Entries categorized as ‘Podcast’
I’m always looking for new PR bloggers to follow. I’ve found several very good ones via The Friendly Ghost, a UK-based blogger at an unidentified agency. The Friendly Ghost has mashed together a formula based on Technorati Authority, Google Pagerank, Yahoo! links, etc. and ranked the most influential PR bloggers.
The complete list is revealing. Steve Rubel is at the top, naturally. The Bad Pitch Blog, one of my favorites, is number 25. There are many more useful sites listed as well.
In case you’re curious, this blog is ranked as the 62nd most influential amongst PR-centric blogs worldwide, sandwiched between Clogger and Josh Morgan. To illustrate why this ranking - like all rankings - is flawed, I somehow ended up higher on the list than David Strom and Paul Gillin’s Tech PR War Stories, which is a must-read/listen. The podcasts they host are invaluable.
Categories: Blogging · Measurement · Podcast
Last week, my old friend Billy James passed on David Strom’s announcement of a new podcast series he and Paul Gillin have put together called Tech PR War Stories.
I’m enjoying these. There are three podcasts thus far, and they’ve kept a witty edge to them - some of the horror stories sound a bit like Kevin Murphy’s (excerpt: “PR pitches fascinate me. They make me feel like a dog that has dozens of people stroking it, all trying to find that one special place that makes its leg kick”).
If you’ve been doing this for a while, you will find a lot to remember, but younger PR people will find a lot of context (I’d say history, but it makes me feel so old) in these as well. Our industry wasn’t always Web 2.0-centric. The brands from the good old days have largely changed, but the core competencies remain the same and there’s lots to learn from people who have been around the block and share their stories. I recommend checking these podcasts out.
Categories: Media relations · Podcast
Microsoft’s PR machine has always been formidable, its marketing machine equally so. The growth of Robert Scoble’s blog during his tenure in Redmond certainly changed the way that some end users viewed the company. Following Scoble’s departure for PodTech, Microsoft lured Jon Udell away from InfoWorld. I’m often surprised when people think of Jon as InfoWorld’s premier blogger, as I generally equate him with his Byte column and his role in InfoWorld’s test center. No matter how you think of him, his new role as a “Microsoft Evangelist” is a coup for Microsoft.
Last week, Microsoft scored again when Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg agreed to take an Evangelist role as well, reporting to Jeff Sandquist (as does Jon, presumably, though I don’t know for sure).
Together, the three have an excellent opportunity to communicate in a one-to-many fashion using media that have far more credibility than a press release does. I’m wondering how Microsoft PR feels about this. If I had to bet, I’d say that PR has very little if any say in content on Channel 9 and Channel 10. However, there’s no question that Microsoft users are increasingly turning to people like Jon, Jeff, and Michael as they follow the giant.
All of this makes me wonder how big the Evangelist organization at Microsoft is going to get. These guys have freedom to stray from approved messaging that PR spokespeople don’t enjoy, as evidenced by the occasions when Scoble’s love for the Mac was clear to his readers. Is the Evangelist role one that truly pushes cutting-edge Microsoft products and services, or a mechanism for the company to put a human face on its defense against criticism of security concerns and other frequent knocks? Probably both. I’ll be watching with interest as this plays out.
On the Vista front, Microsoft’s got its work cut out for it. Three out of four Vista reviews apparently include references to Apple’s Mac OS X. People like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue influence a heck of a lot of consumers. Microsoft will always win in the corporate market, but the Vista launch just gave a huge amount of free publicity to Apple.
Categories: Blogging · Podcast
Today’s Weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal offers what has to be the highest-profile coverage to date of the power of bookmarking services’ power users and the influence they have on consumers. These “Wizards of Buzz” include one 17-year-old high school student now being paid $1k per month by Netscape to do what he was doing for free on Digg. In includes profiles of power users on Newsvine, Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Netscape, among others, and also provides a comprehensive overview of each of those services.
[Full disclosure: My employer represents StumbleUpon, but I do not work on their business, nor have I ever met one of their executives. To tell you the truth, I probably should use their service - but I don't.]
Authors Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen provide a good layman’s overview of the payola schemes that some (including the PR industry) have tried to employ to gain influence with these services and their users. The WSJ identified these users by analyzing over 25,000 submissions to these sites, using software from Dapper - I’m previously unfamiliar with Dapper but will have to check them out.
I’ve struggled to explain the power of social bookmarking sites to friends and colleagues in the past because I couldn’t steer them to any one resource. I agree with Mike Arrington that those unfamiliar “may be left somewhat confused by the whole crazy ecosystem” after reading the article, but I think he’s mistaken about the rest of us not learning anything we didn’t already know. For me, putting faces and backstories to Digg, etc. user names put a human face on this trend.
I’m also plannning on steering people to the accompanying WSJ podcast.
Speaking of bookmarking services…
Categories: Bookmarking · Podcast · Web 2.0
