The Pod

When asked how podcasts can be applied I really had to stretch the imagination. Some of the other social medias we have discussed were pretty obvious, but podcasting was a bit trickier. Even so, I believe it can be done! A great article in PR news provides a clear explanation of podcasting and how it can be used within the public relations realm.

Contrary to this article, I tend to lean towards a more applicable place for podcasting is strictly within an organizaton. I have to give props to Margaret Orlando on the most creative idea I have found for podcasting in PR! She stated that she sees podcasting as a more internal communication tool by providing, "meeting debreifings, conference debreifings, things that people need to catch up on about their organization, this would be a great way to transform the hum-drum newsletter from days of old into the Web 2.0 world."

I absolutely love this idea! In my job, I don't have the time or desire to sit down for twenty minutes to catch up on my emails. If podcasting was provided by my department I could catch up on meetings I may have missed while I was away or just a simple general announcement that could be a critical policy change. In fact, I could even do this on the way to work! Thus, allowing less distraction and better patient care.

Why Do I Care?

Integrated marketing communication is to me just a way of saying, in today's society we must combine all forces to prove to a customer why they should should even care about your organization. This is critical because in today's society people are so constantly inundated with "Come Here!" and "Buy This!" or "We're the Best for You!" that it seems almost impossible to make your organization stand out so that the public will choose you to pursue. Thus, I believe it is necessary to combine advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing into one big ball of publicity genius to reach the full potential of an organization.
This tactic is already beginning to be seen online as well as some offline campaigns. An example of this would be the presidential election. The Barack Obama campaign used their online influence to help promote and educate others on how to use local offline tactics of marketing, promotion, advertising, etc. Thus, combining both online and offline PR and marketing.
The differences of these two areas, PR and marketing, are becoming increasingly blurred. I found an interesting blog with some great resources and interesting comments that address just that. Enjoy!

Release Me!

Online news releases are a recently rapidly growing trend in the media world. They provide an unlimited amount of information to anyone, not just the common news sources that decide to pick up the story. Before one could only get the news that was fed to them by major media organizations, but now it is as if every major or minute event in the world is screaming, "Release Me! Moreover, they can be thorough in the information provided such as pictures, videos, audio clips, etc related to the story.

This also allows for information overload. When looking at the proposed "New Social Media News Release Template, Version 1.5 by Shift Communications, I can't help but be totally overwhelmed and lost by all the information that can potentially provide. While it is great to obtain all angles of a news release, it definitely has the potential of turning those not interested in spending a lot of time reading for the key information away.


However, with all that said, I find it overall as a PR goldmine with the provided options to have the reader with continued information he/she can subscribe to for future news releases, feed, etc.