But I really do believe this.

Inside PR » Blog Archive » Inside PR 3.29: Google Reader, Feedly, and the perils of a dominant competitor.

Are you like me, still testing a number of possible Google Reader replacements?

Well, it appears that Feedly is emerging as the popular Reader alternative. TechCrunch reported that Feedly “became the No. 1 news app across all three top mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad and Android) this week. It even climbed into the “Top Overall” section within all three stores.” This follows news that Feedly had picked up over 500,000 new users within days of Google’s announcement that it would shut down Reader.

Oh Oh. Is Google lavishing the same indifference on Google Alerts that presaged the shutdown of Reader?

Rob is a serial entrepreneur. And he will share with us the lessons he has gained from founding two social companies – MyMusic.com and, before that, Overlay.tv.  What he has learned about creating something real from the germ of an idea. About building and sustaining community with the people who care about you. About creating a social business – one that listens to what people are saying about it and adjusts its actions and structure to act upon what it hears. About building a team that can create something extraordinary. And about marketing what you’ve created through both social and traditional channels.

In a nutshell, Rob Lane is a smart entrepreneur who has a lot to share and will do that with the Third Tuesday community. If you’re in or near either Ottawa or Toronto, click over to the Third Tuesday Toronto and Third Tuesday Ottawa Meetup sites to get your ticket to hear from and meet Rob Lane.

About MyMusic.com
If you’re like me, music is a constant in your life. We listen actively and passively. It surrounds us. Reflects our experiences, environment and friends. And it’s also all over the place. In books we’ve read. On entertainment Web sites. On an MP3 player. Or a Facebook page. The radio. In magazines. Our contact with music is spread everywhere and we have to go looking in many places to pull it all together.

“MyMusic was founded by three guys who love music but hate mindlessly scouring the web to unearth the best content available. We want all the great music content that we know is out there to come to us. We want it sifted, sorted and filtered so that we get exactly and only the stuff we are interested in. We also want a beautiful way to access all that content, anytime we want, anywhere we are. We couldn’t find anything like that online, so we built MyMusic.

“MyMusic.coms’ mission is “to be a single place where you can go to find, discover and share everything that makes your online music experience fresh, exciting, and uniquely you.”

You can use MyMusic to can save images, videos, music, articles, etc. in “magazines”  that reflect your interests. Specific artists. Genres of music. Places where music is played. Your collection of music. Whatever you want. And the site watches what you post so that it can suggest content that matches your interests. The more you post the smarter it gets.

If you’re interested, check out the Thelonious Monk page I made on MyMusic.com. This took me all of 10 minutes from the time I found my first clip to the time I published it. Very user friendly.

Social Media Breakfasts too

One more thing. Rob also gives back to the social media community in another way. He’s the co-founder or Social Media Breakfast Ottawa. Rob and his co-organizers, Ryan Anderson and Simon Chen, have given Ottawa’s social media community an opportunity to meet and hear from smart speakers for the past four years.

Thank you to Third Tuesday’s sponsors

Third Tuesday is supported by great sponsors - Cision Canada and Rogers Communications - who believe in our community and help us to bring speakers not just to Toronto but to Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver as well. Without the sponsors we couldn’t make Third Tuesday a truly Canadian affair. So, thank you to the sponsors of the Third Tuesday 2012-13 season: Cision Canada and Rogers Communications.

The public relations industry is not immune from the impact of these changes. And this has disrupted the competitive marketplace.

Over the past year, I found my company, Thornley Fallis, repeatedly competing for assignments against non-traditional competitors. Ad agencies invading our turf. Digital boutiques. Marketing agencies. Management consultants.

An increasing proportion of the assignments we won from clients incorporated digital communications as a core element. Throughout 2012, we saw the budgets for these assignments shift away from traditional public relations activities to digital. The budgets didn’t shrink. The allocations against digital activities increased.

In a world like this, if you want to be a Public Relations Survivor, you must be willing to reinvent yourself constantly. That’s what the most successful firms in the communications marketplace are doing. And that’s what we’re doing at my firm.

And here’s the indicator that drives this home. Today, only about half of Thornley Fallis’ revenues are from what would have been considered traditional public relations services. The other half? Video production, public engagement, content marketing, design and development.

You’ve probably noticed the absence of social media from that list. Where’s social? Integrated across everything we do. What was hot a few years ago has become simply the common entry fee.

What’s hot now? Content marketing. The creation of social objects that people will connect around. Understanding and building public engagement. Making connections with people who care about our products and services and the things we care about.

We see ourselves as much different from the public relations practitioners of old. We don’t define our horizons within the constraints of earned media. Most of our programs include paid keyword advertising to seed awareness among those most likely to be interested. As the  traditional media distribution deteriorated, we realized that placing great content and counting on organic search simply wasn’t good enough. So we moved into the territory of the advertising agencies. Not as advocates of advertising first, but as advocates of a true integrated solution in which each medium has a role to play.

Yes, we are still a PR agency. But when people ask me what we do, I answer in a way that is much different from the answer I provided a few years ago. Today, we “provide insight, create remarkable experiences and connect people to the things they care about.”

And that’s how we make  sure that we are Public Relations Survivors. Not by clinging to the past, but by evolving with the changing communications environment.

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If you found this post interesting, these sources provide even more to think about:

PR Agencies’ Lost Year by Peter Himler

10 Things I’ve Learned from an Advertising Agency by Ed Lee

When the Corporate Social Strategist Role Goes Away by Jeremiah Owyang

Cancer is a bitch. It strikes the undeserving. It shows no quarter to young or old, good or bad. It is devastating not only to the stricken, but to all those who know and love that person.

Cancer can be beat. It takes all of the science available to our healthcare professionals. But it takes more. It takes hope and determination and belief.

I know that our friend is not the only person who will receive news like this. It’s always devastating. But especially at this time of year.

So to you, my friend, and all the people who receive news that fills us with doubt and fear, I can only say that my thoughts, my will, my prayers, my heart are with you.

If there is a power above, some logic and order that make sense of this, I hope it will show itself now.

Cancer is a bitch.

In today’s episode, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman, I look back at the trends in 2012 that stood out for us. Things like the continuing evolution of social media to photos and video; the convergence of advertising, PR, digital agencies to compete directly against one another; the evolution of search to incorporate personal profiles and social interaction. And above all, for me, the stripping away of my idealism about the blogosphere that came when I read Ryan Holiday‘s “Trust Me, I’m Lying.”

Have a listen. Let us know what you think. In a comment on this blog, on the Inside PR blog, on the Inside PR Google+ Community or on the Inside PR Facebook group. Anyway that you want. We’d love to hear your views.

We’ll be back in 2013 as Inside PR begins its seventh year.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

I met Laurier when we worked together on Sheila Copps‘ unsuccessful campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Laurier may have been fighting for a lost cause, but he did it with enthusiasm, generosity and the highest principles.

It was an honour to have known him. And a true delight to have spent time with him.

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For a perspective on Laurier LaPierre’s contribution to journalism, read Cecil Rossner’s Grilling the Guest – Laurier LaPierre and the Host Seat Interview on the Canadian Journalism Project blog.

First up: Google+ Communities

Google has added Communities to its Google+ Network. Think Yahoo Groups. Discussion groups organized around specific subjects.

Introducing the Inside PR Google+ Community

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.

Worth watching

Will the Inside PR Google+ community get as many members as the Inside PR Facebook group? Will there be better discussion on Google+? (I’m betting the conversation on Google+ will be much better, if not more voluminous.)

Twitter upgrades(?) with Filters on Photos

Is this a step forward? Or a defensive move in response to Instagram pulling its integration with Twitter? I’m not sure about the companies’ moves. I bet our listeners have more insight into this than I do.

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?

Listen to the complete podcast

And tell us what you think

This week, I’m encouraging Inside PR listeners to join the Google+ Community and find out whether this will be an instant success, a slow build, or a complete fizzle.