86: Building on the Groundswell

Forrester Research Analyst Josh Bernoff co-authored the number one Internet marketing book of 2008: Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies. The book he co-wrote with former Forrester analyst Charlene Li broke new ground by applying innovative principles of audience segmentation and measurement to social media marketing campaigns and by relating a litany of real-world case studies.

Since the book came out, Forrester has been at the center of controversial research that indicates that corporate blogs are missing the mark by failing to communicate with customers in meaningful new ways. Businesses are still casting about to find a means of engagement that works for them and blogs just aren’t doing the job at the moment.

Bernoff believes that corporations will find the right tools, but the bigger goal should be to humanize interactions between them and their constituents. In his frequent writings on the Groundswell blog, he argues passionately that years of cost-cutting and automation have robbed many businesses of their personality. Now they have the means to become genuine, but too many companies simply use new media to force the same old message down the pipe. No wonder Forrester Research has recently shown a corporate blogs have less credibility than advertisements. In this interview, he talks about how social media continues to shake up the status quo.

Download the podcast here (19:14)

84: Mumbai Attacks Spotlight Citizen Journalism

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India over the Thanksgiving holiday dramatized the increasingly important role that citizen journalists are coming to play in the reporting of breaking news.  For hours after the attacks began, bloggers and Twitter users provided eyewitness accounts while professional journalists and television crews rushed to the scene.  Not all of the information that was reported was accurate, and this has raised questions about the credibility of eyewitness reports in an age when everyone can be a journalist.  David and Paul discuss some of the lessons the incident has taught us.

Here are a few stories that dramatize the role that citizen media played in the coverage.:

• A couple that survived the Mumbai terrorist attacks are interviewed on Charlie Rose.
• On The Media interviews Arnab Goswami, chief editor of one of the Indian English-language TV networks, about their role.
• On The Media interviews Gaurav Mishra about whether all the Twitterers were responsible or aided the terrorists.
• Amy Gahran on PoynterOnline talks about lessons learned and how Twitter uses can do better with real-time reporting.
• And Mindy McAdams has ten rules for online journalists here.

David and Paul also remark upon the blockbuster announcement out of Detroit this week that the city’s two largest dailies will scale back their print operations and move much of their journalism online. Is this a bold new innovation or a Hail Mary pass?

Download the podcast here (16:20)

82: The Joy of Search

In the arcane world of search engine optimization, HubSpot of Cambridge, Mass. has made a name for itself by simplifying and automating the process. HubSpotCEO Brian Halligan knows a lot about how search engines work and how businesses can optimize their Web presence for search results. He calls it “inbound marketing.” Forget about playing games, Halligan says; it’s all about delivering quality content. HubSpot offers some free utilities — Website Grader, Twitter Grader and Press Release Grader – that can help. These services assess your site’s search performance and suggest ways to improve it. HubSpot also offers a suite of low-cost, do-it-yourself tools that marketers can use themselves, without paying for SEO consultants. In this interview, Halligan offers some tips for optimizing search performance.

Listen to the podcast (19:12) (Right click and save to download)

78: The Corporate Blogger

Krista Gleason

Eastman Kodak Company has been transforming itself from a maker of film-based products into a comprehensive maker of imaging products and services. With a growing line of digital photography, output and online services, the company has been trying to remake its image through multiple channels, including social media.

Kodak maintains blogs devoted to products, photography and the business of graphic communications. It’s also active on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other direct-to-the-customer channels. The social media conversations are based on contributions from some 70 corporate bloggers, who provide a constant stream of information about the company, its markets and its customers. Krista Gleason joined the company a year ago after a career in government and she is learning to apply blogging to the company’s public relations efforts. In this interview, she talks about how Kodak manages multiple blogs, chooses people to represent it online and the remarkable freedom it provides its staff bloggers to write about what they choose.

Listen to the podcast (11:30) Right-click and save to download

74: Corporate Bloggers See No Evil

Paul did an informal audit of 15 corporate blogs this week and discovered that the financial crisis that has fixated the nation is blissfully absent from their coverage. Just two of the blogs even mentioned the turmoil on Wall Street, and only one of those blogs was in the US. Paul and David wonder why, four years into the business blogging revolution, so few corporations are willing to speak honestly to their constituents. They see an opportunity lost.

Download the podcast (13:39)

73: A Naked Conversation

Shel Israel

When Paul and David were reporters working for major tech publications, they used to occasionally get pitches from a PR guy named Shel Israel. Israel’s been around the business a long time and knows the ins and outs of pitching reporters. He also understood very early that the rules were changing and that power and influence were moving into the hands of individuals.

In early 2006, Israel teamed up with superblogger Robert Scoble to publish Naked Conversations, the first book to dramatize the increasingly powerful effects that bloggers were having on markets. The book’s success catapulted Israel into the category of industry thought leader. Suddenly, people like David and Paul were calling up asking to interview him!

Which is precisely what they did for this episode. In an interview set up via the great democratizing agent called Twitter, our hosts spent a half hour with Shel Israel talking about the continuing evolution of markets into conversations. In a session that really is more conversation than interview, Israel spoke about the impact that Naked Conversations has had on his career, but more importantly about the changes that social media are engendering in the public relations field. It’s not a matter of if PR pros should engage with online influencers, he said, it’s a matter of how quickly they can rush to learn the new rules.

Shel Israel is brash, funny and very opinionated. This half-hour clip should give you an indication of why he’s become such a prominent voice in new media.

Download the podcast (30:58)

63: It is all about small niche markets

That is one big bunny!

As EF Schumacher once wrote, “Small is beautiful.” This week, David is a dinner guest at Chez Gillin in Framingham. We use the f2f opp to interview his lovely wife Dana about her own bunny-related podcasts and related Web properties. We talk about the importance of smaller, more focused markets, which is ironic given the level of alcohol consumption made us anything but focused. The moral of this podcast is to find your passion, develop that passion into a niche and dominate it completely with your various Web-related efforts. (We apologize about the poor sound quality, and promise to do better with future podcasts.) Paul’s jeer is about the frequent rescheduled appointments from PR people and how much time is wasted therein. David has a cheer for Jeanette Maher, IBM’s PR doyenne, and hope we can reconnect with her soon.

You can download the podcast here.

59: The Blog that ate Manhattan

You wouldn’t think that a blog that talks about Eva Peron, cervical cancer, and how to get pregnant would have a wide appeal, but these and are topics can be quite compelling. This week we have a mystery guest on the show, Dr. P, a working gynecologist who writes The Blog that Ate Manhattan. She talks about what is like to find her voice and thrive in another profession, how and whom she blogs for, and the kinds of topics that she covers on her blog. Here is one sample of her rather delicious writing style to whet your appetite, as it were, in a post telling women how to get pregnant:

Procreation is like Windows Explorer – it’s built into the operating system. (Weren’t you starting to wonder if Bill Gates was God?) The default mode is pregnant. And here’s the thing – you’ve been using the pop-up blocker! So turn it off already … and let nature take its course.

You can download and listen to the episode here.

56: The Provocateur

Larry Weber didn’t achieve fame and fortune in public relations by spouting conventional wisdom. The founder of Weber Shandwick, the world’s largest public relations agency, Weber has a reputation for blunt talk, innovative strategies and a relentless focus on new trends. Since leaving the helm of Weber Shandwick, he’s wiped the slate clean and is building a new-media PR firm from the ground up. Not surprisingly, he thinks a lot of conventional PR doesn’t work any more. In this interview, he tells why marketers should think of themselves as media people, how influence is dispersing and why mainstream media just isn’t all that important any more. Weber books include Marketing to the Social Web and The Provocateur.

Listen to the podcast (22:51)

52: Anniversary Party

It’s our birthday! And in recognition of this, our 52nd weekly podcast (okay, so we missed one or two weeks) we convene a roundtable discussion of the new world of business communications.

The stars aligned perfectly: David was in Boston on a speaking tour and some of our best friends and colleagues from our years in media were up for a free meal and discussion. Our friends at Lois Paul & Partners kindly provided the venue (as well as two of our speakers) and our seven participants turned out to encompass a mix of media, marketing and financial disciplines.

The debate got quite spirited at points, with Bob Scheier and Steve Hall famously facing off over the ethics of fact checking. Venture capitalist Bill Frezza had the quote of the evening: “We are in the post-integrity age of journalism.” And Lois Paul and Ted Weismann of LPP recounted with resignation the frustration of convincing clients that it’s about more than just the Wall Street Journal these days.

This podcast runs 56:42, with several minutes of bonus material and the end. This week we launch “Dana’s Pick of the Podcast,” a new weekly feature in which Producer Dana Gillin spotlights the program’s best quote at the end of each episode. For those of you who have always wondered about our theme music, we offer the full version of Meet You In The Heavens by Rebel Soul Band. Enjoy. And post your comments below.

Thanks to our panel:

Lois Paul, President, Lois Paul & Partners

Ted Weismann, senior vice president, LP&P

Bob Scheier, IT/Business Writer

Bill Frezza, General Partner, Adams Capital Management

Steve Hall, Publisher Adrants

Download the podcast (56:42)

Below:

Bill Frezza          Bob Scheier

Lois Paul

Steve Hall

Paul Gillin & David Strom