Fir Interviews

Blockchains are databases that maintain a continuously growing list of data records that are hardened against tampering and revision, even by operators of the data store's nodes (according to Wikipedia). If you've heard of them, it's most likely because you've done some reading about Bitcoin, the increasingly popular cryptocurrency. But Phil Gomes -- senior vice president at Edelman Digital -- sees beyond the Bitcoin connection and forsees the adoption of blockchains in the practice of public relations. In this FIR Interview, Phil discusses the blockchain-PR connection.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Phil Gomes on blockchains and PR appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The collaborative (or sharing) economy is heating up, with dramatic increases in both the number of startups that employ the model and the number of consumers who use them. In its annual survey on the collaborative economy, Crowd Companies has crunched the data to identify (among other things) key opportunities for traditional companies to compete as collaborative-economy companies increasingly threaten to take market share away from them. In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks with Crowd Companies founder and CEO Jeremiah Owyang about the results of the study, with a focus on the three primary ways businesses can remain competitive as the collaborative economy continues to heat up. Jeremiah and Shel also digress into related topics, including the impact autonomous vehicles will have on both traditional and collaborative companies.Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Jeremiah Owyang on competing in the collaborative economy appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Good morning, In a recent panel discussion, Startup Saturday Bangalore, had an opportunity to meet with Veda, head of marketing for StayZilla, also known as the airbnb of India. https://www.stayzilla.com About our Conversation Partners: Vedanarayanan V. Stayzilla.com Vedanarayanan possesses more than a decade of professional experience, spanning: E-commerce Management, Digital Marketing, Team Building, Process &... Continue Reading → The post FIR Interview: Veda, Head of Marketing, StayZilla appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Babbler, already a success in France, comes to the US in September as a solution to the email mess that media relations has become. Designed as a platform to connect and provide for collaboration between PR representatives and journalists who cover their clients/companies/industries, Babbler is free for journalists, while it provides a single place for brands to make their digital assets (from press releases to videos and graphics) available to the press. In this FIR interview, Shel Holtz talks with Babbler CEO Hannah Oiknine about the site and how it can improve media relations.Continue Reading → The post Interview: Hannah Oiknine, CEO of media relations solution Babbler appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Infegy Marketing Director Rion Martin discusses the company's service, News Ninja, which ranks the topics people are talking about based on analysis of reams of data, and updated every 10 minutes. The free service is a boon to newsjackers and real-time marketers.Continue Reading → The post Interview: Infegy’s Rion Martin on News Ninja appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Suresh Babu had an opportunity to have Prasant Naidu, the Founder & blogger at Light House Insights, visit the Web Marketing Academy and share his experience on how he organizes content, Indian social media stories and more.Continue Reading → The post Interview: Light House Insights Founder Prasant on Content appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Note: this interview comes courtesy of the producers of our new podcast, Digital India. World Social Media Day Bangalore, brought some of the top social media professionals in India on one stage.  Students from the Christ University and many more digital marketing enthusiasts witnessed a great deal of passion, motivation and the nitty gritty of... Continue Reading → The post Social with The Mind Reader, Omni Channel Consultant & Professor appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this FIR Interview conducted immediately following the end of IABC's 2015 World Conference in San Francisco, 2015-16 Chair Michael Ambjorn discusses the state of the association, his goals for the next year, how the association can remain relevant, how communicators can benefit from membership, and how IABC can serve non-members.Continue Reading → The post Interview: IABC 2015-16 Chair Michael Ambjorn appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this FIR interview, Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini and UX and Press Relations Director Kim Terca join FIR co-host Shel Holtz to talk about the addition of the Interent of Things to the dashboard and how communicators can take advantage of it.Continue Reading → The post Interview: Freddy Mini, Kim Terca on Netvibes’ Dashboard of Things appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

FIR co-host Neville Hobson interviews Leila Janah, CEO Sama Group, on the future of work, recorded at Quartz' The Next Billion conference in London on May 19, 2015.Continue Reading → The post Leila Janah and The Future of Work appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Communicators struggle to build genuine online engagement among employees using the various social tools available for intranets. Study after study shows that few employees use these tools, regardless of how much they might be engaged with external social media. At Bank of Montreal, though, Julian Mills overcame the obstacles to introduce social tools employees at all levels used to advance business goals. In this interview, FIR co-host Shel Holtz talks with Mills about the impetus for the introduction of social channels, and with TemboSocial CEO Steven Green, who worked with Mills to introduce the internal social media tools that drove the interaction on the Bank of Montreal intranet.Continue Reading → The post Julian Mills and Steven Green on social intranets appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Parviz is co-founder of Clammr, a mobile app and platform making audio more social and discoverable. Users are calling Clammr, which features bite-sized audio clips of 18 seconds or less, the “Instagram of Audio.”Continue Reading → The post The Instagram of audio? An interview with Clammr co-founder Parviz Parvizi appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

While digital marketing dollars still flow into Facebook, marketers continue to express frustration at the social network, its reduced organic reach, and its ever-shifting algorithms. BlitzMetrics Chief Technology Officer Dennis Yu has a different perspective. A longtime Facebook marketing expert, Dennis believes good content can thrive organically on Facebook but that PR needs to adopt paid amplification of messages. He also makes the case that paid reach via Facebook should be seen as a gateway to using Google and other similar services (e.g., promoted tweets) to amplify messages, and that these buys should be aggregated for a more comprehensive analysis. They're not traditional ads, however, and should not be viewed that way. They can, however, contribute to ROI and other success metrics. In this FIR interview, FIR contributor Harry Hawk (@hhawk) delves into a variety of dimensions of Facebook marketing in a detailed conversation with Dennis.Continue Reading → The post Harry Hawk talks with Facebook

Longtime FIR supporter Bryan Person caught up with social media consultant Jon Burkhart at the 2015 South by Southwest Interactive festival, where the pair talked about Burkhart's focus on helping organizations avoid embarrassing themselves online.Continue Reading → The post Bryan Person interviews consultant, author, and speaker Jon Burkhart appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.