MediaBlather

Interviews and Insights on the Changing Media World

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Our 100th Show = Your Tweets

May 12th, 2009 · Twitter, socialmedia

Believe it or not, were about to record the 100th episode of MediaBlather.

In the spirit of new media, crowdsourcing and democratized information, we thought we’d use the latest social media tool of choice — Twitter — to help us with this program. So please contribute by answering the following question in 140 characters or less:

What’s great about social media?

By that we mean what’s great for you? How has social media changed your life, extended your circle of friends, made you more efficient, more informed, more tuned in and able to lose 30 pounds? Heck, tweet us even if social media hasn’t been all that great. Use your imagination and tweet the results using hash tag #100great.

We’ll devote our 100th program to sharing your comments, and we’ll even invite a couple of people to join us over Skype to share in the fun.

Of course, you’re welcome to leave more extended answers in the comments section below.

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98: Why Doesn’t Staples Become a Publisher?

April 28th, 2009 · Uncategorized

Paul has been toying around with an idea for Staples, the big office retailer.  With mainstream media and direct mail marketing becoming less and less effective, why doesn’t Staple go into the publishing business?  It could become a trusted source of information for small business customers and earn its place at the table with the likes of Inc. magazine and Fast Company.

It’s not that easy, David notes.  It takes time, money and commitment to become a media entity.  Retail businesses don’t have much of any of those things these days.

However, Paul thinks that the times never been better for marketers to become publishers.  Laid-off journalists can be had hired for pennies on the dollar compared to a few years ago and the cost of online publishing is vastly cheaper than the alternatives.

Our hosts agree that the bigger challenge may be cultural: Marketers are simply not brought up to think in terms of long-term customer engagements, which is what publishing requires.  But it’s never too late to change.

Listen now:

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(10:04)

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97: WeTweet

April 24th, 2009 · Twitter, Uncategorized, commentary

David is a recent convert to Twitter, while Paul has been using it for some time.  Both agree that this red-hot social network, which has people transmitting their thoughts in 140-character increments, takes some getting used to. However the benefits are evident once you make Twitter part of your everyday routine.  Doctors have used Twitter to describe the intricacies of brain surgery and people are even writing books using messages contributed by their followers.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Twitter is the number of third-party applications that have sprung up, which range from useful services like polling utilities to one that lets you calculate how much time you waste tweeting.

Rather than trying to list these apps individually, here are two massive collections of Twitter applications:

100 Twitter Tools to Help You Achieve All Your Goals

Twitter Fan Wiki

For the record, both our hosts recommend TweetDeck to more efficiently manage the flood of messages. Paul likes Monitter to track hot topics. They also agree that search.twitter.com is a fast and efficient search engine that lets you save results as RSS feeds so you can keep track of what people are saying about you at your own convenience.

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96: Social Media on Ice

April 17th, 2009 · Twitter, interview, socialmedia

dilorenzo

As the National Hockey League seeks to recover from its damaging 2004-2005 lockout,  It’s turning to new media as a means to reach out to the public.  Remarkably, half of all NHL fans don’t live near the teams they root for., so the league is using every medium and its disposal to connect people with their favorite teams.  The NHL.com website has been relaunched with an integrated social network and publicity director Michael DiLorenzo is an active proponent of using blogs, twitter and social networks as a way to connect with the league’s constituency.

DiLorenzo practices what he preaches, blogging at http://www.fromtheblueseats.com/ and tweeting at umassdilo. He’s already sent 2,500 Twitter updates. Although he’s a fan, he’s also a shrewd media strategist, as you’ll see when you download the interview.

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(16:52)

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95: That Southwest Style

March 25th, 2009 · blogs, interview, socialmedia

Paula Berg (Ragan Communications photo)

Paula Berg (Ragan Communications photo)

This week we talk to Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines and the team leading the airline’s efforts in blogging, podcasting, and other social media.

In a corporate blogging world that has turned in mostly unspectacular results so far, Southwest is a standout.  The company uses ordinary employees — not high paid executives — to tell its story, and they do so with marvelous candor and enthusiasm.  Nuts About Southwest has a joyful irreverence that reinforces the airline’s offbeat, slightly goofy image. Recently, Southwest added video and podcasts to the mix in a manner that truly looks planned.

Southwest has done a lot of things right in this world, and we find out how customer conversations have changed the company’s policies, how Southwest gives its people lots of leeway in choosing what to contribute to the blog, the online “voice of the company and how its first Twitter-based “screenplay” came together in the past couple of weeks.

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(17:08)

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94: Roll Your Own Magazine

March 23rd, 2009 · Uncategorized

This week Paul and David talk about the changing nature of custom publishing by looking at two different services: HP’s MagCloud.com and Amazon’s Kindle reader.

fit_christianMagCloud creates custom magazines that can be printed, proofed, bound, polybagged and delivered via the US mails to your doorstep, all for a modest per-page fee. The magazines can be as professionally designed and produced as you’d like, using the standard Adobe publishing tools. They can also be highly targeted, like Fit Christian (right). David finds the combination of low and hi-tech appealing and just the ticket for a wide variety of PR and marcom needs.

Kindle, of course, is the versatile book reader that is now in its second incarnation and delivers a very solid user experience. Paul feels the gadget is just the beginning of the paperless era for frequent readers and offers a lot of compelling reasons — although neither of our hosts has actually ponied up their cold cash for the thing.

To listen, click on the player below.

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93: The Travelin’ Mama

March 13th, 2009 · commentary, interview, podcast, socialmedia

Shannon Hurst Lane and three other professional travel writers were chatting at a conference early last year when they hit upon an idea. They were all moms with copious travel experience. Why not start a blog to advise families on destinations that are right for parents with kids? But this wouldn’t be your usual Mickey and Minnie family travel site. The Traveling Mamas, as they chose to call themselves, would also deal with real-world adult issues like where to get an alcoholic drink in the Magic Kingdom and how to take your kids to Las Vegas.

The Traveling Mamas site features a wonderfully homespun and playful voice layered onto the sage experience of people who know how to travel. Fifteen months after launch, it’s getting 50,000 visitors a month and a bouquet of awards, citations and recommendations from media outlets and other bloggers. The four mamas post prodigiously and their audience is  coveted by destination marketers, who compete to get their attention. It’s all rather overwhelming and unexpected.

Shannon is Cajun Mama. She joins us midway through a trip in the Georgia wilderness. In 93 programs, this is the first time David and Paul have ever interviewed someone under these circumstances. Listen to find out more.

Also listen to find out about the nearly disastrous bicycling accident David suffered last week. He’s okay, but instead of sending flowers, he’d like listeners to support his ride for the National MS Society.

Listen to the podcast (17:01) (right click and choose “Save As…” to download)

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92 - Visionary Educator

March 2nd, 2009 · commentary

hanson_hoseinHanson Hosein was a successful television news producer who traveled the world and won an Emmy award working for NBC News before realizing a decade ago that the media world was about to change dramatically.  He ditched the world of “big-box” media and set out with a handheld video camera to learn about the emerging world of citizen journalism.  His travels resulted in, among other things, Independent America, a video documentary of a trip through America’s back roads and mom-and-pop businesses.  Today he heads the masters of communication program at the University of Washington, where his innovative curriculum has created conversation and controversy for its rejection of traditional media models.

Hosein believes that in the future media will be atomized and spread among millions of special interest “reporters,” few of whom will call themselves journalists.  This will ultimately be a superior model, but the process of breaking down old institutions and constructing new ones won’t be pretty.  In this interview, he addresses the question of whether journalism is dying and how aggregation may become the journalist’s most important role in the new democratized media.

Listen to the podcast (21:00) (right click and save to download)

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91: Whom Shall We Trust?

February 23rd, 2009 · commentary

Is the disintegration of mainstream media also the death of trust?  Paul recently spoke to a group of university professors of communications who were decidedly pessimistic about the changes going on in the media landscape.  These scholars fretted that the ongoing loss of jobs and potential collapse of some major media institutions will take down with it the confidence that citizens have traditionally had in media sources.

Their concerns are certainly valid, but our commentators agree that new sources of trusted information will invariably emerge.  The problem is that we are currently in an uncomfortable netherworld between the decline of the old and the birth of the new.

Listen to the podcast (16:18) (right click and save to download)

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90: Dealing with multiple notification pathways

January 29th, 2009 · PR, Twitter

This week David and Paul talk about how we deal with having mutliple notification mechanisms. In our professional lifetimes  we have seen the rise and now fall of having universal email access to our contacts — now we have IM, Twitter, texting, and even the phone to juggle. Part of the problem is that email is notoriously poor at sending large files (and woe become anyone who sends large files to us without asking prior permission).  The two discuss their own personal communications differences, what PR people have to do to get the word out to the media, and what makes sense for each medium. 

You can download and listen to the podcast here.

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