MediaBlather

106: Freelance Destruction

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 03:35:27 +0000

As recently as a couple of years ago freelance writing was a popular way for journalists to make a living. The pay wasn’t great, but the work was interesting and most professional freelancers could make a reasonable income.

Today, things are very different. Freelance rates have fallen through the floor as publications have shriveled and community journalism operations like Associated Content and Demand Media have brought legions of writers into the market working for pennies on the dollar. They produce a lot of content, but is it any good?

David and Paul are all for media democratization, but they also believe the quality of some of the information we get today has declined precipitously over the past few years. One example is product reviews and analysis. While more people than ever are beating on the new iPad and documenting their experiences these days, few of them apply the methodological rigor and discipline of professional reviewers. It’s easy to get opinions now, but not necessarily opinions you can trust.

Hands-on technical reviews have been a major part of David’s business for a long time, and he’s adjusting to the new world by self-publishing and finding new sponsors for his expertise. Our hosts tackle the pros and cons of freelance destruction. Are we really better off?

Right-click here to download

105: Identity Crisis

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:01:43 +0000

If the cap on the Gulf oil spill holds, BP will be grateful for more than one reason. In addition to ending its $4 billion nightmare, it will no longer have to contend with @BPGlobalPR, a Twitter account set up by an anonymous critic who has been skewering the company’s efforts to manage public opinion about the disaster.

“Attn: BP Employees- Office supplies do not belong to you. Please have some respect for other people’s property. #bpcares” is just one of the more than 400 scathingly funny barbs the prankster has posted over the past three months. On the day the cap was finally put in place, the author wrote, “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”

@BPGlobalPR has amassed a following 10 times larger than @BP_America, which is the oil company’s real Twitter account. What’s more, it now overwhelms BP’s real Twitter presence in search results.

This isn’t the only case in which Twitter squatters have embarrassed major brands. @ATT_Wireless_PR is doing the same thing with less success, at least so far. We discuss what challenges this creates for public relations departments and debate whether the world needs an independent authority to regulate user IDs as well as domains.

Play:

Download (right click and save) : http://gillin.com/Podcasts/MB-105.mp3

104: The Joy of Geocaching

strom — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:46:31 +0000

Paul and David return to the podcasting airwaves with a special show this week and an odd twist. Paul and his wife Dana have just published their latest book called The Joy of Geocaching. The couple, who have enjoyed the sport for many years, took time to interview dozens of cachers, as they are called, from around the world to tell their stories and provide a very readable guide to beginners. In the book are tips to get started, what equipment to purchase and Web sites to use, and other practical information. But the real treasure is how the common bond of caching has created this strong sense of purpose and trust among fellow cachers, and Paul and Dana tell some of the more interesting tales.

Audio link (right click to download)

103: Considering crowdsourcing

strom — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:02:08 +0000

We talk with Brent Frei of SmartSheet.com about the growing trend of crowdsourcing, the ability to farm out a series of tasks to a group of unknown contributors. Frei has put together a comprehensive report on the crowdsourcing industry that you can download here. He talks to David and Paul about some of the logistics of hiring these experts, how they are vetted and accounted for by their networks, the types of outsourced work that you want to consider for crowdsourcing, some of the companies that specialize in this area and the different types of crowdsourcing projects.

Here are some links to his published works:

Lead into Gold – the math related to your cost and the crowd worker’s earnings
PR, Internet Intern – do all kinds of research that just takes lots of time
Small Business Will Inherit the Earth - small businesses have to outsource lots of components of business that require specialties or time they don’t have
Entrepreneurial Shock – earn more doing less by outsourcing mundane portions of research
Grasshopper Case Study – build a custom list to an exacting spec for very little cost

You can download our podcast here (20:10):

Audio link (right click to download)

102: Social Media at IBM

admin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:40:37 +0000

Anyone who was around the computer industry during the 1980s remembers IBM as a buttoned-down, almost paranoid company. In the years following the Justice Department’s antitrust suit, IBM became so tight with information that virtually no one other than designated representatives was allowed to utter a word in public without fear of retribution.

What a difference a couple of decades makes. Today IBM is one of the most prominent adopters of social media. Here are the numbers on usage of different tools by its 400,000 employees:

Internal blogs: 17,000
Members of the Beehive social network: 60,000
Daily page views on IBM’s internal wiki: 1,000,000
Participants in its four Innovation Jams: 500,000
IBMers on Twitter: 3,000
IBMers on Facebook: 52,000
IBMers on LinkedIn: 198,000

Big Blue applies social media both to internal and external communications. Because more than half the employees work outside of a conventional office, media like blogs and podcasts have become essential elements for tying teams together on projects.

Adam Christensen is Social Media Communications Manager at IBM. In that capacity, he helps define policies and best practices for dissemination across IBM’s global workforce. Not surprisingly, he’s also an active blogger, tweeter and member of multiple social networks. He tells David and Paul how IBM’s embrace of social media is opening up the company and making it more efficient.

Audio link (right click to download)

101: Driven a Ford Lately?

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:16:40 +0000

Automotive companies aren’t usually thought of as models of institutional transparency, but when it comes to social media, that stereotype doesn’t hold. The big automakers have been some of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of customer conversations, in part because they believe their stories have been so poorly communicated by the mainstream media.

Scott Monty left a job at the conversation monitoring agency Crayon in 2008 to take on the challenge of helping the Ford Motor Co. reinvigorate its image with new media. In the intervening 14 months, the US auto industry has undergone a near meltdown, but Ford has escaped the carnage that drove rival General Motors into bankruptcy.

Monty is Ford’s ubiquitous online presence, with over 30,000 followers on Twitter alone. Among the initiatives he’s worked on is The Ford Story, a multimedia showcase of Ford’s work in fuel efficiency, design and engineering innovation. As he notes in this podcast, Ford has been rewarded for its openness by being hailed as a leader in social media adoption.

Monty manages to find time to tend to his popular blog, but has had to set aside, temporarily at least, another labor of love: His fascination with all things Sherlock Holmes. With the first new Holmes movie in years set for release this fall, now’s a good time to follow Scott Monty.

Click the arrow below to listen now

Or download the podcast (22:18)

Our 100th Show = Your Tweets

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:21:21 +0000

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.

98: Why Doesn’t Staples Become a Publisher?

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:32:22 +0000

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: (10:04)

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97: WeTweet

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:13:11 +0000

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.

(17:35)

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96: Social Media on Ice

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:01:27 +0000

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.

(16:52)

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