CustomScoop's PR PodJots

Welcome to PR PodJots, CustomScoop's weekly rundown of the best of the PR and marketing podcasting conversations.

This week marks the return of a PodJots favorite, Heidi Miller, who gives some valuable advice on interviewing and public speaking.

Diary of a Shameless Self Promoter #95 – How to Win Friends and Interview People

This week, after announcing that the Diary will be going to a bi-monthly schedule, Heidi Miller offers advice for anyone conducting interviews. She covers the top five “interview pitfalls, and how to avoid them.” A podcast commenter claims her biggest problem comes at conferences, when there is often nowhere to get a subject alone and tons of loud background noise. Heidi doesn’t mind not getting people alone, and thinks the background noise can actually add to an interview, liven it up, if you will. She recommends lapel microphones for interviews in these situations.

She mentions an interactive presentation at the New Media Expo she’ll be delivering with tips for conference interviews in particular, for anyone looking to hone their interview style beyond the usual tips.

Pitfalls:

Your guest is just not that interesting. – Drop them soon, and warn them the interview may be edited.

Dealing with a “pompous blowhard,” and droning on – Heidi urges people to find an “interruption point” and steer the conversation back to the topic you’re most interested in.

Help! I spaced out and now I don’t know what my guest just said! – Heidi advises you be honest, and just mention that you need a moment to find your next question, being sure to note that the guest was interesting.

Guest using terms you don’t understand – Never be afraid to admit when you don’t know about something. Just ask them to explain! Your listeners may need an explanation as well.

Guest is on a terrible cell phone – Simple: Never, ever, ever interview anyone on a cell phone! Get thee to a landline, guests…

Forward Podcast #31 – Managing Your Voice (not to mention your brand)

Following a flurry of posts last week (which have been well documented in PR Blog Jots) regarding young PR professionals managing their voices both online and in the office, Paull Young interviews Edelman’s Phil Gomes. Phil wrote a post recently regarding managing up, or the youing professional's ability to effectively communicate ideas and goals to superiors without overstepping boundaries.

Phil thinks that the managing up debate is actually separate from the issue of young PR pros’ ability to blog respectfully. He points out that for everything we teach in college, there’s very little out there to prepare a student to join the workforce, and how to behave as a part of an office.

As for online behavior, he points out that online “viciousness” can come from any level, and has more to do with the individual than how many years they have put in an given industry. People with years and years under their belts have also managed to get into trouble online, and all you can do is “dust yourself off” and keep going.

Also in the podcast:

The podcast concludes this week with some lengthy and useful comments from “the horse’s mouth,” so to speak: young PR professional and blogger Kait Swanson. According to the Forward team, Kait’s “thoughts really put Phil’s theory into practice from the point of view of a young communicator.”

Around the PR Podcast Horn:

Inside PR #77 – Continuing the discussion of the place of young PR bloggers, Terry and David and Terry also cover the topic. They discuss David’s reaction to the conversation launched by a particularly controversial post by a young blogger, and mention some of the blogosphere reactions.

PRobecast #31 – Rob, Sandy and Tim covered a number of issues last week, including the new Yahoo social network Mash (and its unfortunate leak pre-launch), and attempt to answer the question "Does social media make you dumb?" (If I am any indication…that issue is definitely up for debate!) They also touch on the PR behind the "High School Musical" Vanessa Hudgins scandal, and AT&T’s rebranding efforts.

Six Pixels of Separation #69 – After covering the usual housekeeping items on conferences and other concerns and a conversation with Todd Maffin of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mitch offers his six tips of the week. This time, they concern better blogging practices, including writing a draft first, checking for spelling and grammar concerns, and being creative.

Marketing Over Coffee – This week, Chris and John discuss their usual wide variety of topics, covering comment spam, astroturfing, email and podcast deliverability issues, Google AdWords, Facebook Flyers, and much more, including a segment from Chris Brogan.

For Immediate Release – The Hobson & Holtz Report #276: Neville and Shel discussed a number of interesting items, including the recently released UK blogging survey for business and IDC survey.  The pair also covered the crucial topic of Ogilvy’s code of ethics for blogger outreach. The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #277: The duo continued with another interesting podcast later in the week.  Check out their discussion on the StopBlocking.com campaign and media generated by employees.

Marketing Martini #25 - Marketing Martini host Bill Sweetman discusses email marketing, and how to avoid ending up in the “deleted items” folder with the rest of the spam.

Comments

[Heidi Miller]

Thanks for the link love! That episode and blog post were precursors to the Interviews that ROCK session at the Podcast and New Media Expo, which went really well... I think! (Checking the blogosphere to make sure)

[Heidi Miller]

Thanks for the link love! That episode and blog post were precursors to the Interviews that ROCK session at the Podcast and New Media Expo, which went really well... I think! (Checking the blogosphere to make sure)