64: The Spinfluencer

Eric Schwartzman

If you’re a PR professional, you can’t afford not to listen to On the Record…Online. For the past three years, this podcast has offered a steady stream insight on how journalists, marketers and new media innovators use the Internet to report the news and promote their businesses. Host Eric Schwartzman has anchored all 120 programs and in the process become a media influencer in his own right.

Paul came across On the Record…Online when he was writing The New Influencers and devoured program after program. He later devoted a couple of pages of the book to describing how the show had evolved from a conference promotion to become a staple of Schwartzman’s iPressroom service.

In this interview, Schwartzman talks about how On the Record…Online came into being, the impact it’s had on his business and how public relations is evolving in a world of fragmented media.

Download the podcast (27:39)

62: Brogan on Online Living

Chris Brogan is all about social media. The engineer-turned-marketer has one of the largest Twitter followings, is an active blogger and co-founded the Podcamp series of unconferences, which have been held in more than 40 countries. He currently crafts the content for CrossTech Media’s growing conference series, but he mainly publishes in media of all kinds.

Brogan is a prolific communicator. In addition to his frequently updated blog, he is active in multiple social networks and can usually be counted upon to respond to a Twitter request within a few minutes. His blog posts are full of practical and insightful advice for marketers. In this interview, Chris explains the addictive appeal of Twitter, describes the new conference model that is emerging from social media and updates us on some of his recent promotional projects that leverage online groups and video in innovative ways.

Download the podcast (23:14)

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!

Download the podcast (17:24)

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

50: The Social Media Think Tank

The Society for New Communications Research has been studying social media since before the term was created. Founded by veteran publicist Jen McClure in 2004, the nonprofit group known affectionately to its members as “snicker” now counts more than 40 futurists, scholars, business leaders, communicators and other new-media professionals as research fellows. Its signature event in the New Communications Forum, a multi-day multi-track conference that features top speakers and results of the group’s most recent research. It also hosts the New Communications Research Symposium, a more intimate gathering on the east coast each fall.

Jen McClure’s passion for new media is the fuel that drives SNCR. In this interview, she talks about how the group was founded, the four new research studies that will debut at the New Communications Forum in April and what value PR professionals are getting out of their SNCR membership.

BTW, Tech PR War Stories listeners can take advantage of a $100 discount. Just use code NCF08100 when you register.

Download the podcast (16:05)

Four great trade show tips

Evan Schuman (TPRWS 39)  of StorefrontBacktalk.com has spent a lot of time at trade shows lately and he sent us these four tips for getting the most out of media contacts. We like them all, but we think #3 and #4 are particularly good!

Evan writes:

1. Most interviews today are done on the phone and some even via E-mail. The art of how to get the most out of an in-person demo and ESPECIALLY a tradeshow demo (where you have the space luxury of your booth or your demo suite). Demos and interactive capabilities should be top choices. Backups can be truly relaxed conversations about trends. This is NOT where you want to whip out the slides and do a 30-minute overview.
2. Lose the tunnel vision when setting up meetings. Those “want to meet at Big Tradeshow next week?” calls are huge opportunities for stories and coverage and I have seen tons lost due to tunnel vision. They ask and focus on “are you going to be attending X and Y?” with a backup of “Do you have time to meet at the show?” If the answer to either question is “no,” the call ends. What a waste of a contact with a reporter!
3.  Walk the aisles and go into rival booths. Crazy, you say? Not at all. How many times have execs tried to say why their product is so much better than the competition? At a tradeshow, you can make that case 1000 percent more effectively. Start in your booth and show how a particular task is done and how easy and effective it is. Then walk one minute down the aisle to your rival’s booth and have the reporter try to do the same thing with them? Of course, this only if your product is truly better in some way, but if it is, it’s an amazingly powerful tactic that can only be done at a tradeshow.
4. The commissary-like lunch. Last year, there was a vendor COO who did one of the most impressive PR tactics I’ve ever seen. We went down to the ultra-crowded lunch place at the Javits and grabbed sandwiches and looked for a table with space. He was trying to make the point that IT people cared about XXXXX a lot more than they did about YYYYY, which was a huge change. His eyes then lit and he told me to select any table. When we sat down, he knew that there would be at least one IT manager (and probably a lot more than one) sitting there. He brought the topic up and asked the table about it and they agreed with him. Given that I chose the table, there’s no way this could have been pre-arranged. It was a remarkably powerful way to make his point. And, yes, it could only have been done at a tradeshow.

39: Pitches, deadlines, and trade shows

This week our guest is Evan Schuman, who is the retail editor for eWeek and author of the blog www.storefrontbacktalk.com on retail technologies.

Evan has worked for Ziff and CMP for more than 20 years in various capacities, both for print and online media. He talks to David and Paul about how PR pitch him for expert interviews and things that he likes and doesn’t like about these pitches and how PR can make them more successful. He also talks about the meaning of deadlines in the online world and how hard it is to track down spokespeople during trade shows, among other pet peeves.

Download the podcast here (14:16).

35: Second Life with Mike Azzara

Our guest this week is Mike Azzara, a former CMP publishing executive who has gobs of experience with online and print publishing. We talk about ways that businesses can leverage the presence and immediacy of the virtual world Second Life, something that Mike has spent some time “in-world,” as devotees say. He talks about the experiences he had with Dr. Dobbs’s Second Life efforts when he was at CMP. Second Life can be used to deliver more effective and immersive conferences and is being used by many hi-tech vendors for briefings and events. Mike has written a white paper that introduces some of the basics and gives references for people that want to learn more.

Download  the podcast here.

31: Scott Kirsner talks shop

This week, Paul and Dave are joined by Scott Kirsner, a Boston Globe columnist, freelance writer, blogger and conference organizer. As a writer who’s had significant experience in both mainstream and new media, Scott understands the power of each to shape opinion in different ways.Scott sees greater convergence happening between newspapers and citizen journalists, but believes newspapers still have to come up the learning curve in understanding the unique characteristics of Internet content. PR people are skilled at pitching him as a print reporter, he says, but pitches tuned to his blog are almost non-existent. For every 250 print pitches, there’s one blog pitch. This is an opportunity missed. PR still doesn’t give bloggers the attention they merit.

Marketers can adopt new media to understand and engage with their markets better, Scott believes. Start by reading Cluetrain Manifesto. Then stop talking at your customers and start asking them for comments and feedback. You can leverage inexpensive tools like online video to tell people about innovative work your company is doing or to showcase interesting people. Scott’s book, The Future of Web Video, can help you there.

Get the podcast here. (16:51)

30: Feel the love

Paul and David talk about the best PR practices they’ve ever encountered. Paul recounts his experience with one firm that arranged a CIO roundtable and ended up with a three-page magazine spread. David lauds the organizers of a user conference for really celebrating their customers. Both hosts agree on the value of using customers to tell you story, even if it means accepting the bad with the good sometimes. David has a bouquet for NASA, which really knows how to put on a press event. There’s a lot that tech PR pros could learn from the space agency.

Download the podcast here. (16:42)