Tuesday, Nov. 20
1:30pm ET
Listen here

For those of you who don’t know, our very own Luke Armour likes to spread his podcasting talents around … and he has his own weekly podcast at BlogTalkRadio. “The Rundown,” as it’s called, airs live every Tuesday afternoon and features Luke — entertaining as ever — and a guest or two discussing topics relevant to PR, marketing, the Web, etc.

Well, tomorrow, I will be Luke’s guest as we chat about Forward, PR, things I’ve learned during my first few years as a professional, and whatever else Luke chooses to ask me about. So if you’d like to listen in (and surely hear some audible LOLs from me, as I tend to laugh a lot when speaking to Luke), join us at 1:30pm ET tomorrow.

updated 11/26 with audio

Technorati Tags: pr, public relations, pr podcast, the rundown, blogtalkradio, luke armour, erin caldwell

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 The Rundown with Erin Caldwell: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3563)

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In 2006 Dell had 78,700 global employees, revenue of close to $56 billion and Fortune magazine ranked it as the 25th largest company on its Fortune 500 list and 8th on the top 20 list of most admired companies in the USA. They’re kind of a big deal. So it is all the more noteable that they are having the culture of their organization changed by embracing social media.

In this interview Paull Young is joined by Laura Thomas, Lionel Menchaca, Caroline Dietz, Arlette Salcedo and Jacqui Zhou from Dell’s social media team as they talk in detail about their approach to social media. They discuss how they have used tools like their Direct2Dell blog, IdeaStorm, Studio Dell web videos and a Second Life presence to start a new relationship with their customers through two way communication. They also talk about what they have learned from the process that has seen a shift internally in their company’s culture which has been matched by a shift in online consumer sentiment from 50% negative to 23% negative in just one year.

The Dell team will be paying attention to this post, so please take some time to check out their work and leave a comment - it’s a case study worth learning from.

In other Forward related news - if you are anywhere near Athens, Georgia this coming weekend (October 19-20) be sure to come along to the CONNECT social media and PR conference at Grady College. Paull will be presenting a case study on Forward and also a couple of breakout sessions on Second Life and podcasting.

Also, if you enjoy the Amish portion of our Forward Podcast rambling you’ll be excited to hear that Luke has started up his own show with his employer BlogTalkRadio. It’s called The Rundown, it airs live every Tuesday at 1:30pm ET and I’m sure it will be an enjoyable and informative listen.

Finally, the weekend after next (October 26-27) Paull will be attend Podcamp Boston where he’ll be presenting on a panel about Reputation Management for Digital Natives. The event looks like it is going to be an amazing learning opportunity and I hope our panel will be particularly useful for Forward Podcast listeners - be sure to say g’day if you’ll be there.

Technorati Tags: dell, social media, direct2dell, Ideastorm, Studio Dell, online engagement, online community, online monitoring, conversational marketing, online relationships, crowdsourcing, blogging, corporate blogs, corporate blogging

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 Forward Podcast 33 :: Social Media in Action at Dell [42:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (989)

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Forward Podcast 31 responds to some recent hot debate in the PR blogging space about just how vocal young PR professionals should be, both in the office and offline.

This episode is an interview with Edelman’s Phil Gomes in response to his post about the importance of young PR professionals ‘managing up‘ - talking up to their boss or colleagues when they feel they have a deeper understanding of an issue. Paull and Phil also discuss the debate that has recently sprung up about whether inexperienced communicators could be doing their reputations harm by speaking up online.

The podcast ends with some brilliant thoughts from young PR professional and blogger Kait Swanson. Her thoughts really put Phil’s theory into practice from the point of view of a young communicator. She’s clearly a fair bit smarter than Paull and Luke, so hopefully she’ll start commenting regularly. Of course, you can join the conversation at any time by leaving a comment or sending us an audio file to include.

This episode is the second time Phil has appeared on the Forward Podcast, he was previously the subject of episode #6 on the dark art of podcasting. Paull has a post at his personal blog summarizing the numerous mentions of this debate so far, there are some excellent thoughts across the blogosphere that can teach a lot to young professionals.

In other housekeeping news, Forward will be the subject of a case study at the Connect: PR and Social Media Conference at the University of Georgia, Athens, on October 19-20. The conference is intended to educate public relations professionals and educators on social media and Paull Young will be presenting on the mission and history of Forward as an example of how social media can be used to attempt to help both young communicators and the industry as a whole move Forward.

We strongly suggest you take the time to read through the entire debate - there’s a post covering the conversation from start to finish at Paull’s blog. The discussion to date on this topic, from both experienced and inexperienced viewpoints alike, is really a case study of the power of social media to move our industry forward.

Technorati Tags: Phil Gomes, managing up, decision support, reputation management, pr blogging, young pr blogging, marketing blogging

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 Forward Podcast 31 - Managing Your Voice in the Office and Beyond [38:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1332)

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Episode 26 of the Forward Podcast is an interview with Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image and host of the superb Six Pixels of Separation podcast, about the importance of personal branding.

Mitch is one of the best people on the planet to talk to about personal branding. He is a highly sought after speaker and is currently writing a book on this very topic.

After listening to this interview you will understand what your personal brand is, the process you can use to start shaping and extending your brand and have some concrete steps spelled out for you to get started with YOU inc.

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 Forward Podcast 27: Personal Branding for Students and Young Professionals [26:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3731)

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OR ‘why you shouldn’t listen to the Forward Podcast’.

In this edition of the Forward Podcast Paull Young and Luke Armour take you on a tour of all the best podcast sites for PR up-and-comers. They have both been plugged into the PR podosphere for some time and here they share their thoughts on which podcasts hold the most value for PR students and young professionals.

Podcasts mentioned in the podcast:

• For Immediate Release
• Inside PR
• Trafcom News
• New Comm Road
• Comms Cafe
• Six Pixels of Separation
• PR Junction
• Across the Sound
• Marketing Over Coffee
• On The Record Online
• Managing the Gray
• American Copywriter

To close the podcast, Luke and Paull ask for your feedback on the Forward Podcast - what do you think of it? How would you like to see it change? How can it better serve you? Please leave comments below.

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 Forward Podcast 26: A Guide to the PR Podosphere [32:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2831)

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You must be familiar with the argument by now. It’s the one about media fragmentation, message bombardment, cost and waste. In short, it’s about the failure of mass marketing. If you’ve missed it, where have you been? You’ve not been listening to the likes of Seth Godin, the Cluetrain authors or Al and Laura Ries. Even marketing academics such as Philips Kotler and Kitchen have been joining the chorus.

Add to this Punk Marketing, written by Richard Laermer (author of Full Frontal PR) and Mark Simmons (a British marketing consultant who lives in Los Angeles and who is - disclosure - my brother-in-law and the source of my review copy).

This manifesto for revolutionary marketing is an assault on the large and the predictable and a plea to replace it with the smart and the tailored. So punk marketing is defined as ‘a new form of marketing that rejects the status quo and recognizes the shift in power from corporations to consumers.’

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Social Media is about more than just conversation. It’s about connecting, and these connections are driven by conversation.

This point has become clearer to me over the past six weeks as I’ve turned myself into a case study of the power of social media for building serious relationships.

It also provides fertile ground for comparison from experience, as happened last Thursday when I attended Coffee with crayon in the morning and the D.C. gathering of the Social Media Club in the evening (with lunch with fellow blogger Andrea Weckerle sandwiched between the two).

Coffee with crayon

New marketing company crayon hosts a casual weekly gathering for new marketing types at their offices in Second Life. The meetu-p has been attracting good crowds and generated some interesting conversation in my first appearance this week.

Social Media Club D.C.

The D.C. social media club is fairly new and this meeting was in the offices of Ogilvy Public Relations. About 20-30 people were present and the crowd of online geeks had a distinct slant towards PR/Marketing folk (an almost identical make up to crayon’s crowd).

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Todd And, a contributor to Forward Blog, has come up with an interesting list of the top 150 U.S. marketing blogs. It is Todd And’s Power 150.

The list comes about from a combination of objective and subjective methods that draw upon the following four factors: Google PageRank, Bloglines Subscribers, Technorati Ranking, and something called “Todd And Points”, which is essentially Todd’s personal opinion of the blog’s value.

According to Todd,

All four metrics were added to determine each blog’s total score. The total score carried the most weight in assigning the final Power 150 rank. If blogs shared the same final Power 150 rank, the suborder was determined by Todd And points. If Todd And points were the same, Technorati ranking points were compared – then Bloglines subscriber points and finally Google PageRank points.

Visit Todd’s blog for a more complete explanation. We’d like to note that Forward Blog is currently listed at #56 on the list. Thanks, Todd.

By the way, one of the reasons for this post is to test our new email notification system. Forward blog has about 150 email subscribers. However, the previous email notification plugin we were using for Forward was wrought with problems. So, we’ve changed to the Watershed Studio WordPress Email Notification Plugin.

Please do us a favor. If you received your notification of this post via email, please visit this post on the blog and comment. Actually, if you see this post and did not get a notification, please comment, too. We hope the problem is fixed. But, we won’t be sure until this post hits the blog. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

P.S. This isn’t Erin. I’m Robert. Don’t ask. I just needed to test the plugin. Erin was asleep. Shhhhh! She’ll likely not notice. Now, please say a prayer as I’m about to hit publish. Work plugin, work!

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I know that young and old PR pros alike are intrigued by Second Life. Some love it, some hate it. Some are scared, some excited. Here you’ll read my thoughts on a great event I attended in Second Life last week - CaseCamp Second Life (an event I think exemplifies the astounding potential of Web 3.D.)

What Went Down

50-odd avatars descended on crayonville’s auditorium to interact with four short presentations in the CaseCamp format.

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I gave a short guest lecture on social media at one of my MBA classes this past week. I told the class I believe there is a positive linear correlation between the amount of PR elements offered to reporters and the quantity/quality of media coverage generated.

Assuming there is real news value with the announcement/release, PR pros will almost always see an increase in the quantity and quality of media coverage when more “elements” are offered to reporters. PR elements include a well-written press release, source interviews, pre-written quotes, images, audio, video, third-party expert interviews, etc. - all of which are easily accessible in a social media press release.

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