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.

FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz spoke with Jolie and Andrea on Monday, March 8.

About our conversation partners

Jolie O’Dell is a journalist and nonprofit leader. As a news writer and editor, she contributed to tech-focused publications such as ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, and VentureBeat, with bylines appearing in national print outlets periodically. She also frequently appeared on local and national news and podcasts as a tech industry analyst. In addition to her media duties, she was also heavily involved in event planning and newsroom management. O’Dell is the author of four books with a fifth coming in 2023. She lives in Virginia with her dog, Lt. Barclay.

Andrea Weckerle is the founder of CiviliNation and the author of Civility in the Digital Age: How Companies and People Can Triumph over Haters, Trolls, Bullies, and Other Jerks. She earned her Juris Doctor at the University of Richmond School of Law, where she served on the Senior Staff of the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology. She also holds a Master of Arts (MAIS) degree with a focus on Public Relations/Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University. Prior to founding CiviliNation, she ran her own boutique communications consultancy and also worked with national agencies, where her experience included legal and corporate communications, online communications, and social media.

By now, most or all of you are somewhat digitized and working remotely, if not entirely. 

As one CEO of a large tech company recently stated, “We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain.”

Indeed, recent data show that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks. Five years!

Banks have transitioned to remote sales and service teams and launched digital outreach to customers to make flexible payment arrangements for loans and mortgages. 

Grocery stores have shifted to online ordering and delivery as their primary business. 

Schools are either all in-person, some sort of hybrid, or all virtual. And don’t get me started on the hybrid schedules plus having to quarantine because a friend in class tested positive. Oy vey! 

As some regions reopen fully and lift mask mandates, businesses are considering how to return to some semblance of full speed in a still unstable environment. What does that look like as we consider how we market? Are there changes we’ll need to make? If so, how?

The answer is in creating values-based marketing.

That’s what we discuss on this week’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.

Resources Included

* Bud Light Thursday Night Shoutout

* EatOkra

* The Who We Are Project

* Spin Sucks Community

#621: Rene Johnson and Mitchell Levy on Thought Leader Life Credibility Episode

Lead from your power zone and not from your comfort zone. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Rene Johnson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/renesjohnson/), an elite authority in personal power dynamics, author, coach, keynote speaker, and CEO of Power Zone Coaching. She holds an ICF Certified Empowerment Coach degree from Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching (IPEC).

Rene is passionate in partnering with purpose-driven business leaders, turning leadership into their greatest profit center, while having more joy in life. She is an instructor who can inspire audiences with energy, insight, and expertise to become positive and power-filled change agents.

If you’re a small to mid-sized company and you have “power leaks,” consider reaching out to Rene Johnson by visiting her websites https://www.linkedin.com/in/renesjohnson/ and https://powerzonecoach.com/.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* Small and mid-size leaders but are “power leaks” should reach out to Rene Johnson. https://www.linkedin.com/in/renesjohnson/

* My role is to turn your leadership into your greatest profit center and the vehicle to live your best life. #LeadershipWhy https://powerzonecoach.com/ @pzcoach

* I can work with you in identifying and converting “power leaks” which are wasted time and resources that are wasting your and your team’s strengths and talents. #LeadershipWhy https://powerzonecoach.com/ @pzcoach

* I can teach you how to activate the “magic” in your power zone, where against the odds, you can accept your true calling to reveal your greatness. #LeadershipWhy https://www.linkedin.com/in/renesjohnson/

* I can mentor you in uncovering the “why” behind your leadership approach to increase your influence and business results to make a significant difference in people’s lives. #LeadershipWhy https://powerzonecoach.com/ @pzcoach

To view the video interview click here.

#622: Jared Brick and Mitchell Levy on Thought Leader Life Credibility Episode

How to create a strategy to solve digital confusion. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Jared Brick (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredbrick/), he is the Media Producer, Director and Founder of Brick House Media. He is also a Media Marketing Strategist, Video Director and Content Creator. He helps Thought Leaders who have digital confusion.

Jared Brick’s vision is to become a professional photographer, and share new perspectives of this dynamic evolving world. He founded Brick House Images in 2000, to fulfill his creative passion. He’s always possessed an attraction to visual media, with talents in social marketing, skills in digital education, business strategy and a lifetime of expertise in photography and video. Jared offers an opportunity to leverage these expertise areas for emerging thought leaders and break through bold clients.

If you’re a thought leader or small business owner and you do have #DigitalConfusion, you should consider reaching out to Jared Brick by visiting his website at

The March installment of The Hobson & Holtz Report includes reports on these stories:

* The road to hell is paved with good intentions, which Burger King learned after one well-meaning but poorly thought-out tweet

* Do you subscribe to a podcast or follow it? (Or listen to it?) These verbs may have consequence, especially in attracting new podcast listeners.

* Another company has fired another employee who built a following sharing work-related TikTok videos.

* A racing drone’s 87-second flight through a bowling alley has captured Hollywood’s attention.

* Neville is trying Timely, an Android-based competitor of Clubhouse.

* NFTs — non-fungible tokens — are a hot topic right now. Will they become a staple of marketing and communication or will remember them as a flash in the pan in a few years’ time?

* Dan York has updates on WordPress and Google in his Tech Report.

Our FIR recording sessions are now being streamed live, because why not? We already stream it in order to capture a backup recording on YouTube; we’ve just been making these restricted streams. We have decided to make them public so you can watch and comment. Our next recording is Saturday, April 17 at noon ET. You’ll see our pre-recording conversation as well as seeing how the sausage gets made. Watch live here.

(You can watch the video of the making of this episode, though it’s clearly too late to share comments we can read right into the show.)

We are hosting an FIR Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday during the stay-at-home period at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to [email protected]. Spread the word to your communications community.

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Neville’s link blog, Outbox, is available, as well.

Links from This Month’s Episode

* Latest Politemail Internal Comms Benchmark Report

* Burger King UK under fire for tweeting ‘Women belong in the kitchen’ on International Women’s Day

* Burger King’s Snafu Puts Focus on the Danger of Using Shock Value as a Social Media Strategy

* KFC Gaming tells Burger King to delete ‘women belong in the kitchen’ tweet

* Burger King Gets Grilled for ‘Women Belong in the Kitchen’ Tweet Supporting Female Chefs

* Podcasting: What word to use instead of “subscribe”?

* Subscribe or Follow a Podcast: What’s in a Word?

* Brands: Let your internal culture out

In May 2021, Google search rankings will start to include more user experience ranking factors – are your websites ready?  Using a set of metrics called ‘Core Web Vitals’, your web pages will now be ranked based on how fast they load, how quickly a user can start interacting with a page, and how stable the page is while it loads. In this episode, I explore questions such as: what does this mean for your websites? What tools can you use? What can you do to improve your sites so that they don’t lose any search engine ranking (and perhaps increase their ranking)? In this time when commerce has moved online, and Google search remains a critical way for people to find websites, how can businesses ensure their websites remain competitive?

Learn more:

* Mindmap with links for this episode

* Google’s page on Core Web Vitals

* PageSpeed Insights

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.

About our Conversation Partner

Phil is chief communication and marketing officer for Bloq’s multiple services and brands. Prior to joining Bloq in 2018, Phil spent 13 years at Edelman, guiding the world’s largest communications firm’s initial explorations across two generational technology shifts — social media and blockchain — and building its global blockchain center-of-excellence. In his near-decade in Silicon Valley prior to Edelman, Phil worked with startups and enterprise companies alike. His work helped guide clients to win the Technology Pioneers Programme Award at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Twice. Known for industry “firsts,” Phil is widely considered to be the first PR professional to start a blog (2001) and the first to describe and demonstrate the value of blockchain technology in communications (2015).

Links to Resources Mentioned in the Interview

* Mintable.app

* TrustWallet

* Rarible

* Foundation

* Imogen Heap and the Blockchain Revolution

* The Trust Machine (documentary by Alex Winter)

* Coinbase

* About the Kings of Leon NFT

When the pandemic began and schools closed their doors, everyone was crazy understanding. While not everyone had children at home learning, on top of our trying to figure out how to work, it felt like we were all in the same boat. Or at least on the same waters, helping one another paddle toward the coastline.

(That was a terrible analogy. I’m sorry.)

Now, nearly a year later (359 days later, to be exact), people have begun to lose patience. Some schools are fully open. Some are on a hybrid schedule. Some have been quarantined (like us) and some are about to go on spring break. People are exhausted. And, while we can see normal life coming up in the near future, we’re not quite there.

We still have a ways to go and during this day after International Women’s Day, I’d like to spend a little time talking today about all of the women who are out there, trying to have it all. That and more on this week’s Spin Sucks podcast episode.

Resources Included

* International Women’s Day

* Women are leaving the workforce at four times the rate as men

* Recent projections based on economic scenarios modeled by McKinsey and Oxford Economics estimate that employment for women may not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2024—two full years after the recovery for men 

* Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world

* #ChooseToChallenge

One of the things that continue to allude communicators is measurement. Part of the challenge is the industry doesn’t have a uniform way to measure what we do. Then we also have to take into account brand awareness, which is pretty near impossible to measure, and then we’re left with the things we can measure—leads and participation in nurturing them to conversion.

It’s not a fun topic and I can hear you all groaning. BUT!! It’s extraordinarily important. Pretty much every meeting my team and I have with clients today begins with, “How many leads did you generate? How many are marketing qualified? How many are sales qualified?” 

And how do you create your goals, and what do you report on weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually?

It’s rough and, while we’ve figured out the answer for most, there is still the elusive brand awareness, which is required, but challenging to measure—at least without a six-figure budget to do studies every year.

What we talk about is what you can measure and how to set up your comms plans at the start to define the metrics the correct way. And then we’ll use a framework to help you report on the results. 

That’s what we discuss on this week’s episode of the Spin Sucks podcast.

Resources Included

* Christopher S. Penn’s SAINT Framework

* Spin Sucks Community

Over the past year, we’ve experienced a seismic shift in the way we work. Being in the midst of those changes can make them harder to see and understand. In this podcast, Victoria Dew, SCMP, Founder and CEO of Dewpoint Communications, walks us through these shifts while illustrating how communicators can reflect them in their strategic communications in the months ahead.

Victoria’s global business background includes 15 years as a trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs and executives. She tapped that network and beyond in her research into how we communicate and create experiences for people in the post-pandemic workplace.

Victoria joins us to discuss issues from the normalization of employees as messy, complicated humans to what can happen when we stop treating employees as robots. She emphasizes the high stakes involved, as the potential consequences of burnout can cost companies up to 34% of an employee’s salary.

“We are fragile humans and we are resilient humans ― and these same humans are the future of work,” Victoria says. In discussing how we approach the whole human, she talks about efforts and progress toward diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.  She notes that as we make real strides forward in achieving social justice and dismantling systemic racism, companies’ approaches to these issues can prove to be the solution to evolving employee experience and engagement challenges.

Victoria shares her thoughts on the future of the “hybrid” workplace where a confluence of three conditions — human, flexible and connection — will help define the new employee experience.

Hear Victoria share more of these “ah ha” moments with EE Voice, and learn more about Victoria’s work by connecting with her on LinkedIn and downloading the complete study results:  The New Rules of Employee Experience & Communications.

On January 8, Trump was banned from the internet. Last week, Zack Bornstein, an Emmy-award-winning writer/director for the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and Comedy Central, tweeted, “I’m no epidemiologist” and attached a graphic of The Corona cases beginning to steeply decline in the United States on January 8. 

I’m no epidemiologist pic.twitter.com/p53ZAuc2Db

— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) February 17, 2021

It’s a joke, of course (consider the source) but it says a lot about what can happen to real people in real situations when some are banned from social media. I don’t know about you, but it felt to me like the world readjusted itself on its axis when Trump was banned. We no longer had a cliffhanger every time we went to bed.

But what happens when you or your organization or your client or someone on your leadership team is banned? Typically it’s not an outright ban but what is called “shadowbanning.”

And that’s what we talk about on today’s Spin Sucks podcast episode.