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Tech PR War Stories

David Strom and Paul Gillin podcast weekly about new media methods and mechanics

86: Building on the GroundswellYesterday

Forrester Research Analyst Josh Bernoff co-authored the number one Internet marketing book of 2008: Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies.The book he co-wrote with former Forrester analyst Charlene Li broke new ground by applying innovative principles of audience segmentation and measurement to social media marketing campaigns and by relating a litany of real-world case studies.

Since the book came out, Forrester has been at the center of controversial research that indicates that corporate blogs are missing the mark by failing to communicate with customers in meaningful new ways.Businesses are still casting about to find a means of engagement that works for them and blogs just aren’t doing the job at the moment.

Bernoff believes that corporations will find the right tools, but the bigger goal should be to humanize interactions between them and their constituents. In his frequent writings on the Groundswell blog, he argues passionately that years of cost-cutting and automation have robb

85: The Voice of the CustomerDecember 29 2008

Peter Blackshaw has led the charge in consumer generated media.  A cofounder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and the consumer advocacy website planetfeedback, Blackshaw is also a prolific writer who is contributes regularly to Ad Age, ClickZ and several blogs.  He’s also the author of a new book, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000, in which he documents the multiplier effect of word-of-mouth communications.

And that’s in his spare time.  Blackshaw is better known to many people is the executive vice president of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services, a group that helps companies develop online strategies.  Branding in the age of conversation is nothing like it was in the days of one-way communications, he says.  Today, brands are developed cooperatively in discussions with customers whose feedback needs to be seriously considered and incorporated into a company’s message.  He talks with David and Pa

84: Mumbai Attacks Spotlight Citizen JournalismDecember 22 2008

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India over the Thanksgiving holiday dramatized the increasingly important role that citizen journalists are coming to play in the reporting of breaking news.  For hours after the attacks began, bloggers and Twitter users provided eyewitness accounts while professional journalists and television crews rushed to the scene.  Not all of the information that was reported was accurate, and this has raised questions about the credibility of eyewitness reports in an age when everyone can be a journalist.  David and Paul discuss some of the lessons the incident has taught us.

Here are a few stories that dramatize the role that citizen media played in the coverage.:

• A couple that survived the Mumbai terrorist attacks are interviewed on Charlie Rose.
• On The Media interviews Arnab Goswami, chief editor of one of the Indian English-language TV networks, about their role.
• On The Media interviews Gaurav Mishra about whether all the Twitterers were responsible or aided the terrorists.
• Amy Gahran on PoynterOnline talks about lessons learned and how Twitter uses can do better with re

83: Those Snarky Dudes from Woot.comDecember 16 2008

Woot's Toon at the office

To the classic retail marketer, the wild and wacky Woot.com does everything wrong.  The online retailer, which typically sells only one product at any given time, adorns its site with critical and sometimes sarcastic descriptions of the merchandise it sells.  Woot won’t hesitate to tell visitors when one of its sale items is mediocre, but it will always give them an astonishingly good price.  The result: merchandise flies off of Woot’s real shelves, and the company’s fanatical fan base waits eagerly for the latest offering to appear each day, at midnight CT no less. Two from Woot’s St. Louis offices, Jason Toon and David Rutledge, describe the retailer’s unlikely secrets of success.
 

Download the podcast here (19:29)

      

82: The Joy of SearchDecember 5 2008

In the arcane world of search engine optimization, HubSpot of Cambridge, Mass. has made a name for itself by simplifying and automating the process. HubSpotCEO Brian Halligan knows a lot about how search engines work and how businesses can optimize their Web presence for search results. He calls it “inbound marketing.” Forget about playing games, Halligan says; it’s all about delivering quality content. HubSpot offers some free utilities — Website Grader, Twitter Grader and Press Release Grader – that can help.These services assess your site’s search performance and suggest ways to improve it.HubSpot also offers a suite of low-cost, do-it-yourself tools that marketers can use themselves, without paying for SEO consultants. In this interview, Halligan offers some tips for optimizing search performance.

Listen to the podcast (19:12) (Right click and save to download)