FIR Interviews

Eric Schwartzman, an early contributor to the "For Immediate Release" podcast, has written a new book, " The Digital Pivot ," and discussed it with Shel and Neville. In the book, Eric explains what successful digital marketers do differently. Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Eric Schwartzman on His New Book, “The Digital Pivot” appeared first on FIR Podcast Network .

David Murray's new book, "An Effort to Understand," is a collection of essays drawn from many years of posts to his blog, Writing Boots. Addressing the challenges of communicating with one another in a polarized society, the book is structured first to define communication, then move from the personal to the organizational. Like the society on which the book is focused, not everyone will agree wit...

Andrea Weckerle first appeared in an FIR Interview a decade ago after she had founded CiviliNation, a non-profit that is "taking a stand against online harassment, character assassination, misinformation, and violence." That's a tall order given the state of civil discourse these days. In this FIR Interview, Andrea is joined by CiviliNation's new president, veteran technology journalist Jolie O'De...

You can't visit a news site or check your feeds right now without seeing articles about NFTs -- non-fungible tokens -- and how they have captured imaginations. Taco Bell, the National Basketball Association, the Kings of Leon, Jack Dorsey, and artists like the one who sold a JPG for $69 million are examples of digital assets that have been purchased (or are up for grabs) with NFTs. There are scena...

In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks with Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, the Mayo Clinic's chief medical editor and associate medical director for Content Management and Delivery, and Jay Maxwell, senior director of Health Information, about the development of the Clinic's new First Aid skill for the Amazon Alexa platform, how it works, how they measure its effectiveness, and their approach toward prepari...

According to its website, Diva Tech Talk "is a specialized communication channel highlighting women doing wonderful things in the technology arena by creating podcasts from interviews with successful female individuals in the field and covering various technology events.  It was created to inform and inspire women of all ages to  succeed  in professional and life missions that are technology-drive...

In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz talks with Edelman's Phil Gomes, senior vice president of U.S. B2B Digital, about his new blockchain white paper, published by the American Association of Advertising Agencies. that makes the case for marketers and communicators to add blockchain technology to the list of technologies they must understand. some of the startups whose work could change communic...

In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz talks with Jen McClure about JEM Consulting's "State of Employee Advocacy" survey, including the connection between employee advocacy and social selling, whether employees who participate in an employee advocacy should have their involvement reflected in their performance evaluations, the role of advocacy amplification apps (and whether they can constitute an...

In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz spoke with Judith Platz and John Ragsdale, research vice presidents at the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) about the motivation for developing the"TSIA B2B Social Engagement Rating," the thinking behind low- and high-engagement activities, and how TSIA members (which includes the likes of Honeywell, Panasonic, NCR, Symantec, and Unisys) have r...

The risks posed by the common use of digital and social media include several that social media and marketing teams typically don't consider. In early July, JEM Consulting & Advisory Services released the results of a new study, 2017 State of Digital & Social Media Risk . In addition to not having all the right players at the table when developing processes and policies for digital and soc...

What can be better than combining two of your passions to launch a new business? That's exactly what David Meerman Scott did when he opened the doors of Signature Tones , which he describes as a "sonic branding studio" that he started with his partner, musician Juanito Pascual. The agency, which lets Scott apply his marketing skills to his love of music, creates sonic logos and original music desi...

FIR host Shel Holtz moderated a discussion featuring Sean Williams, who coordinated an effort by the Institute for Public Relations to establish standards for employee communication measurement, and three other communication measurement thought leaders: Katie Paine, Angela Sinickas, and Ryan Williams. The robust discussion reflects the challenges of trying to set measurement standards for an activ...

In this third FIR Interview, Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer discusses insights he has gained from four years of assessing PR efforts, including a "potential customer number." He discusses the dramatic changes PR has experienced in the last four years and the increased demand on practitioners to deliver meaningful metrics, as well as the integration of PR with web analytics to track actions and behaviors...

In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz spent 30 minutes talking with "The Employee Experience Advantage" author Jacob Morgan about what it takes to deliver a great work experience to employees, some of the misconceptions about the idea, and the connection between experience and engagement, among other topics. Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Jacob Morgan on Creating the Employee Ex...

Jeremiah Owyang founded CrowdCompanies as a council of large businesses that stood to be disrupted by the "sharing economy," a class of businesses established based on the innovation of technology serving as the intermediary between people who have something (cars, spare rooms or apartments, free time) and people who want it (to get somewhere cheaper and faster than a cab, to stay somewhere more h...

The burgeoning cannabis industry is attracting a flood of entrepreneurs in the states where it is legal. Aliza Sherman, a pioneer digital marketer, is among them. Aliza -- who founded Cybergrrl, the first woman-owned Internet company, in 1995 -- has launched a new marketing agency, Spark The Creative, which provides marketing services specifically for the cannabis industry. Concurrently, she has c...

J. Kelly Hoey built a dream network and that network encouraged her to write a book about it. Within short order, " Build Y our Dream Network " went into a second printing, so her network evidently knew what it was talking about. In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz chats with Kelly (who was a panelist on FIR #72 ) to talk about dream networks, how to build them, and what you'll get out of her book....

"What people tell you may not be the most accurate estimate they could give you, and that’s where prediction markets can come in. They are a mechanism that cost modest resources and consistently give you more accurate answers to the questions you ask, especially when people have the incentive not to tell you their honest answer, and many companies have used prediction markets as a way to produce e...

A conversation for our political times. A discussion about making government work better with Patri Friedman Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder of the Seasteading Institute about competitive governance in multi stack holder environments. Continue Reading → The post FIR INTERVIEW: PATRI FRIEDMAN ON COMPETITIVE GOVERNANCE AND SEASTEADING appeared first on FIR Podcast Network .

Much has been written about how to deal with fake news, including one particularly level-headed framework for how PR should address it by Stephen Waddington, chief engagement officer at global PR agency Ketchum. In this FIR Interview, Wadds (as he's known) offers his views on fake news and outlines what PR practitioners need to do to minimize its impact on their clients or employers. Continue Read...

In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks to two hard-core data geeks -- Edison Research Vice President Tom Webster and SHIFT Communications Vice President Christopher S. Penn -- about 2016's election polls and what communicators can learn from them, and how to ensure polls and surveys are used effectively in planning campaigns or using polls or surveys as elements of a campaign. Continue Reading &#...

In mid-November, PRSA unveiled its 2017-2019 Strategic Plan, " Framework for the Future ." A team of Society leaders reviewed a substantial body of research before laying out the plan with a focus on membership, professional growth, and thought leadership. In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz discussed the plan with 2017 PRSA Chair Jane Dvorak. Among the topics addressed in the interview were th...

Effective December 1, some 4 million salaried U.S. workers will be subject to time-tracking and overtime pay who were exempt from those rules before. It's likely that reading company news or other internal communication on a smartphone will be considered "work" under these rules -- that is, if employees in this group aren't paid for the time they spend consuming internal comms content aren't compe...

This interview is the first in a series produced during a full-day workshop on podcasting for organizational communicators. The FIR Podcast Network's Shel Holtz leads these workshops, part of which includes the recording, editing, and production of a podcast on-site. In this first session, held at the Gleacher Center in Chicago on October 28, 2016, Ryan Alford of Interprose (based in Chicago) volu...

Members of the Arthur W. Page Society -- the professional association for senior PR and corporate communication executives -- have been busy. Following the 2007 release of " The Authentic Enterprise ," the society introduced a new model that "describes the distinctly valuable enterprise leadership role that communications plays" within the radical transformations taking place throughout the worlds...