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 with everything in the book, but Murray offers sage wisdom about how to engage in conversations about these matters. In this interview, FIR co-host Shel Holtz talks with Murray about the book, including his assertion that it is not communication if you know the outcome and that communication should not be civil.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: “An Effort to Understand” Author David Murray appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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'Dell. The conversation covers the organization's approach to addressing the issues that underlie outrage culture, doxxing, and other behaviors that undermine the potential of online conversation.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: CiviliNation President Jolie O’Dell and VP/Founder Andrea Weckerle appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 scenarios that make NFTs exciting for brands and, by extension, for communicators. What are they and how do they work (in terms we communicators can understand)? For that, we turn to Phil Gomes, former digital executive at Edelman and current head of global communications and marketing for Bloq's multiple services and brands.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Phil Gomes on the NFT Craze appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 preparing for a voice-enabled world. The interview includes a brief demonstration of the Clinic's Alexa skill.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sandhya Pruthi and Jay Maxwell on Creating a Smart Audio First Aid Skill appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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-driven." The podcast has also won Clarion Awards from the Association for Women in Communications in 2017 and 2016. In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz spoke with Diva Tech Talk co-founder and host Nicole Scheffler about the show's origins, its goals, and life as a female engineer in a male-dominated industry (and what communicators can do to help change that).Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Nicole Scheffler, Host of the Diva Tech Talk Podcast appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 communication processes and content, as well as other dimensions of blockchain that will soon be part of communication workflows.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Phil Gomes on Blockchain and the Marketing Value of Digital Permanence appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 entire advocacy program), and some of the challenges of maintaining enthusiasm among ambassadors once a program is up and running.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Jen McClure on the State of Employee Advocacy appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 responded to the rating.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Judith Platz and John Ragsdale on TSIA’s B2B Social Engagement Rating appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 social media, too many companies don't even have policies and even fewer conduct all-employee training. In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz spoke with Jen McClure, CEO of JEM, about the study.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interviews: Jen McClure on Digital and Social Media Risk appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 designed to become as recognizable when heard as logos and trademarks are when seen. In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz talks with Scott about his inspiration for the company, the process he and Pascual use, a case study from one of their early clients, and some of the uses for sonic branding that probably haven't occurred to you yet.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interviews: David Meerman Scott on Sonic Branding appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 activity as inconsistently practiced as employee communications. Among the points of contention that emerged in the conversation: the appropriate categories for various metrics and the items that belong in each category, whether outputs (such as intranet posts or emails sent) should be measured, and the distinction between metrics that predict future employee behaviors and those that look at past behaviors.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: The Challenges of Standardizing Employee Communication Measurement appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 following a communication. Sharam also talked with FIR Interviews host Shel Holtz about the pointlessness of impressions and advertising value equivalencies as PR metrics and the role Artificial Intelligence will play (and the roles it most likely won't play) in PR and PR measurement.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer on PR Analytics appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 Experience appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 homey and less costly than a hotel room, to clean out a garage or scan photos, for example). Each of the members of CrowdCompanies needs to innovate to stave off disruption. They asked Owyang "to look inside of companies, to find out how they are structured to respond to disruption trends." The result is a report, "The Corporate Innovation Imperative: How Large Corporations Avoid Disruption by Strengthening Their Ecosystem" (which is available below). In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz and Jeremiah talk about the obstacles to innovation, some of the 10 types of innovation programs the study uncovered, the metrics for m

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 created Her Canna Life, an online publication focusing on women in the industry. In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks with Aliza from her home in Alaska about the preparations she undertook before opening the doors of her new agency, why she's keeping it separate from her existing enterprise, some of the challenges in working in an industry that, while legal in some states still violates federal law, and what it's like working with businesses that have never considered marketing before.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Aliza Sherman on Marketing in the Burgeoning Cannabis Industry appeared first on F

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.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: J. Kelly Hoey on Building Your Dream Network appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

"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 engagement. Participants have consistently found that they like participating and feel that they are listened to more." Dr Robin Hanson.Continue Reading → The post FIR INTERVIEW: Robin Hanson on Transparency, Engagement & Tough Questions using Prediciton Markets appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

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 Reading → The post FIR Interview: Stephen Waddington on Fake News appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.