Category: For Immediate Release

Welcome to episode #9 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Nora Ganim-Barnes, who leads the annual research into social media use among the Fortune and Inc. 500 for the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; Peter Himler, founder of Flatiron Communications in New York; and Ron Ploof, former head of social media for Epson, the podcaster behind Griddlecakes Radio, and creator of the StoryHow Pitch Deck.

On the show this week, we shared our views on the following topics:

• The good and bad of social media in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris
• The decline of blogging among the Fortune 500, and the adoption of Glassdoor.com as a business social media channel
• The kinds of things PR practitioners need to know in order to thrive in today’s digital/online environment
• How the University of Missouri handled protests and the resignations of its president and chancellor
• UPitch, the new app touted as “Tindr for media relations” — will journalists use it?
• A new report shows the financial impact on publishers of ad-blocking software
• How readers reacted to The New York Times’ distribution of Google Cardboard Virtual Reality kits, and the VR native ads that accompanied the Times’ VR story on children refugees
• Starbucks’ strategy of staying virtually silent in the wake of a controversy over its 2015 holiday-themed cups
• Dan York’s report

Connect with this week’s panelists at @NoraBarnes, @PeterHimler, and @RonPloof.

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

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

Join us next week for our 10th episode. Joining me on the panel will be PR educator and consultant Barbara Nixon, GaggleAMP founder and president Glenn Gaudet, and social media and PR consultant and trainer Philippe Borremans.

About this week’s panel

Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes earned a Ph.D. in Consumer Behavior from the University of Connecticut and is a Chancellor Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As Director of the Center for Marketing Research, Nora has provided services in brand and product development, research, promotion, and commercial television production to hundreds of clients. The Center serves as the primary link between the University and businesses in the region. Prominent members of the business community sit on the Center’s Advisory Board and interact with students through the projects conducted under her supervision. Nora has published over 125 articles in academic and professional journals and proceedings, and has contributed chapters to books. In addition she has supervised the writing of approximately 200 business monographs. She is a frequent presenter, session chair and track chair at academic conferences and sits on the review boards of the Health Marketing Quarterly, the Journal of Professional Services Marketing, and the Journal of Marketing Management.

Peter Himler  is a veteran agency executive who has led the media practices at some of the more esteemed global firms including Edelman, Burson-Marsteller, Cohn & Wolfe and Hill & Knowlton. He left the big agency world ten years ago to form Flatiron Communications LLC to help established and emerging companies capitalize on the latest technologies and strategies taking hold in the communications industries. Today, Peter comfortably straddles the worlds of traditional PR, content marketing and digital communications, frequently lecturing and writing about the two on his blog and for Forbes.com. He also owns and edits a publication on Medium called “Adventures in Consumer Technology,” which now has 32,000 followers. He maintains an active engagement in the social media graph, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, RebelMouse, and (far) too many others. He serves as president of the Publicity Club of New York and has advised Social Media Week and the Center for Communication. He sits on the Board of Advisors of the Communications & Media Studies Program at Tufts University, from which he holds a BA in Political Science and French.

Ron Ploof is a 25-year veteran of the high-tech electronics industry. His interest in social media began in 2005 when he launched one of the world’s first indie storytelling podcasts called, Griddlecakes Radio: Exploring the Lost Art of Audio Storytelling. He co-founded a social media consulting firm in 2008 and was the manager of social media for Epson America from 2012 to 2015. But his first love has always been to use storytelling as a communications vehicle. He’s produced an audio book about the American Revolution and written a job-skills book as a novel. His most recent project, The StoryHow™ PitchDeck, is a deck of playing cards that helps business people convert their ideas, messages, and presentations into memorable narratives.

The post FIR #9: Media Relations? There’s An App For That appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #8 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Howard Greenstein, chief operating officer and co-founder of DomainSkate; Francine Hardaway, cofounder of Stealthmode Partners; and Mark Story, communication counsel and social media lead for the National Cancer Institute.

On this week’s show, we shared our views on the follow topics:

• A joint study from the PR Council and the Association of National Advertisers found that CMOs believe brand narrative and social strategies — including content marketing, brand journalism, and social media — all belong under the jurisdiction of marketing or advertising departments. PR? That’s for crisis management and executive communication.
• The possibility of an startup from outside their industries suddenly presenting them with significant competition is the number one thing keeping CEOs awake at night. Call it the uber-ization of business.
• Can spotlighting employees in a company’s social media accounts help make employees happier?
• Reports indicate Facebook will introduce Notify this week. The app will deliver updates when new content is published by Facebook partners. What red flags does Notify wave?
• Chief Digital Officers aren’t, for the most part, officers, and it’s not likely the position will exist for the long-term.
• One of the panelists in a canceled SxSW panel wrote that she had raised the security issue several times before event organizers took the actions we reported in episode 7 of FIR. What went wrong? And what can people do about being harassed online?
• UNICEF swapped ads for a call to action in an effort to defeat ad-blocking. What else can companies do to get their advertising into online publications without having them blocked at the browser?

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

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

Join us next week for our sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Nora Ganim Barnes, Peter Himler, and Ron Ploof.

About this week’s panel

Howard Greenstein is a marketing technology strategist, working with companies to form strategies for online communities, social networking, blogs, an d 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.

Francine Hardaway  PhD is the co-founder of Stealthmode Partners, an accelerator for early stage entrepreneurs. A three-time entrepreneur herself, she has been a PR professional since 1980. Her last PR company, Hardaway Marketing Services, was acquired by Intel in 1996, and after a year inside Intel, she emerged to advise, coach, and fund startups in the internet space in partnership with Ed Nusbaum. Dr. Hardaway has written for Huffington Post, Fast Company and Medium, and is a contributing writer to the Phoenix Business Journal, where she has won two journalism awards for best column. She has also taught “Business and Future of Journalism” and “Digital Media Entrepreneurship” classes as ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism.

Mark Story is a one-time contributor to FIR. Mark currently works as communication counsel and social media lead for the National Cancer Institute, and he was director of International Corporate Affairs for the Alibaba Group in Hong Kong, and the first-ever director of New Media for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mark also put in time on the agency side as a senior VP for Fleishman-Hillard and a vice president at APCO Worldwide. Mark is also the author of the book, “Starting Your Career as a Social Media Manager,” which was published in 2012.

The post FIR #8: Doesn’t Integrated Marketing Include Public Relations? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #6 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Christopher Penn, vice president of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications; Laura Thomas, Chief Blogger at Dell’s Direct2Dell; and Martin Waxman, president of Martin Waxman Communications and co-host of Inside PR on the FIR Podcast Network.

On today’s show, we explored these topics:

• Beginning on November 7, The New York Times will mail 1 million google Cardboard headsets to its subscribers, a joint project of the Times and Google dubbed NYT VR. The goal is to deliver immersive journalism, but also immersive native advertising. The marketing world is abuzz over Virtual Reality. The PR world? Not so much.
• IBM has introduced the idea of the “citizen analyst,” which Chris recently addressed in a blog post. Like citizen journalists, citizen analysts will use widely available data and analytical tools, often for activist purposes. What do PR practitioners need to do to be prepared for data activism?
• Snapchat has been in the news — a lot. One marketing agency, Giant Spoon, has used it to produce Snapchat Stories that serve as pitches to prospective clients. Some agencies and brands are producing unique content for Snapchat rather than repurposing existing content. And now Snapchat is introducing branded geofilters, which some think could be a killer tool for marketers.
• Dan York’s tech report covers Country Top-Level Domains like .ly that could cause problems down the road and Facebook’s decision to make all public posts available for search.
• How seriously should we take demographic givens that suggest the older you are, the less likely you are to understand and embrace digital media?
• The role of agencies in content marketing, according to David Berkowitz, is to build trust with clients and then get out of the way of the creatives. That sounds a lot like what PR does, particularly when it comes to building trust.
• When building trust, a key element is agreeing on the measures of success. Impressions have become the go-to metric for social media in the PR world. There must be a better way to use impressions to convey real, meaningful results.
• Medium was the channel of choice for both Amazon and The New York Times in a give-and-take following publication of a Times article critical of Amazon’s distribution center practices. Could Medium be the PR wire service of the future?

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

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

Join us next week for our sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Olivier Blanchard, Sharon McIntosh, and Ike Pigott.

About this week’s panel

Christopher Penn works among different fields, professions, and ideas to help people understand each other. He can write code, but he’s not a developer or IT pro. He can design campaign strategies and run ads, but he’s not an advertising professional. Christopher defines himself as a marketing technologist: Digital marketing is Christopher’s laboratory. He is Vice President of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications (a national PR firm). He also co-hosts of the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast with John Wall. He is a Google Analytics Certified Professional and a Google AdWords Certified Professional. And Christopher has been a practitioner of the martial arts for 20 years now, and currently hold a black belt in ninjutsu under Sensei Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center.

Laura P. Thomas is Chief Blogger for Dell. Laura brings More than 15 years experience in corporate communications and digital marketing roles to her work,  including jobs in public relations, employee communications, branding, community engagement, event management, online commerce, social media and virtual world development. In her role as Dell’s Chief Blogger, Laura is responsible for the development, coordination and execution of strategy and content for Dell’s corporate blog, Direct2Dell. Since taking the Direct2Dell reins, Laura has recorded an 80% increase in time on page at the end of the first year in this role. She also leads the company’s cross-business unit editorial team and engages with marketing, product line, operations and corporate communications colleagues worldwide to enhance the company’s brand.

Martin Waxman has over 25 years of experience in creative and business writing, video and audio producing, public relations and journalism and can work with you and your team to help his clients discover, shape and develop their content marketing programs, set up online newsrooms, and identify and build relationships with influencers to amplify their stories via social PR. Based in Toronto, Martin is aa blogger and podcaster. He also speaks on social media trends at events around North America. Martin currently is president of Martin Waxman Communications. He is also the incoming chair of the PRSA Counselors Academy.

The post FIR #6: What could be better than millions of impressions? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #5 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Shonali Burke, President and CEO of Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc.; Dave Fleet, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital; and Kami Watson Huyse, CEO at Zoetica Media.

On today’s show, we explored the following topics:

• Volkswagen has brought a new board member to the company, who most recently applied her expertise to bringing a culture of integrity to Damiler. What impact can she have at the beleaguered VW?
• The Internet Advertising Bureau has confessed, as ad-blocking continues to expand, that “We messed up” In response, the IABC has introduced a new alternative set of standards called LEAN to improve online advertising. Is it too little too late, and is the solution from advertisers to invest more in earned media?
• Meanwhile, native advertising continues to be a big deal that may (or may not) elude ad blockers. A new study explores consumer perceptions of native advertising.
• Facebook is getting ready to release a new app called Notify that will dish up notifications — filtered by users — when publisher partners like The Washington Post publish content directly to Facebook. It’s one more sign of the fracturing of news. Given that PR practitioners spend much of their time earning media coverage, these changes have profound implications for the practice of public relations.
• Dan York’s tech report covers the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Dublin this week, a United Nations meeting on the so-called “zero draft” of the World Summit on the Information Society, the Internet of Things, and more.
• The New York Times has introduced a new component to its newsroom, which will cover the web’s most compelling and fast-moving stories. With PR “newsrooms” churning out little more than clever tweets associated with news and cultural events, is the Times model one agencies and brands should adopt?
• Ad agencies are giving up on new hires with ad agency experience and are turning instead to “internet kids.” Is it a replicable practice in PR?
• Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce company, has raised customer hackles by announcing its services will be available by app only — no more website.

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

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

Join us next week for our sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Christopher Penn, Laura Thomas, and Martin Waxman.

About this week’s panel:

A veteran of small and large PR agencies, Shonali Burke is the award-winning president & CEO of her eponymous social PR consulting firm, Shonali Burke Consulting, Inc., where she and her team(s) help for- and non-profit organizations small and large reach business goals by taking their communications “from corporate codswallop to community cool.” Shonali also serves on the Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University in its M.A. /Communication program, as well as the Rugers University School of Communication and Information.  Before launching her own consultancy, Shonali worked as Vice President of Digital Media and marketing for MSL Group, and as Vice President of Media and Communications for the ASPCA.

Dave Fleet is Senior Vice President of Edelman Digital for the Canada East region, where he leads the practice with a team of more than 35 communicators who develop and implement innovative digital engagement strategies for brands like kraft, Mondelez, payPal, eBay, TELUS, Intuit, and a host of others. Before joining Edelman, Dave was Vice President and Account Director reponsible for social media at Thornley Fallis Communications. He also co-organized Podcamp Toronto as a volunteer gig. Dave spent several years working in communication jobs for the Government of Ontario.

Kami Watson Huyse founded Zoetica Media. She writes an award-winning blog, Zoetica Talks, on the topic of public relations and social media strategy. Kami is a national leader in the use of social media for public relations. She speaks at social media events and conferences all over the country and her work in social media has earned her the SNCR’s 2008 Reputation Management award and IABC’s 2009 Gold Quill of Excellence Award. Kami was a 2010 fellow of the Society for New Communications Research where she pursued a study on how cause marketing in social communities can benefit companies.

She is is also the cofounder and organizer of the Social Media Breakfast Houston.

The post FIR #5: Online advertisers messed up appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #4 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Think AHA Chief Instigator Mitchell Levy (who is also the host of Thought Leader Life on the FIR Podcast Network), Stone Temple Consulting senior consultant Doug Haslam, and ClaimWizard co-founder and marketing director Lynette Young.

On today’s show, we explored the following topics:

• A Washington Post reporter called out Edelman for soliciting reporters’ insights on a client’s communications efforts, not an unusual practice, but this time it was veiled in secrecy and involved a donation made on the reporter’s behalf to a charitable organization. While a couple reporters found the solicitation unacceptable, it didn’t get any serious traction as a story. We wonder why.
• Twitter has launched Twitter Moments, the latest in a barrage of news platforms that also includes Facebook’s Instant Articles, Apple News, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and Snapchat Live Stories. What are the implications for the practice of PR and, in particular, pitching stories to the media?
• Justine Sacco, the PR professional shamed by the Internet for a misguided tweet, is now working for FanDuel, one of the two big fantasy sports gambling sites that finds itself embroiled in its own controversy. Yet several sources including the New York Post have made an issue of Sacco’s role with the company.
• In his Tech Report, Dan York looks at Ello’s iOS app, whether email (and tools like Tiny Letter) aren’t the anti-Facebook, the plans to live-stream the Democratic debate, and Dan’s upcoming talk at AstriCon.
• A study from Maxwell PR + Engagement delves into blogger expectations and practices when it comes to working with brands.
• Mitchell leads a discussion on best practices for becoming a thought leader.
• PR News wants $450 for the print version of a social media guide. Would you pay?
• Cinemagraphs are taking off in social media, prompting stock photo houses to rush to build their libraries while a German startup, Gallereplay, will focus exclusively on them.

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

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

Join us next week for our third episode. Joining me on the panel will be Shonali Burke, Kami Watson Huyse, and Dave Fleet.

About this week’s panel:

Doug Haslam’s  career has spanned a variety of disciplines within the communications field: radio technology, editorial production, public relations, marketing, social media and digital. Doug began with public radio, producing news and thoughtful sports programs, moving into technology public relations, and currently to social media and content strategy for brands of all sizes and industries. Doug’s love of media has come full circle, as his most recent positions have seen him taking full advantage of his content creation skills, managing social media and brand publishing programs for a wide variety of clients.

Mitchell Levy is focused on democratizing thought leadership. According to LinkedIn, he is the first Thought Leader Architect in the world!  As of June 25, 2013, there were over 115,000 people in LinkedIn with “Social Media” in their title, only 500  with “Thought Leader” and only one “Thought Leader Architect” . Marshall Goldsmith, The Most Influential Leadership Thinker in the World (Thinkers50 Survey—Sponsored by Harvard Business Review) calls Mitchell’s 18th and latest book #CREATING THOUGHT LEADERS “the career Bible for thought leaders!”  As a Thought Leader Architect, Mitchell helps companies turn their experts into recognized thought leaders.

Lynette Young is co-founder and Director of Marketing ClaimWizard. ClaimWizard is a software-as-a-service workflow management system for the public adjuster industry. She is a marketing technology strategist and published author with focus on digital marketing and implementation services. With over 25 years in technology, 17 of those years in digital marketing, she is well positioned as a “full stack marketer” giving her a distinct advantage in today’s fast paced business and environment. Over her professional career, Lynette has worked with clients of all sizes ranging from Google, Twitter, Harlequin Publishing, and American Airlines to HVAC installers, an email marketing service provider, local appliance retailers, other agencies, corporate franchises, and public adjusting firms. Lynette heads up the ClaimWizard digital marketing products and team.

The post FIR #4: Leave Justine alone! appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #3 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Internet Society Senior Content Strategist Dan York (Dan is also the FIR Podcast Network’s tech correspondent), Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies, and 4L Strategies partner Jennifer Zingsheim Phillips. More details on the panel appear at the end of this post.

On today’s show, we explored the following topics:

• Volkswagen has brought four PR agencies on board to help deal with its self-made emissions cheating scandal. Does VW need PR or do they just need to start behaving ethically? And are PR practitioners out of line for writing posts and commentaries about the crisis?
• Peeple is an app due for release in November that will let people rate other people the way you can rate a restaurant on Yelp. The public response can be charitably described as outraged while the developers insist it’s nothing but positive.
• Business Wire released a report on the convergence if PR and investor relations. Is this consolidation or just a preferable business practice?
• It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month and marketers everywhere are turning to pink to promote their brands’ solidarity. Most of it is just “pinkwashing,” though. How can brands be serious about their commitment to this (and, for that matter, any) cause?
• Google is about to take the wraps off an open-source project to compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles (not to mention similar offerings from Snapchat and Apple). What does this mean for the news ecosystem in which PR plays such an important part?
• Shot is a Kickstarter project that aims to make it easy for people with iPhones to create Virtual Reality (VR) photos and videos. In the meantime, newsrooms everywhere are gearing up to embrace VR.
• Millennials are willing to pay for content — just not news.
• ScottTrade is the latest institution to have to react to a data security breach. Shouldn’t any company that keeps customer data on servers be prepared to address an unwelcome intrusion?
• PR StackBook version 2 is out, with 30 PR professionals contributing 48 practical guides to more than 250 digital tools we can use in content marketing, PR, and SEO.
• Tumblr now lets you hide your Tumblr blog from the web. Some say this is creating yet another walled garden that is antithetical to the underlying philosophy of the Internet.
• Facebook has revamped Notes to make it more of a blogging tool to compete with Medium and LinkedIn.
• Beloved comic strip Bloom County is back after nearly 25 years. It’s on the Web only, and creator Berkeley Breathed is using it to attack the one-or-two-spaces-at-the-end-of-a-sentence controversy.

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

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

Join us next week for our third episode. Joining me on the panel will be Mitchell Levy, Lynette Young, and Doug Haslam.

About this week’s panel:

Scott Monty is an internationally recognized leader in digital communications, digital transformation, social media and marketing. As principal of Scott Monty Strategies, he counsels brands and agencies on strategy, executive communications, influencer management, the customer experience, and digital initiatives.

Scott spent six years at Ford Motor Company, as a strategic advisor on crisis communications, influencer relations, digital customer customer service, innovative product launches and more. He is a board member of the American Marketing Association and an advisor for RPM Ventures, My Dealer Service, and Crowd Companies. He writes about the changing landscape of business, technology, communications, marketing and leadership at ScottMonty.com and is the executive editor and co-host of the Sherlock Holmes website and podcast I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

Jennifer Zingsheim Phillips has  worked in politics–many sides, including political party work, working for a state senator, and lobbying. She also has worked at Fleishman Hillard, one of the biggest PR firms in the  world, and she has also done a stint in retail, working in customer service at a well-known furniture and lifestyle store. Jen currently is a partner at 4L strategies, an online media analysis and monitoring firm.

Jen’s work has been published in business magazines. She also brings to the table web content creation experience, podcasting, and fiction writing.

Dan York, CISSP, is a passionate advocate for the open Internet focused on helping people understand the changes going on all around us within communication technology and practices. Dan currently serves the Internet Society as the Senior Content Strategist focused on the Deploy360 Programme – creating, curating and promoting online content that helps service providers, companies and individuals more quickly deploy Internet technologies such as IPv6 and DNSSEC. Separately, Dan is also the Chairman of the global Voice Over IP Security Alliance (VOIPSA). Dan is also active within the real-time communications area of the IETF.

Since the mid-1980’s Dan has been working with online communication technologies and helping businesses and organizations understand how to use and participate in those new media. An author of multiple books on networking, security, IPv6 and Linux, Dan is a dynamic and engaging speaker who frequently presents at industry conferences and events and has been blogging and writing online for over 12 years. His most recent books are “Migrating Applications to IPv6” and “The Seven Deadliest Unified Communications Attacks”.

The post FIR #3: People who don’t want Peeple appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to episode #2 of For Immediate Release, the successor podcast to The Hobson & Holtz Report

This week’s panel includes Redphlag CEO Gerry Corbett, former CustomScoop CEO Chip Griffin, and W20 Corporate and Strategy Director Lionel Menchaca. More details on the panel appear at the end of this post.

On today’s show, we explored the following topics:

• Volkswagen’s self-made crisis and what the company must do to rebuild trust with stakeholders including dealers, customers, and the public
• Speaking of rebuilding reputations, we discuss Brian Williams’ return to NBC (and his new reporting breaking news for MSNBC), and how Williams’ situation could be applied to a leader’s loss of credibility in any organization
• What do we really mean when we talk about the need for authenticity?
• The PR implications of commitments made at the Sustainable Development Summit
• Stephen Colbert has been interviewing tech CEOs, a departure from the usual late-night talk show fare. Should PR departments be wary of invitations to have their CEOs appear on similar programs?
• The Mayo Clinic’s content partnership with the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the ethical issues that could surround this and other similar agreements.
• The importance of building social connections at work, and the importance of face-to-face connections in developing those networks.
• The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Ray Lane, who was at the time chairman of Hewlett-Packard, tried to kill the disastrous $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy. What does a revelation about the company’s past mean to its present and its future?
• Heather Armstrong is giving up her ground-breaking mommy blog in the face of (among other things) extraordinary demands from sponsors. Could this be a trend in niche blogging verticals?
• What does it mean for Twitter and for users — especially communicators — that Twitter has enabled anybody to distribute a poll through the service?

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

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

Join us next week for our third episode. Joining me on the panel will be Dan York, Zennifer Zingsheim Phillips, and Scott Monty.

About this week’s panel:

Gerry Corbett is Chair and CEO of strategic communications consulting firm Redphlag LLC., Founder and Partner of Wise Counsel, and CMO of real estate tech startup Producers Forum, Inc. in Palo Alto. He also is an award winning career coach, blogger and Past Chair & CEO of the 32,000 member Public Relations Society of America, having served as Chair and CEO in 2012. Gerry is a versatile branding, marketing, public relations and communications executive and coach having served four decades in senior marketing and communications roles at Global Fortune 100 firms and earlier in his career in aerospace engineering and information technology with Silicon Valley firms and NASA.

Chip Griffin is a writer and entrepreneur with a particular interest at the intersection of communications and technology. Chip has helped clients communicate more effectively through strategic messaging, writing, digital advice, and innovative web-based software. He sold one of his companies, CustomScoop, in the summer of 2015. After first getting involved with digital marketing and communications in the mid-1990’s, Chip became one of the first individuals to serve as a Chief Digital Officer of any major public relations firm. He has written for clients and publications for more than 20 years.

Lionel Menchaca serves as director of Corporate & Strategy for W2O Group. In this role, he helps clients of all sizes to develop content and engagement strategies so they can connect directly with customers. He’s worked extensively on social media training for organizations and on helping organizations build and launch employee advocacy programs. He also works with teams of developers to build tools companies need to manage an increasingly complex flow of content. Before W2O, Lionel worked at Dell for 18 years and was the founder and chief blogger of Direct2Dell, Dell’s main corporate blog. Over the last 7 years, Lionel authored hundreds of posts on behalf of Dell. He helped expand it into several continues to extend Dell’s global presence. Before the blog, Lionel was one of the main architects behind Dell’s blog monitoring process begun in April 2006. He was Dell’s first full time employee paid to handle social media efforts.

The post FIR #2: Volkswagen’s reputation crisis appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Welcome to the first episode of For Immediate Release, the successor podcast to The Hobson & Holtz Report.

Our panel this week includes Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment-Dietrich, a Chicago-based public relations agency, and Frank Eliason, innovator of the Comcast Cares social media customer service program and former head of social media at Citi.

Today’s conversation addressed these stories:

• Josh Bernoff’s follow-up post to the blog-based conversation he and Augie Ray had about how close to death social media marketing is.
• Edelman has announced it will no longer work with coal-producing companies or any company that promote denial of climate change. Was this a PR move or is there substance behind the policy?
• Live streaming video is heating up, with new players from Facebook (with Facebook Live) to startup Blab, which one thought leader believes could overtake Periscope and Meerkat.
• Dan York’s Tech Report covers the release of the Wirecast Go beta, Skype’s outage and implications for business, and a broader discussion of the “messaging wars.”
• Google and Twitter are partnering to take on Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.
• Some journalists are now balking at producing content for brands’ content marketing program.
• Mark Zuckerberg believes Virtual Reality could one day connect everyone in the world in a fully immersive, 3D environment, while Satya Nadella said the Augmented Reality product Microsoft is working on — HoloLens — will first have an impact in the enterprise where once you use it, you can never go back.
• Some companies — like Target, Southwest Airlines, and Amazon.com — are scoring viral hits with content foduced by front-line employees. Is this a sustainable model for other companies?
• Uber has produced a print publication, following in the footsteps of Airbnb. Does print still matter?
• Social media changes politics forever in Scotland where the YES campaign attracted 45% of the vote despite virtually no supportive coverage from mainstream media. What can that tell us about social media in the current U.S. presidential campaign?

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

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

Join us next week for our second episode, with Chip Griffin, Gerry Corbett, and Lionel Menchaca.

The post FIR #1: Does social media marketing need a reboot? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.