Online observations of public relations, marketing, advertising and social media; the occasional frivolity; and The Rundown show notes. Jump in, the water's fine.
Please Note: Everything posted on this blog is my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of my employer or its clients.
Podcamp Ohio goes live this weekend in wonderful, wacky Columbus Ohio. In the spirit of unconferences everywhere, it’s FREE, fun and guaranteed to be educational. The 2008 version is the first and I have to applaud the organizers of this event led by Angelo Mandato. I’ve been on the email list for the planning committee and the work they’ve put into this is incredible. I did my share by complaining and offering unsolicited advice. They’re probably all like, who IS this Armour fellow anyway? I’ll be sure to provide more Kudos, I’m sure, after the event, but I wanted to get that out here.
So, Podcamp Ohio, the details as Miss Abby Laner so excellently details them, uh, in detail:
WHAT: A conference that helps connect people interested in blogging, social networks, podcasting and new media. Attendees can learn, share, and grow their new media skills with others.
WHEN: June 28, 2008 from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
WHY: You will learn all sorts of really cool things about the various aspects of social media. It’s also a great way to meet new folks who love to do the same things as you! (translation: NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK)
Your favorite Ausssie (I have no way of knowing if that’s true) Paull Young and I will be presenting an interesting look at the world of social media with our “What NOT To Do: Podcasting and other Social Media Anti-Tips” session. Due to the Law of Two Feet, there’s sure not to be a full chair in the room when we’re done.
To see the full list of sessions, please click here.
I’m looking forward to meeting Abby (I’m assuming that’s her on the left, I stole the photo from her post) in person as well as the infamous Constantin Basturea (whose name you may recall from my Murder Mystery virtual geek dinner, yes I’m still plugging that thing), the Ohio-native-turned-New Yorker Michael Denton of whom I’ve heard so many disturbing things, and Todd Cochrane, who I’ve actually talked to on the phone before and whose podcast I sometimes listen. Also, of course, fun to see Kait Swanson and Mr. Young again.
As soon as I get some twitter and blog tags, I’ll be sure to post them here so you can keep up with our weekend exploits. Follow me!
The Rundown is going on the road today as I head to Kent State for the hands-on PRSA Akron event “You, Too, Social Media Boot Camp and Leadership Summit” where I’ll be teaching a session on podcasting and, of course, BlogTalkRadio.
Should be a great event, the leadership summit includes former U.S. Congressman Dennis Eckart and NEOhio PR legend David Meeker. Others include Mike Connell, CEO of New Media Communications, whose company provided the Internet strategy to the Bush-Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004, and Jenny Camper, president of the public affairs firm Lesic & Camper.
Other highlights include PRSA’s John Elsasser,editor in chief of PR Strategist, who will moderate the panel. Steve Shannon of BurrelleLuce will present on “Copyright Compliance in the Digital Age.”
Good boy Bill Sledzik at ToughSledding referred to me and some other locals as “big names in social-media,” which is kind. I’m looking forward to meeting Matt Dickman, director of digital marketing, Fleishman-Hillard Cleveland, who’s blog I read, Dino Baskovic, principal with Vincena, an Internet and social-media consulting firm based in Detroit and my little Twitter pal Kait Swanson. I’m also pleased to be meeting up with Sage Lewis, founder of SageRock.com for our annual run-into-each-other-at-some-event meet up.
I’m going to be broadcasting live whenever I can today during the event, so check out The Rundown Live at Kent State to listen in or catch the archives, I won’t be taking calls today, but I’m hoping to get some great interviews.
For too long I feel we’ve had folks on both sides of the issue of social media. One side blindly pushing for the adoption of new media tools as tactics and even as the new order. On the other side - and it’s interesting since we don’t see them much out here - are those who flat our refuse to accept that social media and all it apparently represents has no business in, well, business.
I am oversimplifying the issue quite a bit, but you can draw a line in the sand and form sides around much of the blogosphere and certainly around business lunches, professional groups and in the C-Suites. The divide gets worse when you move geographically around our country and into certain industries.
The truth is, social media is not a free for all. Business is business. And you can’t join the two all willy nilly. So it’s nice when you see a strong advocate of social media who puts on his business hat and reframes the picture for you.
Shel Holtz wrote a strong post called Business adoption of social media: It’s not about employee rights that I will share with any communicator who will listen, social media fan or not. Business is not a democracy and organizational leaders do what is best for the company. As communicators, our jobs are to provide counsel that allows them to do that. Sometimes that advice employs tactics like social media, sometimes it doesn’t. One thing I have learned about Public Relations is that there are more publics out there than most people realize - and you have to relate to them all. What are you saying to all of your publics? Even if it’s nothing?
Shel writes:
My position on employee engagement in social media is based on my belief that doing so will produce far greater benefit—in the form of enhanced constituent relations—than risk, particularly when it is managed strategically. There are many dimensions to these benefits, some of the most important of which include the following:
Recruiting and retention
Employee engagement
Increased customer satisfaction
Improved brand experiences
And he goes into great detail. Shel also writes “There’s probably a whole book in this topic…” and he’s right. And I hope he writes it, cause I’ll buy it. I come from the academic side of Public Relations and this is not the first time Shel has echoed my thoughts and put them into words in a way that I wish I could. But I can’t, or at least didn’t, so read the post.
This week I have Peter “The Flack” Himler on The Rundown. Peter’s an well rounded and extremely experience PR professional and one of the most interesting and knowledgeable bloggers out there. As always, The Rundown is my LIVE Tuesday BlogTalkRadio show featuring an analysis or summary of something by a knowledgeable person - and me. Peter and I will take a look at the broader picture of where traditional and PR 2.0 meet, including what competencies survive, and what new competencies are needed for success. We’ll try to tackle such topics as how stories grow in a fragmenteed media world, and how to thwart a crisis in that fragmented media world. We may also touch on the interesting divide between Silicon Valley and middle America - since I live in there.
Peter is founder and principal of Flatiron Communications LLC, a PR/media consulting firm in New York. He most recently served as Chief Media Officer for Edelman Worldwide, following 11 years with Burson-Marsteller as head of the agency’s U.S. corporate and strategic media team and its worldwide spokesperson.
I recently got word - first from Kevin Dugan and then from Angelo Mandato, one of the spearheaders - that there will finally be a Podcamp Ohio. I’m stoked. Rest assured I’ll be there, maybe speaking, but there for sure. Will you?
I’ve yet to get involved in the planning (bad, Luke, bad!), but Angelo has been heading up the charge to organize PodCamp Ohio and doing a fine job. Over the past month or so, they’ve got a location and launched a Podcamp Ohio web site.
PodCamp Ohio will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 9am to 5pm at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard (just west of Columbus), Ohio. The organizing committee is using all the available tools, except one, I don’t see BlogTalkRadio on the list…hmm. If you’re interested, you can stay up to date with Podcamp Ohio with:
Good pal and Yin to my podcasting Yang, Paull Young will be presenting a case study on the Forward Blog as a demonstration of social media helping steer PR into social media. He’ll also be yapping about Second Life and podcasting. Please view the agenda.
Like me and can’t make it? Stay on top of it with these helpful links:
At the risk of turning my personal/professional blog into a billboard for my employer, I’m posting this post. I can’t help it, it’s too exciting and also one of the reasons I haven’t posted anything else since my last BlogTalkRadio post.
Today we launched a new site with new features and great new social media components. It adds more “social” to podcasting and Internet radio than ever before.
One of the biggest benefits to podcasting has also been one of my biggest complaints: asynchronous communication and community building. We all love podcasts because they’re “on demand.” We can listen when and where we want. But there’s always been that lack of immediate interaction. Most podcasts I listen to are community based and comment driven, but there’s that gap among when it was recorded it to when it was downloaded and when it was actually listened to and, finally, when it a comment was sent in.
For Immediate Release hosts Hobson and Holtz tackled this problem by having a few SkypeCasts in the past. Those were great shows and allowed the audience to directly interact with the hosts and each other. They had even set up a text chat on the backend.
But BlogTalkRadio does all that for you now. And it’s one of the reasons I joined the team. It brings community close to home. Well now it’s gone one step further and added a social networking component and text chat to the site. Hosts and Listeners can set up profiles, link to each other and build a bigger, stronger community on the network. I’m excited about it. Plus, cool new logo. Check out all the new stuff.
If podcasting was something you’ve wanted to try, but didn’t like the technical aspect of it, try BTR. Live, easy and still delivered via RSS.
Oh, and in full disclosure, I work for BlogTalkRadio if you haven’t figured that out by now.
Update: CEO Alan Levy has a good run down of the new features with a top level perspective.
Update: An update on the Converseon blog site has some interesting lessons learned about this project. As we pave the way in the new media landscape, we should pay very close attention to the successes and mistakes of others. One thing they don’t mention is that there were two Members Project reforestation initiatives and this one didn’t make the cut. The other one did - with surprising results after little marketing. People need very specific directions and no matter how much planning you do, one single distraction (such as registering) will derail the train.
Paull Young’s agency, Converseon in NY is doing some great social media work. Here’s something that’s a great cause that really shows their mad skilz. Yes, I just wrote mad skilz. His project is one of the 50 remaining American Express Members Project (you’ve seen the tv commercials) projects. If you hold an American Express card, you have to vote by July 15th in order for this project to go on to the next round. It’s (as far as I know) the only Second Life project in the remaining 50. It’s a virtual reforestation project that also plants real trees in rain forest areas. If this wins, 1 million trees could be planted. Pretty cool. Vote here.
As an added bonus, you get to hear the melodious crackling tones of my voice through a junky mic on the embedded video (rss readers, click Second Chance Trees). I was honored to do it, I just wish Paull had given me a bit more warning so I could have had better equipment more readily available.
Anyway, read Paull’s post about the project that has some excellent lessons on dealing in the social media space. Not only is the project cool, Paull’s really educating us about the process. Kudos. Well, good luck, remember, voting ends this Sunday, July 15th!
The Bum Rush The Charts blog says it all. Not only is it a good idea, but Penn makes it a good cause for a different reason. Here’s a snippet from the BRTC blog:
On March 22nd, we are going to take an indie podsafe music artist to number one on the iTunes singles charts as a demonstration of our reach to Main Street and our purchasing power to Wall Street. The track we’ve chosen is “Mine Again” by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on - and who they ignore at their peril.
I’m a fan of Black Lab, I fell for them back when they released Your Body Above Me in 1997. I’ve listened to a few newer tunes, but I still love that old record. I’m looking forward to getting back in touch with Black Lab. I’ve also found out they re-released Your Body Above Me with some original pre-label-touch-ups and tracks cut from the first release.
You can read more on numerous other blogs by visiting Technorati here. Again, I’ll finish up with a very succinct message from the Bum Rush The Charts blog:
If you believe in the power of new media, on March 22nd, 2007, take 99 cents and 2 minutes of your time to join the revolution and make iTunes “Mine Again”. . . Nothing would prove the power of new media more than showing corporate media that not only can we exceed their reach and match their purchasing power, but that we can also do it AND make a positive difference in the world. If we can succeed with this small example, then there’s no telling what can do next.
I love this. Police departments across the country are turning to social media sites and tools like YouTube to fight crime. AP writer Eric Tucker wrote this article about just that. While the police are hesitant to give too much credit to the application of these tools to catch criminals, they are still embracing this new media. This isn’t a new idea, just a fresh approach.
As I’m fond of saying, these tools are tactics, not strategies and - while some PR people and companies can’t often figure this out - these police departments have. From Tucker’s story:
“This is just something else - an extra added feature that we can now use to get our message out there on a countrywide or worldwide basis,” [Sgt. Michael Bentolila] said.
“I kind of applaud the fact that police are using the latest tools,” said Michael Brady, a retired police chief in Charlestown, R.I. who teaches criminal law and criminal procedure at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. “We tend to get stuck in technology deficits. We tend to want to stick with the old tried-and-true.”
And like I mentioned above, it’s no replacement for doing a traditional job well done. Whether you’re talking about good media relations, strategy planning, communication channel building with an influential public or keeping the peace, knowing which tactic best suits the task at hand is crucial.
“Technology,” [Patrolman Brian] Johnson said, “will never replace the feet-on-the-street.”
Agreed. For PR, technology will never replace good relationships. But it can make them easier to create…
Podcamp Ohio goes live this weekend in wonderful, wacky Columbus Ohio. In the spirit of unconferences everywhere, it’s FREE, fun and guaranteed to be educational. The 2008 version is the first and I have to applaud the organizers of this event led by Angelo Mandato. I’ve been on the email list for the planning committee and the work they’ve put into this is incredible. I did my share by complaining and offering unsolicited advice. They’re probably all like, who IS this Armour fellow anyway? I’ll be sure to provide more Kudos, I’m sure, after the event, but I wanted to get that out here.
On March 22nd, we are going to take an indie podsafe music artist to number one on the iTunes singles charts as a demonstration of our reach to Main Street and our purchasing power to Wall Street. The track we’ve chosen is “Mine Again” by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on - and who they ignore at their peril.
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