90: Dealing with multiple notification pathways

This week David and Paul talk about how we deal with having mutliple notification mechanisms. In our professional lifetimes  we have seen the rise and now fall of having universal email access to our contacts — now we have IM, Twitter, texting, and even the phone to juggle. Part of the problem is that email is notoriously poor at sending large files (and woe become anyone who sends large files to us without asking prior permission).  The two discuss their own personal communications differences, what PR people have to do to get the word out to the media, and what makes sense for each medium. 

You can download and listen to the podcast here.

89: The generational media divide

There is a growing divide in how we consume media, and it is mostly age-related. But it isn’t as simple as everyone older is using this technology and younger is using that technology – there are a lot more subtle sub-groups. In this episode, Paul and David talk about ways that media professionals have to target and segment their approaches and how to avoid some common mistakes in pitching to the press using multiple communications pathways.

You can download the podcast here.

83: Those Snarky Dudes from Woot.com

Woot's Toon at the office

To the classic retail marketer, the wild and wacky Woot.com does everything wrong.  The online retailer, which typically sells only one product at any given time, adorns its site with critical and sometimes sarcastic descriptions of the merchandise it sells.  Woot won’t hesitate to tell visitors when one of its sale items is mediocre, but it will always give them an astonishingly good price.  The result: merchandise flies off of Woot’s real shelves, and the company’s fanatical fan base waits eagerly for the latest offering to appear each day, at midnight CT no less. Two from Woot’s St. Louis offices, Jason Toon and David Rutledge, describe the retailer’s unlikely secrets of success.
 

Download the podcast here (19:29)

81: Making connections in Columbus

David recently visited Columbus, Ohio and met with several entrepreneurs and IT managers and came away pleasantly surprised. One of the movers and shakers there was Ben Blanquera. By day he is an app dev manager for a healthcare firm, and his alter ego has him involved in a series of social networking, meetups, and startups that involve connecting geeks from the area together in such forms as Ignite Columbus, and Columbus Tech Life. In this week’s podcast, Paul and David talk to Ben and find out how he managed to pull this off with no money and lots of volunteers, including organizing a conference at the last minute to bring into town some very famous computer industry mavens.

Download and listen to the podcast here.

77: The true cost of reader-generated content

Reader-generated content has caused a lot of excitement among publishers who hope to use it as a low-cost way to generate content. However, a recent article in Folio magazine noted that coordinating an army of readers-as-journalists to produce publication-quality information is messy and expensive. David and Paul believe media generated by readers has its place, but it will never measure up to material from professional writers and editors who can shape, focus and polish their drafts into the finished works that we all read.

You can listen to the podcast here.

75: Straight talk from Andy Sernovitz’ word of mouth

This week Paul and David talk to Andy Sernovitz, the king of word of mouth marketing who has written a book by that name along with his ”Damn I Wish I Thought of That” blog at damniwish.com. Our conversation is peppered with lots of suggestions on how you can market your company with little money, effort, and time. The simplest stuff often works, according to him — sending free stuff, being the first to thank someone, putting “Tell a Friend” buttons on your Web site, and turning spare capacity into capturing devoted customers. 

Download the podcast here.

72: Introducing Web Informant.tv

This week, in an act of shameless self-promotion, Paul interviews David about his latest venture called Web Informant.tv, a series of sponsored screencast product reviews using the Camtasia authoring tool. David talks about how he came to create these videos and why they are useful, what the intended audience is for watching them, and the issues surrounding creating Web-based videos. (And don’t worry: we will be plugging Paul’s new book when it comes out!)

You can listen to the podcast here.

70: Social secrets of David Nour

This week Paul and David talk to David Nour from Atlanta. He is a champion of using social networks for business purposes, both in terms of using the tools to extend his own networks and also to enhance the connections within corporate types.

David met David at the annual National Speakers Association conference last month and learned a lot of great tips in how to get the most out of LinkedIn and Facebook. He spends about an hour daily updating his profiles and connecting with his networks, and in the process has been able to consult to some of the world’s largest corporations. He says you need to understand what you are trying to accomplish at the outset, and also that these are early versions of the services and have limited functionality (LinkedIn’s Groups is a prime example of that). To be a great social networker, you need both producers and consumers to be active on each network.

He is also a prolific speaker, executive coach and the author of a new book called Relationship Economics: the art and science of social networks that will be out in stores in a few weeks. 

You can download and listen to the podcast here. 

69: PR Strategies for Startups

 

Jason Calacanis

This week Paul and David discuss some of the strategies that serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis mentions in his subscriber-only mailing list (note: our recording is mistaken about where to find it) about PR strategies that have resonated with him. As he says in his post:
 
“You don’t need a PR firm, you don’t need an in-house PR person and you don’t need to spend ANY money to get amazing PR. You don’t need to be connected, and you don’t need to be a ‘name brand.’”
 
He talks about how you can be the brand, and be totally involved in what your company is doing. And always pick up the dinner check. They also talk about others who have succeeded in garnering positive press for little dough. Two jeers this week for Konica Minolta printers from David and Gannett’s reaction to the Gannett blog from Paul.

You can download and listen to the podcast here.

67: Exclusive woes

This week, Paul and David talk about when bad things happen in the PR-journalist supply chain when it comes to offering exclusive customer profiles to reporters. David is writing an upcoming article in Information Security magazine profiling four different endpoint security customers. He ran into a snag when one of the subjects was recently covered in a competitor: that coverage made things difficult for the subject and he asked David to pull the story from publication, because he was threatened with losing his job. PR people (in this case Visitech PR, the agency working for StillSecure) should know better: don’t shop customers around to competitors, especially direct competitors that are geared towards the same audiences and media markets, unless you want things to blow up in your face. And reporters have something to learn from this escapade as well in terms of how specific they need to be about demanding exclusives.

You can download the podcast here.