41: Putting search and recommendation engines in perspective

This week’s show was prompted by this amazing list of the best Internet marketing blog posts of 2007 by Tamar Weinberg.

With so much focus on search engine performance and user recommendations these days, PR pros may be tempted to spend all their time learning how to game the various traffic drivers that are sprouting up all over the Internet.  Sure, it’s always nice to get a traffic boost from Digg or StumbleUpon, but the value of that traffic may not be worth the effort.  The fundamental skills of PR — creating compelling content, building relationships and delivering on a message — are still critical in the Age of Search. This week, David and Paul try to put the recommendation engine craze in perspective.

Download the podcast here (13:04).

40: A look ahead

This being the final Tech PR War Stories podcast for 2007, David and Paul thought they’d stretch out a little and ruminate on what’s ahead for 2008. Here, in no particular order, are their predictions. It’s going to be another wild year for tech PR, but one in which savvy PR pros can elevate their status with employers and clients:

• The end of beats at technology publications. Reporters will become more generalized and contract experts will contribute more of the specialized coverage;
• Fragmentation in coverage of technology; it will come from a variety of sources;
• Google will buy Second Life and Skype. Paul sees big opportunities for the search giant to leverage those core technologies into franchise businesses;
• PR pros will have to do a better job at creating meaningful relationships with press. They’ll also have to reach out to unexpected places for coverage;
• Increasing concerns about privacy in social networks. Facebook’s Beacon was just the tip of the iceberg;
• The Wall Street Journal will become a free service. Rupert Murdoch has already made it clear that he wants to take the paper in this direction and that will have big implications for tech coverage as the Journal asserts itself as a major online news force;
• The rise of social search, addressing some of the inherent limitations of search. Mahalo and WikiaSearch are early proofs of concept of an evolution of the search utility;
• Vendors will increasingly become publishers and will need help from PR people to create useful and interesting content.

What do you think? Post your comments below and please continue to offer suggestions and sources for future Tech PR War Stories podcasts.

Download the podcast here (19:00).

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).

38: Boo hiss

Paul was attacked in the blogosphere last week, and it got him thinking about dealing with negativity online. The risk of blogger attacks is one of the biggest reasons companies avoid social media, but Paul and David argue that fears are overblown. Sure, you need a thick skin to invite customer feedback. But companies with good products and happy customers aren’t likely to be hurt by one bad seed. And companies with poor products and angry customers should research their situation thoroughly before wading into the blogosphere.

Negativity can be an important indicator of future trouble, so it pays to monitor customer conversations. Also, the speed at which a story spreads these days can catch businesses flat-footed if they don’t react quickly. A recent story involving AT&T and the California wildfires demonstrates this; the story was “dugg” more than 2,100 times in the six hours before AT&T issued an apology. The good news is that fast action and a willingness to admit mistakes can quickly quell negative publicity.

 Listen to the podcast (9:32)

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).

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)