44: Internet marketing superlist author shares secrets

Late last month, a post appeared on Tamar Weinberg’s techipedia blog that stopped us in our tracks. It’s called Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007 and it weighs in at more than 8,500 words and 250 links to an amazing assortment of blog entries about everything from headline writing to linkbaiting to becoming a Digg.com power user. So we called up and Tamar and talked to her about how she assembled the list and what she learned in the process.

If you’re trying to figure out what social media is all about, listen to this interview. Tamar is a recent Columbia graduate who consults on social media marketing and who isn’t tainted by memories of how easy things used to be. She’ll tell you about behavioral and ethical standards of new media and give you a lot of practical advice. We certainly learned a lot!

Download the podcast (15:51)

Why you should never give an unrehearsed demo to a journalist with a video camera

Scott Kirsner (TPRWS episode 31) blogs about a disastrous live demo by an executive at Nuance Communications, one of the biggest players in speech recognition. The demo went so badly that the exec posted a follow-up on YouTube explaining what went wrong. A lot of reporters carry video cameras these days, so know what you’re doing before you agree to let them switch those devices on!

43: A roll of mints, a jug of cola and Wow!

Stephen Voltz and Fritz Grobe have turned chemistry into a viral video sensation. Their experiments mixing Mentos candies with Diet Coke have produced a series of online videos that have logged more than 40 million downloads and shaken up marketing at the Coca-Cola company. This week we snagged the duo, whose venture is known as Eepybird, and asked them about the secrets of their success. A hint: Don’t overdo it on production values, but pay attention to staging. Above all, keep it genuine.

Download the podcast (22:55).

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).

37: How to measure social media success

This week our guest is Katie Paine, the social media measurement guru of the great northeast. Katie’s an experienced journalist and PR professional who has spent the last several years developing a business around understanding the payback of social media campaigns. She has strong opinions about what marketers should do.

Katie believes that the Internet is the most measurable medium ever invented, but that people generally don’t do a good job of using the metrics they gather. It’s not about bar charts, she says, it’s about trends. The important thing to measure is how your reputation in the blogosphere is developing over time, using a variety of promotional means.

Katie tells the story of the ASPCA, which had an epiphany when it realized there was a direct correlation between news stories in the media and traffic to its web site. The organization used this insight to increase contributions and membership.

Lots of services try to automate the task of measuring online conversations, but the human factor is still needed. Even Microsoft is on record as saying that machines alone aren’t up to the task of evaluating online results; people still need to interpret the data. In the early days of the Internet, measurement was all about total eyeballs, but Katie argues that the important factor today is audience engagement. In that respect, online media is a powerful complement to traditional media. You can use online metrics to assess the effectiveness of print and broadcast campaigns.

Listen to the podcast (18:39)

36: All about corporate blogging

This week’s virtual guest is Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book and an expert on business blogging. Paul met with Debbie at the BlogWorld Expo conference in Las Vegas and conducted a short interview, which we play here. Paul and David then discuss some of the more frequent questions they hear from PR professionals who are trying to get their executives on the Cluetrain.

Some major issues they address include:

• Should every company have a blog and are there alternatives that are superior for different business objectives?
• What do you do about reluctant executives who don’t see the value of online customer conversations?
• What should your blogging policy look like, or do you even need one?
• What are the different applications of blogs to achieving business goals?
• How do you deal with negativity? Should you enable customer comments and engage with persistently negative commenters?

Download the podcast (16:34)

34: Blogging at SAP

Paul’s at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, where he met Mike Prosceno, VP of Marketplace Communications at software giant SAP. SAP has an unusually progressive approach to working with the blogosphere. Not only does the company use blogs for internal and external communications, but it has embraced bloggers as important influencers, treating them in much the same way it treats mainstream media. In this interview, Prosceno talks about how SAP evaluates influence in the blogosphere, the company’s PR strategy as it relates to bloggers and why blogging is so compatible with the SAP customer service philosophy.

Listen to the podcast (11:42).

32: Dan Kusnetzky analyzes PR

This week we chat with Dan Kusnetzky of the Kusnetzky Group. Dan worked for an analyst for many years at IDG, and now specializes in virtualization technologies and currently blogs for Ziff Davis. He talks about both his favorite PR tricks and some of his frustrations over  the years, and why he likes working with smaller companies that can be more innovative. 

You can download the podcast here.
 

29: These are the worst

This week the discussion is about the worst PR practices Paul and Dave have encountered recently. These include unanswered inquiries, missed phone calls, messed-up mail merges and the trade show “press swarm.” They’re not complaining, mind you, just pointing out how lack of attention to the basics can torpedo even the best PR efforts.

A particular issue is PR people who don’t respond to overt invitations from reporters to be included in articles. What are these people thinking? Our hosts debate the merits of “info@” e-mail addresses; Dave doesn’t like them but Paul thinks they’re OK if done right.

Dave describes how his schedule was disrupted by a PR professional who couldn’t distinguish between eastern and central time zones. Paul reminds listeners that there is a difference between standard and daylight time and wishes more PR pros would make that distinction.

Paul tells of his experience at the Demo conference, where a PR feeding frenzy was evident on day two. Why didn’t these people do more advance work?

And then there’s e-mail. Dave reminds PR pros that if he doesn’t respond to the first e-mail, chances are low that the second one will be any more successful. And Paul recounts the amusing results of a misfired mail merge he received this week.

Download the podcast here. (11:24)

21: Shara Karasic, social media bonzana!

Our guest this week is Shara Karasic, the community manager at Work.com. She maintains a fascinating and very extensive directory of social media sites here. She talks to Paul and David about the sites that PR people should pay more attention to depending on their client’s goals such as Xing.com. Also, some of the more obscure sites that you may not have heard of, and specialty sites that might be relevant to particular market segments.

She talks about the reasons for the big uptake with businesses using social media for their own purposes and the ways influence is gained and maintained.

You can download and listen to the podcast here (16:05)