Welcome to episode #6 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Christopher Penn, vice president of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications; Laura Thomas, Chief Blogger at Dell’s Direct2Dell; and Martin Waxman, president of Martin Waxman Communications and co-host of Inside PR on the FIR Podcast Network.
On today’s show, we explored these topics:
- Beginning on November 7, The New York Times will mail 1 million google Cardboard headsets to its subscribers, a joint project of the Times and Google dubbed NYT VR. The goal is to deliver immersive journalism, but also immersive native advertising. The marketing world is abuzz over Virtual Reality. The PR world? Not so much.
- IBM has introduced the idea of the “citizen analyst,” which Chris recently addressed in a blog post. Like citizen journalists, citizen analysts will use widely available data and analytical tools, often for activist purposes. What do PR practitioners need to do to be prepared for data activism?
- Snapchat has been in the news — a lot. One marketing agency, Giant Spoon, has used it to produce Snapchat Stories that serve as pitches to prospective clients. Some agencies and brands are producing unique content for Snapchat rather than repurposing existing content. And now Snapchat is introducing branded geofilters, which some think could be a killer tool for marketers.
- Dan York’s tech report covers Country Top-Level Domains like .ly that could cause problems down the road and Facebook’s decision to make all public posts available for search.
- How seriously should we take demographic givens that suggest the older you are, the less likely you are to understand and embrace digital media?
- The role of agencies in content marketing, according to David Berkowitz, is to build trust with clients and then get out of the way of the creatives. That sounds a lot like what PR does, particularly when it comes to building trust.
- When building trust, a key element is agreeing on the measures of success. Impressions have become the go-to metric for social media in the PR world. There must be a better way to use impressions to convey real, meaningful results.
- Medium was the channel of choice for both Amazon and The New York Times in a give-and-take following publication of a Times article critical of Amazon’s distribution center practices. Could Medium be the PR wire service of the future?
Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.
Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.
Join us next week for our sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Olivier Blanchard, Sharon McIntosh, and Ike Pigott.
About this week’s panel
Christopher Penn works among different fields, professions, and ideas to help people understand each other. He can write code, but he’s not a developer or IT pro. He can design campaign strategies and run ads, but he’s not an advertising professional. Christopher defines himself as a marketing technologist: Digital marketing is Christopher’s laboratory. He is Vice President of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications (a national PR firm). He also co-hosts of the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast with John Wall. He is a Google Analytics Certified Professional and a Google AdWords Certified Professional. And Christopher has been a practitioner of the martial arts for 20 years now, and currently hold a black belt in ninjutsu under Sensei Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center.
Laura P. Thomas is Chief Blogger for Dell. Laura brings More than 15 years experience in corporate communications and digital marketing roles to her work, including jobs in public relations, employee communications, branding, community engagement, event management, online commerce, social media and virtual world development. In her role as Dell’s Chief Blogger, Laura is responsible for the development, coordination and execution of strategy and content for Dell’s corporate blog, Direct2Dell. Since taking the Direct2Dell reins, Laura has recorded an 80% increase in time on page at the end of the first year in this role. She also leads the company’s cross-business unit editorial team and engages with marketing, product line, operations and corporate communications colleagues worldwide to enhance the company’s brand.
Martin Waxman has over 25 years of experience in creative and business writing, video and audio producing, public relations and journalism and can work with you and your team to help his clients discover, shape and develop their content marketing programs, set up online newsrooms, and identify and build relationships with influencers to amplify their stories via social PR. Based in Toronto, Martin is aa blogger and podcaster. He also speaks on social media trends at events around North America. Martin currently is president of Martin Waxman Communications. He is also the incoming chair of the PRSA Counselors Academy.
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