Inside PR 2.77: Jay Baer Talks Corporate Culture

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This week, Jay Baer, of Convince and Convert and The Now Revolution fame, is our guest.

We interviewed him at the PRSA International Conference in Orlando last month and thought now was a great time to run it.

It’s 2012 planning time so we discuss with him the things people ought to remember when using the social tools, trends to watch, and what to consider for next year.

A few things you want to pay particular attention to while you listen:

– His keynote topic at the conference was the goal of corporate culture in speed, authenticity, and response, not about social media.
– He talks about how social media success isn’t about the tools and technology. It’s about corporate culture and being social instead of doing social.
– He wants you to remember that the tools always change. If you focus on the tools, when they die, go public, or get bought out, you’re going to be left with the smoking wreckage of a plan not focused on strategy.
– He says the goal is not to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business, using social media.

We ask him what are the three things he wants you to take away and he outlines them for us.

We also discuss how, as consumers we have so much more information about at our fingertips, it’s important for companies to be sustainable, human, approachable, and engage to help us make our decisions.

Ending with what’s next for Jay Baer and the four words Martin takes away every time he hears Jay speak.

It’s been said multiple times during the podcast, but if you’ve never heard Jay speak, you’ll quickly understand why he’s one of the industry’s most sought-after experts.

He walks the walk, is highly engaging, and is really, really smart.

Enjoy!

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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 DietrichJoe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.62 Hanging Out on Google+

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It’s two weeks since Google+ launched and the Inside PR hosts, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley, have been testing it for its strengths and weaknesses. This week we  talk about our experience so far.

One of the things that has caught most people’s attention is Google Hangouts, the feature that lets Google+ users set up video conference calls with up to ten users. So we thought that we’d use this feature for our recording. Well, as you’ll hear in this episode, there’s a reason why Google+ is still in the “test” period. Not everything works the way that you’d like it to. We lose Gini part of the way through. But she rejoins us by the end. We also experienced the same problem that Shel Holtz noticed when he and Neville Hobson recorded a special episode of the FIR podcast using Google Hangouts with Camtasia studio. The video recording had several defects – frozen screens and video that lagged behind the audio. Hangouts is quite ready for this use. But we’re hoping that Google will keep improving this feature and we’ll keep testing it. Eventually, I’m sure we’ll be able to produce a video version of Inside PR to accompany the audio version.

Have you ever sat down with a long time partner and said, if we could do it over again, what would we do differently? So far, I think that Google+ is the Social Network that’s doing it over and is doing it right.

For me, Facebook started as a place that suggested we could have private conversations with friends and family. But as Facebook developed its business model, it broke the faith with us on that. Bit by bit, it pushed our information onto public feeds – and it wasn’t always up front about what it was doing and didn’t provide us with easy control over how we could control our information.

Martin has been focused on rebuilding his network on Google+. And he’s found that it feels like the early days of Twitter, before the celebrities invaded it and the network became obsessed with numbers of followers. Martin’s finding that he can connect with his real community of interest on Google+ and have much higher quality conversations than he’s experienced on the other networks.

So far, I’ve had an experience similar to Martin. I’ve found that I share the interests of most of the people who have followed me. And by using the Circles feature to sort people by topic, I can dip into different areas just as I would if I were choosing between sections of a newspaper. A great way to increase the signal to noise ratio.

Martin also finds that a strength of Google+ is the ease with which users can adjust their privacy settings – on a general basis and on a post by post basis. It’s intuitive and clear.

Gini also points out that the Circles approach is different from the asymmetrical following on Twitter and the symmetrical friending on Facebook. And this means that we’ll have to develop a different way of figuring out how to manage ourselves in a way that takes full advantage of the unique properties of Google+

So, that’s our Google+ discussion this week. It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in social media in the past couple years. We’ll continue to test it and share our experiences in future weeks.

And what about you? Are you using Google+? What do you think of it? It’s strengths? Its weaknesses?

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 DietrichJoe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.46 – Happy Birthday Twitter!

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It’s no surprise, if you spend any time on Twitter, that they celebrated their fifth birthday on Monday.

Yes, on March 21, 2006, co-founder Jack Dorsey sent his first tweet. And, according to Martin Waxman, they are “officially a toddler. They can walk and talk and are past their terrible twos.” It seems incredible that it’s only been five years, but also amazing that it has been that long.

A few interesting statistics:

  • It took three years, two months, and one day for Twitter to reach one billion tweets. Then it took one week to reach another billion.
  • There were 465 tweets per second when Michael Jackson died last June, but the current record is 6,939 tweets per second.
  • A year ago, the average number of tweets sent in a day were 50 million. Yet last month there were 140 million tweets per day and 177 million just last week.

But, on their fifth birthday, they’re changing their terms of service because they have to make some money. And, in the process, they’ve turned away the developer community who helped them get as large as they are.

Alexandra Samuel said it best in her Harvard Business Review blog.

So as Twitter locks the door, some geeks somewhere are coming up with a new idea that will fill the void. This infinitely more flexible and risk-embracing startup will explode onto the social media scene with the next thing, or maybe even the Next Big Thing. And then sometime in 2015, it, too, will trade in creative chaos for business sense.

And, perhaps what Dave Winer, the father of podcasting and RSS feeds, has in mind with his new Minimal Blogging Tool that allows us to keep our content on our own servers. It allows us to push that content wherever we need to to reach our audiences, but we own it so it can’t be affected when the social networks change their terms of service.

Additionally you’ll hear in this week’s podcast:

  • Springtime in Gov 2.0 in that Canada is finally joining Australia, the U.K., and the States in the social and the open movement;
  • Third Tuesday this month is the best (and misses) of SXSW;
  • The “Dear CEO” eBook has been published and can be found at Spin Sucks;
  • The New York Times is charging for content; and
  • Martin talks about what he’ll receive as immediate past president of CPRS, come June.

We’d love to get your thoughts on Twitter’s birthday or any of the other topics we discuss this week.

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 DietrichJoe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.39 – LinkedIn Recommendations and Social Networks In Egypt

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We’re trying something new starting this week. Rather than give you the time sections of the podcast, we’re taking a cue from NPR and writing an accompanying blog post with each podcast.

So here we are…on our 39th (can that be right??) episode of Inside PR. This week we answer a bunch of questions from our listeners and we touch on the crisis in Egypt.

Shel Holtz sends in an audio question (we love him!) and Guy Skipworth asks about former employees having online relationships with your clients after they leave your agency. You can listen to our discussion about both in the podcast.

Long-time listener Danny Starr says,

“Just catching up on old episodes and the discussion on “making” viral video was really good. One thing that I think needs to be pointed out about viral video is that you never know what’s going to hit it big… and while there are things you can do like capture something funny or unexpected in the footage, I think that anyone setting out to achieve the result of having a video go viral – and we need to be clear that viral is a result, not really a strategy – needs to be putting up many different things.”

The thing is, Danny, we agree with you. In fact, at Arment Dietrich, when we get a call about making a viral video, we always joke internally that we’ll create the video the client wants and then have two guys kicking each other in the nuts so it does go viral. Not really a strategy, but we’re certain it would work! And yes, I say “nuts” in the recording.

And, while we don’t spend much time talking about what’s going on in Egypt, we do ask (and answer) an important question, “Is Internet use a human right?

Hope you enjoy this week’s Inside PR!

And tell us…what do you think of the new format? Do you have other comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.36 – Wednesday, January 12, 2011

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Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 discuss viral videos and Quora, the question and answer website that everyone is talking about.

0:27 Martin opens the show.

1:32 Martin shares a story about talking social media with his local MP.

2:55 Gini starts off with the first topic of the episode: The homeless man with  golden voice.

4:38 Martin thinks it’s a great example of the kind of videos that go viral.

6:38 Joe reminds  us that there is no set formula for a viral video.

9:30 Joe thinks videos go viral because the appeal to a particular interest or cultural background. Unless you create a video with that in mind, it’s unlikely to be successful.

10:12 Martin recalls a panel he saw at South by South West Interactive and they gave three tips about making a great video: 1) develop a great story, 2) the production values need to match your story and 3) distribution and promotion.

11:34 Joe talks about the second topic of the show: Quora.com, a question and answer website and community. He thinks it’s a great research tool.

14:05 Gini wonders whether Quora is a social network or an open, unmoderated content reference website?

16:07 Joe says Quora is becoming a lot like a social network as it’s pure discussion, but on searchable answer basis.

16:30 Martin has recently signed up and is looking forward to playing with the website.

17:20 Martin closes the show.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.35 – Wednesday, January 5, 2011

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Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.34 – Wednesday, December 22, 2010

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Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.33 – Wednesday, December 15, 2010

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Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 discuss the top trends in 2010 in part one of a two part episode.

0:26 Martin opens the show.

0:57 Martin announces this week’s topic: a look at trends in 2010.

1:36 Martin shares some listener comments. The first comes from Lisa Gerber.

2:35 The second comments comes from Marike Timmermans, who thanks Martin, Gini and Joe for sharing their perspectives on pitching to the media and “PR spam”.

6:30 Joe brings up a “trend” that never caught on – 3D TVs.

8:30 Joe talks about a trend that particularly stood out to him – the emergence of tablets and the evolution of cellphones and mobile media devices.

9:42 Martin notes that he’s not a Mac or Apple person, but he picked up an iPad and felt like it was something that worked.

10:20 Gini’s husband, who was resistant to the idea of an iPad at first, eventually saw the value in one.

11:15 Joe brings up another trend for 2010: content that is fluid across all devices.

11:30 Gini has seen a big shift toward the clients with respect to web content and materials for many businesses.

12:40 Martin agrees and says it’s reminiscent of an older approach to customer service.

14:02 Martin shares a trend he’s noticed: the number of people embracing social networks. He mentions how the Library of Congress is set to acquire Twitter’s entire archive.

17:11 Martin closes the show and notes that they’ll carry on the discussion in next week’s episode.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.32 – Wednesday, December 8, 2010

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Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 discuss PR, bloggers and blogola.

0:25 Martin opens the show.

1:48 Martin thanks Mary from Buzz4biz.ca for commenting on episode 2.28 and sharing what she would have changed in her career and Katie Stambeck, a PR student, weighs in on what made sense to her in terms of engagement on her blog.

3:32 Joe feels that when people comment on Inside PR topics of discussion and continue the conversation on their blogs, it validates what they do every week.

5:28 Gini announces this week’s topic, inspired by a blog post by Danny Brown. An anonymous blogger, “Sarah”, shares why she thinks PR people get paid and bloggers don’t. Gini disagrees with “Sarah” and tells us why.

8:55 Martin is surprised by Sarah’s comments and thinks she’s missing some of the main points of the social media landscape and networking.

10:05 Joe thinks Sarah’s post is actually tongue-in-cheek.

13:30 Gini asks Joe how he determined that Sarah’s post was supposed to be humourous and Joe explains.

14:00 Joe doesn’t understand why Sarah is writing anonymously.

15:30 Martin agrees and notes that your opinion doesn’t have much value if you don’t have the guts to stand behind it.

16:20 Joe brings up some good points on the topic of social media “A-Listers”.

18:25 Gini agrees and points out it makes more sense to pitch someone who is an influencer in their niche community than an “A-Lister”.

20:02 Joe mentions that Terry Fallis’ book, The Best Laid Plans, has been selected as one of the final five short-list candidates for the Canada Reads Most Essential Canadian Novel of the Decade. Congratulations, Terry!

21:32 Joe recommends that everyone check out Mitch Joel’s interview with Neville Hobson on Mitch’s Six Pixels podcast.

22:40 Martin closes the show.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.

Inside PR 2.30 – Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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Comments? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], 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 chat about several news items in social media and public relations this week.

0:27 Martin opens the show.

2:01 Martin announces they’ll be discussing several news items this week.

2:20 Martin talks about some things he took away from the meshmarketing conference last week.

3:32 Joe tells us about the Web 2.0 Summit, where he heard that LinkedIn now has 85 million members and a new member is joining every second.

4:40 Joe comments on how fantastic Mary Meeker’s presentation was at the Web 2.0 Summit.

5:10 Joe talks about his guest-stint as a lecturer at Martin’s PR class at McMaster University.

10:24 Joe chaired a conference last week at the Canadian Institute where Richard Binhammer, also known as RichardAtDell, did a presentation on their approach to social media.

13:20 Martin shares a few comments from Inside PR listeners. The first is from Amanda Jai Dynne about a previous episode on personal branding.  Regular listener Petya Georgieva suggests a topic for an upcoming show, PR spam, and gives a shout out to Inside PR on her blog. This week’s final comment comes from Peter Gault, who responds to Inside PR 2.28.

15:12 Gini shares her take on the new Facebook mail.

17:40 Joe wonders if Facebook is trying too hard to become a Swiss army knife? Something that does everything doesn’t do any one thing particularly while.

19:10 Martin brings up some news about Twitter analytics.

20:10 Joe chats about the changes going on at Backtype.

21:17 Martin closes the show.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Yasmine Kashefi.