Hobson and Holtz

The Hobson & Holtz Report

Monday, August 03, 2009

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #471: August 3, 2009

Content summary: Neville and Shel back again jointly hosting FIR; Richard Laermer and Geoff Livingston relaunch The L Show podcast; Shel quoted in today’s Wall Street Journal; IABC president Julie Freeman interviewed for Houston Chronicle article on social media; FIR Interview with Dell’s Richard Binhammer and Kerry Bridge posted; upcoming FIR Interview with BrightIdea CEO Matthew Greeley; follow-ups: Best Buy crowd-sourced social media job description published, judgement goes against Michael Arrington in the UK in Sam Sethi libel case order; Sallie Goetsch reports from the Podcast Asylum about the VoloMedia podcasting patent kerfuffle; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News Thats Fits: Burson-Marsteller studies Fortune 100 use of social media; a new dimension in the ongoing SpinVox kerfuffle as TechCrunch Europe encounters the perils of drafting sensitive blog posts online; virtual worlds back on the rise; 10 words to ban from press releases; FIR Friendfeed Room round-up; music from A Step Behind; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for August 3, 2009: A 60-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

FIR #471 show notes at The New PR Wiki

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Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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So, until Thursday August 6…

Posted by neville on 08/03 at 10:03 AM
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Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #470: July 30, 2009

Content summary: Upcoming FIR Interview is coming; developing stories we’re watching: the SpinVox kerfuffle, patent for podcasting by VoloMedia, the extraordinary tale of Aral Balkan and Sys-Con/Ulitzer; Dan York reports on the Microsoft-Yahoo search and online advertising deal; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: could marketing investments grow because of buzz?, Journalism.co.uk crowd sources how to write the perfect press release, why you should conduct a social media audit, what the CEO of Crocs did when a blogger threatened him (what would you do?); listeners’ comments discussion; the Twitgigs Experiment in London next week; music from M Lovers; and more.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for July 30, 2009: A 63-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and almost live from Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

FIR #470 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday August 3…

Posted by neville on 07/30 at 10:41 AM
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Monday, July 27, 2009

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #469: July 27, 2009

Content summary: Flight delays for Shel; upcoming FIR Interview with Dell’s Richard Binhammer and Kerry Bridge; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and ‘respondeat superior’; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: crisis PR and the SpinVox kerfuffle, marketers are emailing in the dark survey says, Universal McCann’s Wave4 study shows global active internet audience of 625 million, Twitter launches guide to using Twitter for business; FIR Friendfeed Room round-up; music from Sunshine Variety Club; and more.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for July 27, 2009: A 49-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

FIR #469 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday July 30…

Posted by neville on 07/27 at 12:49 PM
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Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #468: July 23, 2009

Content summary:The Bad Pitch Blog bloggers are hosting a teleseminar. An FIR interview with Chris Aung-Thwin and Jack Horwitz of HomelessNation.org interview is up. There will be no FIR Live in July; our next BlogTalk Radio show is set for August 22.We don’t understand the disconnected nature of podcast reviews on iTunes. Dan York reports on interoperability of hosted sites and applications. The Media Monitoring Minute looks at the Amazon acquisition of Zapos.com. News That Fits: a HubSpot study suggests social media releases don’t work as well as traditional releases; Twitter strategy for government; MuckRack offers 130-character press releases; TwitCam integrates streaming video and Twitter commentary. Listeners’ comments, including a discussion of the “free” concept. Music from Wright and Hudson. And, as always, more.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for July 23, 2009: A 65-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA.

FIR #468 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday, July 27…

Posted by shel on 07/23 at 05:38 PM
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

8 tips on giving away books for free

Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson‘s new book Free is about the free economy, and he’s walking the talk by making multiple versions of the book – in print, online, and audio – available for free.

Anderson’s activities were a news item in episode 466 of the FIR podcast last week when we reported Anderson’s plans, prompting FIR listener Frank Meeuwsen to offer his perspectives as a guest author on why free can be good to increase awareness about and drive sales of your product or service.

8 tips on spreading your philosophy through free books online (but pay for them in the store)

By Frank Meeuwsen
Guest Author

I have been reading this discussion with great interest, since we are actually giving away free books to our audience! I am the co-founder of Lifehacking.nl, a Dutch site on working and living smarter. You could see us as the Dutch counterpart of the popular Lifehacker.com, but we try to go beyond the nifty software and geeky Mac-hacks.

So far, we have released three complete e-books for free and also made them available in print. We have seen tremendous results in spreading the word of Lifehacking.

100 Lifehacking tips: In June 2008 we released our first e-book with the 100 best blogposts from our weblog. Slightly edited for print, some new screenshots and of course a nice layout. We released the e-book on the same day it hit the stores.

Everyone who wanted to download the book, we asked them to leave their name and email address so we could contact them once we had new cool stuff to give away. About 15,000 people did.

Upgrade your Life: We translated this book from Gina Trapani (Lifehacker.com) and left out some real US examples and inserted some of our own. We gave the people who downloaded the first book a sneak preview and they could download the book for free one day before the rest of the world could. A very very large percentage did so. The book got released in print the same day as the PDF.

Zen to Done: We got the rights to Leo Babauta‘s great "shortcut into GTD" and we had this translated as well in Dutch. We applied the same tactic, gave people who downloaded before a sneak preview to pre-download the book before anyone else.

We worked together with two great publishers here in the Netherlands, SDU (100 Lifehackingtips and Zen to Done) and A.W. Puna (Upgrade your Life).

What have we learned?

There are a few learnings we have by giving away free content.

1. Free works great for paying books!

Yes, the publisher still makes money. Even though the books are free online, there are still lots of people buying them in the store. Perhaps even more, since you can get a free insight in 200-400 page book before you decide to buy it.

2. Make it easy to buy

We are still working on this (we are no e-commerce experts) but it should be as easy as 1-2-3 to buy the book once you have the free PDF. As I said, we have the email address of our downloaders, so we can contact them and perhaps give them a nice incentive to buy the book. Also, the technological improvements on the PDF-format should make it easier to buy from the PDF itself. We are still looking into this.

3. Pick your moment!

This is something we really discovered by accident. We released the first book just before the summer holiday. A moment where a lot of people pick their books to take with them on vacation. Because we released the 200 page PDF for free, a lot of people downloaded it and checked it out. They then decided to buy it in hardcopy to take in their suitcase on their holiday. Also, the book is 200 pages, you don’t print that very easy. We tried it again with Zen to Done to release it in time for the holidays. Not only a great Christmas present but also nice to give to business relations as a holiday present. We definitely see interesting possibilities in using the right moment to release your free e-book.

4. Love your audience

Above all, know who you are talking to! If your readers would like to see more of a specific subject, respond to that. On the Lifehacking Academies and with our presentations, we meet a lot of our readers and we always talk to them and see where we can help them.

5. Spread the word

Make sure you’re on Twitter or any other social network of any importance to spread the word you are releasing free e-books. Retweets are getting easier on different Twitter clients. We also take any opportunity to talk about the free downloads. Why? Because that’s the Purple Cow for us. When we say we’ve got a new book, well, take a number and stand in line. When we talk about how we are giving them away for free, people listen.

6. Work with publishers!

Don’t forget to work closely with your publisher. They are the experts on publishing, book deals, legal issues, marketing, etc. But don’t be afraid to speak up and have your own opinion. We were very fortunate to work with great people at great publishers who are open for these new ideas and are willing to take a risk with it.

7. Think networked!

Don’t think in big glitzy ad-campaigns, book signing tours and TV appearances. Think one tweet at a time, one download at a time. This stuff takes time and takes energy. Be prepared to give a lot to get a lot more in the long run!

8. What have we gained?

One of the biggest things we got from it was attention. Not only on our website through press and word of mouth, but also because we get invited to give talks and lectures on this subject (giving away stuff) and we host a paid Lifehacking Academy 4-5 times a year where we give workshops, unconferences and inspirational talks on a variety of subjects.

This attention is much more valuable in the long run because it gives us a platform to grow on, work together with more people and have the opportunity to spread our "gospel" of working smarter to people in the Dutch government, financial world and healthcare.

Our publishers have gained tremendous insight in their audience. Think about it: What would you rather have? Sell 10,000 books but you don’t know who they are, if they are interested (on an individual level) in more titles from you catalogue? Or have 10,000 names and addresses for you to start a conversation with about your future books, perhaps sell more titles on a personal level and find new information on your market?

The future

We are currently negotiating deals together with some publishers on releasing more free e-books. I can’t give you any names yet but it sure looks promising. We are also vamping up our own online store where you can download the books but also buy them immediately.

We are also looking into the e-reader market. In The Netherlands we don’t have the Kindle yet, but there are some other e-readers who look promising.

Think about giving away e-books to your readers but gaining a two-way conversation channel while they are reading the book!

Frank Meeuwsen is a self-proclaimed digital bohemian, living in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He has an extensive background in the social media world, starting his first weblog in 2000, being the first with a Dutch corporate weblog in 2002, organising the first business blog meetings and "regular" weblog meetings between 2002 and 2004 and he played a big role in the rise of the Dutch weblog awards, Dutch Bloggies.

Right now, Frank is editor in chief of Lifehacking.nl, a Dutch weblog on working smarter and a platform for much more online and offline activities. Frank is also a digital inspirator and strategist on new online developments with his own business The Incredible Adventure starts here…

He’s a big Twitter fan and can’t wait until the day his young daughter can read and write so she can take over her own weblog he is maintaining now!

FIR co-host Neville Hobson first met Frank in 2005 when Neville lived in Amsterdam.

(Cross-posted from NevilleHobson.com)

Posted by neville on 07/22 at 10:10 AM
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Monday, July 20, 2009

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #467: July 20, 2009

Content summary: Are FIR reviews on iTunes country specific?; Neville went to WordCamp UK 2009 in Cardiff; Michael Netzley reports on China’s internet population and the Rio Tinto alleged industrial espionage case in China; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: users understand ads fuel free content, new study from Charlene Li shows that deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance, why do people go online?, world’s next top brands set to rise in the East says Wolff-Olins/FT study, Google Reader gets Facebooked, the lesson from Amazon deleting e-books on the Kindle; listener comments held for the next show; news about Thursday’s show; music from Al Phlipp and the Woo Team; and more.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for July 20, 2009: A 60-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

FIR #467 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday July 23…

Posted by neville on 07/20 at 01:53 PM
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Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #466: July 16, 2009

Content summary: Kami Watson Huyse, APR, is our guest co-host while Neville attends a Financial Times blogger outreach event; discussion of the role of ROI in measuring the impact of social media; Dan York reports on Google Chrome, United Breaks Guitars and the denial-of-service attacks originall presumed to be launched from North Korea; Neville follows up on the NLA’s plan to charge for using links to members’ newspaper articles; Media Monitoring Minute; News That Fits: TechCrunch’s ethics called into question after publishing documents stolen from Twitter, study measures the chatter of the news cycle, mommy bloggers plan a weeklong PR blackout, Morgan Stanley intern says teens don’t use Twitter and are happy to pay for live events; listeners’ comments; music from Lisa Blanco; and more.

About our guest co-host: Kami Watson Huyse, APR, is a sought-after speaker and writes an award-winning blog, Communication Overtones, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. She is a senior communicator with nearly 15 years of experience in crisis communication, reputation management, focus group research and media relations. Her ideas and work are featured in several books about social media including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and Now is Gone. She is also a contributor to the MARCOM and PRSA Byline blogs. As a media relations specialist she has garnered coverage for her clients in media outlets such as the “Washington Post,” the “Wall Street Journal,” the “CBS Early Show” and the “San Antonio Express News,” among others.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for July 16, 2009: A 65-minute podcast recorded live from Houston, Texas, and Concord, California, USA.

FIR #466 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday, July 20…

Posted by shel on 07/16 at 08:57 AM
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