For Immediate Release

The next episode of FIR Live will look at the communication efforts surrounding the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill—the worst in U.S. history. Our guests are…

* Gerald Baron, who authors the Crisisblogger blog and wrote “Now is Too Late 2,” one of the best books available on crisis communication in the digital era. Gerald is a founder and Director of Strategic Services for PIER (Public Information Emergency Response) Systems, a crisis communication technology solution. (PIER Systems was used by BP during the Gulf spill crisis.) Most recently, Gerald wrote the white paper, “Unending Flow: Case Study on Communications in the Gulf Oil Spill.

* Neil Chapman, a BP communicator, was part of BP’s communications response team for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He has been on the communications front line for controversial industrial projects, company takeovers, trading scandals and lobbying campaigns. Neil was the subject of an FIR interview with co-host Neville Hobson earlier this year.

The show—which you’re encouraged to be part of by calling in or participating in the live chat room—is set for Saturday, December 11, at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. London.

As always with FIR Live, you can be part of the discussion by calling in to +1.347.324.3723 to ask a question or share your views, or by commenting in the chat room.

On the day of the show, you’ll need to log in to BlogTalk Radio in order to participate in the chat room.

Join us—your questions will ensure that this will be a fascinating conversation!

“Unending Flow” is available for download as a PDF (free) or as a Kindle ebook (for $6.99) after completing a brief form:

http://www.piersystems.com/go/survey/1533/4615

Join hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz for a discussion with Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, co-authors of the new book, "Empowered."

The book, a follow-up to Benoff and Charlene Li's bestseller, "Groundswell," explores how companies use technology to solve customer problems. It focuses of HEROes, highly empowered and resourceful employees whose experiments and innovations on customers' behalf result in extraordinary customer service. That surprising level of customer service, the co-authors argue, is the new way to market, generating repeat business and attracting new customers.

During the hour-long show, you'll be able to call in with your own questions or comments, or participate in the chat room.

The show is scheduled for 1 p.m. (Eastern time) on Saturday, October 9.

The rest of the show

Is it wise for companies to direct consumers to their Facebook pages instead of their websites?

That's the subject our panel will discuss on Saturday, August 14, at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. London.

So far, the panel will include...

* Steve Rubel, Senior VP and Director of Insights, Edelman Digital, who wrote about the trend in his March column for Forbes.com

* Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company, which will use traditional advertising to drive consumers to a Ford Explorer page on Facebook

* Jennifer Cohen, co-founder and president of Something Creative LLC, which guided a Facebook-focused campaign for Uni-Ball (which Jennifer discussed in a recent FIR interview

As always with FIR Live, you can be part of the discussion by calling in to ask a question or share your views, or by commenting in the chat room.

Is marketing part of PR? Or is it the other way around? Where does government relations fit? While the structuring of communications functions in organizations may sound mundane, it's a topic that actually inspires considerable passion among communicators. We're putting together a top-notch panel for this discussion. Confirmed so far are Mitch Joel, president of TwistImage, a digital marketing agency based in Montreal, and Beth Harte, community manager at MarketingProfs and host of the PR20Chat on Twitter. We'll update this post with additional panelists as we confirm them.

One study suggests that 85% of organizations plan to increase their email marketing efforts. But another finds that two-fifths of marketers don’t even know if their email messages are being delivered successfully; those who are aware of delivery failures don’t have the tools to make sure those messages find their way to the right inbox. In the meantime, IT departments and individuals do anything they can to keep a lot of those messages out of their inbox.

In this episode of FIR Live, we’ll talk with experts about email marketing, what works and what doesn’t. John Wall, author of the Ronin Marketeer blog and co-host of the “Marketing Over Coffee” podcast, will join us, along with Greg Cangiolosi of email shop BlueSky Factory. Representing Return Path, the organization behind the study, “E-Commerce Opportunities,” will be Tami Forman, the company’s director of Corporate Communications. And it’s altogether possible Christopher S. Penn, John Wall’s co-host, will also drop by.

Please join us with your questions, observations, and stories.

FIR Live #16 is set for Saturday, August 22, 2009, at 10am PDT, 1pm EDT, and 6pm in the UK. You can take part in the show by calling in to +1 347 324 3723. You can listen in live at the same number as well as online at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fir. You can also join in the chat by text in the chat room.

After the live show, the recording will be made available as a podcast as usual as part of the Hobson & Holtz Report.

We hope you’ll join us on August 22.

Outreach by PR professionals to influencers via online channels has resulted in a firestorm of criticism. A recent form email from a publicist designed to generate awareness for his client resulted in a wide variety of opinions. Joinins us to discuss this particular email and the issue influence in general will be John Bell, managing director at Ogilvy PR; Gary Vaynerchuk, a well-known social media figure (and the person who was promoted in the email pitch referenced above); John Cass, the PR blogger who wrote about the Vaynerchuk pitch; and Connie Reece, an Austin-based practitioner with an alternate view of the pitch. Please join us!

It's not unusual for communicators to feel stifled by corporate attorneys whose counsel, often viewed as contrary to the organization's reputational interests, is rubber-stamped by CEOs. Neville and Shel will look at perceptions of lawyers by communicators, explore ways legal and communications can work together, and discuss whether attorneys' judgments are always best for the company. Our special guests include Helio Fred Garcia, president and founder of the crisis management firm LOGOS Consulting Group, and executive director of the LOGOS INSTITUTE for Crisis Management & Executive Leadership; and law academic and commentator Mike Semple Piggot, aka CharonQC, the man behind Charon QC The Blawg and Insite Law Magazine podcasts. Also joining us is Jim Golden, Chattanooga, Tennessee-based attorney specializing in negotiation of early reasonable settlements in complex accident and commercial disputes, avoiding or shortening litigation and significantly reducing client costs. Adapting theory learned at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School to the practical needs of firm clients, he provides leadership in an area of legal practice he describes as “negotiation counsel.” Golden, who has represented the trucking industry, among others, has views about what companies can and could say that run counter to what you hear from most corporate counsel..

Please join us with your questions, observations, and stories.

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb explored both sides of the increasingly popular business activity of monitoring social media. He wrote: "It's kind of a modern day horror story, isn't it? Web 2.0's potential benefit for humanity tragically sold short by social media because it fell under a fog of marketing software. Would-be short-form conversationalists jumping in with CRM-tinted glasses secured to their faces. One of my co-workers says that within minutes of his wife Tweeting about her art studio last night, she was friended by scads of art companies and salespeople. Who wants to have a conversation in that context? Or maybe it's just a matter of changing our expectations. Maybe this is all good; the new customer service - a lot like the old customer service, but in your blog comments and replies tab."

In our April FIR Live episode, we'll talk with CustomScoop CEO Chip Griffin and a senior representative of the new social media monitoring service Spiral 16 for their takes on the issue. And we'll take your calls.

For every company with a full complement of communicators on the payroll, there are dozens of communicators toiling to manage all of their companies' communication efforts all by themselves. Marketing, advertising, sometimes even financial and shareholder communication, all done by one person. If he's lucky, he has an admin, but not even that is a given. On this episode, in response to a comment left by FIR listener Adam Daniels, we're taking your calls with tips on how to manage some PR activity along with all the other communications you're responsible for. Neither of us have ever been a one-man show, so we're counting on your calls, lest we wind up with nothing to talk about!