Oct 24, 2016
Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are back with another episode of the Inside PR podcast. #IPRMustKnows From Docs to Podcasts A sign of the continuing professionalization of podcasts. In a few weeks, Hot Docs, North America's largest documentary film festival, will launch its first Hot Docs Podcast Festival. The lineup is heavily skewed to mainstream, large audience podcasts. I guess that means that we need to continue to look to community-generated events like Podcamp Toronto to represent amateur niche content. Things like Inside PR. :) Twitter - independent or acquisition? Can Twitter survive on its own? Would it be better being acquired by a larger entity? I know that, one way or the other, I don't want Twitter to disappear. As other services have refined their algorithms to present popular content first, I think that Twitter now holds a unique place as our newsfeed. An essential lense on the world that not only allows us to bear witness in real time, but also allows anyone to see it happening in real time. Google Automated Insights If you use Google Analytics, you must check out the automated insights that have been added to the Google Analytics mobile app. An invaluable tool that helps you quickly identify the most salient trends and events in the traffic to your site. Little by little, we are moving in the direction of the intelligent assistant. And it's free! PR can't stop changing For our main topics this week, we discuss the need for PR to accelerate the repositioning of its core business proposition in the face of shrinking newsrooms. PR will not disappear. It just won't look like it did a few years ago. And companies that haven't changed their focus away from earned media will find themselves left behind. The rise of Facebook as an aggregator. The decline of newsrooms. Sponsored content as the new norm. The end of print newspapers. PR must prepare itself for the post-newsprint world. Some PR agencies are well down the path of reimagining the business. The new firms seem to understand that the emphasis must continue to be on relationships. But different forms of relationships with different actors and agents (algorithms anyone?) Those that evolve in this way will succeed. Along the way, those that change will have to explain themselves to a marketplace that may not have understood the need for these changes. Those that don't will disappear. Bet on it.