FIR Podcast Network

On this week’s episode of “For Immediate Release,” host Shel Holtz reports on the following stories:

* A lot is changing at Google in the wake of 20,000 employees walking out, but not enough to satisfy the walkout organizers

* Social media is putting CEOs under increased scrutiny

* Helping you create better Stories is a million-dollar industry

* In China, an Artifical Intelligence news anchor is standing by to read news 24/7

* A chain of newsletters in the U.S. Southeast is showing how to attract younger readers

* Voice texting has become a thing, but some people absolutely hate it

* Amazon introduces variable “slots” for Alexa skill-building

* Social media growth in the US is over

* A New York Times Insights Group study explores the psychology of social sharing

* Smartphone cameras are the next marketing battlefield

* Holograms are coming to Vimeo

* Pew explores the most popular categories of YouTube content

* Vine is returning as Byte

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

You can find the stories from which FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

Links from this week’s episode:

* Google updates sexual harassment policies following protest

* Google walkout organizers vow to ‘not let up’ following CEO’s response

* Microsoft Will Keep Pursuing Military Deals Amid Employee Concerns

* In the Age of Social Media, CEOs Are Under Intense Scrutiny

* Designing people’s Instagram Stories is now a million-dollar business

* China’s state-run press agency has created an ‘AI anchor’ to read the news

* White House Spreads Doctored Video to Justify Temper Tantrum Against CNN Reporter

* ‘They Do It All The Time In Sports,’ Kellyanne Conway Defends ‘Doctored” Jim Acosta Video

* Can this network of lit-to-be-local newsletters unlock younger civic engagement?

* Is the Era of Voice Texting Upon Us?

* Voice Assistants Like Alexa And Google Assistant Have A Trust Problem

* Amazon improves Alexa responses with 4 new variable types: foods, sports, video games, and creative works

* Social media growth is over in the U.S. — which is its most valuable market

This week, on Inside PR 526, Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley and Martin Waxman discuss:

* Do you want to understand the Paid/Earned/Shared/Owned approach to PR and marketing? Martin tells people that Gini’s SpinSucks site is a top site for info on PESO.

* Is Facebook really bigger than every government in the world? Does this mean that Facebook is above the oversight of the political leadership of nation states? Well, you might think so, as politicians in Canada and the UK band together to request that Mark Zuckerberg attends a joint hearing. Canadian politicians will fly across the ocean to question Zuckerberg, who will not fly four hours to speak to them directly in Ottawa.

* Still, some political bodies are determined to move forward to protect our privacy rights. The Canadian Privacy Commissioner announces new disclosure requirements for privacy breaches. Only in Canada, you say? Pity.

* Twitter’s Q3 financial results showed that, while monthly active users may have decreased, daily active users continue to increase. And that’s a good thing. Suggesting that Twitter is succeeding in reestablishing itself as a place that users like you and me will want to treat as one of our principal social networks on a daily basis, not just on an occasional basis.

* Finally, Kara Swisher gives us much to think about in her rumination on Silicon Valley’s links to and dependence on investments from organizations and individuals who would never be considered to be friends of liberal democracy and free speech. And Ezra Klein‘s discussion with Jay Rosen of the media’s turn to entertainment logic from news logic underscores the media’s weakness in helping us to come to grips with the true underlying issues.

Interview with John Ricks from Nebraska Tourism talking about their new and refreshingly honest campaign “Honestly, it’s not for everyone”.

John Ricks is the Executive Director for the Nebraska Tourism Commission where he is responsible for attracting, selling, and overseeing the development, implementation and coordination of the state’s tourism efforts. John and the marketing team develop competitive marketing strategies to promote an effective image for state-wide tourism assets, programs, events, as well as cultural, historic and agriculture tourism resources.

Hosts: Leif Pettersen of Leif Pettersen PR and Chris Christensen of BloggerBridge.com and AmateurTraveler.com.

John Wall, co-host of Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher S. Penn and partner at Trust Insights, joined this episode of Chats with Chip to talk about podcasting, marketing technology, and more.

As a longtime podcaster, John also co-hosts Stack & Flow with Sean Zinsmeister where he looks at the technology stacks used by a wide range of marketing professionals.

[read the transcript]

In this episode, Mitchell Levy (http://aha.pub/MitchellLevy), TEDx speaker and the AHA Guy at AHAthat (http://AHAthat.com), and his co-host for the month, Lisa McDonald (http://aha.pub/LisaMcDonald), author, motivational speaker, and radio and TV show host, share views with Al Cole http://aha.pub/AlCole), a world-class speaker, author, singer, and CEO of People of Distinction Humanitarian Foundation.

Al Cole provides his ideas and perceptions about the two types of legacy in a person’s life. He believes that going back to the innocence of a child brings about genuine love and happiness that is tarnished by today’s current events. A legacy is unique for each individual, and giving love and respect to everybody is as important as the value of a person’s life. If you are facing trials in life, there is always hope to reinvent oneself and see the light in things.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from the episode. See more in the “AHA Moments from Thought Leader Life” eBooks available in the social media-enabled eBook platform, AHAthat: http://AHAthat.com.

* There is one generic #Legacy that we share with everybody. That is the beautiful innocence of love and respect when we came into this world. #TLL http://aha.pub/AlCole

* Reclaiming your inner child is paramount to grasping your inner self. It is when you are most curious and wondrous about life. #TLL http://aha.pub/LisaMcDonald

* One does not have to be shrouded by doubt all the time. Our visualization of life filled with beautiful human energy can indeed become a gift to the present. #TLL http://aha.pub/AlCole

* A home does not have to be a million-dollar home. It is where the heart is. #TLL http://aha.pub/AlCole

* We can only spread genuine love when we first have respect for God and most importantly, ourselves. #TLL http://aha.pub/AlCole

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, subscribe to the channel: http://youtube.com/user/thoughtleaderlife.

A couple weeks ago, Joe talked about his dismay at the social media communications from his local power company during a more than two day power outage in Ottawa following a devastating tornado. Well, you listened, and you told us that we (at least Joe) was being too demanding in what he expected of communicators in a crisis. We received some thoughtful feedback which we read and react to on this week’s episode. Thank you Chip Griffin, Sean O’Driscoll and Shannah Hayley. Your comments made us think twice about our expectations of social media.

We also discuss Twitter’s release of the Tweets from foreign Trolls trying to influence the US election. It’s clear that the mischief makers are constantly revising their approach, presenting a moving target for researchers and members of the public who are trying to protect themselves form their influence.

Finally, we look at reports that Twitter soon will provide greater transparency about whether a tweet was removed voluntarily or was in fact taken down for a violation of the platform’s terms of use.

All Things IC’s Rachel Miller shares her perspectives on a damning Wall Street Journal report that contradicts years of glowing reviews for Netflix’s corporate culture. Also in this week’s episode:

* Can marketing maintain human connections while scaling up in social media?

* Mark Zuckerberg told analysts sharing is shifting away from the Facebook news feed to messaging apps and Stories

* A year after doubling its character count, Twitter finds tweets are getting shorter

* Fewer and fewer CEOs are maintaining a social media presence

* Google.org is looking to nonprofits to innovate ideas for using AI for social good

* You can now share your IGTV videos to Instagram Stories

* American men are ignorant of women’s workplace struggles

* 20,000 Google employees walked out over gender inequality

* Dan York reports on WordPress’s 5.0 beta, the Gutenberg editor and accessibility, a new “Activity” feature in Jetpack, and Flickr’s impending deletion of all but your 1,000 most recent photos.

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

You can find the stories from which FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

About Rachel Miller

Rachel Miller, founder of All Things IC, began her career as a journalist in 1999 and also worked in-house for a decade. She’s a regular keynote speaker and awards judge and has contributed to a number of best-selling books. She specializes in helping internal communicators succeed. As an experienced communicator, Rachel is a Fellow of both the Institute of Internal Communication and Chartered Institute of Public Relations; she’s also a Chartered PR Practitioner. Her in-house career included roles at London Overground, Novartis, Visa, Tube Lines, and Visteon. She also worked agency side for Sky, GSK and L’Oréal. CIPR named Rachel Outstanding Independent Practitioner in 2017 and she received the inaugural Best Individual Contribution to Internal Communication award.

Links from this week’s episode

* Doctor Death podcast

* Bear Brook podcast

* The Survivors podcast

* In a digital tech world, comms pros face challenge of scaling human engagement

* Chris Penn’s mid-term hashtag data analysis on Facebook

* Zuckerberg says the future is sharing via 100B messages & 1B Stories/day

* Despite 280-character expansion, short Tweets are still the norm

* The CEO’s Social Media Challenge

* Working together to apply AI for social good

* You can now share IGTV videos to your Instagram Story

* Google Walkout protest included 20,000 participants Friday

* US Survey: What Pay Gap?

In this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chip Griffin and Gini Dietrich discuss what to do when the business revenue isn’t enough to meet payroll or personal obligations.

The topic was inspired by a post in the Spin Sucks Community where an agency owner asked about doing freelancing to supplement agency revenue during a rough patch.

Chip and Gini explore several aspects of this topic including:

* Figuring out the real reason why revenue is lagging — and making sure to address that issue, regardless of any short-term fixes that may be available.

* Finding a way to make any freelancing or other income-supplementation efforts fit into the overall story that the agency tells.

* Identifying when a revenue dry spell is actually a new reality for the agency.

* Avoiding the urge to panic and engage in short-sighted decision-making.

* Knowing when it is time to throw in the towel.

[read the transcript]

We speak this week with Daniel Newman, author, speaker, millennial CEO and founding partner at Futurum Research. We were interested in a column he wrote for Forbes entitled, How Will The 10 Top Digital Transformation Trends For 2019 Impact The CMO. 

Dan highlighted a couple of the tech trends that will be essential items for CMOs to get their arms around in the coming year, including the transformation of data from machine learning to AI. “Analytics should be the CMO’s best friend,” he told us. “AI will allow for data-driven campaigns that will be guaranteed to work every time.”

Newman said data should play a pivotal role in marketing in the future, and don’t worry too much about over-personalizing the message. Nobody ever complains when a brand provides too much value and can help drive purchases that customers want at any given moment. The trick is to find the right moment and to target customers accurately.

The European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation will force changes in the way brands market in the coming year, he said. They will have to become more creative about not just getting customers to opt in but to staying engaged. This means that companies are going to have change the way they do lead development. They’ll need to know customers better in order to personalize content because they’ll have less data to work with.

We had a particularly interesting discussion about chatbots as a mechanism for driving personal interactions. Newman sees us moving away from face-to-face moments, and the phenomenon isn’t limited to teens or Gen Xers. The rise of customer self-service is an indication that “We have become more social, but only behind our keyboards,” he said.

Another of his provocative predictions consumers will be able to use blockchain to, in effect, sell information about themselves to marketers.  While Newman sees this technology as still immature, he believes its long-term potential is explosive.

Finally, as the average tenure for CMOs continues to decline, they will have to do a better job of managing expectations and develop tighter relationships with their CEOs.

You can find Dan on Twitter here.

 

Tim Hayden of Brain+Trust Partners joined Chip to talk about business transformation through the use of data and digital innovation.

They talked about how most organizations underutilize their existing data and could be developing meaningful insights from what they already have at hand. In addition, they explored the role that data can play in improving the customer experience and business outcomes.

Tim discussed why he objects to the term “digital transformation” and the role that the human nature to avoid change plays in to the work of Brain+Trust Partners.

[read the transcript]