Don’t call us to ack. receipt, puh-leeze

Alan Zeichick has some great tips here for PR pros who have to pick up the phone to find out if a press contact received their emailed release. And he also links to a piece by Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten too.

The moral of both stories: don’t call us. If we want to follow up, we will.

37: How to measure social media success

This week our guest is Katie Paine, the social media measurement guru of the great northeast. Katie’s an experienced journalist and PR professional who has spent the last several years developing a business around understanding the payback of social media campaigns. She has strong opinions about what marketers should do.

Katie believes that the Internet is the most measurable medium ever invented, but that people generally don’t do a good job of using the metrics they gather. It’s not about bar charts, she says, it’s about trends. The important thing to measure is how your reputation in the blogosphere is developing over time, using a variety of promotional means.

Katie tells the story of the ASPCA, which had an epiphany when it realized there was a direct correlation between news stories in the media and traffic to its web site. The organization used this insight to increase contributions and membership.

Lots of services try to automate the task of measuring online conversations, but the human factor is still needed. Even Microsoft is on record as saying that machines alone aren’t up to the task of evaluating online results; people still need to interpret the data. In the early days of the Internet, measurement was all about total eyeballs, but Katie argues that the important factor today is audience engagement. In that respect, online media is a powerful complement to traditional media. You can use online metrics to assess the effectiveness of print and broadcast campaigns.

Listen to the podcast (18:39)

36: All about corporate blogging

This week’s virtual guest is Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book and an expert on business blogging. Paul met with Debbie at the BlogWorld Expo conference in Las Vegas and conducted a short interview, which we play here. Paul and David then discuss some of the more frequent questions they hear from PR professionals who are trying to get their executives on the Cluetrain.

Some major issues they address include:

• Should every company have a blog and are there alternatives that are superior for different business objectives?
• What do you do about reluctant executives who don’t see the value of online customer conversations?
• What should your blogging policy look like, or do you even need one?
• What are the different applications of blogs to achieving business goals?
• How do you deal with negativity? Should you enable customer comments and engage with persistently negative commenters?

Download the podcast (16:34)

35: Second Life with Mike Azzara

Our guest this week is Mike Azzara, a former CMP publishing executive who has gobs of experience with online and print publishing. We talk about ways that businesses can leverage the presence and immediacy of the virtual world Second Life, something that Mike has spent some time “in-world,” as devotees say. He talks about the experiences he had with Dr. Dobbs’s Second Life efforts when he was at CMP. Second Life can be used to deliver more effective and immersive conferences and is being used by many hi-tech vendors for briefings and events. Mike has written a white paper that introduces some of the basics and gives references for people that want to learn more.

Download  the podcast here.

34: Blogging at SAP

Paul’s at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, where he met Mike Prosceno, VP of Marketplace Communications at software giant SAP. SAP has an unusually progressive approach to working with the blogosphere. Not only does the company use blogs for internal and external communications, but it has embraced bloggers as important influencers, treating them in much the same way it treats mainstream media. In this interview, Prosceno talks about how SAP evaluates influence in the blogosphere, the company’s PR strategy as it relates to bloggers and why blogging is so compatible with the SAP customer service philosophy.

Listen to the podcast (11:42).

33: Are PR people spammers?

David and Paul riff on Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson’s anti-spam manifesto, which includes the publication of hundreds of addresses of PR people who are banned from his inbox. David is appalled that Anderson would go so far as to publicize e-mail addresses for every spambot to harvest. Paul agrees, but sees merit in the problem that Anderson is highlighting. Both agree that there are tools journalists can use to manage their inboxes more effectively and that the onus is on reporters to become familiar with those tools.

The hosts would like to hear from their listeners about ideas that are working for them. How are you getting through the e-mail deluge and getting your message to reporters? Comment below, and we’ll include the best ideas on a future episode.

The hosts also discuss Steve Rubel’s blog post this week in which he laments the craziness that has overtaken the Web 2.0 market. They agree that the hype machine is out of control, but believe that this is nothing like the Internet bubble of nearly a decade ago. Paul says that new platforms invariably spark a surge of innovation and that this is basically good for the market. A shakeout is inevitable, and the survivors harvest the best ideas of the companies that didn’t make it. Sustainable new markets need to go through this process, he believes.

Get the podcast here. (15:58)