Digital Download with Paul Sutton

Public relations has had issues with measuring return on investment for, arguably, the entirety of its life. Competitive disciplines such as digital marketing, advertising and SEO have mopped up business for little other reason than PR has struggled to prove its worth. A new methodology, however, promises to guide PR professionals towards a process that demonstrates its value once and for all. In...

The CIPR’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) panel has published new research revealing the impact of AI on public relations and communications practice. It highlights where AI is already impacting skills, predicts the impact on the profession in the next five years and makes interesting and, depending on your perspective, challenging reading for anyone working in communications. In this episode...

Podcasting has undergone a massive resurgence in popularity over the last couple of years, and the boom shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down. In fact, with Google entering the fray listening could as much as double in the next two to three years. Communications professionals, however, seem to be reluctant to embrace podcasts as a medium perhaps due to unfamiliarity with the technology and pro...

Personal branding is a term that few people like, but that many people understand the huge value of. We all have a personal brand, whether or not we like it or whether we understand what it is. In the first episode in Season Two of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to blogger, podcaster, speaker and author Mark Schaefer about his new book ‘Known’ and ask the question: is it really p...

In early March I wrote a blog post entitled ‘The Four Horsemen of the PR-pocalypse’ . It outlined four key threats to the public relations industry, each of which represents a threat but in combination could quite possibly wipe out large swathes of agencies, freelancers and in-house communications practitioners. It created quite a stir within the industry. This is the final show in Sea...

You know how sometimes you read the latest thoughts of a social media guru and get swept away by the wisdom they impart? You know how sometimes you can read two contradictory articles and be convinced by both of them? There’s a lot of rubbish out there in the world of digital communications. In this straight-talking episode of the Digital Download podcast I chat to Danny Brown, a marketer wi...

We’ve all got mobile phones with 8 or even 16 megapixel cameras on them. And we all know that imagery is vital when it comes to social media marketing. Which means we have the ability to fill our Instagram profiles without having to go anywhere near a costly professional photographer. Doesn’t it? In this episode of the Digital Download podcast I talk to Andy Sutton, a commercial photog...

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has caused much confusion within the communications industry around the responsibilities of different parties and who needs to do what in order to comply. Very few seem to have any clarity and, rather like the movie franchise, it’s all a bit fifty shades of grey. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to founder of KC Communicati...

Internal communications is an area of public relations that often gets missed when digital technology is discussed, largely because the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all external-facing. But innovation in IC is arguably greater than outward-facing communications channels, with the likes of Office 365, Facebook Workplace, Yammer and Slack providing internal communicators with a pletho...

Contemporary PR and communications professionals face a challenging but exciting time. The explosion of digital technology, questions over ethical practice, the data revolution and the evolution of both internal and external facing digital platforms has prompted as many questions as it has provided answers. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, I seek to answer some of those questions w...

Website design is normally overlooked by communications professionals as ‘the thing that the geeks do’. But if we want our campaigns to fly in an increasingly digital and mobile world, we have to understand some of the basics of website development and web browsers. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to veteran website developer Richard Shea about how website desig...

Barely a week goes by without one company or another attracting the ire of the mob on Twitter and Facebook. Brand trolling seems to have become an acceptable way to behave, causing no end of problems for the unwary and ill-prepared. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to Tamara Littleton, CEO of both The Social Element and crisis simulation platform Polpeo, about the rise of br...

2018 has been labelled by some as ‘the year of the smart home’. Driven by the adoption of Google Home and Amazon Echo, voice recognition promises to transform not only the way we interact with the internet of things but also the way we use the internet itself. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to co-founders of marketing communications agency Threepipe, Jim Hawker...

When the White Moose Cafe published a scathing review of vlogger Elle Darby’s request for a free five night stay in return for a positive YouTube review, the ensuing storm captured the attention of the world’s media. There are strong arguments to be made on both sides about what does and does not make someone ‘influential’. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, o...

Public relations had a turbulent year in 2017. With a perceived lack of self-confidence and new technologies such as artificial intelligence, messaging bots and voice recognition looming on the horizon, the industry faces a potentially defining 12 months ahead. In this episode of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to 2018 CIPR President and author of #FuturePRoof Sarah Hall about the way the pub...

To stay ahead of the game in digital media, you have to be informed about what technological and best practice trends are developing. You can only prepare for what you know. In the first ever episode of the Digital Download podcast, I talk to leading PR blogger and author of Spin Sucks and Marketing in the Round Gini Dietrich about what communications professionals need to get to grips with over t...