Inside PR 426: It’s Jeopardy VR

December 15, 2015 • thornley • Inside PR, PR

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This week, Martin and Gini do another two-hander, as I’m AWOL. (I have to stop making a habit of this.)

Martin’s #IPRMustKnow takes us to the other side with Alex Trebek and Jeopardy’s Virtual Reality experience. Really?!?!

Gini’s #IPRMustKnow is the removal of share counts by Twitter. You’ll have to find another way to get your share counts. Don’t freak out. It’s OK.

But let’s talk about something cool for our main discussion. Let’s talk sensory metaphors. Jonah Berger’s recent contemplation of why cool is still “cool.” Or it that hot?

Are we talking to ourselves? We hope not. Please let us know what you think about the things we discussed on this episode.

Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the FIR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

And we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

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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 Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 425: The Lost Episode

December 7, 2015 • thornley • PR

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Yes, it’s been a long time. Too long.

We haven’t posted, even though we have recorded podcasts.

And that’s all on me. This has been the busiest autumn for work that I’ve had in years. And I found I just lacked the energy to do that one more thing, to post Inside PR at the end of the day.

It’s on me.

If you’re reading this, if you’re still subscribed to the podcast, Thank you! Here’s the first of several that will be posted over a relatively short time as we catch up.

Today’s episode: Canada, the land social media forgot. It’s a two-hander. Just Martin Waxman and me. Gini is still on the road. But all three of us will be back together again next week.

Are we talking to ourselves? We hope not. Please let us know what you think about the things we discussed on this episode.

And we have a favor to ask: 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 Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 421: The Business of Podcasting

August 30, 2015 • thornley • Inside PR

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This week, on Inside PR 421, we introduce our first Inside PR Book Club #IPRBookClub, featuring The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. We’re not alone in the book club. Mark Blevis, co-author of Touch, and Kevin Anselmo from the FIR on Higher Education podcast weigh in with their thoughts on the book. On top of that, Donna Papacosta joins us to tell us who she and Steve were thinking of when they wrote the book and what they hope people will take away with them from reading it.

We also have our regular IPR Must Know #IPRMustKnow segment:

More evidence of the power of search to shape opinion. This time, it’s an academic study showing that manipulating search results can affect how people vote. It’s important for us to constantly be aware of the power of Google.

Gini and the Arment Dietrich team tested Facebook’s Notes feature and they discovered that posts written via the Notes feature are in fact extending the reach of their content. If you have a company page, it’s worth taking a fresh look at whether you should be posting content via Facebook Notes.

Martin points out that, after several years absence, Twitter posts are again showing up in real time in Google’s desktop search. The return of a beautiful relationship.

We’d love to hear from you.

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.

And we have a favor to ask: 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 Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 418: The IPR Book Club

August 10, 2015 • thornley • Show Notes

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Joseph Thornley here. On this week’s Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I talk about Gini’s experiment reposting older content and some of the trends in blogging and publishing that it pointed to.

Also, this week, we launch the Inside PR Book Club #IPRBookClub. Each month, we will ask the Inside PR community to suggest a book that they would like to discuss with us. We’ll name the book at the beginning of the month and then take two or three weeks to read it. As we do this, we’ll invite our listeners to read the book as well. And then, most importantly, we’ll ask you to share with us your impressions of the book. What was most useful? What rang true? What missed? We’ll ask you to submit your impressions as comments on the IPR blog. Or even better, we’ll ask you to send us audio comments to the [email protected] email address. Then we’ll collect your comments and our own impressions and put together a special Inside PR episode in which we discuss the book. And I mean WE. Because we plan to play your audio comments and read the comments you leave on the Inside PR blog. Yes, we’re going to not just review books but make this a real book club with all of us taking part in the discussion.

For our first book, we’re going to talk about something that should be of interest to the podcaster in all of us, The Business of Podcasting by Donna Papacosta and Steve Lubetkin. This is a brand new book by two podcasters who share with us the lessons they have each learned in over a decade of experience in podcasting. It’s a short read – perhaps two hours time. Full of tips and examples. You can get your copy from Amazon.

We also have our #IPRMustKnow segment. This week, we tell you about three things we think you should be sure to note:

The New York Times is reinventing the way it presents advertisements on mobile devices;

Facebook marches on. They now can claim 1.49 BILLION monthly active users. Facebook, he Internet for most of us.

Gini points us to an article of useful tips to ensure that we stay on the right side of the law with our visual storytelling.

We do this for you. And we’d love to hear from you.

And we have a favor to ask: 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 Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 417: Ezra Klein’s vision of the future of media

August 3, 2015 • thornley • PR

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On this week’s Inside PR podcast, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about three #IPRMustKnows. All three involve either Google or Facebook and two relate to video. Listen to the podcast for news about Facebook tools for video publishers, a new YouTube mobile player and the next steps in gutting Google+.

Our main discussion item was suggested to us by Robert Carver (Thanks Robert!). Recently, Ezra Klein peered into the future and came up with the question, Is the Media Becoming a Wire Service? Klein’s article is thought provoking and a worthwhile read. He posits a tradeoff between greater reach and an erosion in innovation. Gini, Martin and I are drawn into Klein’s vision of the future with both enthusiasm and trepidation. Give it a listen and then tell us what you think? Is Klein’s vision of future journalism something that you think will come to pass?

We’d love to hear from you.

And we have a favor to ask: 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 Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 414: End of Days for Human Content Creators?

July 7, 2015 • thornley • PR

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This week on Inside PR, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I give you three #IPRMustKnows plus we talk about

First, the #IPRMustKnows:

Meerkat introduces and embeddable player. Now you can put your streaming media on your own site.
Yeplive joins the streaming video field. And it lets you shoot your video in landscape mode, unlike Meerkat and Persicope which serve up your videos in portrait mode. You can get the Yep Live app in the iOS and Play stores.
Google “began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.” The code supports Google’s hotword feature that enables voice commands. This is the kind of feature you need to be aware of. Remember what you enable on your device because always-on monitoring has become a “feature” of our lives.

In our main discussion this week, we turn our attention to the increasing role of algorithms and computer code not only to shape the distribution of news, but also to create content. Do you know when your news is generated by a person or generated by an algorithm? This is the type of development that strongly divides people. And it is a discussion that we’ll surely be having much more in the future.

We’d love to hear what you think.

And we have a favor to ask: 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 Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 411: Communications across borders

June 12, 2015 • thornley • Inside PR, PR

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What happens when we are trying to communicate with people who live in another place with a distinctively different culture? Do they do things differently there? How can we be sensitive to these differences?

As communicators, we are attuned to the audience we want to reach. But still we are grounded in the people around us, to where we work and live. It’s hard not to have our approach shaped by “the way we do things around here.” In other words, the local culture. It’s what we’re exposed to each and every day. So we don’t challenge or think about whether it is the best way of doing things.

On this week’s episode of the Inside PR podcast, we explore these questions with two guests who have lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic.

Suzy Chisholm is head of communications at Philips Switzerland. A transplanted Canadian, she has spent over twenty years living and working in Switzerland, a country at the heart of Europe and a country with three languages.

Sherrilynne Starkie has worked in Washington, London, the Isle of Man and now in Canada.

Both Suzy and Sherrilynne offer their perceptions and insights into the challenges of communicating in different cultures. And then Martin, Gini and I weigh in with our own thoughts.

We hope that this discussion opens some windows onto the different experiences and approaches people may have working as communicators around the world.

What is your experience? Have you had direct experience of the differences driven by culture and language? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

And we have a favor to ask: if you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

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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 410: Martin, You complete me

June 5, 2015 • thornley • PR, Shownotes

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You want to make your point. So, which do you try to do? Appeal to your listeners emotions? Or hit them with cold, hard reason?

Martin Waxman and I have a wide ranging and maybe too personal discussion of that question on this week’s Inside PR podcast. And in doing so, we may reveal a little too much about ourselves. But isn’t that why we podcast in the first place? So that we can not just communicate our ideas, but communicate them as real people?

What got us off on this line of discussion? An article by Lisa Lai published recently on HBR.org. In her article, Lai provides both a conceptual overview of the emotion reason dichotomy and some practical advice on how to decide which route to go in specific situations.

As I read this article, I realize that one of my failings through my career has been my propensity to appeal to reason. I approach the world as a rational place in which causes can be discerned and solutions devised. That’s a world in which all things can be engineered with determination, focus, and a well thought through plan of action.

Martin allows that he sees things through the human lens and his first instinct is to appeal to emotion. He has struggled with the need to introduce the rational in situations where emotion just won’t do it.

This leads us to think about the importance of being attuned to the other person in order to read which persuasion technique is best for them. And that takes us back to the most basic communication skill, listening. We must listen to the other person for the clues about what’s important to them in order to figure out which approach to take with them. My preference doesn’t matter. If I want to persuade another person I need to start with their preference as my anchor point.

That takes us even further afield to the most often used and most often abused communications technique of the digital era: email. You can’t read the other person using email. You can’t tell whether your argument is going to be effective, is going to tap the right place, either emotional or rational.

Finally, we talk about Crystal, a new app that promises to tell “you the best way to communicate with any coworker, prospect, or customer based on their unique personality.” Machine-generated empathy!

We’d love to hear your views. What do you think of the reason vs. emotion dichotomy? Are you ready to rely on a machine algorithm to help you communicate in the mode preferred by the other party?

And we have a favor to ask: if you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

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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 408: Now we all are Irish

May 4, 2015 • thornley • PR

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On this week’s Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I talk about three things:

Twitter’s move of non-American account holders to Ireland;
LinkedIn as a content publishing platform; and
Buzzfeed’s bowing to advertisers’ demands to delete previously-published articles.

What do you think?

We’d love to hear from you.

And we have a favor to ask: 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 405: Starbucks Starcrossed

March 30, 2015 • thornley • PR, Show Notes

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On this week’s Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I talk about three issues: Starbuck’s #RaceTogether initiative, the change to Google’s search algorithm to penalize Websites that are not mobile-friendly, and another move by Facebook to make itself more inviting to advertisers.

Starbucks #RaceTogether

Looking back at Starbucks’ #RaceTogether campaign, I can’t help but feel that, while laudable in intent, RaceTogether showed a remarkable lack of self awareness on Starbucks’ account. Martin and Gini disagree. They see more positive than negative in Starbucks’ initiative and its handling of the subsequent fallout.

Gini feels that Starbucks succeeded in getting us to talk about the issue. I think that Starbucks succeeded in getting us to talk about Starbucks – and not in a positive way. I think the issue came apart because of a lack of self awareness on Starbucks’ part. I see it as an unequal power relationship. A chain that sells premium-priced coffee to a well-heeled clientele asks its fairly low paid employees to raise a highly sensitive topic across the counter. Gini pushes back. She talks about her experience of her local Starbucks. Martin sees it as a grand gesture in the finest tradition of liberalism. Gini gets the last word. We’re talking about it. Starbucks had some success and she suggests they should not be timid about this type of social initiative in the future.

Mobile-friendly by April 21 or else

But that’s not all we talk about. We also point to the pending April 21 change to Google’s algorithm penalize Websites that are not mobile-friendly. Communications execs, make sure that your sites are up to date or be ready to see them disappear from the front page of Google Search.

Facebook entices advertisers

Finally, we discuss the disappearance of comments from corporate Facebook pages. Just one more step by Facebook to make Facebook a more attractive platform for advertisers.

We’d love to hear from you.

And we have a favor to ask: 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.