Dan York

Chris Abraham, Cindy Crescenzo, and Steve Farnsworth join host Shel Holtz to talk about these topics:

• Breitbart News called for a boycott of Kellogg’s after the cereal company pulled its ads, then started publishing articles critical of the company after calling the decision to withdraw advertising “censorship.” Is this the new reality for companies making what used to be simple business decisions?
• Employee engagement surveys aren’t worth much anymore according to one expert, since people are more concerned about survey scores than addressing engagement issues. Is it time to stop measuring engagement?
• Virtual Reality headset sales aren’t setting any records. Can public relations help make it go mainstream?
• With the Amazon Echo and Google Home, along with Siri and Google Now, it’s fast becoming a voice-driven world. Brands and agencies will have to adapt.
• A lot has happened on the fake news front since we first reported on it, including a shooting in Washington, D.C. by a North Carolina man “self-investigating” a fake news story. We’ll bring you up to date.
• Brands have jumped on the emoji bandwagon, but audiences think they’re trying too hard.
• Figuring out what people are talking about using Google Trends is a better way to do real-time marketing.
• Dan York reports on the Internet Governance Forum this week in Mexico, a panel last week on Internet fragmentation (which communicators don’t want), and WordPress’s move toward promoting more SSL/TLS.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @ChrisAbraham, @CreativeComms, and @Stevology.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About today’s panel:

Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response. He operates his consultancy at Gerris Corp. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Cindy Crescenzo brings more than 15 years of research, measurement and planning expertise to the corporate communications world. Her passion for numbers and audience research have helped thousands of communicators all over the world transform the way they communicate, by teaching them the power of surveys, metrics, focus groups and executive interviews.  She and her husband and business partner, Steve Crescenzo, founded Crescenzo Communications more than 20 years ago and together they have energized the communication industry with their proven tactics and strategies to combine research and strategy with creativity and best-practice communications.

Steve Farnsworth has over 15 years as a senior digital marketing executive, and is currently the Chief Marketing Officer for the @Steveology Group, a content marketing for demand generation agency serving high tech B2B organizations. He works with mid-sized and large companies, and funded start-ups to develop and implement multimedia content marketing programs that increase inbound leads and grows brand reputation. Steve is a Forbes top 50 social media influencer. He is a digital marketing educator and has moderated panels, spoken at, or managed industry events at Google, Intel, PayPal, Yahoo!, Cisco, Adobe, Electronic Arts, HP, SAP, Wells Fargo, TEDx, Applied Materials, Symantec, NetApp, and Stanford on brand, social, digital, and content marketing.

The post FIR #64: That’s not our shark! appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Jim Hawker, co-founder and owner of Threepipe, a London-based PR and digital marketing agency, and experience architect Andrea Vascellari weighed in on the following topics:

• The reputations of the S&P 500 are worth nearly 44 trillion of shareholder value, more than $1 out of every $5
• Speaking of reputation, Sony has filed a patent for a process to assess the reputation of journalists and their articles
• British grocery upstart Lidl has gotten a lot of positive buzz for its “Social Price Drop” campaign
• In a recent post, Brian Solis urged companies to go mobile-first
• How should communicators react to the disruption social platforms are causing established media?
• Dan York reports on data breaches, the imminent release of WordPress 4.7, the upcoming WordPress USA event, and an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible dealing with acoustics
• Facebook blocked Admiral Insurance from accessing Facebook user data to make decisions about how much to charge for premiums
• Diageo created an immersive VR video to experience a drunk-driving car crash from the first-person perspective
• Brands and agencies are jumping on the Snapchat Spectacles bandwagon; is there something to it or are they just chasing the newest shiny object?

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @JimJimHawker and @vascellari.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About today’s panel:

Jim Hawker is Co-Founder and Business Development Director of Threepipe, a PR and digital marketing agency of 70 people based in London. The agency runs campaigns across PR, SEO and paid media for clients across business, consumer, sports and entertainment sectors. Jim has 20 years’ experience working both in house and agency side in both the UK and US. In his spare time he is a big sports fan as well as an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes (hence the connection to the Threepipe name).

Andrea Vascellari is an Experience Architect. He works at the intersection of digital transformation and experience design to help organizations develop their communications strategies. Andrea is an award-winning communications professional with over 15 years of professional experience and a deep understanding of marketing and communications, including public and media relations. He worked as Director of Digital and Content at WPP, world leader in advertising and marketing services, as Digital Planner at the leading global communications marketing firm Edelman, and as CEO of Itive an international digital strategy agency he founded with offices in Finland and New York.

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First-time panelist Liz Scherer joined Howard Greenstein and David Spark for a deep dive into fake news.

• “Post-truth” was the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year. (One of the finalists was “alt-right.”)
• Fake news is more viral than real news.
• Jeff Jarvis has recommended some ways to address fake news.
• Fake news is coming for companies; in fact, PepsiCo and its CEO, Indra Nooyi, are experiencing it right now.
• Does the rise of fake news and the balkanization of news mean the end of mass persuasion for PR?
• What is Facebook’s role and responsibility in addressing fake news that spreads on its site?
• Mark Zuckerburg says he wants to banish fake news from Facebook, but it’s hard
• Did a fear of conservative backlash stymie Facebook’s efforts to curtain fake news during the election?
• A group of renegade Facebook employees has met in secret to come up with solutions to present to management.
• Dan York reports on the recent meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, Facebook Live’s apparent roll-out of its two-person streaming capability to non-verified users, and Twitter’s adoption of QR codes.
• In the wake of the election, what’s the future of data and polling?
• Two “State of Social Media Reports” have been released: one from Pew Research, the other from Buffer.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @howardgr, @lizscherer, and @dspark.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About today’s panel:

Howard Greenstein is a marketing technology strategist, working with companies to form strategies for online communities, social networking, blogs, and other media. He helped found the Social Media Club, which he served as CEO and executive director. Currently, Howard is chief operating officer at DomainSkate, which helps companies protect themselves from brand fraud and cybercrimes. And he is an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University.

Liz Scherer is a digital communications strategist specializing in health & wellness, nonprofits, regulated industry and agriculture. A pioneer in the social web healthcare movement, Liz has been involved in moving the envelope in terms of health and gender equity and is a former social media advisory board member for Health Justice CT. She is especially interested in how novel & emerging players are ultimately impacting agility marketing and in the disruption of content/communication-driven customer experiences. In addition to her extensive experience as a strategist, Liz has worked as a journalist, medical writer, copywriter and blogger and maintains active memberships in the National Association of Science Writers, the Association of Health Care Journalists and Journalism and Women’s Symposium. Currently, she is a curator of Emerging Infectious Diseases for univadis.com’s Clinical Essentials, and recently took a role to direct strategic communications for a mHealth publisher. Liz sits on the Advisory Board for the Center for Health, Media & Policy, Hunter College, NYC. In her spare time, she mentors health start-ups at GA/1776 DC and Village Capital, and is active in the D.C. Tech Community.

David Spark is a veteran tech journalist and founder the brand journalism firm Spark Media Solutions. Spark has worked with brands such as IBM, Microsoft, HP, and Indycar Racing. He’s reported on the tech scene for more than 18 years in more than 40 media outlets, and is the author of “THREE FEET FROM SEVEN FIGURES: One-on-One Engagement Techniques to Qualify More Leads at Trade Shows” available at ThreeFeetBook.com.

The post FIR #62: A Real Episode About Fake News appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.