January 2017 archive

Jan 30

For Immediate Release #72: Corporations Take Sides

Kelly Hoey, Andrea Weckerle, and Lynette Young were on the panel this week, reacting to the non-stop torrent of news from the White House and how business has responded, along with other communication-focused update, including…

  • The range of corporate reactions to the presidential order implementing a temporary ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries
  • Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 press conference, which some believe raised the bar for corporate apologies
  • The Public Relations Society of America’s statement on “alternative facts” and a call for public relations professionals to uphold the standards articulated in PRSA’s code of ethics
  • David Murray’s assertion that public relations professionals are in the unusual position, if we play our cards right, of being the most credible people with the best ability to wield influence
  • Another view from Bill Sledzik that PR needs to turn the corner from advocacy to “responsible advocacy,” putting public interest and social responsibility ahead of, or at least on par with, client interest
  • Snapchat’s announcement about how it intends to minimize fake news in its Discover section
  • The new surge of rogue Twitter accounts in the wake of the Administration’s restrictions on agencies speaking with the public and the new trust issues they raise
  • The use of Trump attacks as a marketing hook by everyone from PRSA to Dippin’ Dots
  • A survey of B2B marketers found original research the most effective form of content marketing
  • Nearly 20% of all online media consumed is influencer content; does this make content marketing more imperative for companies?

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @jkhoey, @aweckerle, and @lynetteradio.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR is usually recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s panel:

Author and investor Kelly Hoey is a networking expert whose new book Build Your Dream Network is to be released in January 2017 by Tarcher Perigee. Kelly has reinvented her career from corporate lawyer to influencer, author and investor. In addition to her portfolio of angel investments (Levo League, Hullabalu, Smigin, CloudPeeps, flowthings.io), she is a LP in Laconia Capital Group. Kelly advises several emerging company initiatives (NZTE and CTA) and is an adjunct professor at LIM College in New York City. In addition to her professional pursuits, Kelly is the Chief Tech Ambassador for the YWCA of NYC’s Girls Geek Club. As a connector, and networking expert, Kelly has been lauded from Forbes (“1 of 5 Women Changing the World of VC/Entrepreneurship”) to Fast Company (“25 Smartest Women On Twitter”). She has a column on Inc.com, blogs on myturnstone.com (as well as Medium and jkellyhoey.co) and tweets frequently. Kelly has appeared as an investor panelist on CNBC’s Power Pitch and is the host of the BroadMic podcast.

Andrea Weckerle founded and leads CiviliNation, a nonprofit organization taking a stand against online harassment, character assassination and violence. Its focus is on advancing the full capability of individuals to communicate and engage in cyberspace in a responsible and accountable way. She is the author of the book Civility in the Digital Age: How Companies and People Can Triumph over Haters, Trolls, Bullies, and Other Jerks. In addition to a JD, she holds an MA in Public Relations/Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

Lynette Young is co-founder and Director of Marketing ClaimWizard, a software-as-a-service workflow management system for the public adjuster industry. She is a marketing technology strategist and published author with focus on digital marketing and implementation services. With over 25 years in technology, 17 of those years in digital marketing, she is well positioned as a “full-stack marketer” giving her a distinct advantage in today’s fast-paced business and environment. Over her professional career, Lynette has worked with clients of all sizes ranging from Google, Twitter, Harlequin Publishing, and American Airlines to HVAC installers, an email marketing service provider, local appliance retailers, other agencies, corporate franchises, and public adjusting firms. Lynette heads up the ClaimWizard digital marketing products and team. She maintains her speaking, mind-mapping, and podcasting activities at Purple Stripe Productions.

The post FIR #72: Corporations Take Sides appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Jan 23

TDYR 321 – You can now embed 360 photos in any WordPress site

You can now embed 360 photos and videos in any WordPress site using the Jetpack plugin version 4.5 released last week. I talk about why I think this is so important and what it offers. More info can be found in this article: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2017/01/big-news-360-photos-now-available-for-any-wordpress-site-via-jetpack-plugin.html

Jan 23

For Immediate Release #71: The Historic Decline in Trust

Steve Crescenzo, Steve Lubetkin, and Jen McClure joined host Shel Holtz to discuss a range of topics with an overarching connecting theme: trust and its decline. This week’s stories include…

  • Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary, held his first press briefing, which violated “the top two tenets of being a good PR person,” according to one analysis.
  • It turns out a little negative buzz can have a big impact on how people perceive a brand despite great advertising and marketing.
  • The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer is out and the numbers are not good.
  • Dan  York reports on the new video capabilities and advertising opportunities in the new JetPack update for WordPress, along with a feature that didn’t even make the announcement: The ability to publish 360-degree videos.
  • The New York Times has released an internal report on what it needs to do to continue adapting to the digital news world (and it includes more direct involvement of readers).
  • Unilever released a study on advertising stereotypes. The results are fascinating, but so is the fact that Unilever researched the issue in the first place.
  • Why (you may ask) is it intriguing that Unilver surveyed the population on gender stereotypes in advertising? It makes sense when you hear about a study that found online sentiment is better for companies that talk about their own CSR activities.
  • A school district fired a staff member for a tweet that should have gotten her a promotion.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @crescenzo, @podcaststeve, and @jenmclure_JEM.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR is usually recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s panel:

Steve Crescenzo  started Crescenzo Communications 15 years ago after leaving his post as Editorial Director and VP of New Product Development at Ragan Communications. I should point out that Steve does a lot of great communication work, but his wife Cindy runs Crescenzo Communications. Both Steve and Cindy do presentations, internal communication audits, and internal communication consulting. Steve and Cindy both present frequently, together and solo, at a number of communication conferences at events, and Steve has been recognized as the top speaker at IABC’s world conference a number of times.

Steve Lubetkin is the managing partner of The Lubetkin Media Companies LLC, an award-winning producer of documentary and news-style audio and video programming, digital photography, and websites. In 2012, he was named one of the Philadelphia Business Journal’s “Social Media Stars,” for podcasting. He is co-author, with Donna Papacosta, of the book, “The Business of Podcasting: How to Take Your Podcasting Passion from the Personal to the Professional”. He is Accredited in Public Relations (APR) by the Public Relations Society of America and is a member of PRSA’s prestigious College of Fellows. He currently serves as vice president, technology operations, for the IABC Philadelphia Chapter.

Jen McClure is CEO of JEM Consulting & Advisory Services. Prior to founding JEM, Jen was Vice President of Digital & Social Media and the head of the Digital Center of Excellence at Thomson Reuters. In 2005, Ms. McClure founded the Society for New Communications Research, a nonprofit research and education foundation and think tank and was President of the Board of Directors from 2005-2016, when the organization merged with The Conference Board. She now chairs the Advisory Board of the new organization.

The post FIR #71: The Historic Decline in Trust appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Jan 23

Big News! 360° photos now available for any WordPress site via JetPack plugin

360 photo

For those of us experimenting with "360-degree photos", last week's announcement of Jetpack 4.5 had a hidden but awesome feature: you can use a shortcode to embed your 360 photo or video into ANY WordPress site (that uses the Jetpack plugin).

Here is why this is so huge - up until last month, the only sites that would display 360 photos were either:

  • Facebook
  • Google StreetView

That was it. Two effectively closed walled gardens of content.

As I mentioned in my reports into a couple of For Immediate Release podcast episodes, my concern was that only Facebook users would really get this benefit. I wanted the ability to display 360 photos on any website.

On December 15, 2016, WordPress.com announced that all hosted sites could embed 360 photos or videos. This was a great step forward in bringing 360 photos out to more sites.

Then just last week version 4.5 of the JetPack plugin was released and, somewhat bizarrely, while the announcement contains no mention of this awesome new feature, an Automattic staff person confirmed the inclusion of the support in a comment.

You can read all about this new capability here:

Now, since this Disruptive Conversations site is sadly NOT on WordPress, I can't show you the features directly here. However, I've gone ahead and embedded 360 photos on two WordPress sites I have:

Those were both taken using the Google Street View application on iOS. (And yes, sometime I need to write or record a tutorial about how to do this.)

I have included the shortcodes in the blog posts so that you can see how easy this is to do. You just:

  1. Take the 360 photo using the Google Street View app on your smartphone. (This will save it to your camera roll on an iPhone.)
  2. Upload the image to your WordPress site.
  3. Use the appropriate shortcode in your blog post.

That's it!

Of course, you need the Jetpack plugin installed in your site, but that's all.

Many thanks to Automattic's Jetpack team for bringing out this capability so that we could set our 360 photos free of the walled gardens and bring them to any WordPress site!

What do you think about this? Will you try some 360 photos now?

Jan 23

Watch Live Today – State of The Net 2017 conference in Washington, DC – security, privacy, IoT and more

Starting at 9:00am US EST (UTC-5) today, January 23, the State of the Net 2017 conference will stream live out of Washington, DC. This annual event brings together politicians, U.S. Congressional staff and other policy makers to discuss the current state of Internet policy, particularly as it relates to U.S. positions and policies. Given the new U.S. President, this year's event should be of special interest. You can watch live at:

We will have two Internet Society staff participating:

Dan York

Jan 17

Testing 360 photos on WordPress

This is a 360-degree photo viewable via the Jetpack 4.5 plugin.

The shortcode I used to embed this photo here is:

[vr url=”https://danyork.me/testsite/files/2017/01/Church-360.jpeg” view=360]

This is a church in Helsinki, Finland. Photo taken using the Google Street View app on an iPhone.

Jan 17

Testing a 360 photo on WordPress

This should be a “360 photo” embedded using the latest (4.5) release of the Jetpack plugin:

Jan 16

Free webinar on DNS/Internet security – Thursday, 19 January, 18:00 UTC

ISC2 LogoWant to learn more about DNS security and the broader topic of Internet security? This Thursday, 19 January 2017, I will be speaking as part of a free webinar on the topic of “Visibility and Security – Two Sides of the Same Coin“.  The panel will include:

  • Cricket Liu, Executive VP, Infoblox
  • Dave Lewis, Global Security Advocate, Akamai
  • myself

This is part of ISC2’s “Think Tank” series of discussion webinars. There are no slides here, just a discussion and time to answer questions from participants. In the preparation call, we discussed potentially covering:

  • DNS security and privacy issues, including DNSSEC
  • the recent DDoS attacks and what can be done
  • network analysis and threat mitigation
  • … and many more topics!

It should be a fun and informative session and we’re looking forward to guiding off of the questions that attendees ask.

The webinar begins at 1:00pm US Eastern (18:00 UTC). You must register to attend. Registration is free, although you must sign up with BrightTalk’s system to participate. Whatever contact information you provide in the registration will also be given to ISC2 and the sponsor of the webinar, Infoblox.

FYI, if you hold one of the ISC2 certifications, such as the CISSP credential, this webinar is eligible for Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits.

And if you want to learn more about DNS security – or any of the other security topics we cover here – please visit our Start Here page to begin!

Jan 16

For Immediate Release #70: Capitalizing on Insults

Chris Christensen and Jen Phillips joined host Shel Holtz to discuss these topics:

  • Most employees don’t know what makes their company different from the competition — and can’t explain it to customers
  • U.S. travelers make 140 different website visits (on average) before booking a trip. Do you know your customers’ path before they make a decision on your product or service?
  • Some companies have turned insults and attacks by the President-elect into badges of honor — and merchandise for sale.
  • Getting people to share your content isn’t as big a deal as some marketers think. What does it take to amplify your content (and what should we be measuring)?
  • Tech correspondent Dan York follows up on the Amazon Echo ecosystem and reports on China’s notice to app developers, Facebook’s fake news filter rolling out in Germany, a change to then notification on Facebook that a post has been edited,
  • The panel also discusses the Amazon Alexa’s dominance at CES (while VR struggled to capture marketers’ attention)
  • Jen found an Alexa-like product in development aimed at seniors
  • A study found investors pay attention to company tweets, and there’s a difference between how the react to good and bad news
  • The Washington Post has introduced a newsletter that summarizes reader comments. There’s a business model there for brands and agencies.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @chris2x and @jenzings.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

FIR is usually recorded using Zencastr.

About today’s panel:

Chris Christensen is the CEO at BloggerBridge.com, a website that helps connect companies with relevant bloggers, writers, podcasters, videographers, and other content creators. He’s also the host of the Amateur Traveler Podcast, which he’s been producing almost as long as this show, since June 2005. Chris is also a coder; he was a director of Engineering for TripAdvisor, Executive VP of Engineering and Operations for LiveWorld, and a manager at Apple, designing and programming server solutions.

Jennifer Zingsheim Phillips is the principal at 4L Strategies, consulting and providing content development for a variety of industries. She has worked in communications and public affairs for 20 years. Her background includes work in electoral politics, government, lobbying, and public affairs PR work.

The post FIR #70: Capitalizing on insults appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Jan 09

New Report on “State of DNSSEC Deployment 2016” Shows Continued Growth (Featured Blog)

Did you know that over 50% of .CZ domains are now signed with DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC)? Or that over 2.5 million .NL domains and almost 1 million .BR domains are now DNSSEC-signed? Were you aware that around 80% of DNS clients are now requesting DNSSEC signatures in their DNS queries? And did you know that over 100,000 email domains are using DNSSEC and DANE to enable secure email between servers? More...