PR Podcasts up for Podcast Awards

The third annual podcast awards are now open for listeners to submit their votes to recognize the best podcasters in the world. More than 335,000 podcast listeners and podcasters this year submitted more than 6 million nominations with 4,097 submitted shows.

Two podcasts that I’ve recommended on this blog are up for awards in the business category: For Immediate Release and Inside PR.

If you are a listener to one or both of these podcasts, you know how good they are and how deserving they are to be awarded. Please go to http://podcastawards.com/ and vote. You can vote every day in fact.

If you have never listened to For Immediate Release or Inside PR, I encourage you to check them out. You can listen from your computer if you don’t have an Mp3 or iPod. I learn something from every show.

There’s one more podcast I want to pitch for that’s up for an award in the education category (mine was nominated but did not make the cut). Pediacast is a podcast by Dr Mike, a board-certified pediatrician. He is entertaining and highly informative. If you have kids at home, this is a great podcast to listen to. Try it out, and then go vote for it.

Don't Miss Our Local Teleseminar on Integrating New Media Into Mainstream PR Campaigns

PRSA is hosting another teleseminar on Tuesday. Our chapter will be hosting a viewing site to save you money. It normally would cost $150 for PRSA members and $250 non-members.

But at the San Antonio-sponsored location, it's free for members and only $20 for guests.

But who care's if the topic is relevant and if the speakers aren't good.

Well I can vouch for this one. I've heard one of the speakers (Katie Paine) and the moderator before. They are excellent speakers and they are practical and very helpful.

Here's the description of the teleseminar:

In the age of citizen journalism, businesses can no longer hide behind a veil of secrecy; they are naked to the public eye. One false step can have devastating consequences for a company’s online reputation.Spurred by the advent of online publishing tools like blogs and podcasts, organizations are circumventing the news media filter.

Forward-thinking PR practitioners are telling their stories themselves, and they’re utilizing search engine optimization, web content management, audio and video on demand, RSS, social bookmarks, social networking and virtual environments to do it by engaging their constituents in a constructive, mutually beneficial dialogue. Find out from these PR thought leaders how they successfully integrate new media into mainstream PR campaigns, and how you can apply their techniques, in this latest “Meet the Media” teleseminar.

You will discover:
• Why PR professionals are best situated to capitalize on social media.
• How to win internal and external support for new media initiatives.
• The benefits and drawbacks of the various enabling technologies.
• How these subject-matter experts create a compelling business case that wins budget approval for social media initiatives that take organizations and clients into uncharted waters.

Moderator: Public relations executive and new media pioneer, Eric Schwartzman, founder and chairman of online newsroom provider iPressroom and managing director of Los Angeles public relations firm Schwartzman & Associates. He also produces the PRSA award-winning PR Podcast “On the Record...Online.”

Panelists:
Phil Gomes, Vice President, Edelman
Greg Jarboe, Founder, SEO-PR
Katie Paine, author of KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
American Red Cross, San Antonio Area Chapter, 3642 E. Houston St.

So come on. It's not that much time out of your day and you'll learn useful information. Plus it won't cost much -- especially if you are a member.

Register now!

Cool New Use for Jott

I have discovered a really cool use for Jott. In case you haven’t heard of this tool, it’s a free web service that lets you call a toll-free number and leave a message. The service then transcribes your message and sends it by e-mail. The transcriptions aren’t perfect. But they’re pretty close. It takes about 60 seconds to set up an account. And they don’t ask for personal information except your name, cell phone number and e-mail address.

I heard about Jott on Bryan Person’s “Tools of the Trade” segment on his NewCommRoad podcast.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been sending myself reminder messages, like “Postpone dentist appointment” and “Buy calamine.” That’s been really useful for this working mom of two little tykes.

But I’ve just come up with a use that is even more valuable to me. You know those cute little things children do that you don’t want to forget? I keep a MS Word file of little stories like that. It serves as a journal in a way. I used to be real good at updating it back when I was e-mailing photos of the kids to family members. I’d include a little story too. But now, I post those photos online. So I’ve gotten behind with the updates.

Enter Jott.com. When I’m away from my computer and I think of a cute, funny or touching story about one of my kiddos, I just Jott myself. Then when I get home, I can copy it into my master file. Like this one:

I was reading a story to [my 4-year-old]. There was a drawing of a dairy cow. She said, “Look Mommy. There’s a pig coming out of that cow’s bottom!”

Que cute!

Using Delicious in Public Relations

Learn About Social Media from Your Desk

In this set of lessons, I introduced readers to Delicious and talked about the value of using it to share your bookmarks. But what I find fascinating is how many ways there are to use Delicious in your public relations work.

One thing is to come up with a special tag for a particular topic, and then you and others can start building a set of bookmarks related to your topic. The advantage is that your searches will filter out items you are not looking for. For example, the folks who have been coming up with the social media release formats are using the tag: hRelease. I don’t know how they came up with that particular tag, but they’ve been using it, along with any other relevant tags.

You also can set up an account for a client or your organization and tag related items. For example, let’s say you are about to have some major announcement to media. You could create a “purpose-built” Delicious page that already has a set of bookmarks for web pages and related news stories on your topic. Include a link in your news release. Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications wrote more about this in his blog post, “Tagging: ‘Crowdsourcing’ vs. ‘Purpose-Built.’”

But why limit this to when you have big news announcements. You could do the same for topics that you deal with consistently. By creating a Delicious account for such a topic and tagging new items regularly to keep it updated, you are helping journalists in their research, but the information can seem more credible because it’s not always created by you. More on this too by the insightful Todd Defren in his post, “Daily Servings of del.icio.us Delights.”

Of course, you can use Delicious to help you keep track of trends in your industry or to see how your issue is being covered prior to your big announcement – along with your other media and web monitoring tools.

Some excellent tips are available on the Information Age Education blog post, “5 Things You Need to Know Before Using Del.icio.us, a Social Bookmark.”

For those who are feeling brave and a little geeky, Web Worker Daily provides some useful suggestions at “8 Tips for Better del.icio.us Bookmarking.”

If you haven’t started using Delicious, give it a shot. This is one social media tool that is really easy to jump into.