from our own community among those who have teenagers.

Martin ends the discussion by leaving it in your hands. He asks, “Are we moving into the next phase of social media?”

Many of you listen to us on iTunes and it would be great if you could leave us a review.

******************************************************************

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 394: The 2015 Public Relations Predictions

December 17, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

It’s the last episode of 2014 and we couldn’t let the year end without giving you our public relations predictions for 2015.

Before we get to those predictions, though, Joe talks about a few changes at Google, including updates to the Customer Journey to Online Purchase. For communicators, this is pretty interesting to check out because it helps you determine how a customer might make a purchase decision and how you can help them along through the process. No longer do you have to guess at the types of content that will help them make a decision.

The trends we discuss are:

The continual integration of PESO (paid, earned, shared, and owned media);
Return of big ideas a la West Jet Holiday Miracle; and
The quest for scale, both for organizations and for content.

Of course, we talk about why we’ve chosen each of these and what they mean for the industry. They also all seem to intertwine with one another, which was not planned. We didn’t discuss beforehand which trend we had each chosen. Serendipity!

And, before you begin your holiday cheer, please join us in making fun of Martin Waxman for always saying, “At triple W insidepr dot C A” instead of just “insidepr dot CA.”

Happy Holidays to all of you! We wish you a great start to 2015 and look forward to hanging out in your ears for another year.

We’d love to hear what you think.

******************************************************************

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 390: Throw Away Your Crisis Communications Playbook

November 12, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

You didn’t think we’d not do a show about Jian Ghomeshi, did you?

Though he was a CBC Canadian star, his crisis evolved beyond the borders and certainly hit the United States as we all watched in wonder to see what would come of it all.

If you are like me and have never heard of him, the story goes that he was abusive to some former girlfriends in the bedroom. His story is that it was all consensual. The side of the women is that it wasn’t so much, particularly when he punched one of them in the face.

There, of course, are always three sides to a story (his side, her side, and the truth), but what has been interesting to watch is how Ghomeshi has handled the crisis, from a communications perspective.

The moment he was fired from the CBC, he wrote a long explanation to his fans on his Facebook page. Then he filed a $55 million lawsuit against the media company. Because he was a union employee, he cannot file a lawsuit, but speculation is he did it so he could tell his side of the story in legal documents that couldn’t be held against him later.

Then things got really hairy. His high-profile crisis firm dropped him and he “fled” to California. The case is ongoing and it certainly hasn’t died down because he stopped being vocal.

We discuss how he and his team framed the issue, what they did extraordinarily well, but also what they forgot to include, based on the flamethrowers on social media. Joe brings up a good point about how this also relates to Gamergate and how, in social media, people begin to define the issue themselves.

We’d love to hear what you think about how crisis should be handled in 2014/2015 versus 1990.

******************************************************************

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 389: Copyblogger, SlideBatch, and More

November 5, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

On today’s Inside PR, we have three topics: The Vocus/Cision merger, Copyblogger shutting down its Facebook page, and a cool new tool called Slidebatch.

Vocus and Cision

As it happens, I was in Washington, D.C. for the PRSA International Conference. I attended the happy hour with Vocus and Cision to learn of their new name and what their plans are, now that the merger is complete.

They will keep the name Cision and will be headquartered in Chicago (which makes me happy), but it sounds like Cision clients will now have access to Vocus tools (PR Web and HARO) and Vocus clients will now have access to Cision tools.

But it is an interesting look at what is happening in the PR industry. Joe asks if we’re shrinking and what that could mean for our livelihoods.

Copyblogger and Facebook

Then we tackled the big announcement from Copyblogger that they shut down their Facebook page, even with 36,000 fans.

We talk about whether this is a publicity stunt (that clearly is working because everyone in the industry is talking about it) or just a really smart decision.

Though the algorithm at Facebook has changed and engagement, reach, and comments are down across the board, it still drives a significant amount of referral traffic for each of us.

It would be interesting to see if Copyblogger lost a significant amount of referral traffic when they did this.

Slidebatch

SlideBatch is going to change the look and feel of your newsrooms forever.

No more manual updates to the newsroom every time a story runs.

Instead of every time a story runs about your organization or about one of your client, you have to create an image, write a couple of sentences to entice people to click, and then link to the original story, you can create a Batch.

We talk about other uses for it and why we think it’s a nice tool for every PR pro’s toolbox.

We’d love to know what you think about these topics!

P.S. I was riding my bike (stationary – not outside!) while we recorded this, which is pretty evident when I listened to the show. Oy! I won’t do that again.

******************************************************************

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 388: The Evolution of Media and Media Relations

October 29, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

While I was in the air for the recording of this podcast, the conversation Martin Waxman and I had about the layoffs at The New York Times launched the conversation he and Joe Thornley had today.

While it’s a focus on Canadian media, it shows a very interesting trend: There is an ongoing march of media consolidation, which could very well continue to affect the way communications professionals—particularly those who focus on media relations—do their jobs.

In the news, Post Media acquired Sun Media and they are suddenly the largest print publication in Canada. Martin suspects they have 100% media market in cities such as Ottawa and Vancouver. While they’ve said there won’t be layoffs, we surmise they don’t really need multiple news bureaus in every city so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

There continues to be a consolidation of newsrooms and the disappearance of beats—PR pros today outweigh journalists four to one—which means we have to continue to evolve.

And speaking of evolution, Martin and Joe spoke to an interesting tactic Jesse Brown is taking with Canadaland.

For those of you who don’t know (I didn’t), Jesse Brown was an early podcaster with Search Engine. A couple of years ago, he turned that into Canadaland, which is a media watchdog of sorts.

He has broken big stories, such as the policy the CBC had that allowed Peter Mansbridge to be on the news every night and also get paid to speak at events for organizations that were in the news. Because of the Canadaland investigation, the CBC changed their policy.

But Jesse is facing something many content producers face and that is he’s not being paid to spend the necessary time to break news like this. So he has asked his supporters to become patrons of sorts…and it’s working!

Martin and Joe wonder if this could be a new trend, particularly for brand-new content producers.

What do you think?

******************************************************************

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 386: Wearable Technology

October 1, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

A couple of years ago, a study was released that showed how bad sitting at your computer is for your body. So bad, in fact, Google has claimed the phrase: Sitting is the new smoking.

This research helped launch wearable technology and now, with the new Apple watch, we have personalized and customized data available to us that makes us smarter about our health, nutrition, and overall well-being. It helps you understand just how little you actually do move during the day, particularly in our industry, and it helps motivate you to get up and move.

I have a pretty strong opinion about wearable technology and how it not only helps us live better lives, but how it helps communicators target more specifically our messaging. We also discuss it from the perspectives of fashion, function, and plain old cynicism.

Do you agree with Joe and look askance at it? Do you agree with Martin that it’s all about fashion? Or do you agree with me, the technology and geek hound?

We’d love to hear from you. What do you think about wearable technology? What do you think the future is? How can we use it in communications and across cultures? Is it cool or scary to get this kind of data about about ourselves? Can we use that data to improve our lives? Or is really just about being a wearable fashion hound?

******************************************************************

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 385: Twitter “Buy Now” and Social Advertising

September 24, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • social media

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Twitter is slowly rolling out a “buy now” button to users, which promotes the ability to buy directly from the social network.

As Twitter continues to try to figure out how to make money, and brands want to figure out a return-on-investment that translates directly to the bottom line, it will be interesting to watch and see how (or if?) this works.

Pinterest certainly has been able to figure it out…maybe Twitter is taking a page from their book.

We discuss the implications and pros and cons of social advertising and then move to Apple Pay.

Apple Pay is offered on the new iPhone 6 and provides a way for you to pay without cash or credit card (and is my dream because I hate carrying a wallet and I hate carrying a purse).

We debate the merits, whether it’s bad for small business, whether it could be disastrous for some, and whether it’s made only for enterprise organizations.

Martin tells a story of his local coffee shop—Snakes and Lattes—that is a true neighborhood destination. He worries a business like that won’t be able to afford the infrastructure needed to accept Apple Pay. I, however, share a story of how local boutiques in my neighborhood all have iPads at the counter to accept Belly, a local loyalty card.

Who is right and who is wrong is yet to be seen, but we’d love to hear what you think.

Will the Twitter “buy now” button help brands increase sales? Will Apple Pay be devastating to small business?

******************************************************************

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 3.80: Digital Reach with Cision

July 30, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • Media relations

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

This week we have a special guest in Heidi Sullivan, the senior vice president of digital content at Cision. She is here to talk to us about Digital Reach, a new offering from the PR media database company.

You know how you go to research a competitor, a blogger, or a journalist and you check out their numbers? You check them out on Compete and on OpenSiteExplorer and in a media database such as Cision to figure out what kind of authority they have and where your influencers might lie.

The problem, of course, is sites such as Compete are not completely correct. I checked out Spin Sucks there, just to see how accurate it is and it’s off by more than 20 percent.

Enter Digital Reach.

It takes a site’s unique visitors and combines it with the social shares it typically receives. This gives you a UVPM, or unique visitors per month, which is more accurate than anything else out there.

Listen to her describe what communicators can get from Digital Reach, what she did as her first job in the business (which makes me laugh because many of us have been there), and how you can get started.

I’m off to test it for some of our clients now.

Enjoy the listen!

******************************************************************

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 372: Mesh Conference with Mark Evans

May 14, 2014 • Gini Dietrich • PR

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Mark Evans is a co-founder of mesh conference, which is in its ninth year, and will be held in Toronto on May 27-28.

Roving reporter, Martin Waxman, recently caught up with him.

He began the conversation by talking about the biggest surprises Mark has seen since the conference started.

And, as a former journalist, Martin wanted to know what’s been the biggest change in media since he was writing, and why pitches from PR professionals are still terrible.

Mark handles the latter question extremely well, while providing some great feedback on the things PR pros should consider, even with the immense amount of pressure we face from clients.

They talk about the media stream at mesh, which is the brain child and passion of Matthew Ingram, about the trend toward the new media companies introducing newswires to capture citizen journalists, and the y talk about the conference.

What’s most interesting (as I listened to the interview) is Mark’s take on Neil Harbisson, Mark Little, and Stewart Butterfield.

You’ll find what he has to say about each of these speakers really interesting. He talks about how Neil’s cyborg activism will help you think differently about how you live your life and how you do your job because it gives you a different perspective. How Mark, with the help of Storyful – the company he founded – is standing in the social “grayness” to help us determine what is actually news and what is not. And how Stewart salvaged a business from complete failure by doing a strategic pivot.

It’s a good episode you don’t want to miss!

Disclosure: Thornley Fallis is helping out on the PR for this year’s Mesh conference.

******************

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Inside PR is part of the FIR Podcast Network.

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 Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.