We’re living in a period of profound change in communications channels and tools. How will you change your communications practices to reflect these underlying changes in the communications networks, expectations and participants? What are the opportunities? What are the challenges?

Gini says that the current set of changes are accelerating a move to agency consolidation that she has been observing since the turn of the century. But while we as professionals are finding ourselves in integrated agencies, we are feeling pressure to become expert in related fields – SEO, content marketing, paid promotion. We have to be able to operated above and across the silos as they break down.

Martin Waxman feels that the greatest challenge for PR practitioners is to break out of the publicist mode once and for all. The move to content journalism and content marketing plays to the PR practitioner’s traditional storytelling strengths. And if you’re looking at your career, don’t disregard this path to the future.

Joe points to the trend to anchor integrated communications in marketing departments and marketing programs, places and activities that measure real results against defined objectives. PR practitioners must become platform agnostic, married not solely to earned media, but open to paid media as well as owned media.

Gini notes that she has seen search firms competing for some of these assignments. The challenge for these firms is that they are great at writing for robots, not for human beings. The complete firm will write for both human beings and the search robots. The success of PR firms or any firm will rest on their ability to pull together in one team the analytic and storytelling skills to offer truly compelling, effective content marketing.

Finally, Martin asks how people will be able to make a living as content creators when online outlets like Huffington Post and Forbes.com pay nothing or very little for quality content. Joe suggests that most won’t. There are few Mathew Ingrams or Om Maliks, few people who have something to say, day in and day out. Most of us write more infrequently on a narrower range of topics. As it ever was, few will make a living directly from their content creation. Most of us will of necessity rely on earning our living in jobs in which we benefit from reputations enhanced by creating and publishing smart content.

Also in this episode, Martin gives a plug to the digital communications class at University of Toronto. The next course starts in May. So, if you’d interested in taking this, contact Martin.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.

If I live in a luxurious cage, am I any less a prisoner than if I live in a concrete cell?

In this week’s episode of Inside Pr, we talk about the biggest trend social media trend of all: mainstreamification.

As the traditional business models for traditional media wither away, as social media start-ups become mainstream with mass audiences and seek to generate revenue that justifies their sky-high valuations, we have decisively left behind the early social media ecosystem of independent voices and the culture of generosity that nourished it. We’ve left behind the free and self-sufficient connections of self-publishing and replaced them with the dependence on proprietary social networks.

Martin calls this the “mainstreamification” of social media. In five years, he argues, we’ve seen the triumph of the “get if fast, get it first, then get it right” mentality in online news outlets. Both he and Joe point to the large number of voices previously found on independently published blogs who have moved their content onto platforms like Huffington Post or Forbes.com in pursuit of the much larger audiences that those platforms have attracted. They have left behind their independent mindset for a mass media mindset.

We shouldn’t be surprised that these networks put their own business interests ahead of users’ interests. It’s not just one move. It’s a range of moves. It’s Google turning its back on its core Google Reader users and dropping support for RSS feeds. It’s Amazon, the king of the walled garden publishers, taking over GoodReads which, until now had been a champion of the device and platform agnostic publishing. It’s Facebook publishing a start page for Android to entice users of the most open mobile OS into its walled garden.

Social media was born out of our desire to have a voice and to connect with people who shared our interests. It provided us all with a low cost/no cost way to be heard. And as such, it celebrated the niche. It didn’t matter how narrow the audience was. The economics of the platforms and the passion of the users supported interests of all shapes, sizes and natures. No one was unimportant. Everyone was important if they had something to say.

What are the downsides of the mainstreaming of social media? The decline of the niche. The decline of innovation in platforms that serve niche content producers. The era in which voices with something to say mattered – even if they didn’t have a mass audience.

We should not sleep walk into this era of mainstream dominance. Gini points out that the strategies of the dominant platforms give us reason to remember the smaller, independent providers of tools for self-publishing and content discovery and curation. If we are open to examining these options, we may in fact find that they are better.

So, in this era of “mainstreamification,” let’s celebrate the independent voices.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.

We could call this episode of Inside PR, the “Joe goes on a rant about Google, Reader, single competitor dominance and the viability of RSS feeds” episode.

Google Reader’s pending demise is a big deal for us. Like many writers, we use RSS feeds to be sure that we don’t miss content that passes in the flow at times when we aren’t paying attention. Gini and Joe have shifted to Feedly. And what did we discover? That a Feed Reader could be much better than Google Reader, like switching to full colour from black and white. That the emergence of one dominant provider of any service does not foster innovation.

Joe also wonders what impact does the shut down of Google Reader have on the trust that Google’s most passionate fans have on the company.

Finally, for those who thought that RSS fees are dead, the reaction of the heavy users shows that there is a deep, dedicated user community.

End of rant. (And thanks to Gini and Martin for patiently hearing me out. )

Finally in this episode, Martin gives a shoutout to Daniel Davidson and his Pitchin’ Ain’t Easy video.

If you’re a PR person, watch it and have a chuckle.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

The Yahoo! decision to bring employees to the office is not news. You’ve probably heard it dissected to death. I wrote about it, from a PR and marketing perspective, and people have debated it to death, from women’s liberation and backwards thinking to why companies disappear and what this might mean for company growth (or not).

But Joe and I, with some prodding from Martin, discuss it a bit differently: From business owner perspectives.

Both of us have had good success with employees working from home. I run a completely virtual company and Joe has two offices (Ottawa and Toronto) with a team who work both in the office and at home.

We’re in agreement if you’re aiming for productivity, working from home tends to work better than being in an office where you can be constantly interrupted. But, if you’re looking to innovate, create new product design, or brainstorm, it’s really hard to produce remotely.

Joe says it’s easy to come up with a good idea, but they need to be stewed over and discussed. When the idea becomes a strategy is when people are waiting for the coffee to brew and they begin to discuss the idea. You can’t replace that with a virtual office.

I agree. In fact, I talk about how we struggle with those very things so we have to make a concerted effort to use technology to our advantage when we need to work on bigger, more thoughtful things for clients (or ourselves).

But through the discussion, we come up with a new way of doing things and using technology to obtain innovation without being in the office.

Listen to the episode to see what it is!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

This week we feature video interviews we did at meshmarketing conference in Toronto. Our guests are three content marketing strategists – well, two strategists and one creative artist: Kristina Halvorson, Lee Odden and David Usher.

Here are some highlights:

Kristina Halvorson – Brands need to care about content more than ever because that’s what drives their relationships with customers online… Brands should ensure they look at content not at a commodity but as a business asset.

Lee Odden – Content is the perfect medium for storytelling, it’s what helps brands stand out beyond the noise… Think about online marketing as a peanut and jelly sandwich, search is the PB, jelly’s the social media and content is the bread that holds it all together.

David Usher – Content is very important to brands these days because it defines the brand. If you take the word brand and replace it with personality, it’s really the same thing… You need authenticity and originality and those are the two things that make content engaging.

Gini, Joe and Martin talk about the interviews and how each of us thinks about content. We agree you don’t need to have a big budget to create meaningful and sharable social objects. You need a great story to tell to people who are genuinely interested. And that’s where relationships and creativity come in.

What are some of your content marketing ideas secrets? We’d love to hear from you.

And if you liked these interviews, you may want to check out the great lineup of speakers at Mesh 2013 in Toronto in May. And yes, that’s another Inside PR video on the homepage .

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Gini recommends a content audit and talks about things that can be repurposed and optimize it so it reaches. You don’t always have to create something new, you need to use what you already have in other collateral.

Takes pieces of a PDF white paper that isn’t searchable and creates nuggets that are searchable from existing content.

Content as a business asset and spoke that it’s meaningful and engaging and the issue of high quality is interesting with social objects.

What are some of your content secrets? We’d love to hear from you.

It’s no secret Joe Thornley, Martin Waxman, and I are big fans of Counselors Academy.

During this week’s episode, we talked to this year’s Chair, Dana Hughens, about what to expect in Austin on June 9-11.

For those of you who are not familiar, Counselors Academy is a subsection of PRSA created for agency owners and senior members.

This year’s theme is WEIRD, which stands for wired, entrepreneurial, imaginative, and results-driven. It plays off the the “keep Austin weird” tagline of the city and is designed to help attendees increase creativity in their organizations and with their clients.

During the episode we talk about the types of things you can expect to learn, different activities in which you can participate, and a very cool pre-conference that is sure to fill up quickly.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

It’s Valentine’s Day and while we certainly don’t know the secret to romance, we do know that no real relationship can survive without trust.

And that brings us to today’s topic. We caught up with Roy Reid, APR, one of the partners in Consensus Communications, at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco. Roy had just given a presentation on trust – well, actually he went beyond simple trust to describe something he called outrageous trust.

Here are three actions Roy recommends to achieve outrageous trust:

1. Take responsibility for the relationship.

2. Build from the inside out. That means always acting with integrity and producing excellent work.

3. Be consistent in your communications.

Gini references the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer and the fact that while trust in organizations is no longer falling, it’s still low. She agrees with Roy and says you can’t be trustworthy externally unless you’re trustworthy internally too.

Joe mentions Naked Conversations and the notion that we trust people we know and can talk to and are generally skeptical of business. And if organizations haven’t spent the time to engage with their community, they won’t have much credibility or support when a crisis occurs.

We go on to talk about two recent online crises in the restaurant industry, at Smith and Wollensky (scroll to the end to read what the police had to say) and the tipping brouhaha at Applebee’s.

What do you think organizations need to do to attain the state of outrageous trust with their customers and communities?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Yes, this is a “lost” episode of Inside PR. It’s late being posted. Not because it’s not a good episode. But because Joe dropped the ball.

But, if you’re interested in tools to help you with your online research, we have news about delicious and Diigo.

And Branch is out of Beta. Have you taken a look at it? Do you see a use case for Branch?

@martinwaxman points to the Nielsen Social Media Report 2012. Martin says that we live in a mobile world and Gini says this should affect not just the way that we publish our content (e.g. responsive design), but the manner in which we write and produce that content. (If you’re interested in more discussion on the Nielsen report, you can hear Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson‘s discussion on the For Immediate Release podcast.)

Finally, we chatted about Lance Armstrong and Oprah. Did it work for him?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

We’re trying something a little bit different this week. We have a video of our interview with Mickey Nall, managing director of Ogilvy and incoming chair and CEO of PRSA International.

But don’t fear! Those of you who prefer the audio version (and to hear the voices of Joe Thornley, Martin Waxman, and me), Kristine Simpson stripped the audio from the video and edited it into our normal recording.

This interview is really interesting because Nall breaks down his goals for 2013 into three areas: Value, ethics, and diversity.

We discuss the three, where we think this year will take us from his perspective, and whether or not we agree. Martin and Nall discuss the types of things PRSA members receive and whether or not they’re valuable, particularly in this new economy where we’re all doing more with less.

Of course, ethics is a big one as we could all readily quote some recent issues with large PR firms (and PRSA members) getting caught doing some unethical things, in the form of whisper campaigns and more.

The diversity angle has some fun debate – we don’t all agree on what that means. Does it mean diversity as it relates to males and females? Or nationalities? Or both?

We’ll leave these things for you to listen (and watch!) and decide. Where do you land on PRSA member value, ethics, and diversity?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

So we thought we’d share the video portions of the conversations we had with Shonali Burke and Shel Holtz at the 2012 PRSA International Conference. We featured the audio in IPR 3.15 and 3.16

And while you’re at it, check out our new Inside PR YouTube channel. We’ll be doing more interviews in 2013 so as they say in TV land…stay tuned.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Well, it’s January 2013 and we thought we’d start the year with some upcoming projects and a list of the conferences we’re planning to attend.

Projects:

Gini’s writing her second book, aptly titled Spin Sucks: The Book. It’s about the general perception that PR is made up of a bunch of spin doctors and what we can do to restore the industry’s reputation and perform our jobs ethically and honestly. In other words: how to ‘Fight Against Destructive Spin’.

Joe and the Thornley Fallis team are working on an ebook entitled, The User’s Guide to Social Media Listening and Engagement Tools, a marketing and communications industry resource. Twenty-two platforms will be reviewed and rated and individual sections will be published as blog posts.

Martin mentions he’s gearing up for the new University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Digital Strategy and Communications Management Certificate program. The first class, a Foundations course, starts on January 23 and is almost full. Future plans include offering the Certificate courses online. Stay tuned…

And speaking of online courses, Gini is one of the presenters in the Content Success Summit presented by Social Media Examiner.  And Joe and Shel Holtz are offering an Integrated Social Media Course through IABC beginning on January 17.

Conferences we’re looking forward to/speaking at:

BlogH.O.T., March 25 to 27, Los Angeles

PRSA Western District Conference, April 18 to 20, Phoenix

Ragan 22nd Annual Corporate Communicators Conference, April 29 to May 1, Chicago

Mesh conference, May 15 and 16, Toronto

PRSA Counselors Academy Conference, June 9 to 11, Austin

CPRS National Conference, June 9 to 11, Ottawa

IABC 2013 World Conference, June 23 to 26, New York

PRSA Digital Impact, June 27 and 28, New York

PRSA International Conference, October 26 to 29, Philadelphia

There are lots more places to learn and keep your digital and social media skills finely tuned.  We’d love to hear about what you’re looking forward to.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

We made it through December 21. The world did not end. The Mayans were wrong!

We hope you had great holidays!

This week, we talk about the predictions and trends we see for 2013.

I start the conversation with augmented reality and how those of us who create content should consider using it this year. Companies such as Layar make it easy to test some visual content with our written words. It’s an inexpensive way to see how it might work for you this year.

The other trend I like is native advertising. We talked last episode about how the lines between the disciplines continue to blur and native advertising makes that even more possible. While advertising will continue to pay for placement, PR should focus on working with our colleagues to create content that looks and feels like the site we’re visiting – from Mashable and Facebook to trade publications and blogs.

The trend Joe Thornley likes is the continued move from desktop to mobile; or the continuation of content consumption through smartphones and tablets. He says the percentage of visits from mobile on the sites Thornley Fallis manages continues to increase and the idea that we can be completely virtual continues to expand.

And Martin Waxman closes out the trends with the formalization of social media education. Of course, it’s a little bit selfish because he is at the forefront of the creation of this in Toronto, but Joe and I both agree it’s time to formalize the social web and harness the wild, wild west feeling.

So there you have it. Three very distinct, but integrated, looks at what 2013 holds for each of us.

What trends do you see coming this year?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

It’s our last episode of the year – our winter finale, if you will. We take a look at the things that affected each of us, both in running our own businesses and working with clients.

This was the year Facebook hit one billion users and social networks, in general, wormed their way into every part of our lives. This was the year that it became impossible to treat social media as anything other than the main show.

Of course, we also had the introduction of the visual social networks with Pinterest and Instagram and even sites such as Mashable became more visually appealing.

Martin Waxman talks about the phenomenon known as Gangnam style and how interesting it is what goes viral and what does not. As a side note: We talk about doing an Inside PR Gangnam style dance next time we’re together. Who wants to see that??

Joe Thornley talked about the convergence of agencies and how Thornley Fallis ran into ad agencies during what would normally be PR firm pitches to prospective clients. Of course, Marketing in the Round calls for this breaking down of silos and integrating the disciplines and it was interesting to see it begin to take place this year.

We discuss search and what Google is doing with search plus your world. Martin mentions how Google now sees “Joe” and “Thornley” as a person instead of two words. And we talk about how tools, such as Zemanta, help you create content that is both optimized and has the right links included.

Joe, of course, talks about how “Trust Me I’m Lying” changed his sunny disposition about the blogosphere. He talks about how the era of trust is gone and how most bloggers are more interested in getting the backlinks and traffic than in creating a community.

And I wrap it all up with color commentary about each of the trends. You’ll have to listen to learn more.

Now it’s your turn. What was your year like?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

In this week’s episode of Inside PR, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about a number of things that caught our eye this week.

Google+ Communities

Google has added Communities to its Google+ Network/layer/thingamabobby. Think Yahoo Groups. Discussion groups you set up to discuss specific subjects.

We’ve set up a Community for Inside PR listeners on Google+. If you like the podcast and would like to suggest future topics or discuss each week’s episode, click over to our Google+ Community and join the conversation.

Twitter upgrades(?) with Filters on Photos

Gini Dietrich points us toward Twitter’s move to add filters to photos.

Both Martin and Gini wonder whether Twitter is on the right path – or undercutting itself by moving away from the universal publishing platform to one that emphasizes its proprietary solutions and services.

Facebook drops its commitment to user democracy.

Does anybody care? Was this ever a real thing or did Facebook’s thresholds so high that it simply fed a feeling of powerlessness from the outset?

Lots of questions in a great discussion.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

The team is back together and catching up on some exciting events that have happened in the past few weeks.

Gini Dietrich shares her stories of her trip to the great land of Holland. She regales us with tales of her journey to Amsterdam. You will get a little chuckle when you learn why she was thrown out of the red light district.

Gini’s trip also sparks the conversation of how different cultures respond to people in different ways. The hosts talk about the art and culture of listening in different parts of the world, and the importance of being a good and active listener, especially in the industry of public relations and communications.

Martin Waxman announces that he will be part of a new digital and social media program created by the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. They will be launching a three-course Certificate in Digital Strategy and Communications Management in January 2013. The classes are geared to communications and marketing professionals who want to fine tune their skills and learn how to adopt a strategic approach to digital and social networks. You can read his blog post on the program here.

And last, but most certainly not least, Joseph Thornley shares an NPR Facebook experiment that determined what kinds of local stories drive engagement. The result were the following nine type of local stories: place explainers, crowd pleasers, curiosity stimulators, news explainers, major breaking news, feel-good smilers, topical buzzers, provocative controversies, awe-inspiring visuals.

This study can help your organization determine what kind of stories to share to ensure engagement with your local audience.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

This week, our episode is short, but sweet (well, we can at least guarantee the first part). We recorded this show before US Thanksgiving and Gini’s trip to Amsterdam to give a talk to the PR community there.  We’ll hear about her adventures next show.

We continue our discussion on producing and sharing remarkable content and Joe mentions an article Aaron Dun wrote for Marketing Profs on why creating a single blog post on a particular subject is no longer good enough. You need to learn how to re-purpose your content – in a major way.

Dun recommends an approach he calls ‘extreme reuse’, that is building out and spreading one idea across multiple platforms. He suggests you start by considering everything you do as fodder for content, whether it’s a call with clients, a brainstorm, an article you read, a conversation, trends…  Then figure out how you can take your concept and adapt it to other channels including blog posts, slides, webinars, Google hangouts, infographics, video, email marketing, etc.

Gini talks about all the content she creates – and how she doesn’t know where she’ll find the time to do any more…

That’s where having a talented and diverse team comes in. In order for extreme reuse to be effective, organizations need people with different areas of expertise to add their perspective to a story and bring it to life in various media.

Martin suggests we should also look at things strategically and realize not every idea is a big enough to merit that much reuse. So be selective.

Is content marketing something you can do on your own or do you need partners who are good at other things and who can create a series of social objects around a subject or a theme?

We’d love to hear what you think.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Martin recaps meshmarketing 12. Among his highlights are singer/songwriter David Usher’s creative presentation that combined storytelling, images, video, and illustrating his points in song; and Kristina Halvorson’s observation that much of what passes for content on websites is online garbage. She urges us to start thinking more strategically and stop polluting. Watch for the upcoming video interviews we’re producing with Lee Odden, Kristina Halvorson and David Usher.

This week, we feature a PRSA International Conference interview with Shonali Burke, VP, Digital and Marketing  at MSL Washington and creator of the Waxing Unlyrical blog. Shonali talks about one of her favourite topics: measurement and why it’s important to communicators.

She advises us to shift our mindsets from output to outcome and embed this type of thinking into our programs in order to demonstrate how our work actually achieves business goals.

She encourages communicators to perform measurement tests and present the results to clients as a way to educate them on how PR and social media programs can correlate to business outcomes.

Looking ahead, Shonali thinks we must all pay more attention to measurement and understanding analytics ; we should focus on storytelling – that is going back to what PR is really about and; we must learn how to become community managers and tell our stories directly to the audiences we’re trying to reach.

It’s always a real pleasure catching up with Shonali!

And on behalf of Gini, Joe, Kristine and me, we want to wish all our American friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Martin Waxman and Joe Thornley talk with Gini Dietrich about the elections and the United States does, indeed, have a newly re-elected President.

We also talk about the interesting phenomenon of the differences between the west and east coasts during Hurricane Sandy, which Joe likens to being at a funeral and half the attendees are cracking jokes. And we discussed citizen journalism and the strange trend journalists are faced with fact-finding and creating authenticity of a story based on a single tweet or Facebook update.

But we quickly got into the meat of the podcast, which is an interview with Shel Holtz about his session at the PRSA International Conference: Gamification.

Shel talks about how PR professionals need to think beyond our normal tactics and find a way to connect our brands or client’s brands to gaming. But, to include gamification in our programs, we need to have an understanding of human behavior, sociology, anthropology, and psychology.

Doing so can great an immersive experience for your customers, which creates kinship and loyalty.

To Martin’s point, though, you can’t stick badges on your site and call that gamification.

Listen to what Shel has to say about gamification as a game changer and see the slides he presented at IABC earlier this year.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Following up on our last episode, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley, talk about another great interview they recorded at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco.

This week, we feature Joe’s discussion with Lee Odden about his successful approach to content marketing.

Odden is the author of Optimize - ’How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing’. He is also the CEO of @TopRank Online Marketing, a Minneapolis based digital marketing agency specializing in strategic internet marketing consulting, training and implementation services including: content, search, email and social media marketing.

Joe and Odden talk about the book, the ‘people’ behind the SEO, and how to strategically integrate other distribution channels beyond social media and email marketing to promote your content.

Lee Odden is one of the featured speakers at the 2012 meshmarketing conference in Toronto on Nov. 7.

Inside PR will also be there to talk to more thought-leaders and digital innovators and keep you up-to-date with digital trends in our industry.

Watch the video interview on the Inside PR YouTube channel:

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

It’s fall and, like many of you, we’re on the learning circuit. Now, I’m not talking about formal post-secondary education (of course, that’s valuable too).  I mean attending conferences and events, gaining insights from speakers and meeting new people. We were recently at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco and will be featuring audio and video interviews we did over the next few weeks.

And, on November 7 we’ll be at meshmarketing in Toronto to talk to more thought-leaders and digital innovators.

On this week’s show, we discuss some of our PRSA highlights and feature an interview with Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, and one of the keynote speakers at meshmarketing.

PRSAIcon

This year’s conference was filled with standout content and lots of lively interaction between sessions. Highlights include a keynote by Twitter founder Biz Stone, who said ‘creativity is a renewable resource’, sessions on story marketing, a panel let by the CEOs of several major PR agencies looking at where the business is heading and presentations by Lee Odden, Shonali Burke, Shel Holtz.

One takeaway Joe observed is that we’re living in a post-social-media world and looking at a PR industry that’s positioning itself to compete with advertising and digital. We’re interested to hear your thoughts on how the profession is evolving.

Kristina Halvorson: content as a complicated beast

According to Kristina, the web is content. That’s one of the primary reasons we go online, whether to consume or create content. Businesses are waking up to the fact that we need to be focusing our time and energy on it – and it’s not easy; content is a complicated beast.

That’s because many organizations aren’t properly structured to identify the kind of content that’s needs to be created, how it’s all going to work together, who’s going to develop it, where it’s going to be published and who’s going to maintain it over time.

She believes companies need to start by having a group therapy session; a series of candid conversations where they can share their challenges and work toward a shared solution to create a more effective content strategy with clear goals.

You’ll be able to hear more from Kristina – and Lee Odden – at meshmarketing.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

During the Presidential debate on October 3, 2012, the person handling the KitchenAid account tweeted this:

The tweet was deleted almost immediately but not, of course, before it was screen grabbed and retweeted to death.

And then something surprising happened. KitchenAid caught their mistake and handled it. Immediately.

And then, Cynthia Soledad emailed Mashable to say:

During the debate tonight, a member of our Twitter team mistakenly posted an offensive tweet from the KitchenAid handle instead of a personal handle. The tasteless joke in no way represents our values at KitchenAid, and that person won’t be tweeting for us anymore. That said, I lead the KitchenAid brand, and I take responsibility for the whole team. I am deeply sorry to President Obama, his family, and the Twitter community for this careless error. Thanks for hearing me out.

And then she tweeted directly to the President to apologize.

Joe Thornley, Martin Waxman, and I (Gini Dietrich) discuss this topic, why it’s news, and whether or not it was crisis well done.

We also talk about the trend of social TV and how big real-time events, such as the debates or the Olympics or the Academy Awards, create an opportunity for each of us to have a voice via the social networks as we’re watching.

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Earlier this month, Darren Barefoot challenged The Globe & Mail for not linking to an Inc. article they wrote about and for using a much too similar “link bait” headline (which was changed when Barefoot emailed the business editor).

The real meat of the discussion comes when he says in his blog post:

In our remix culture, I feel strongly that we ought to, whenever possible, acknowledge our antecedents. It would have been easy for the Globe to recognize and link to Inc. in the text of the article (“In August, Inc. asked the question…”) or in a footer at the end of the article.

We discuss (and don’t all necessarily agree) on whether or not journalists should be required to link to sources of inspiration.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Well, it’s fall 2012, our extended summer vacation is over and we’re excited to be starting a new season of Inside PR.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our collection of interviews and want to thank our listeners for being patient and to welcome all of you back.

This week, we catch up by mentioning a few of the changes that have happened since our last recording including the fact that Google has eclipsed Microsoft as the second largest technology company by market cap. Byng is getting closer to Facebook and that’s making it a more relevant search engine. And Twitter’s closing the gates to their API and leaving some of the developers who’ve helped build the service behind.

As many of you know, Gini has just finished 25 weeks on the road, launching her new book, Marketing in the Round and she talks about some of the things she’s learned.

She said she was most surprised by the length of the process – a full year to sign a contract, write, edit, publish a book and then another few months for people to start reading and talking about it and for the authors to know if they’re making an impact. That’s very different from the instant gratification we get from blog posts and online social interactions.

She also found traditional sales measurement lacking. It takes a couple of weeks to receive reports and they only track hardcover sales and not special sales or ebooks. She says she’s used to working in a fast-paced world and publishing is more traditional and slower.

So what’s on the horizon for Inside PR?  We’re happy to be partnering with PRSA again. Joe and Martin will be at the International Conference recording video and audio interviews with some of the speakers and thought leaders. Martin’s also presenting a session called Social Media Barometer. So if you’re there, please say hi.

We’re also excited to be sponsoring MeshMarketing 2012 in Toronto.  We’ll be talking to some of the presenters including Kristina Halvorson and the organizing team and will be roving reporters at the event – which always features innovative thinkers in the social and digital space.

And we’re interested to hear from you and any ideas you have about what you’d like us to discuss.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Well ladies and gentlemen, this is our last episode of the summer series of interviews. Next week, you get to hear all three voices of the Inside PR team: Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley.

This week, Martin catches up with Dennis Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare , at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Martin and Crowley talk about how far Foursquare has come, what they plan on doing next year and the amazing stuff they are doing with big data.

Martin also catches up with Doug Haslam, Client Services Supervisor at Voce Communication Architecture, at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference. Martin and Doug talk about the relationship between agency and client and the roles each should fulfil.

They also talk about data and trends. Doug says “data lies, trends don’t.” It is important to look at data over a period of time watching where the spikes and lows are to determine what works and what doesn’t.

Doug also shares his views on infographics. He has two Pinterest boards, one called Infographics I like and the other Infographics Crimes Against Humanity. Just remember, Doug says “if you make me scroll I will troll.”

Until next week!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

We’re almost finished our summer series of interviews (and will be back recording new shows next week!). And we’ve been fortunate to talk with some very intelligent and interesting people in our industry.

This week, we air Martin Waxman‘s interviews with three presenters at the Social Capital Conference in Ottawa this June.

The conference blended formal presentations with community/un-conference style sessions on topics ranging from Twitter to LinkedIn, the technical details of self-hosting a blog to the how-tos of personal branding, and online community building to social media in the workplace.

Martin was thrilled to be the keynote speaker. The crowd sure loved him, because he started trending in Ottawa on Twitter. Go Martin!

Martin caught up with Tanya Snook, a web and social media strategist for the Government of Canada, also known as @spydergrrl on Twitter. They talk about Tanya’s presentation which concentrated on five ways not-for-profits can successfully engage in social media.

Martin also spoke with Kat Inokai, whose Trying Times blog is featured on YummyMummyClub. They talk about Kat’s experience about blogging on subjects that are very private in her life. Some believe she is too open. Kat and Martin explore her story and discuss privacy for bloggers.

And finally, Martin interviewed the closing keynote speaker at the Conference, Heather Greenwood Davis, a writer with more than 15 years of journalism experience in traditional media. Recently, she just got back from a year travelling around the world with her husband and two young boys. Martin and Heather discuss how she used social media to keep in touch with family and enhance her experience abroad. You can read about her travels on her blog.

Thanks to all three ladies for their time and wisdom.  And thanks to all the organizers of Social Capital!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

The 2012 International Conference takes place in San Francisco between October 13 and 16 and focuses on the intersection of technology and media. Here’s where to go to register online.

Flaherty talks about his role, and how he, along with his co-chairs Jack Martin, Global Chairman & CEO, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Janet Tyler, Co-CEO & Founder, Airfoil Public Relations, worked on planning the conference. He says it took a lot of bright and intelligent people to bring together such a strong line-up for 2012.

Flaherty also talks about an exciting panel on The Agency of the Future, hosted by himself, Jack Martin, Tyler and Fred Cook, CEO of Golin Harris.

If you are attending PRSA, you may catch Martin at this panel.  You can also catch Martin at his own session, Social Media Barometer, on Sunday.

This year’s conference theme is ‘The Future is Now’, which represents how we are entering a new era of public relations and communications. Everything from radical transparency to globalization of PR.

To support the theme there will be keynotes by some of North America’s leading entrepreneurs, thinkers and innovators:

Biz Stone, Co-Founder, Twitter
Tim Westergren, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Pandora
June Cotte, Ph.D., Consumer Behavioral Expert
Michael Steele, Political Analyst, MSNBC

But, PRSA is not all about the keynotes, there are a variety of networking opportunities to meet other greats minds in our industry.

If you have the opportunity we encourage you to check out the conference in San Franciso between October 13 and 16. Make sure to look out for Inside PR we hope to see you there!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

As a vegetarian, I was very interested to learn more about the Oink Outings with the Minnesota Pork Producers, particularly how they care for the baby pigs to make sure they get the right nutrition as soon as they’re born so, well, they can be slaughtered and brought to your dinner table.

While they didn’t turn me back into a carnivore, this interview covers more than just public relations, results, and the Silver Anvil entry.

You’ll learn that Oink Outings are events created by the Minnesota Pork Producers and Weber Shandwick to get moms to the farm. There they learn about what the pork producers do – from farm to fork – in order to build trust for the product. The goal was to show moms it’s OK to serve pork to their families and that it can be a trusted food source.

One of the things Weber Shandwick did as part of the PR program is survey moms before and after the program. What they found is a 79 percent increase in trust after moms had been on an Oink Outing.

When asked the three things other communications professionals can take away from the program, they said: Have passion for your work, measure your efforts (before, during, and after), and have fun!

If you have passion and know how to combine that with strategy and measurement, you’ll win every time.

Have a listen…I think you’ll enjoy hearing from a Minnesota Pork Producer. Her passion is very clear during the discussion.

Also in this episode…

The “We Love Our School” initiative from Bounty left behind chalkboards that gleamed brighter, windows free of fingerprints, and desks so clean you could eat off them. By cleaning more than 2,500 classrooms across the country, “Bounty” and “clean classrooms” was on the tips of the tongues of more than 25,000 volunteers and 430,000 students.

When Bounty learned teachers were spending their own money and time on classroom cleaning and supplies, the brand saw an opportunity to put its product to use for communities and students nationwide.  Launched on Valentine’s Day last year, “We Love Our School” successfully mobilized the Bounty target audience – moms with kids in school – to launch a nationwide school cleaning initiative.

Bounty encouraged parents, students and administrators to take the “We Love Our School” pledge and vowed to help provide cleaner learning environments to help foster creativity and hands-on learning.

With a multi-faceted campaign containing a persistent message, strong sampling and “always on” social media, Bounty’s program fulfilled a need in the community and engaged consumers with its “We Love Our School” initiative.

With roving reporter Gini Dietrich (aka me), you’ll learn more about the program, the research compiled ahead of time, and the results that created clean classrooms across the country.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Here are some of those interviews, enjoy!

PRSA 2012 Silver Anvil Awards: Home is Where the GIFT Is

PRSA 2012 Silver Anvil Awards: Centennial Celebration of Service

PRSA 2012 Silver Anvil Awards: The Power of the Purple Purse: Talking About Domestic Violence

PRSA 2012 Silver Anvil Awards: Oink Outings: Bringing Moms to the Farm

PRSA 2012 Silver Anvil Awards: Helping Pets Win a Losing Battle

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

First we talk with Jay Winuk from the non-profit organization MyGoodDeed. Jay shares his story of the birth of 911 day, a national day of service to commemorate and remember those who perished on September 11, 2001.

9/11 Day is the international non-profit movement to observe September 11 every year as a day of charitable service and doing good deeds. It was created soon after 9/11 to provide a positive way to forever remember and pay tribute to the 9/11 victims, honor those that rose in service in response to the attacks, and remind people of the importance of working more closely together in peace to improve our world. Today millions participate annually by taking time out on 9/11 to help others in need, in their own way.

Then, we talk with Taryn Sullivan from Edelman in Atlanta and The Gateway Center about their award winning submission called Home is Where the GIFT is. Atlanta’s nonprofit Gateway Center, which battles chronic homelessness by providing services and self-sufficiency skills, asked Edelman to secure media coverage of a $32,000 gift from the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District publicprivate partnership. The agency did much more than that by executing a program that drove $70,000 in donations, contributed to securing 54,200 homes for the homeless, and established sustainable relationships to continue generating support.

That is all for now, until next week!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

This week, Martin talks with PRSA International Conference keynote speaker, June Cotte, associate professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario and the school’s George and Mary Turnbull Fellow.

Professor Cotte studies consumer behavioural and purchase issues, also the subject of her presentation, ‘When Will Consumers Pay to Be Good’.

Cotte and her colleagues conduct research on socially conscious consumption including recent experiments where consumers are exposed to certain purchase conditions and then asked to respond in order to determine how and why people behave the way they do and when they’ll pay more for ethically produced products.

In addition to paying a premium for ethically produced products, she found consumers will penalize brands by paying a lower price for goods when a company’s corporate behaviour is in question.  Consumer attitudes are cyclical and Cotte observed that ethical consumption was important in the ‘70s though less so in the ‘80s and ‘90s.  The current prevailing sentiment toward socially responsible behavior began to emerge again in the 2000s. She contends a cultural zeitgeist drives the change and that is where PR can come in, to explain the story and the benefits of an organization’s positive behaviour to consumers. This is especially important in an economic downturn where price becomes more of a consideration.

And because firms can get into trouble when they oversell a claim, communicators can help organizations strike a balance between explaining what they’re doing and the effect it has and help them deliver the story in the right tone.

It’s a fascinating study and you can hear more at the PRSA International Conference, October 13 to 16, 2012 in San Francisco.

Gini, Joe and Martin will also be at the conference and we look forward to meeting you there.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Domestic violence affects one in four women in their lifetime, which equals more than 145 attacks every hour in the United States.

As well, 75 percent of Americans think domestic violence is an issue that needs to be talked about, but only a third actually do.

Enter The Allstate Foundation. With a long history of supporting efforts to end domestic violence through financial empowerment programs, they partnered with YWCA USA to encourage a national conversation around the issue during Domestic Violence Awareness Month last October.

But a partnership wasn’t enough. Along with PR firm Fleishman-Hillard, The Allstate Foundation and YWCA designed a program that would help people talk about domestic violence through the “Purple Purse.”

The Purple Purse became the new symbol for domestic violence and the code word that would launch a campaign to build a collaborative community of people – both online and offline – who would help share information and resources to make it easier to talk about domestic violence.  The team targeted women of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Not only did it build a collaborative community, it gave women the resources they need to leave a domestic abuse situation. Things such as financial planning, saving copies of key documents, and how to prepare for moving out…and on.

In this interview with the Silver Anvil finalists, we learn the Purple Purse website, social shares, a portable widget, and offline events created an opportunity for women to discuss this very important issue, talk to one another, and hear from survivors.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

When we record our ‘one-track-pony’, Gini, Joe and Martin are all in Toronto and about to watch Gini talk about her new book, Marketing in the Round at Third Tuesday Toronto. Here’s a link to the event Twitter feed on Storify.

The night before Gini was at Third Tuesday Ottawa and the following day, she and co-author Geoff Livingston are at Social Mix 2012. Busy? Why would you ask?

This week’s topic centres on the post Gini wrote about Ryan Holiday’s new book, Trust Me, I’m Lying.  Holiday claims he’s a media manipulator. To prove it, he and his assistant conducted a test where they posed as sources and responded to reporters who were looking for experts to quote in articles. Holiday made up lies that were included in various publications.  He claimed this demonstrated how few media do their homework and how easy it is to bamboozle them with false information.

The three of us agree this is unethical behavior that casts a shadow on the communications industry and reinforces negative stereotypes about PR that, in the majority of cases, just aren’t true.

Joe says that in journalism and PR mistakes do happen or something falls through the cracks, but that’s the exception and not the rule and that Ryan is a publicity-seeking outlier who’s out to sell books.

The situation reminds Martin of P.T. Barnum, a promoter and publicist (among other things), who would do anything to get attention. But it runs counter to our industry and the ethics many of us practice every day.

Gini contends it’s not unlike the get rich quick schemes that people fall for and wonders if you need to lie to succeed.

Have a listen to our discussion and let us know what you think.

This is our last recording of the summer. But we’re not going on a full hiatus. We’re featuring podcast interviews from PRSA Silver Anvils, Social Capital Conference, PRSA International conference and more.  We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled programming mid-September.

So stay tuned… And thanks for listening!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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 we feature an interview that Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley did at the PRSA Silver Anvil Awards in New York with the Jet Blue communications team.

Jenny Dervin, vice president of corporate communications at Jet Blue, Victoria Neville, manager of communications for flight operations at Jet Blue, and Phil Walotsky from MWW Group, and their full team where nominated for a PRSA Silver Anvil Award. They share with us on today’s show the communications challenges they faced when their airline went through a union battle.

The team built a communications plan that would inform pilots of their choices and the benefits of not unionizing the airline, but maintaining a positive and direct relationship with pilots and to preserve their company’s culture.

Also, the hosts of Inside PR want to give a big shout out and thank you to their producer Kristine Simpson for the awesome birthday gift celebrating our 300th show, a blooper reel from the past six to seven months. Check it out on her blog. Her gift was much better than the other birthday gift we got, a virus on our website. That may explain the lack of activity on the website, but we are back up and running. Thanks to 76design for the hard work putting us back online, and thanks to everyone for your patience!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

As one of the Silver Anvil finalists, we had the opportunity to talk to Tom Lindell, who worked with Nestle Purina on their Project Pet Slimdown.

Beginning the conversation by giving us some stats (did you know more than 50 percent of pets are overweight??), Tom talked about how pet obesity mimics our lifestyles and how the epidemic is much larger than human beings.

It’s as simple as feeding them too much food (or giving them table scraps), but also not getting them the exercise they need.

So, working with Nestle Purina, they started a program to address obesity in pets. They discovered it’s a challenge to address this with pet owners and that people need support and encouragement from both veterinarians and friends. But that they also needed the solutions and inspiration to address the issue with their pets.

Project Pet Slimdown did two things: helped vets talk about the topic with their clients and provide pet owners the tools they need to help their furry children lose weight.

A series of webisodes followed pet owners along a three-month – which showed success, struggles, and weigh-ins – a Fighting Pet Obesity page on Facebook, and other social media helped to tell the story.

When we asked Tom the three things other PR pros can take away from this campaign, he said:

1. Tap into cultural relevance;

2. Inspire people vs. berate them; and

3. Recognize it isn’t easy and that it takes time to change the conversation around an issue.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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, Inside PR hosts a special episode with Lara Wellman and Karen Wilson from the Social Capital Organizing Committee of the upcoming Social Capital Conference happening in Ottawa, Ontario on July 21.

For the first time, producer Kristine Simpson jumps in to the role of roving reporter and catches up with Lara and Karen to learn more about the conference.

Social Capital is a one-day conference that will fill the need of Ottawa’s active and passionate social media community. The conference will blend formal presentations with community/un-conference style sessions on topics ranging from Twitter to LinkedIn, the technical details of self-hosting a blog to the how-tos of personal branding, and online community building to social media in the workplace.

Inside PR’s very own Martin Waxman will give an opening keynote on the Social Media Barometer. A cannot-miss presentation!

With countless opportunities for networking and learning, Social Capital will be the perfect destination for all who are interested in social media, be it for personal or business reasons, for the beginner or the expert, to come together and learn from each other. Attendees will leave with new skills to implement and a larger social network than they walked in with.

To find out more information on the conference visit their website at socialcapitalconference.com. Tickets are still available and those interested in attending can register online.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This is our 300^th episode!  So we thought we’d take a few minutes to celebrate reminisce about a few of the highlights from years past.

Inside PR started out in 2006 with Terry Fallis and David Jones as creators/hosts – the early days of podcasting. They came up with the idea and vision for the show.  We wouldn’t be here without you, Terry and Dave.

In episode 201, Terry and Dave were joined by Julie Rusciolelli, Keith McArthur and Martin and had a grueling recording schedule – Sunday evening at 10:30 p.m. (we’ve since moved it to Friday afternoon).

Gini got introduced to the podcast four years ago during Martin’s first foray as a roving reporter at Counselors Academy, ‘have Zoom, will travel…’

Joe recalls that in episode one, Terry and Dave did a shout out to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, whose podcast For Immediate Release inspired them – and is still going strong today.  They also talked about a new philosophy for media training – authenticity versus the message machine.

Martin mentions that the more we change the more we stay the same and that some people in our industry are still focusing on message and control rather than two-way communications.

Special thanks to our talented and dedicated producers, Chris Clarke, Kyra Aylesworth, Samantha Lovelace, Janna Guberman, Sarah Laister, Yasmine Kashefi and our current producer – Kristine Simpson. If we had our sound machine, now would be the time for some cheering and applause!

The first episode the three of us did was on April 27, 2010: we talked about what we were going to talk about and asked for listener input.  And we decided to shorten the format. It took a few weeks for us to figure out the chemistry and flow (and along the way each of us forgot to press record…)

2012 is the year of the interview where we’re highlighting conversations with leading practitioners and thinkers, thanks in large part to our partnership with PRSA.

As always, a big thank you to all our listeners for hanging in there with us, and sharing your comments and stories.  We would love to hear what you’d like us to talk about in the coming year and, if we choose what you suggest, we’re going to invite you to come on the show.

And, finally thanks Kristine doing such a great job editing the blips, keeping our sound waves balanced and including a special effect where we need it most. We want you to come back on the podcast again soon! And all the best with your Young PR Pros podcast.

Hopefully, we’ll have more exciting times ahead. Stay tuned.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

Inside PR and PRSA present a special interview with the 2012 Best of Silver Anvil award winner: IBM’s ‘Centennial Celebration of Public Service’ featuring Lisa Lanspery, manager of Corporate Communications, IBM and Esty Pujadas, partner and director of the Global Technology Practice at Ketchum.

Last year IBM turned 100, a rare milestone for a technology company, and the organization wanted to mark the occasion with a year of celebrations. Looking to their values and heritage for inspiration, they created a comprehensive corporate social responsibility program that focused on activating and engaging employees to share their skills in projects around the world.

IBM has over 400,000 employees globally and all were encouraged to contribute at least eight hours of their time.  The corporate communications team and Ketchum developed an integrated communications strategy inviting staff to give back through active participation in hyper-local programs that provided a direct benefit to the communities involved.  And they wanted to provide a platform that enabled staff to share stories and visuals about the positive impact their work produced.

Central to the program was a digital map of the world showcasing the various activities. The employees’ stories offered a glimpse into their dedication and the breadth of the volunteerism whether it was engineering and computer projects or personal donations of time. What made it stand out was the human element – how the company empowered employees to help.

For its anniversary, IBM wanted to make a difference its staff’s efforts and their results were impressive: 80 per cent of IBMs work force volunteered on programs in 120 countries and touched the lives of 10 million people.

And it was captured and amplified via social sharing and traditional media, with a message to spread the word to others to volunteer.

It’s an innovative and inspiring initiative and we want to congratulate IBM and Ketchum on their honor. And the volunteerism from within IBM continues.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

The Mesh Conference, in it’s seventh year, hit Toronto once again this month, where attendees were able to hobnob with some of the best and brightest minds of social media.

Martin Waxman attended the conference and caught up with David Weinberger, the author of Cluetrain Manifesto and Too Big to Know. They discussed networked knowledge, which is a contrast to book-based knowledge we’re accustomed to having most of our lives.

Weinberger brings up a great point about knowledge. It used to be that knowledge had to be settled enough that it fit between the two covers of a book. There was no jumping out of the book, on to the web, to get more information, to have debates, disagreements, or even confirm what we were thinking after having read a particular book.

We used to think knowledge could be mastered, but now we’ve come to realize it’s linked and messy and contradictory. We tend towards media the confirms our beliefs, which creates an echo chamber and it also makes us more extreme in our stances.

Moving from books to the web happens every day. In fact, Joe Thornley has been talking about this for a couple of years, when he discusses how long-form reading is slowing down as we read smaller stories, essays, blog posts, and articles so we can bounce around the web to learn more about what the author is theorizing.

The interview goes into this further. Listen on to learn more!

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week, Inside PR and PRSA present the second of two special episodes featuring Martin’s interviews with Silver Anvil Awards finalists.

Adrienne Hayes is the general manager of consumer marketing at Edelman in New York. She led the team on its campaign for Church and Dwight called ‘Trojan Pulls Back the Sheets on Sexy Tech’.

Focusing their strategy on making the subject matter more approachable, they leveraged ‘adjacency categories’, that is industries that were also known for product breakthroughs.  They decided to treat the new Trojan products as cool ‘tech gadgets’ and launch them at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And while some media were red-faced when presented with the story, they quickly understood the tie in; it appealed to media who wanted something new and fresh to write about.

They continued their creative approach during the second part of the year when they took the show on the road and launched the ‘Good Vibrations Truck Tour’ around Manhattan to give people an opportunity to ‘see, touch and feel’ the different products. They used social media to drive awareness of where the trucks would be and encouraged consumers to talk openly about what has traditionally been a taboo subject.

Doug Piwinski, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Toms, tells us about the company’s ‘One Day Without Shoes’ initiative, which began as an April Fool’s gag and developed into a global campaign. Tom’s is unique as a business because they don’t rely on traditional advertising and instead build relationships with customers through social media and word of mouth. Each year the company activates its community by asking them to give up wearing shoes for one day in order to experience what life is like for children who don’t have shoes.

The program comes to life through a series of grassroots events in cities around the world and is promoted via a microsite which encourages people to plan and post events.

They worked with Ketchum PR in LA to craft a phased strategy and weren’t expecting the snowball effect that took place this year including stories on the home page of AOL and MSN and becoming number one trending topic on Twitter.  Toms effectively uses an influencer strategy to inspire people to engage, raise awareness for an important cause and think about social entrepreneurship in a new way.

This year’s Silver Anvil awards will be presented in New York City on June 7, 2012. Inside PR will be there.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

Would you like to be able to generate more than $2 million in new revenue for your company simply by writing a blog post? Marcus Sheridan, our guest on inside PR this week, has done just that.

Gini Dietrich caught up with Marcus after his keynote speech at the PRSA Conference last month in New Orleans.

Marcus shared an in-your-face and engaging presentation at the conference about content marketing. Marcus made a name for himself when he started a blog about fiber glass pools. His goal was to drive traffic to the website and eventually lead potential customers to his front door. To accomplish this, he answered common questions he had heard relating to installing or buying a fiber glass pool on his blog. Long story short, the traffic to his website blew up. He and his partners became “the guys that knew about fiber glass pools”.

Martin Waxman, Gini and Joseph Thornley discuss how Marcus’ image of content marketing can be adapted to the way PR and communications professionals craft and promote their key messages today in the connected era.
For more information on Marcus and his story, here is a little video that sums it all up.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week, Inside PR and PRSA present a special show where Martin interviews two Silver Anvil Awards finalists.

Scott Brooks is vice president, marketing and communications for IBM Research. He talks to us about Watson, the computer-contestant on Jeopardy that defeated two of the show’s best players. Watson’s technology is based on the concept of  ‘automatic question answering’.  A team of 25 people worked for years to improve the ability of computers to answer questions.  When the communications folks saw the initial results, they realized the PR potential to build awareness and contacted Jeopardy to see if they might be interested in a man-machine competition.

Getting an early start and narrowly targeting their prelaunch outreach was one of the strategies the communications group used  to tell the complex story in long form. About 18 months before the matches, they approached three media influencers, New York Times magazine to write a feature, PBS TV’s Nova to produce a documentary, and author Stephen Baker to write a book.  The three had open access to Watson throughout its development.

The biggest communications risk IBM faced was presenting Watson live on television and not knowing what the outcome would be. Brooks said they made big decisions early on that were game changers including what to name the computer, what kind of voice it would have and what it would look like on stage.  Watson was actually named for for first president of IBM.

Their strategy paid off and Watson garnered prelaunch awareness and much traditional and social media coverage during the matches and after the win.

Kari Mather works as a senior communications consultant in corporate communications at Allstate Insurance Company. (Disclosure Allstate Canada is a Thornley Fallis client though we don’t work with Allstate U.S.)

The company created the Allstate Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, to fund cause-related programs in support of safe and vital communities, safe driving and ending domestic violence.

In this case, they helped the community of Tuscon Arizona build a playground in honor of Christina-Taylor Green, the young girl born on 9/11, who, along with 10 others sadly lost their lives during the shooting that injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Not long after the tragedy, the Allstate Foundation learned the community wanted to commemorate Christina’s short life, stepped forward and granted funding to build a playground at Christina’s elementary school and ensuring her classmates were involved throughout the project.

In addition to the funds, Allstate Foundation was active throughout the design and build, brought in more than 100 volunteers and stood side by side with the community to help bring the Christina-Taylor Green Little Hands playground to life.

What could have been a local story was picked up by local and national media and it became an important milestone in the company’s history as they were able to involve the community, agencies and employees in a cause they really believed in.

This year’s Silver Anvil awards will be presented in New York City on June 7, 2012. Inside PR will be there.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week, Gini, Joe and I are all together at PRSA Counselors Academy’s annual conference for agency owners/leaders in New Orleans (and we all had our parts to play…). The theme is ‘Jazz Up Your Agency: Stylings from the Best in the Biz’ and we thought we’d recap our first day and a half.

Joe talks about the opening keynote – a one-two punch featuring Gini and Jay Baer. They interviewed each other and offered a primer in content marketing and how agency owners can build trust and their businesses by integrating certain aspects of their personal and professional lives. We may think otherwise, but we get clients based on people and not the company name.

In addition to an engaging talk, the attendees all received a copy of Gini and Geoff Livingston’s new book, Marketing in the Round.

We continued our focus on content marketing with our second keynote, Marcus Sheridan, a hilarious, in your face presenter, who transformed his pool business into a content marketing powerhouse that used the long tail of search to generate sales results. His takeaway is to think about all the questions your customers are asking and write content that offers helpful answers.

As an event geared to business owners,  Counselors’ other focus is to provide practical sessions that improve the way you run your agency. These range from profitability and processes to understanding and managing people and creating a culture. Joe did a roundtable on how to get your staff thinking about the business of the business and turning them into an army of entrepreneurs, based on Jen Prozek’s book and her 2011 keynote.

Next year, the conference will be in June 2013 in Austin Texas and Dana Hughens is the chair.  If you’re an agency owner or leader, we think you’ll find a lot of value and encourage you to check it out.  In the meantime, you can get a flavor of Counselors Academy from the Sharypic photowall.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

At the recent Digital Impact Conference in New York, roving reporter, Martin Waxman, caught up with Lee Odden. Lee, as most of you know, is the CEO of TopRank and the author of new book, Optimize.

Lee has been talking to PR professionals for a long time about how to diversify not only their thinking, but also their skill sets.

As a side note: I (Gini) met Lee for the first time in Orlando at the PRSA conference last year. And he described to me how, many years ago, he was talking about search engine optimization at PR conferences and everyone looked at him with blank stares. He said this past year was the first time many were jumping out of their seats to ask questions about how to incorporate SEO into their content and storytelling.

During his interview with Martin, he discusses how he’s now pushing our industry to think about the why instead of the how.

He begins by discussing his content marketing trilogy, which is: Where do your audiences look for things, how is it that they consume content, and what are their preferences for sharing.

He goes on to say, of course, sales is part of every objective, but when it’s a content program, your goals should also include gaining a social share or a referral, which leads to new audiences who buy.

Optimize is about how to approach reaching particular audiences by thinking about what they care about, their pain points, and their goals. This forms an editorial approach that ties together marketing and public relations.

Listen to Lee talk more about this…and his soothing voice that will make you a fan for life.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

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 insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

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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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

Martin Waxman and Joe Thornley join Inside PR from the PRSA Digital Impact Conference in New York City and pull Gini Dietrich in via Skype because she was back from Norway just the day before and couldn’t make the trip to the Big Apple.

Based on the interviews Martin and Joe were able to secure, we have a lot of great content coming up for you!

Some things to look forward to include interviews with:

• * Mattias Lufkens who, for many years, served as the social media director for the World Economic Forum at Davos. He gave a keynote at the conference that showed a case study on building an online presence. He talks about how he built the social media efforts for Davos and how he eventually grew a team focused only on video, blogging, social media, and web efforts surrounding the annual event.
• * Katrina Klier who is the worldwide marketing director for Microsoft. She catches up with Joe to talk about how Microsoft is moving past community and building kinship.
• * Gina Hernandez who is the executive director at the Society for New Communication Research, where she is responsible for sponsoring original research and advanced thinking on social media.
• * Lee Odden, who talks about his new book, Optimize.

And much more!

During the next few weeks, we’ll air these interviews so you benefit from the conference presentations, even if you weren’t able to attend.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

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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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

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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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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.

This week, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley talk about new social management tool Jugnoo, tablet computers, Facebook timelines for pages and a new feature in social media measurement tool Sysomos.

Last week we reported that Jugnoo, a new social media management console service had launched in open beta. We received a comment from Danny Brown telling us we pronounced it wrong. Oops. And Gini and I talk about when a service like Jugnoo should ask potential users to install a plug in or open access to a user’s Website data.

We also talk about the rapid adoption of tablets in the workplace. Two years ago, we considered our notebook computers to be the go-to mobile devices. Today, we each use a tablet computer. We wonder how long it will be before we will be able to reduce the number of devices. The limiting factor on this is the evolution of tablets to include both the hardware and software to support all the content creation we want to do.

Timelines for pages is being rolled out to all users at the end of the month. Gini is keen on timelines. She’s watched as content that she had long ago posted to the Arment Dietrich page had resurfaced. Old content becomes more accessible. Joe is skeptical of the value of timelines for small businesses. Many small businesses have limited resources to devote to social media. And it seems to him that corporate page owners will have to devote considerable energy and resources to keep their content fresh. And this may not be a priority for may businesses.

Finally, we talk about the integration of Google Analytics into Sysomos’ Heartbeat social media monitoring service. A nice addition that makes a good service better.

What do you think? Are we on the right track? Missing something? Do you have a different view?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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 Katie Charbonneau. Inside PR producer: Kristine Simpson.

First we mention for a new startup out of Toronto now in public beta. JugnooMe is a dashboard that helps small business owners figure out which messages to use on various platforms, how to schedule them and how to measure the results.  It also has a Social Advisor tool that acts like a virtual consultant and answers the question: what do you do next?

Jugnoo offers social search monitoring, reputation management, engagement, video creation from inside the platform, social commerce and analytics all under one roof. And there’s more to come.  Good luck to Danny Brown and Hessie Jones, who are both involved.

Martin kicks off the next segment by introducing a comment about Pinterest from listener Petra Opelova.

Gini talks about Pinterest’s copyright issues and how the company’s terms of service puts the onus on the user. As a result, people need to be careful about the items they’re pinning, because all the liability could fall on them.

Joe believes adhering to copyright is important and buys the images he uses on his blog and other sites. However, he says unless a person makes a concerted effort to ensure they own the items they’re sharing online, they’re at risk of violating copyright.  Joe compares Pinterest’s terms of service to the indemnity clause many large corporations add to their contracts, thereby shifting the risk from the company that has the resources to the small business it’s working with.

Do you adhere to copyright when you’re sharing online? What do you think about Pinterest’s terms of service and indemnity deflection? We’d love to hear from you.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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 Katie Charbonneau. Inside PR producer: Kristine Simpson.

This week on Inside PR, we discuss Tony Clement’s visit during Third Tuesday. We also chat about the pros and cons of Pinterest and begin to touch on the copyright issues (which we’ll focus on in a subsequent episode).

Open Government and Social Media

If you know Joe Thornley, even peripherally, you know his life’s work has been dedicated to open government and Canadian politics. Because of that passion, he was able to secure Tony Clement for Third Tuesday last month (which I discovered rarely happens on the third Tuesday of each month).

Tony, for those of you non-Canadians, is a federal politician, president of the Treasury Board, Minister for the Federal Economic Initiative for Northern Ontario (FedNor), and Member of Parliament of the Conservative Party.

He discussed open government, social media, and transparency for politicians.

Joe, who doesn’t agree with Clement’s policies, found himself really respecting the conservative politician, whose methods he admires.

And Martin Waxman added how Clement talked about how he’s using social media to be human, authentic…and himself. He has a plea for all citizens as other politicians get on the social bandwagon.

Pinterest

I LOVE PINTEREST!

A tool with endless possibilities, it reminds Joe of the early days of Twitter, when the platform left it to us to make it what we wanted it to be instead of trying to cram us into something they wanted it to be (cough, Google+, cough).

We discuss how to use it both personally and professionally, as well as a couple of case studies that show sales conversions early on.

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We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email or an audio comment to insideprcomments@gmail.com, 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 Gini Dietrich, with extremely detailed notes from Kristine Simpson.