Yes to greater transparency and more balance

• • Show Notes

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Instagram released some information about how its algorithm determines what we see. Every individual has a unique feed. But all of us gain some insight from Instagram’s disclosure. A praiseworthy step toward greater transparency is how the social media sausage is made.

Last October, Facebook de-emphasized news in the Facebook Newsfeed. The bottom dropped out of many publishers’ traffic. New data from Chartbeat suggests that the system is returning to a healthier mix in which traffic to publishers from Google Search and direct has increased to provide a more balanced flow of traffic. Balance is good, in that it reduces the relative importance of any single platform.

Linkworthy

How Instagram’s algorithm works, Josh Constine

Mobile traffic rises for news sites, Christine Schmidt

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows.

#IPRMustKnow

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Subscribe on the podcast app of your choice

We’re trying to be wherever you want us to be. So, you can subscribe to Inside PR on the most popular podcast apps.

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.

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Inside PR 509 by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Inside PR 490: When an apology just isn’t enough

• • PR, Show Notes

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Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley discuss two topics on this week’s Inside PR podcast:

  • Can Snapchat be fixed? It is a great service with the right set of users, but just a terrible user interface? Or do its problems runs deeper?
  • The outing of sexual predators gives us pause to examine how you can respond to the unconscionable. What do you want? An apology? Or a commitment to change? Are either sufficient alone or even in combination?

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

#IPRMustKnow

Our hashtag is #IPRMustKnow. If you are tweeting or posting about the podcast, please include our hashtag so that we can find your post.

Please rate us on Apple Podcasts

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe on the podcast app of your choice

We’re trying to be wherever you want us to be. So, you can subscribe to Inside PR on the most popular podcast apps.

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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 472: Meet you on Mastadon?

• • Inside PR, Show Notes

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The NY Times is on Snapchat Discover. You’re probably not on Mastadon. But is that really important? Consolidation on the Internet. Facebook and augmented reality. Let’s go Inside PR. It’s just Martin and Joe this week. But we cover a lot of ground.

Facebook focuses on AR

Facebook just isn’t letting up on the pressure on Snapchat. Last year, Snapchat made waves with its glasses, pointing the way to a video future. Just as it has parroted other Snapchat features (Stories anyone?), Facebook is now pointing to an AR future and committing Facebook-scale resources to it. Competition is great, as long as the giant doesn’t crush the upstart.

Distributed publishing isn’t all publishers hoped it would be

News that the Guardian has pulled out of Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles comes on the heels of earlier reports that other publishers were not seeing the financial results they hoped to achieve from adopting the distributed publishing model being touted by Facebook, Snapchat and Google. And for those of us who publish our own content, take note. Don’t shut down your owned website quite yet.

The New York Times is looking for more on Snapchat

In April, the New York Times joined Snapchat Discover.

It’s hard to see how Snapchat Discover matches the nature of the Times content. Take an early Discover article as an example. On Sunday April 23, the Times ran a major feature on Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. The version of the Times Website clocked in as just under 4,000 words.  The next morning, the Times launched its Snapchat Discover channel with the Kalanick story. And what a difference! The Snapchat version contained an animated GIF and three text panels containing under 160 words. That’s right. 4,000 words on the Times site. Less than 160 on Snapchat.

 

Consolidation on the Internet

A recent NY Times article underlined the degree to which the previously open Internet is consolidating around a handful of platforms. Consolidation of attention makes us less free, makes us less able to serendipitously encounter different views and different experiences.

Are you on Mastadon?

Probably not. But does that matter? Do platforms need to scale to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat levels to be of value? No, it’s not. It’s important that we support and play with new experiments like this. Whether Mastadon every grows, the very spirit that gives to its rise underlines the vitality of the Internet and Net Neutrality.

 

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, 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 471: Tweak Week

• • Inside PR, Show Notes

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It’s social media feature tweak week. Changes to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat underline how competitive the social media platforms are. Plus we get onside with changing norms in acceptable language. And Spin Sucks surveys PR pros.

Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are back for another episode of the Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Stories Here. Stories There. Stories Everywhere … on Facebook

Facebook lets you had Stories directly from your mobile app. In a world in which more than half of Facebook usage is on mobile apps, this is the real start of the race for Facebook. If the essence of an attention getting story is a visual, then it only makes sense to let us compose stories from the device with a built-in camera.

Snapchat Keyword search

Casual users may find Snapchat much more welcoming now that Snapchat has upgraded its search to enable full key word searches.

Twitter confuses long time users

When are extra characters worth keeping around? When they are the @NAME convention in tweets that respond to other people’s tweets. Take it away and you have confusion on the part of many long time users.

Periscope live streams now appear inside Twitter Moments

Periscope is a great live streaming tool. It’s also less popular than other livestreaming services. So, anything that raises its profile is a good thing.

RIP the Egg

And we couldn’t let the passing of the Twitter egg go by without comment. Another of the quirky, idiosyncratic things that made early Twitter so distinctive is now just a memory. Say hello to generic head and shoulder outlines as the new avatar for trolls and newbies.

A small step for gender neutral language, a giant step for Mankind

Communicators must be aware of words and phrases that convey or reinforce values that are outmoded. This is a challenge in a time in which acceptable language standards are established by focused communities of interest. It’s a big challenge to stay on top of these changes in acceptable use. We struggle to keep up.

Spin Sucks surveys PR practitioners about the state of the business

Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks site asked readers to tell them about the PR industry they work in today. The responses came in mostly from people who work at small PR firms and independently, which itself says something about changes in the PR industry. Gini takes us through some of the insights she gained into the state of the business through this survey.

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, 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 468: Escape with us

• • Inside PR, Show Notes

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Escape with us. From fake news. From our filter bubble. From annoying videos that play sound as soon as they scroll into view. From Snapchat hype.  Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are back for another episode of the Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Snapchat hype

In the wake of the Snap IPO, we talk about what really matters for its prospects – a disconnect between its user base and its business model. And since we recorded this program, the dramatic drop in Snap’s share prices suggest that, after the hype, others have taken a closer look at what’s really going on here and have decided that its time to pull back from overly inflated excpectations.

Who is asking for Sound on videos by default? Not us.

Facebook’s move to turn sound on by default on videos that scroll into your newsfeed is another example of what happens when the interests of advertisers are placed ahead of the wants and likes of users. It’s also something that happens when one player dominates the marketplace. It can do things that don’t serve users. But, heck, where can we go? (See Snapchat above.)

Facebook is getting better at identifying fake news

Facebook has begun to more clearly mark fake news when users attempt to share it. A good move. An overdue move. And another clear indicator that Facebook is a news media company. And it should shoulder the editorial responsibilities of a news media company.

Escape your filter bubble

Social media, with its newsfeeds  created by algorithms designed to retain our attention and increase our interactions, traps us in a filter bubble. We will only escape this through action on several fronts. By acknowledging and understanding  standards for journalism grounded in transparency of perspective in place of the illusion of objectivity. By continuing to pressure the social networks to acquit their editorial responsibilities as news media. By promoting increased media literacy among all people.

#TryPod

March is #TryPod month. During this month, we and other podcasters are encouraging you to share with your friends one or more podcasts that you love. For my part, I want to share with you two podcasts.

  • Brief Remarks. Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery veteran Susan Delacourt knows all the key players in Canadian politics. And every week, she interviews them. A chance to get to know not only the politicians we see every day, but the behind-the-scenes players who make government work in Canada.
  • The Daily. Every weekday, Michael Barbero provides an in depth look at one of the big stories or trends that the New York Times is covering. In greater depth than is possible in the newspaper or on a blog post. Interviewing the people who researched and wrote the stories. Providing context. It’s the podcast I listen to to start every day.

If you have podcasts that you love, share them with others. Post about your favourite podcasts on Facebook, Twitter or any social media using the hashtag #trypod. Share the joy of podcasting and look for the smile on your friends’ faces as they too discover content that matters to them.

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, 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 467: Stay nimble!

• • Inside PR

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Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are back for another episode of the Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Note to Self’s Privacy Paradox series

Do you care about retaining (some) control of your privacy while online? Do you want to know who is creeping you and how they are doing it? Do you want tips for some simple measures you can take to retain some control over your personal information? If you said yes to any of these questions, click over to Privacy Paradox, a project of WNYC’s excellent Note to Self podcast. Register to participate and each day for five days you will receive and email with links to a special podcast episode, personal challenges you can take to assess your own privacy and tips on tools you can use to maintain awareness and retain some control. Time well spent.

The Washington Post goes to Snapchat

Snapchat’s user growth may have been slowed by Instagram Live Stories. But that’s not stopping news media from continuing to flock to it. The latest is the Washington Post, which launched on Snapchat Discover. I’m all for news media drawing revenue from any source they can. But it still seems to me that Snapchat is not a place people go to find the news.

The Neverending News Cycle

Round and round we go. When the United States has a President who seems to rarely sleep and always has his Twitter feed at hand, how can news organizations plan media announcements? Is there any such thing as clear space any longer. Or even a clear time of day?

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, 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 462: Books that last

• • Inside PR

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Books for communicators

On this episode of the Inside PR podcast, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about books that had lasting impact on us and that we would recommend to others:

What Would Google Do, by Jeff Jarvis, an annual read for Gini. Always inspiring. “It’s fun to watch the progression of my own business since I first read that book,” says Gini.

Spin Sucks, by Gini Dietrich. Martin says, “I’m not sucking up. I put it on the reading list for my social media course.”

Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, “A book written about how people were losing their social connections as they cocooned during the television age,” says Joe. A must-read to understand what social media freed us from.

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle. The other side of the social media and handheld device revolution. When can we be alone in a crowd?

Disruptive Power, by Taylor Owen. A contemporary take on how these trends have led to the era of non-hierarchical collective action.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman writes in an accessible fashion about how and why we make unpredictable decisions. A primer on behavioural economics that we can all understand.

Built to Sell, by John Warrillow and Bo Burlingham. Gini found this book invaluable in helping her to conceive of how to turn here services business into a process driven company that is scalable and less dependent on her personally.

The Art of Strategy, by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J.J. Nalebuff. Martin read this book when he was selling his business. It helped him sort through his thinking about what strategy really is and how it differs from tactics and how to manage through situations in which people are acting on very different strategies.

These books made a difference in our thinking. And we return to them repeatedly. So, we recommend them without hesitation.

#IPRMustKnows

Also, on this episode, we cover:

  • A recent study underlines the persistent problem of people not being able to discern the distinction between native advertising and  editorially-independent news on publishers’ websites.
  • Snapchat adds to its content with a deal with Turner to develop original shows for Snapchat based on TBS programs.

 

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, 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 456: Ugh. It happened.

• • Shownotes

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Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are back with another episode of the Inside PR podcast.  

#IPRMustKnows

Snapchat is a Snap

If you missed the news, Snapchat has rebranded and at the same time begun to move outside of its core business, including the promise of Snapchat video glasses. Snapchat may well pull off what Google Glass failed at.

Why Allo?

Google Plus redux? Do we need yet another duplicative app?

The sprit of selfless sharing

MOZ, the SEO app is a useful tool and source of expertise for many PR people who need to learn and apply pragmatic SEO to their programs. Recently, Ran Fishkin published a remarkable post in which he was both candid and insightful. And we contemplate his observation that “Inbound marketing never really became a thing…” A big deal if you are repositioning your company into the inbound marketing space. Something for PR people to think about as we reposition our businesses for the future. Not specifically about inbound marketing. But about any space we are moving toward. Will it still be there when we arrive?

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, 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 449: Here an App. There an App. Everywhere an App.

• • PR

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Snapchat is more than ephemeral with Memories. Pokemon Go rules the world. And we pick up on Walt Mossberg’s discussion of our fragmented messaging environment. Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley tackle these topics and more in this week’s Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Snapchat Memories for when ephemeral isn’t enough

Hard on the heels of news that Snapchat has surpassed Twitter in daily users, we say Snapchat switch from its ephemeral-always model to provide users with the ability to save their Snaps using a new feature, Snapchat Memories. Memories lets you save current and previous Snaps and then use them for future stories. So, now you never need to worry people missing that embarrassing photo of your best friend that you sent out 25 hours ago. You can reach into Memories, add the photo to a new story, and start the cycle all over again.

Pokemon Go Goes

Like virtually everyone else this past week, we have been entranced by Pokemon Go. For its privacy implications. And because it has brought the potential of augmented reality to the masses. It may be a fad. But it’s a fad that will have made a difference.

Here an App. There an App. Everywhere an App

It was simple in the days of email: Just settle on your client – Outlook, AOL… and then add all your email accounts to access them in one place. Today, as we spend more of our time on chat, with proprietary, non-interchangeable standards, we are again facing the need to switch constantly between apps – for social networks, for chat. Pain the butt? We riff on a theme recently explored by Walt Mossberg in a blog post, The Tyranny of Messaging and Notifications, and on his podcast, Ctrl-Walt-Delete.

Now it’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. 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 445: The Internet of Trends

• • Inside PR, PR

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Chatbots, Snapchat, PR misadventures and Mary Meeker’s Internet trends. Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley tackle these topics and more in this week’s Inside PR podcast.

#IPRMustKnow

Chatbots – Destination or Waypoint?

It’s been a month since Facebook introduced Chatbots at F8. Martin reports on his experience with the CNN chatbot. Interesting. For sure. Useful. Not as good as it could be. But Facebook is doing its best to keep you inside its ecosystem of apps. Digiday reported this assessment of CNN’s experience with its Facebook Messenger Chatbot.

IMG_0003Snapchat changes the Discover feature to help publishers attract attention

It was telegraphed by Snapchat. Previewed by publishers. And now it’s here for all of us. The Snapchat Discover feature has been overhauled to a more magazine-like appearance. The hope is that the replacement of the small, circular icons with larger tiles including both text and images will give publishers a better platform to attract attention from Snapchat users.

You know you’re in trouble when the PR person becomes the story

Good PR people advise, prepare and support. But we know that media want to hear the words from the mouth of the principal. I’m sure every PR adviser has a story of having watched even the most well-prepared client get tripped up and make a mistake in an interview. But as PR pros, we’ve held out tongue and dealt with it after the fact. Few of us would dream of stepping in front of the camera or intervening to order a live recording stopped. After all, once the recording starts, isn’t it all fair game? Well, this week we have an example of what happens when a PR person loses sight of the fact that a recording of an interview is the media outlet’s to with as they please. The headline of the article from KWTX news tells you all you need to know: “Question leads to awkward interruption during Starr interview.”

Internet trends that matter to PR pros

Finally, we look at Mary Meeker’s annual report on internet trends. Essential reading for every PR pro. Meeker points to several trends of importance to PR pros:

  • Advertisers are still spending too much on traditional advertising. The big opportunity will go to those who master mobile advertising.
  • Facebook and Google are even more dominant in advertising and distribution. And Facebook is charging ahead.
  • Facebook, with both Messenger and WhatsApp, is dominating in the fast growing messaging area.
  • Not all is bad news for Twitter, as the average daily time on Twitter has increased.
  • With over 10 billion views per day on each of Snapchat and Facebook, video live streaming is mainstreaming. As Martin says, we’ve gone from live to live – live TV to live streaming.

We’d love to know what you think.

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.