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)

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.

80: End of a (PC) Era

Volume 1, No. 1

It was the end of an era this week as PC Magazine, the publication that led the revolution in personal computing nearly three decades ago, announced it will shut down its print operation and move entirely online.  TechTarget also shuttered the print editions of Storage and Information Security magazines this week.

David and Paul don’t think we’ve seen the end of this trend; not by a long shot.  Technology titles have led the transformation of the publishing industry from print to online and our hosts expect to see more closures in the coming months.  As staffs are downsized, outside experts will increasingly be brought into the editorial mix, meaning that public relations pros will need to focus more of their efforts on occasional contributors, bloggers and columnists.

Paul sees some good in this. Web 2.0 has opened publishing to a new class of experts who previously didn’t have an outlet for their skills. David sees a problem in the continuing decline of quality product reviews, however. Without institutions that can pay reviewers to go through the long process of evaluating complex products, where is this critical information going to come from?

Here’s a link to David’s eulogy.

Listen to the podcast (14:18)

79: The Information-Empowered Viewer

David spent election night flipping back and forth between the news coverage on television and various information sites on the Internet, seeking out background information on the results and candidates. He began thinking about how the Web is changing the way people consume news. PR pros need to assume that readers and viewers will constantly want to check facts and seek background on events in real time. How does that change the way they package information?

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77: Judging Citizen Journalists

Consumer-generated media 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 citizen 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. They question whether those standards are realistic, though. Consumer-generated media should be measured on its own merits, not those of professional journalists. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments area below.

Listen to the podcast (right-click and save to download): 19:13

76: Spread the Viral Love

This week, our hosts talk about viral marketing and questionable PR practices. Paul’s new book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, shipped from the printer this week. More than 20 reviews have already appeared on blogs, Twitter and the reviews section of the book site. The reason? Publisher Quill Driver Books distributed nearly 5,500 copies in print and PDF form in the two months prior to its release. Remarkably, most of the awareness spread by word of mouth. Paul notes that only 250 people registered for the free PDF, yet more than 5,200 copies were actually downloaded, a ratio of nearly 21:1. Was it a smart idea to give away a book that costs $11 in print? The jury is still out, but Secrets has been as high as 8,000 on Amazon before its actual release, indicating that awareness is high.

David has been writing for The New York Times, among other outlets. He tells the story of a Dutch auto company that ignored his repeated requests for an interview. Why a small company would turn down an opportunity to be featured in one of the world’s most important newspapers befuddles him. Paul has had similar experiences recently. Has traditional media lost that much luster? Paul and David doubt it. They think the level of PR professionalism is sinking.

Stick around for outtakes at the end of this program.

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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.

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61: We’re Grumpy This Week

Paul’s been on the road, and he recently took a tour of the pressroom at the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper that’s been awash in controversy. Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell has made it clear that he intends to measure journalists increasingly by the volume of their output. David and Paul think this is a bad idea, although they do acknowledge that journalism is still too opaque a profession to the casual outsider. Journalists need to be more transparent.

Paul just returned from the Enterprise 2.0 conference, where corporate interest in social networks was evident. He thinks big businesses are going to glom on to these tools with enthusiasm. If the CIA can do it, anyone can.

David has a jeer for PR pros who use editorial calendars to pitch executives instead of ideas. Paul remarks on the practice of posting huge PDF files on websites as a barrier to sharing meaningful information. They agree that the best kind of pitch is one that saves the reporter time and trouble. Unfortunately, agencies and their clients are still too focused on pushing executives and messages instead of valuable ideas.

Don’t forget to stick around at the end for Dana’s Pick of the Pod!

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60: The Struggle to Collaborate

Following a long series of shows featuring interviews with everyong from CEOs to anonymous bloggers, David and Paul reflect on what they’ve learned from these interactions. Paul is impressed by the fact that people who were once hard to reach have now become so accessible.

David is annoyed by the slow adoption rate of collaboration tools and wonders why people fall back to e-mail when such significant productivity improvements are available. Paul thinks productivity isn’t enough. People tend to fall back to the tools they’ve used for a long time, even if they don’t do a very good job.

In Cheers & Jeers, David tells of an interview he has coming up with someone, but he doesn’t know who. The PR person won’t tell him. Paul says he’s now receiving pitches aimed at bloggers, but they look suspiciously like the mass mailings he used to get when he was an editor.

Be sure to listen for bonus features, including Dana’s Pick of the Pod and some amusing outtakes.

Download the podcast (right-click and save): 19:48

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