Disruptive Conversations

Today I received a personal reminder of the new strong linkage between Google+ and YouTube.  Given that today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the USA, I posted a link to a YouTube video of Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech to my Google+ account.  

I had forgotten, though, that... 

Every post on Google+ about a YouTube link is DISPLAYED ON YOUTUBE as a comment!

So a little while later when I went to get the link again to pass along to someone else, I refreshed the page in my browser and there was my smiling face staring back at me...

Now, in this particular case, I don't particularly mind. I just had forgotten that this integration was already in place between Google+ and YouTube. Google rolled it out in November and almost immediately came under fire for increasing spam comments on YouTube (which they are now trying to address through new tools for YouTube creators).

I need to remember this, too, because when posting a YouTube link to Google+ I may be thinking about it in the context of my Google+ page and the content I post there... but I have to remember that my text will also be seen by people viewing the video on YouTube and without the context of having perhaps regularly seen my Google+ content.

Similarly, I need to remember that ANY sharing on Google+ will wind up on YouTube. For instance, on Facebook I have on occasion re-shared a video that I thought friends might be interested in... but that I might not necessarily want to have my name attached to. It might just be a silly video that I found funny.

With this G+ integration, however, any time I re-share a video in this manner on Google+ my name and my comment are going to appear on the YouTube page for that video. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I will say it will make me be much more careful about what kind of YouTube links I share on Google+.

How about you? What do you think about this integration between Google+ and YouTube?

P.S. And going back to the original video link that started this all, if you haven't watched Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech, it truly IS a powerful speech!

---

UPDATE: Here's an issue with the integration - my Google+ comment is displayed over on YouTube, but my name "Dan York" on YouTube links over to my YouTube account instead of my Google+ account. While that makes sense: 1) I don't use that YouTube account; and 2) I left the comment in the context of Google+ and now people have no way to see that. So it's a kind of a one-way integration...

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• following me on App.net;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

It's 2014. If you are in PR, marketing or communications - or have that as part of your role, even if you are not formally in that "department" - is part of your business the rapid creation of online content?

The Internet provides all of us with a fundamental opportunity on a scale great than we've ever had before:

We can tell our OWN story, in our OWN words, through our OWN channels.

The gatekeepers of the past to whom you had to beg permission for them to publish news about your organization are now... gone. Disrupted by the Internet.

As Tom Foremski famously wrote, "every company is a media company." (Also see these posts.)

But have YOU embraced that?

Are you thinking like a "media company"? Are you thinking about how you can best tell your story online? Are you thinking about how you enable many people within your organization to tell your story?

I'm not just talking about social media and encouraging employees to share or retweet corporate tweets or posts on Facebook or Google+.

Are you enabling people within your organization to rapidly create online content related to their roles?

Can they easily post blog posts? Can they post videos to YouTube? Can they create an audio podcast episode? Can they post photos to Instagram or Pinterest or Flickr?

Or does everything have to go through YOU in the PR or Marketing department? Are YOU the only one who can post information about the company online?

And if so, can you/your department scale to truly represent your company online when thinking like a media company?

Unless you've got a large staff and budget, I think the answer for most people is that to truly embrace the "media company" thinking, you have to look at how you enable more people within your organization to rapidly post content about their aspects of the company. Your role can then evolve to be in helping with the overall strategy and with enabling the individual groups within the company to rapidly create online content - and also to post

If you are embracing the "every company is a media company" opportunity that is out there (and guess what, if you aren't your competitors either already are or will be soon), then you need to start asking yourself some questions:

Authority

Do people within your organization have the authority to create online content related to their part of the organization? Can they do so rapidly? Or does everything have to go through 15 layers of approvals before it can go out?

Do you trust certain people within your organization to communicate online on behalf of your organization?

Tools

On a purely practical level, CAN they rapidly create content? Does your website or blog system allow them to rapidly create content? Do they have the tools - and training on the tools - to be able to create content?

Have you reduced the "latency" in your processes? Is the user experience as fast as it can be?

If someone wants to post something online, particularly someone who might only be doing this as a small part of their larger work, can they get into your system, enter in their content fast, and publish it quickly?

Or is your system slow, with many different screens and fields that just don't make sense?

If you have a non-tech-savvy person who just wants to post an article with maybe a photo, can they do that fast?

Skills

To that point, do the people in your organization have the skills to rapidly create content? Do you have people who can write well who are tasked with communicating for their group? Do you have people knowledgable in how to create videos or well-done photographs? Do you have people who understand the nuances of using different types of social media services?

Think about this - have you ever considered "embedding reporters" into the different groups and teams within your organization? Hiring people with communications skills who don't work directly for, say, the PR department, but instead are working within the actual product teams or other divisions within your company?

Could you do something like that with those embedded communications people having some connection to your central team? (And some companies are doing exactly this by hiring some of the journalists who have been laid off from the true "media companies" (ex. newspapers) who have been disrupted.)

Can you help people within your organization to gain the skills to help tell their part of your larger story?

---

The Internet has fundamentally disrupted the traditional view of PR, marketing and communications. The opportunity is there for people who can embrace the new world to truly rise above the others out there and tell their story in their own words.

Are you embracing that change?

Are you enabling the people in your organization to rapidly create their own content?

Are you thinking like a "media company"?

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• following me on App.net;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---

What are Google+ “Hangouts On Air” (HOA) all about and how can communicators best use them? How does a “Hangout On Air” differ from a “Hangout”? What kind of technology do you need to know to use them? What are some tips and tricks for working most effectively with a Google+ HOA? What is the linkage to YouTube? How do you get started?

Those were all questions I addressed with my guest Randy Resnick in the first episode of a brand new podcast I'm down doing called "FIR On Technology with Dan York". You can listen on the episode page (where there are also links to HOA resources) or here:

The interview was fun to do and from comments in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+ has already been a help to multiple listeners.

As I noted in the introduction post on the For Immediate Release (FIR) website, the goal of the overall "FIR On Technology" podcast is to answer questions such as these:

How can communicators best use new tools such as, say, Google+ Hangouts On Air to tell their stories in new ways or to reach new audiences? Are there tips and tricks they should be aware of? What is new in the latest release of WordPress? Why should someone in PR and marketing care about something like IPv6 or HTML5?

For close to 9 years now I've been contributing weekly reports into the regular For Immediate Release (FIR)podcast hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Now, with the creation of the "FIR Podcast Network" and the launch of new shows, it was logical to launch a technology-focused podcast where I could do a deeper dive than just the 5 minutes in the regular FIR episodes.

Please do note - my regular weekly FIR reports WILL continue!

Nothing changes there... it's just that these "FIR On Technology" episodes will allow for more time to get into specific topics at a higher level of detail.  I'd love to hear your feedback about this episode or the overall idea either as comments to this blog post or via social media or email: 

• Twitter: @danyork
• Google+: +DanYork
• Email: [email protected]

In particular, if there are any topics you'd really like to see me address on future episodes... or if you want to pitch me on why it might be interesting to interview you or a client, I'm open to that as well.

The "FIR On Technology with Dan York" podcast will NOT be a "regular" podcast in that it will not be on a specific interval, i.e. weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. It is instead "a periodic podcast" meaning that the episodes will come out whenever I have time to record and produce them. I'm aiming for at least monthly, but there may be more at different times.

If you'd like to follow along, you can:

• View and listen to the episodes on the FIR web site
• Subscribe via RSS

A subscription option via iTunes will be available soon.

I'm greatly appreciative of the FIR podcast community who has been very supportive of me doing this podcast - and of course I'm deeply grateful to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their support and continuing to involve me in the growing world of "FIR".

Please do join in and follow along... there is a LOT of technology and tools out there to talk about with communicators!

P.S. The music I am using (with his permission) for the intro and outro comes from my friend Mark Knox in Ottawa, whose music can be found on his SoundCloud account.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• following me on Twitter;
• adding me to a circle on Google+;
• following me on App.net;
• subscribing to my email newsletter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed.

---