Astroturfing, smear campaigns, social media manipulation, unauthorized release of private information, defamation, character assassination, whisper campaigns, media planting, and gaslighting.

These activities are undertaken by the seamiest, most ethically challenged public relations practitioners. While there are far more PR professionals who abide by ethical codes, the bad actors get all the attention, leading to a sordid reputation for the industry that some believe we will never be able to overcome.

The latest example comes from the agency representing actor/producer/director Justin Baldoni, who responded to accusations of inappropriate behavior by engaging an agency that employed all of the tactics listed above. Initially, the campaign had the desired effect but ultimately backfired as the campaign itself drew more attention than the original allegations.

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel examine the controversy and address the idea of requiring licensing or certification of all PR practitioners and whether it would weed out those who find codes of ethics to be mere inconveniences to be ignored.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

Raw Transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 442 of four immediate release. I’m Shel Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson. And we are recording this the day after Christmas Day. And this topic is very timely news wise. It’s in the news, but it has depth of distinct interest to communicators. And this is the huge kerfuffle surrounding the actors, Blake Lively and Justin Bald, and the aftermath of the work they did on the film.

It ends with us. It’s become a flashpoint for ethical discussion in the PR and entertainment industries. The incident as covered by many, the B-B-C-C-E-O today, New York Times that I’ve seen today, in fact and many others, showcases a disturbing confluence of workplace misconduct allegations and aggressive reputation management strategies.

With continuing allegations over egregious behaviors by PR pros and agencies, what are the [00:01:00] impacts for practitioners and the profession? We’ll address this question right after this.

The conflict began during the production of It Ends with us where Blake Lively accused Baldon and producer Jamie Heath of boundary violations and inappropriate behavior, prompting the studio Wayfarer to implement safeguards such as hiring an intimacy coordinator. Despite these measures, tensions persisted particularly over creative control.

Lively ultimately won significant input into the film’s final cut and received a producer credit as the film approached its release. Private messages revealed a coordinated effort by Baldon and his crisis PR team, led by Melissa Nathan to damage Lively’s reputation. I. The campaign allegedly involved amplifying negative narratives about Lively online while suppressing stories of b’s.

Alleged misconduct techniques included fostering untraceable social media narratives, leveraging media connections to plant damaging stories, and utilizing [00:02:00] tactics reminiscent of campaigns seen in other high profile cases like that of Johnny Depp and Amber Hurt. Documents disclose that Baldon and his team sought to portray lively as difficult to work with and opportunistic, aiming to shift public focus from his actions to her perceived shortcomings.

This strategy significantly impacted Lively’s career and personal brand resulting in a decline in her haircare product, sales and public backlash against her. The PR tactics used in this case highlight the ethical quandaries surrounding the industry’s role in reputation management. The notion that PR professionals could systematically attempt to bury an individual raises questions about the need for stricter professional standards such as licensing or accreditation for PR practitioners.

Something Shel and I have discussed many times in this podcast. B’S public image has remained relatively intact despite the revelations. While Lively has suffered reputational damage. Critics argue this outcome [00:03:00] underscores the pervasive double standards in how society evaluates men and women in public controversies.

Allegations of harassment and subsequent retaliation illustrate persistent issues within Hollywood’s power dynamics. The case exemplifies how crisis management can ve into ethically dubious territory. Real world consequences for individuals and public discourse. It also strengthens the argument for introducing licensing requirements for PR practitioners to enforce ethical standards and accountability.

A number of PR practitioners have weighed in on this, especially on LinkedIn. Many are highly critical of the alleged egregious behavior and actions of some PR practitioners. But before we look at what others have to say, she, what’s your take on the PR issues arising from all of this? It leads me to re reiterate my belief that we do need licensing or a requirement for certification for people to work in this industry because there are no repercussions to the agency that [00:04:00] engaged in this behavior and this behavior is beyond the pale.

I mean if you look at the codes of ethics of any. Association out there that represents people in the communications industry. P-R-S-A-I-A-B-C-C-P-R-S-C-I-P-R, they have violated several of these truth and accuracy. Uh, is one. They engaged in defamation and they spread falsehoods.

The core of her lawsuit is the accusation. That his team spread these false and damaging stories about her, and that violates code of ethics, which does emphasize. Honesty and accuracy in communications. They misused influence his position. And I think this has come out more strongly since this story has gained the legs that it has.

He has been a prominent advocate for women’s rights. They he’s misusing his influence there to a attack. A woman potentially harm a colleague [00:05:00] is a. Breach of trust. There’s a lack of transparency involved here, which is another PR principle of, fostering open and honest communication.

The smear campaign was conducted covertly. She didn’t know about it. She didn’t have the opportunity to respond to any of these accusations. The harassment and the smear campaign. This is potential abuse of power dynamics in the entertainment industry where I’m really glad that I don’t work.

Uhhuh I should note that my father was in the entertainment industry and I I was exposed to it a lot growing up and determined early on that I really didn’t want anything to do with it. But PR professionals do have a responsibility to ensure that their actions don’t. Enable this kind of abuse.

And I think the thing that disturbs me the most is that there are ways that a PR agency could have taken on this account and handled it well. By prioritizing truth and accuracy, I. I [00:06:00] absolutely advise against defaming the person that is on the other side of this argument facilitating open communication, upholding professional standards, all could have been brought to bear in a strategy.

I. That would have worked. Th this is the easy way out for Balone. And, frankly I think that the people who did this should be ashamed of themselves. I’m sure they’re not, I’m sure they’re very proud of the results of this. Although, to be honest, the more this story grows, the worse it is for bald his reputation.

It was looking pretty good for a while, but the more discussion there is around this, the more it’s backfiring against him because he’s being seen as a guy who hired an agency that did these things. You also, because this has gotten so public, have a lot of people coming to Blake Lively’s defense, including Colleen Hoover.

Who wrote the book that the movie was based on, I don’t know if she wrote the screenplay or was heavily involved in the film, but when you have all of these [00:07:00] people publicly standing behind Lively it’s not going to stand well for Balone. So ultimately, I don’t think this worked out for ’em, but only because it got the amount of attention it did.

This PR agency takes on work like this all the time. I don’t know. If there have been previous instances where they have taken the same approaches and it just hasn’t, gotten the kind of exposure that this assignment did. But in, in a world in which they had to be certified in order to do this kind of work the certifying agency or the licensing agency would be able to revoke it because of the violation of ethics, and they wouldn’t be able to do this work anymore.

That doesn’t happen, as I’ve said a million times. Anyone can hang out a shingle that says public relations on it, and take on clients and behave any way they want. And that’s what happened here. Yeah, it looks that way, doesn’t it? And what’s, what I, what sort of takes me aback a bit too is the strong way in which the agency [00:08:00] defends what they’re doing is just doing their job.

I saw just before we started recording this, an article in. People magazine that was in my feed that I’m following for this, I thought, oh, someone’s mentioning astroturfing finally has it come back again? I don’t think it ever went away. No. In fact, there’s a, the text in the narrative, which I thought was absolutely to the point.

It says, at the core of live’s allegations is astroturfing a strategy designed to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion of grassroots support. Or backlash. The complaint claims that Baldoni Crisis PR firm, the agency group, let’s tag. T-A-G-P-R coordinated social media efforts to portray her as controlling and difficult during the film’s production.

And it, it notes a paragraph later emphasizing that they were simply doing their job because everyone does this. I think there’s absolute bollocks to use a technical term we have over here in the uk. I can’t believe that for a second. But there are many who do though. And thing I, I wanna point, I wanna mention, just [00:09:00] share really some of the conversation that’s been going on LinkedIn in particular.

Bob Pickard, who’s the name I think you are familiar with Shel. Oh, sure. He wrote just for Christmas, I felt nauseous reading this article. We can bury anyone inside a Hollywood smear machine in the New York Times and that is a really good article I have to say on this kerfuffle, no proper professional communicator with even a similar crim of ethics could ever debase themselves using such gutter tactics of character assassination.

No genuine crisis, public relations expert, quote unquote, could conceive of writing down such slimy nonsense or so lacking in judgment. As we can bury anyone. All too often celebrity publicity does not equal communications professionalism. And there are quite a number of comments to to that post that he made.

There’s also some, another one I want to reference too, which is in the House of Marketing and PR communications group on Facebook. That was posted again just for Christmas Day by Helen Reynolds. And she has an [00:10:00] interesting take here. She starts by saying popular, unpopular possibly a popular unpopular opinion.

I work in comms, not pr, it’s an old debate, but this story about Melissa, Nathan, that’s the the PR person mentioned earlier, has made me embarrassed. I. The popular idea is and always has been, that smearing people and coverups are the job. I don’t want to be associated with pr. She says, ironically, PR as a profession has the worst reputation.

The term is permanently tainted. She says, and she had responses from a number of people who say hang on a minute. You’re tying the whole profession like this. The whole profession’s not like this. That’s I guess, a point of all of this because it is highlighting what negatives in the profession of which.

That’s what’s getting the attention, not the good the profession does. So this debate, no doubt on this angle in particular the professionalism or lack of certain people who work in the PR industry is highlighting this whole point about, wait a minute if this was some kind of. Like doctors, like lawyers and so [00:11:00] forth, where you are ju you are in a sense, judged by others before you get a license.

You have to apply and be verified and all that kind of stuff. You wouldn’t have this you, I think that’s probably a little naive saying you wouldn’t have this you would still, but you’d be able to do something about it if you do. We’ve talked about this lots of times before. Your view is strong on this.

I know. I don’t disagree with you either. I don’t believe this is gonna happen. I hate to say it like that. No this might get lots of debate going such as what we are having in this podcast. What I’m seeing people writing on social networks like LinkedIn, will anything actually happen. It, as Helen mentions, popular, unpopular, or possibly popular un god, a mouthful to get tongue twist, to get you word.

Popular. Popular, possibly unpopular opinion. Because it’s clearly isn’t something front of mind to many in our, in this profession. I, I don’t see a kind of groundswell of people demanding, something must be done about this. I don’t see any of that. I don’t see the professional bodies commenting on this publicly [00:12:00] at all.

So clearly this is not, embarrassing enough to force action. So what’s to be done, do you think? I don’t know what other PR agencies would do if their billings are fine. And as we reported recently talking about the Edelman layoffs and trauma at other agencies billings aren’t fine right now.

So maybe this is the time for some self-reflection in the industry. But I think. One, one of the challenges that you face with the reputation of PR as an industry is that because you have people like this and agencies like this engaging in behaviors like this and that’s what gets the attention and how much attention does it get in the public media when a PR agency has a successful engagement that.

Was done completely ethically that ticked all of the boxes on codes of ethics it never gets talked about. So what does that lead to? It leads to [00:13:00] portrayals of public relations, people in the movies and TV and novels as being more like this individual than the people that you, and I know Bob Picard for example.

Who, who do. Engage in their practice based on a solid foundation of ethics. I, as you mentioned, the problem is that there are no consequences. There’s nothing that’s gonna happen to her. I. She’s looking at all this bad press right now over this, but how many celebrities are looking at this and say, yeah, she’s the one I want in my corner.

Something bad happens. I imagine she’s gonna do rather well as a result of this, sadly. But, by the way I should note my view that licensing or a mandatory certification should be. A requirement is 180 degrees from where I used to be on this issue. When I heard people talk about it, my argument was no, because if you look at the professions that do require this, the [00:14:00] law, accounting, medicine.

Things like that, there’s one right way to do things and in public relations there’s a tremendous amount of creativity and a tremendous amount of flexibility. There’s dozens of ways, hundreds of ways that you could approach any assignment that, that you get in a PR agency. And how do regulate that?

And I have come around based purely on ethics. We’re not going to say there’s one way to do. Something, but there are clearly ethical and unethical ways of doing it, and that’s what the licensing or certification bodies would be looking at in a world where it was required when a complaint was filed that this violated ethics.

We’ll look at it, we’ll investigate and we will determine what the consequences should be. Should it be reprimand should it be. A revocation of the license or the certification. These bodies would have to come up with the committees or groups that would make these assessments.

But I [00:15:00] don’t see it happening anytime soon because I don’t see the motivation out there to do this. And of course it’s not the PR industry that would do this. It would be the business community. It’s not the lawyers who say you have to have. A-A-A-A-A-A license to practice law.

It’s the state in the United States, it’s California. You have to have pass the California bar. So at some level it would have to be a governmental body some kind of a public institution that would need to make the determination that this has gone far enough and we need to start licensing or certifying these people.

Yeah. It’s a, it is a tricky one. I can see that quite clearly. It’s. It’s sad. I think I was thinking when I was thinking about this today organizations many have codes of ethics that they publish. I’m talking about in the profession, not just general businesses, but although some do but mostly you’ll see this in advertising, in pr of course in marketing, where people publicly state, we follow this code of ethics [00:16:00] practice.

I wonder I’ve not none come to mind that I that they quite outstanding and all encompassing and embrace this kind of topic that this is not how we conduct ourselves here. The easy thing perhaps would be to say if you’re a member of a personal body, they have a code of ethics, it’s new, have a code of knew how to publicly support that and.

Many people do that wouldn’t be, none of that is enough. So you are right. It’s not the professional associations, it’s the clients, let’s say who, who might need. But there’s, there is no motivation. I. Yeah, and I think there’s an opportunity for education that you wanna look for an organization with individuals who have the certification from a credible organization like the Global Communication Certification Council.

But one, one other point just to make you brought it up with that people article talking about astroturfing. Yeah. I don’t know why anybody would think it had ever gone away. Astroturfing originally was really difficult to pull off. What you had to have was a network of people [00:17:00] that you could send.

A letter to, and then they would rewrite that letter and sign it and send it to their local newspaper to appear in the letters to the editor. So essentially, you had the same letter in hundreds of local newspapers showing a groundswell of public grassroots support for whatever the issue was in the digital world.

With influencers and social media, it has gotten a lot easier. So there’s more astroturfing, not less taking place today. We see it, although I don’t see people calling it astroturfing so much, but it is what it is. Yeah. I remember in, in, in the current climate IE digital since the turn of the century, I first came across that term in the, you’ll remember this Shel in the early days of blogging global PR week.

Version 1.0 of course that had a lot of people who we know who are still active discussing this whole thing. And I’ve seen others discussion since then, but nothing really, there’s no needless have been moved other than it gets into public [00:18:00] consciousness. Maybe someone might hear what we are talking about and think, okay, let me.

Amplifi this topic that I think would be a good idea if we said to people, look, if you hear this and you are broad agreement with the topic we’re discussing here, please talk about it. Please amplify it to others. Maybe that way someone’s gonna take notice. So don’t write to your member of Parliament and that kind of stuff.

Just talk about it on your networks and raise it with your communities and see what people have to say and will that make a difference. I put my cynicism aside, but only in the sense that, don’t have your expectations set too high, but if enough people start talking about this, it might get subtraction at some point.

Yeah. My expectations are not set very high and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #442: Justin Baldoni’s Attack on Blake Lively Explains Why PR is a Dirty Word appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The world’s biggest PR agency laid off five percent of its global staff. It’s a sign of the headwinds facing the industry, including reduced opportunities for earned media, which is what PR agencies spend a lot of their time trying to achieve. We’ll explore what’s happening in the PR agency world in the long-form FIR episode for December 2024. Also in this episode, an update on the social media landscape, with Reddit surpassing X (formerly Twitter) in the U.K.; a look at some of the key findings in “AI Activated,” the latest relevance report from the USC Annenberg School; there’s a waiting list for an app that’s being called a feed reader for the fediverse; communicators are gearing up for challenges that face them as Donald Trump prepares to return to the U.S. presidency; and there’s new information about how businesses are adapting to Artificial Intelligence. In his Tech Report, Dan York, recounts his trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the United Nations’ internet governance body’s meeting; he also shares his thoughts on efforts to protect children from social media’s harms.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 441 of four immediate release. This is our long form episode for December, 2024. I’m Shell Holtz in Concord, California. And I’m Neville Hobson in Kru and Somerset in England. It’s the week before Christmas as we are recording this, and in a few days time, it will be Christmas for those of you who celebrate like me no snow here and no white Christmas expected here in the uk talking to friends in in Colorado the other day that they’ve not got snow where they are, but it should have some.

So if you’re celebrating Christmas and expecting a white one, the UK in the south certainly is not the place to be. Nevertheless don’t count on it in San Francisco either. No, don’t count on it there either. So today is actually as we’re recording this, which is on Saturday the 21st, December, it’s the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day of the year.

And here in the uk we were lucky to see eight hours of sunlight today. The good news in the [00:01:00] south of England, less the further north you go. The good news, though, is that from now on the daylight time grows more every day as we get closer to the summer. That was actually a crossword clue this morning in the New York Times, is that the days starting today will be what from now on and the answer was longer, right?

That’s correct, yes. So it’s great. So to our show today, we’ve got some great stuff to talk about. But first let’s do a quick rundown to remind you of what we have covered in between these monthlies. What have we talked about since the monthly episode for November, which was three episodes ago. Or four, counting that one.

And we’ve done three basically since then. Now we’re doing this monthly. So episode 4 38 which we published in early, the early beginning of December. That was about Google’s AI overviews, which many are saying are turning upside down. Search engine optimization or SEO. [00:02:00] So we looked at the data, we took a look at the data and the trends, and had a good chat about that.

And recommend, we recommended some actions communicators can take to ensure that web properties still get attention as the shift to AI search continues. And that’s really what’s behind all of this, the shift to AI search. There’s that AI again. Pay attention. You’re gonna hear that a lot in this episode.

We’ve got a handful of comments to this one. Didn’t we show? We did starting with Shashi Beam Kanda an old friend of ours and of the show, he’s currently the principal research director for the Infotech Research Group, and he said, thanks for sharing, speaking with our members and trends that are surfacing first a reduction in organic traffic with the same level of conversions, which to me indicates the traffic is highly targeted even though there may be zero clicks due to AI overviews.

And then LLM traffic has started appearing as referring [00:03:00] sources. Though not much, I think only desktop traffic from LLMs will show in the analytics for now. So that’s what Shashi had to say. Heidi Sullivan who I met when she was at Cision said, great FIR episode. Lots of great and practical suggestions to get into AI overviews as organic search result Traffics.

Traffic declines, but we’ve all got lots of work to do. And Amy Santoro communicator, I know through IABC said Agree. I always double check AI research. Smart Amy. Smart. Good. That’s great. Feedback there. Episode 4 39 we published in mid-December that was talking about the top digital trends or digital marketing trends for 2025, and we focused really on agent AI in that episode.

That was the top trend that the report we cited. Highlight it. So we took a stroll into agen ai, which just a couple weeks ago was a [00:04:00] relatively new term in the mainstream. Suddenly everyone’s talking about it. And indeed, I’ve seen reports at around that time saying, oh, this is gonna be the word for 2025.

I’m pretty sure it’s likely to be Italy hyped like crazy. You can be sure of it and everyone will use it, not knowing, it’s not a made up word. I’ve heard some people saying this is a manufactured word. No, it’s not. It’s been around a long time. Look it up. It’s the dictionary. Find something. Yeah, it is signifying there’s something that acts as an agent for something or someone else.

It’s pretty straightforward, so you get a sense of what it’s about. But we looked at it and considered some of the possibilities for communicators along with the five other digital marketing trends from that report. So that was a pretty interesting episode. And then episode four 40 which we published just a few days ago during the past week.

Where we talked about influence and indeed experimenting for influence what some organizations are doing to enable their ex experimentation and what many more aren’t that ought to be as we discussed in our conversation. So [00:05:00] we reviewed some research on the subject and discussed ways, communicate this can apply experimentation to their work.

And that’s a topic I have a feeling we’ll be talking more about during 2025. So that’s where we’re at since the last episode. We have also just published the most recent episode of Circle of Fellows. This is the monthly panel discussion among usually four fellows of the International Association of Business Communicators.

I usually moderate it and I moderated this one, which featured Neil Griffiths and Russell Grossman from the uk, Martha Mka from Canada, and Jennifer wa from Canada. Hey, I was the only yank in this episode. And the focus of this was how communications as a profession can lead you to bigger leadership roles.

It was a fascinating discussion. A lot of people who have already listened thought it was one of the better episodes that we have done. Really went by fast. So that is up on the FIR [00:06:00] Podcast Network now and available for you to listen to or watch as a YouTube video. The next one is also scheduled for Thursday, January 16th at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, and we’ll be talking about how communicators can spark creativity.

We only have two panelists confirmed at this point, but they’re good ones. Zora Artis and Amy Greenhouse will be joining me for that one and two other August fellows. So should be a fun one to talk about sparking creativity. I suspect AI will come up in that conversation too, since a lot of people are using AI to spark creativity.

To get off that blank screen or ideate with images and the like. So looking forward to that. And we have, as you mentioned earlier, Neville some great stories to report today, and we will get to those on the other side of the break.

A lot of [00:07:00] FIR reports recently have looked at the evolution of the social media ecosystem. We are seeing significant transformations reshaping how individuals and organizations communicate with platforms like Reddit, blue Sky, and TikTok. At the forefront of these changes, they each is introducing unique features and experiencing shifts in user engagement.

And it’s worth noting that with the exception of Reddit, none of those platforms existed 10 years ago. And 10 years ago, nobody was really thinking about Reddit as a contender in the social network space. It was, but that’s not how it was perceived. For communication professionals to make informed decisions for their organizations or clients.

All of these shifts. In the social media landscape is something that we really need to get our minds wrapped around. And it starts with Reddit. Reddit recently surpassed x, formerly Twitter, of course, in popularity within the uk. It’s now the [00:08:00] fifth most visited social media platform on your side of the pond.

Neville. In May, 2024, Reddit attracted 22.9 million UK adults. That’s a 47% increase from the same period in 2023. That’s quite a surge, and it’s partly attributed to enhancements in Google search algorithms, which have improved Reddit’s visibility and accessibility. I’ve noticed this in Google searches.

I’m getting more and more content out of Reddit. But Reddit’s commitment to user-driven content and community engagement resonates with a growing audience. And of course, there are those people who are just looking for that alternative to X. And while many of them are headed to blue sky and some to threads, there’s some headed to Reddit.

To further enhance user experience, though Reddit has just introduced Reddit answers. This is an AI powered conversational interface. They designed it to streamline retrieval of information. The feature allows [00:09:00] users to ask questions and get curated summaries that leverage the platform’s ex extensive knowledge base by integrating advanced AI capabilities.

Reddit aims to simplify navigation and improve content Discovery. Reinforcing is position as a leading platform for community-driven discussions. This use of AI is getting fairly common. There are newspapers like the Washington Post that are introducing similar features. Then there’s Blue Sky, which we’ve covered.

I would have to say exhaustively here on FIR. We’ll have more on Blue Sky later in the show in fact. But for now, let’s just say that Blue Sky has amassed millions of users reflecting a growing interest in decentralized social networking models, which at least so far, Reddit is not after a long period of generally ho hum attitude toward blue Sky.

Now it’s fair to say something’s actually going on there. Even though it may be banned in the US by this time next month, TikTok is increasingly becoming a [00:10:00] primary news source for younger demographics, prompting legacy media organizations to set up a presence on the platform. Fox News, NBC, they’re all producing personality driven content tailored to tiktoks format.

In order to engage this segment of the audience. Notable journalists are creating these spontaneous, unscripted videos that align with the platform’s emphasis on authenticity and relatability. Although TikTok doesn’t yet generate substantial ad revenues for these companies, it is viewed as a strategic investment in cultivating future audiences if it’s still around.

Now, these developments underscore the dynamic nature of the social media landscape. Communication professionals need to consider some strategies in order to account for this continuing. Evolution of the space. First you have to diversify your platform engagement. Look at emerging platforms like Blue Sky and [00:11:00] legacy platforms that you may not have been active on, like Reddit to reach audiences seeking decentralized and user-centric experiences.

You can’t be concentrated in just one or two networks anymore. You need to leverage AI tools like Reddit answers to enhance content discovery and audience interaction and adapt content strategies. You develop authentic personality driven content. For platforms like TikTok or wherever people go after TikTok is banned to effectively engage younger audiences.

It’s also important to stay on top of these shifts if you’re gonna engage with diverse audiences and leverage the opportunities presented by emerging technologies and platforms because this evolution isn’t gonna slow down anytime soon. You are right there. I saw that guardian story too about the surge of Reddit in the uk and it’s it is pretty interesting, isn’t it?

Particularly that growth in just a year, 47% increase. And you [00:12:00] outlined I think some of the reasons perhaps that is driving that growth. We talked about Reddit. A few episodes ago. And my concern about Reddit to companies if one says to an organization, Hey, you should be on Reddit. No, you need to ask why is your audience on Reddit?

Are the people you want to connect with on Reddit? Do your research before you make that kind of choice. But it is true, and I agree with the sentiment of what you outlined she, that you, the days are gone really where you would, and this sounds weird, isn’t it? 20 years ago less actually that 17 or 18 years ago that Twitter appeared and started something that became significant, such as we saw it in the latter part of the 2010s.

So probably about 2015 to 2018 would’ve been the peak of the kind of presence of Twitter as it was then. And that. Drew, as we saw and still see. One of the reasons, perhaps why it’s still [00:13:00] going organizations across the globe using Twitter as a formal communication channel, announcements opinion influential comment in response to others.

You name it, by organizations and the people who are part of those organizations. That is still true today but certainly nowhere near the power it had in those days. So there are alternatives. As we’ve mentioned some of the research we’ve seen, some of the reporting showing generational behavioral differences very marked compared to what they were before.

And the fact that gen Z in particular is wielding quite a big influential role which has grown in the past couple of years, so that’s surged with credibility. The landscape is totally different to what it was in those golden days where you just had a one or two major places that you could use to, to reach the audiences.

So we’re seeing this landscape shifting radically. I think blue skies. The most [00:14:00] interesting one. I’m there as you are from the pre-launch days. I’m there more now than Threads, which was my favorite place. It’s still a good place to be, but it’s not from my point of view. And it reflects what I see others saying to.

It’s not the place for engagement. At all in my view, and I’m not like some who join every conversation and respond constantly to others. I don’t do that. I’m more listening. Yet I find some of the people I’m connected with on, on blue Sky definitely. I seek them out every time I go there now.

Which is a new behavior for me. So I find that great. Yet professionally, I’m all over the place looking and listening at what’s going on. And Reddit I’ve been on Reddit since it started in the early two thousands. But I’m spending more time on Reddit these days in places where I like to be a number of the subreddits to see what’s going on.

I’m in and out more frequently, so that, that’s my contribution to that. So I think blues Sky in particular I was reading one of the other articles you linked to Shall, New York Times Clay Shi piece on [00:15:00] that. So I think it’s quite good what he had to say. And he talks about red blue sky might fail.

Sure it might not. I go with the might not. But it’s still working through how it’s gonna make money. And is it gonna do advertising? I did see some talk last week that some folks had discovered some screenshots that were posted by somebody that showed a subscription model. And where you pay a certain amount of money and you don’t see ads.

That’s, I think that’s more attractive. Way than just doing advertising or across the board. But again, this is all speculation. They’ve not confirmed or denied anything. Still early days, there’s, they’re now 25 million north of that number in terms of users, considering it was four months ago, they’re only 7 million.

So if numbers are important to you, then 25 million from seven is actually interesting. Very interesting. But it is good and it is a mark of what is evolving in this space. Stay tuned. [00:16:00] Yeah. A few thoughts based on what you were saying. I hadn’t heard about the screenshot of a subscription model and.

It’s interesting because I think people would’ve rebelled against that some time ago, but it has become so common in the podcast space that people are now accustomed to hearing about that concept. How many podcasts are there where you can hear the ad free version by subscribing?

NPR has that, the New York Times has that I think Crooked Media, which does Pod Save America and Pod Save the uk. They have it. And, grim and mild, which does lore, they do that. It’s getting really routine. So now I think people are going to hear other platforms adopting that idea, and it’s not gonna seem so, no disruptive or inappropriate.

So that could work in, in, in terms of the use of Reddit. I agree. You have to see if your audience is there, but I’d be willing to bet your audience is there, or at least some of them. There are [00:17:00] so many subreddits that are highly specialized around niches and interests that a quick search is gonna reveal whether there’s anything there for you in terms of reaching the people that you wanna reach.

But the other thing is, they’re still doing Ask me Anythings AMAs on Reddit. And you don’t need to have your audience there to tell everybody if you have the means of getting the word out, that you’re gonna be doing an a MA on Reddit, because people will go they’ll sign up in order to be part of that a MA if they’re interested in what the the leader or thought leader or influencer, whoever it is that you’re putting out there has to say.

I think there’s a lot of opportunity on Reddit. And the other thing is, of course you could tell people that you’re gonna be there and that’s where you’re gonna be hosting real conversations and again, attract people to the platform. And in terms of Twitter.

Government leaders and business leaders in the [00:18:00] like posting. It was also the place, as we have talked about a lot lately, where news tended to break. Yeah. And it’s not that they had the billions of users that, that Facebook for example, does but there were enough journalists following it that when news broke if it was a citizen journalist reporting something, they were on top of it real fast.

And if the journalists were breaking it first of all, they could source information on Twitter and then break the story on Twitter. And then as news continued to unfold, they could embed those tweets. There was no longer the man on the street interview. They were just embedding tweets in the story.

I don’t see anybody embedding tweets from X in the media anymore. So this is another big shift away from X that we’re seeing. Yeah, you’re right. It’s not gained serious momentum yet, although I’m noticing more frequently people talking about this group of journalists in this country have stopped [00:19:00] posting on TWI on X and then now on Blue Sky, there are a number of startup hacks full of journalists for individual publications some geographically based, et cetera.

So you can find this, it’s not yet easily discoverable at all, and it’s not yet by any means gained any momentum in the sense of the ubiquity of X. Share buttons to X everywhere you go on the web, on the worldwide web, you see it everywhere. Everyone has got a website with an article, has got sharing buttons and includes x.

I don’t yet see blue sky anywhere. I started seeing threads here and there, so maybe it is one of those slow burns, but I suspect. Blue Sky’s likely to pick up on that faster. We are seeing things like a developer ecosystem developing with some interesting things going on. There’s one I’m very keen on that I’ve been experimenting with, which is called Auto Blue, which which is a plugin for WordPress that you can use when you publish a blog post.

You schedule it for instance, or publish it manually, whichever that it automatically [00:20:00] shares that to Blue Sky. Threads has had that capability for a while and with threads, by the way, it also then shares it out to the wider fed of us by Mastodon. But Bluesky does it through its. A way it accesses the fedi verse so that connectivity’s there.

So these are all embryonic steps. I’m not sure when we will suddenly see a groundswell, but I suspect we will. And it will require something that does signify a wholesale shift from mainstream media, journalism’s journalists to a platform like this, for it to suddenly become truly in the mainstream.

And that then requires everyone else to put the sharing buttons and all that stuff. So this is not something that’s gonna happen overnight. Maybe towards the end of 2025, we might see something, but during the year it’ll grow. I believe, I don’t think it’s gonna collapse anytime soon. And it is gonna be an interesting year from this point of view.

Sure. And we’re gonna see during this year more of that shift of the media from X over to TikTok. [00:21:00] If tiktoks still around, and I’ve read a number of pieces that are speculating where people will go if TikTok is banned. And we should be clear what’s gonna happen if it’s banned. Is that the the Play Store and the Android?

It’s the Us, yep. And what it’s going to mean is it’ll be banned from the app stores. If you have it on your phone, you’re still gonna be able to access it. Yeah. But then you upgrade your phone and you need to reinstall it. It won’t be there. So it’ll be through attrition that will, there will be fewer and fewer users.

So where do the people creating these videos go? Do they go to reels on Facebook or on Instagram? Does everything shift over to Snapchat? Do they benefit from this? We don’t know. It’s all speculation at this point, but that type of video as. A real place now with that younger generation to the point, as I mentioned that mainstream media outlets are producing content aimed at that.

So that’s another shift to, to keep an eye on. And this is why I [00:22:00] think, we have to be decentralized as communicators. We can’t focus on Yeah, one or two of these. I remember when you said, oh, I’m already on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. I can’t do, I can’t handle anymore. I don’t have the bandwidth.

You gotta have the bandwidth. You’ve gotta be on all of these now. You do, there are tools that will help you get a sense of what’s happening across all of these. One I’ve been playing with recently is called sil, SILL, that is offering one appealing feature right now, which I’m taking full advantage of, is a daily email telling me the top six stories across Blue Sky in particular that.

My community is paying, is sharing, and I find that actually extremely good service surface is stuff I missed or wouldn’t pay attention to. It needs that to be far more robust and large in, in scale. But it’s a startup. They’ll have a, it’ll be a paid service soon as I understand from their emails recently.

But things like that, we’ve had those sorts of tools for quite a while on the web generally. But [00:23:00] this is different than just having it on a website. This is focused on the new social landscape. And it’s it’s interesting what’s happening. We have some stories to talk about that in, in later on in this show.

Yeah, somebody to pay attention to. Communicators need to be ubiquitous themselves across the social landscape and just understand. Who’s doing what, where, and is this something you need to pay more attention to? You have help. AI can help you with some of these things. There are some generative AI tools that you could, should explore that would help you stay on top of this.

And there, that’s the beauty of AI for you. And keep your eyes on it because there will be more tools coming down the pi. That’s very true. Which is a nice little lead into to this story. I was gonna say, that’s what I call a segue. That’s a segue. Exactly. I mentioned at the beginning that we that you’ll hear AI mentioned a lot, and this is true on, on, on this story certainly and others coming that this is such, so front of mind with what’s going on, that [00:24:00] understanding all of it is almost impossible for anyone.

So we’re offering our little bits on some of these topics. It’s also the time of the year when everyone is doing predictions and trends, reports. There’s so many of them. And we’ve talked about a couple in recent episodes. This topic, this one I’m gonna mention today, I think is definitely worth your attention.

So in December, just a week or so ago the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism published its relevance report for 2025. This is the organization’s annual deep dive into the key Trends impacting public Relations. Each edition focuses on a key theme with the 2025 report titled AI Activated dedicated entirely to the impact of AI and pr, showcasing practical applications, ethical considerations, and future opportunities.

First, though, let’s understand context and perspective with regard to this report. These relevance reports began in 2016 to explore emerging trends and challenges shaping the communication and PR [00:25:00] industry, drawing an insights from leading industry experts, researchers, and academics. The report serve as a guide for communicators, navigating and ever evolving landscape.

Helpful. In other words, Microsoft contributed significantly to the 2025 reports theme, including key essays from Microsoft executives that provide practical insights into AI’s transformative role in PR and communication. Microsoft’s involvement underscores its leadership and integrating AI into communication and its collaboration with academic and professional institutions to shape the future of the industry.

So this report takes a definitive, optimistic view of AI and pr, but doesn’t shrink from pointing out areas of concern. In the forward USA’s, Fred Cook questioned the PR Rdic entity’s appetite for early adoption of new tech, of a new technology. Something we’ve touched on in previous episodes, Cheryl, especially one that could threaten its own existence, happily, he notes his concerns were unfounded.

The report shows that AI adoption has [00:26:00] moved from fear and skepticism to widespread activation within the PR industry, with communicators increasingly using AI to streamline operations, enhance storytelling, and address complex challenges like misinformation and bias. It also emphasizes the need for ethical AI governance and the balance integration of AI and human creativity.

So I’ve pinpointed three significant findings in this report. It’s a big report that covers a huge amount of thinking and certainly not something we can dissect in this episode. So highlighting 16 pages. 116. Yeah, that’s the PDF. Yeah. So first, AI is revolutionizing PR workflows. Tools like generative AI are now integral to content creation, media monitoring and sentiment analysis, significantly improving speed and efficiency.

Custom AI applications such as tailored GPTs allow organizations to deliver precise, compliant, and inclusive communication at scale. Second, [00:27:00] leadership and culture drive AI adoption. AI’s successful integration is often led by senior leaders fostering a culture of experimentation, innovation, and trust employees using AI frequently report feeling more valued, engaged, and empowered.

To take creative risks. And third, ethical and responsible AI is essential. The risks of AI, including misinformation, bias, and polarization require a commitment to transparency, inclusivity, and governance. Organizations must invest in AI literacy, adopt diverse data sets, and develop frameworks for responsible implementation to ensure long-term trust and equity.

The report positions AI as a catalyst for transformation in pr, offering tools to navigate challenges and maximize opportunities in an evolving business landscape. There is much to absorb and learn in this 116 pages, as I mentioned earlier, including in credible calls to action for communicators and organizations, and I do recommend spending time on that.[00:28:00]

It is definitely worthwhile. Some final words from Grant tos, global Chief Digital and Intelligence Officer at PR firm Berson, who in his essay titled AI is an uprising, not an upgrade. Answers two critical questions. First, what would an AI transformed organization look like? It would have fluid adaptive structures.

He says it would offer continuous learning and experimentation. It would be a symbiosis of human creativity and AI capabilities. And his second question, what must we do? We do to stay ahead even as everything changes rapidly around us? Embrace experimentation and calculated risk taking. He says, foster a culture of lifelong learning.

Develop agile decision making processes, cultivate trust between leadership and workforce. Now, all of those things to my ears, sound like we’ve been talking about this sort of stuff for a long time. Pre ai. Fundamental [00:29:00] things don’t really change that much. The ways you go about them perhaps do, but these to my mind, are absolutely critical.

This is about transformation. This is about organizational willingness as a personified by those who lead the organization and the others, including those who make up the organization, which is people, let’s say. Let’s face it. So we’ll have a link in the show notes where you can download a copy of the report for free in exchange for your name and email address.

There’s lots of work to do here. It seems to me she, oh, there’s a ton of work to do here, and I don’t know if it’s just the gloomy weather, but I’ve been growing more and more skeptical about all of this lately. Not the power of AI and the potential of ai, but organizational ability to adapt it. I.

Look at what organizations do in terms of how they manage their business and how they manage their people. And the need for oversight and the need for [00:30:00] governance doesn’t seem to align well with the way a lot of organizations approach their business. So I am not optimistic that you’re going to see a lot of organizations employ that kind of thinking, that kind of analysis and strategizing.

I think you’re gonna see the very large organizations do it, but when you start to get down to mid-size business and small business, I think you’re gonna see people either ignore it, misuse it, underuse it you it’s I think it’s not gonna be pretty for quite a while. And I feel that way about, I.

PR agencies and the PR industry as well. Because as much as I see, Fred Cook saying that he was gratified to see that the early appetite for adoption of AI didn’t create the kind of downside that, that he had anticipated. And as I’m thrilled to see the early adoption of any technology in the PR industry, which tends to be very [00:31:00] late in, in adopting new digital technologies.

They miss boats a lot, don’t they? They’ve missed boats as long as I’ve been in this industry, and that’s been a long time. And it’s very gratifying to see them not miss this boat. But what I think they’ve latched onto the writing capabilities of ai and can’t see much beyond that when again, I think that’s one of the least interesting things.

That this tool can do. And the way that it can help in a public relations agency or a public relations practitioner beyond that are massive. But we as an industry tend not to look past the craft of what we do very often. And so we’re very focused on how can this help us with the craft as opposed to the backends and the analysis and the management of relationships and the other things where there’s potential, especially as a agentic, AI advances.[00:32:00]

Yeah I see tot I get totally where you’re coming from on that shell and until recently I would be with you on that. I remember two years ago reading surveys from my, the likes of PRCA that talked about 25% of people they surveyed would never ever go anywhere near AI at all.

It’s not the future. Guess what it is. I think though that I’m far more optimistic that Sure. I’m, I have skepticisms here and there on the level of how this will work. You are right. I’m sure this is not, so the landscape is exceptionally uneven. This is not like on mass, everyone’s gonna move to, this is not gonna happen at all.

What will happen though is those who are really. Clued into this, who have studied this, who have listed, who have read reports like uscs and all the other documentation out there. Listen to people like Grant Toes and Fred Cook. They are the ones who will benefit from this. And indeed, we have a, an upcoming report where I’m gonna be talking exactly about that with case studies.

[00:33:00] So there is a lot of going good going on broadly, not just in pr, but PR is catalyzing some of the things that are happening and the people are taking advantage of these tools that are there. I feel that reports like this like this USC report and and I’d just given a gloss top level assessment of it, if you will read those 116 pages definitely worthwhile.

It’s. Presented in this Roy Rose tinted, look at all that. There is a lot of, yes. But in there that does give some things worth paying attention to. So it is not even I see that therefore, as opportunities galore for communicators who are clued in to what’s going on, to advise their employers and their clients in, in not in everything, they can’t, they’re communicators.

So broad business strategy is not their their focus. It’s how you communicate that and how you do what tools you’re gonna use to do that. So all working together, and that does require leadership. So you are right in one area. The lethargy, the resistance. [00:34:00] The total skepticism of some will interfere with that.

There’ll be obstacles to, to organizations doing this. But yeah, I just, I see this as a tremendous opportunity for communicators to take a leading role. Yeah. And another reason to pay attention to this report in particular, I think is because it is from the Annenberg School, right? Unlike, there’s a really good report out now from Fleischman Hillard.

There’s been one out, and I think there’s a couple of others from McKinsey. I’m sure Boston Consulting and Accenture and others have released reports. The thing about the USC report is they’re not trying to sell anything. They’re not trying to use this as a, as a lead generation tool. I and I know that Microsoft was a heavy contributor, but they do this trends report every year.

They’ve got a lot of experience with collecting and analyzing this data. So it’s worth listening to what they have to say. From that perspective. I think one of the things that’s going to be needed. Is for organizations at the top to look at the bottom up [00:35:00] use of AI and start to synthesize that.

And I, I’ll tell you what I’m reporting on it where I work, when I find an employee using ai, I’ll interview them and do a short article saying, this person’s using it. Look what they’re doing with it. I just talked to our head of accounting who’s using it for Excel. They have a bunch of Excel spreadsheets that they inherited from an earlier.

Time that were custom done and can’t figure out what the formulas are. So they’re just giving it to AI and saying, what is this formula trying to do? And it deciphers it. Or I’m trying to create a formula that does X, Y, and Z and it’s not working. Take a look. What am I doing wrong? And it tells them, so it’s speeding up their use of Excel which by itself is gonna save a lot of time and be very beneficial to the organization.

So the more those stories get shared, I think the clearer the uses become and people can see beyond their biases [00:36:00] and the limitations they’ve placed on how they think they can take advantage of a chat bot. Yeah, ab totally. Those are the kind of uses that people go, oh, they’ll thinking about, oh, it’s gonna chat GPT, I’ll ask, oh, I prompt it and it tell, tells me the things I can use in a report.

They don’t realize that this is way beyond that. That kind of use. You gave examples of there are loads in this article in an upcoming report later in the show that talks about case studies that I mentioned that gives you a glimpse into this. This goes way beyond the kind of things that you think AI is all about.

Certainly at an enterprise level, a big organizational level, some of the things that are improving workflows are truly quite extraordinary. And you think when you hear about it, you think, of course that’s what AI’s for. That can help you do that. So that’s a great example. The Excel. I can give you a small example on my own account.

Something I do mostly as a hobby, as a personal interest is PHP coding. And [00:37:00] I write codes. I’ve got three books that tell me how to write PHP and it’s a bit like I, I found in my old bookshelf the other day, HTML written, it was published in 2002. Boy was that leading edge at the time. But the book’s this thick and it’s huge.

So anyway I write stuff myself based on my limited experience so far. For instance, things like WordPress plugins, I have a a kind of a a playground site, a sandbox site that I try out stuff with. Usually it crashes everything. But since I started asking my AI for help. Phenomenal. So it’s improved my ability to deliver on that.

It’s increased my learning on how to do it and increased my confidence on saying if I try this, maybe it’ll work. ’cause that’s what I did before and it worked. So these are things you don’t need a company policy to do. What you do need and this is key in my view, curiosity and the willing to experiment.

And that last word we talked about that topic in, I think the last short short form version. The experimentation. It was [00:38:00] either 4 39 or four 40. I can’t remember which one it was. Four 40. That’s yeah. Okay. So that’s key. This report goes big on experimentation. And indeed grant tube’s point about.

What we gotta do to stay ahead, embrace experimentation and calculated risk taking is a key thing there that isn’t, doesn’t come naturally to everyone. That sort of approach. So that’s a leadership thing to encourage that. There We’re talking about then potentially transformation, how you run your organization.

So this is, these are all elements that are connected and we gotta do this though, I think. Let’s temporarily leave the world of AI behind and enter the cold, cruel world of business. Earlier this month, Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, announced the layoff of 330 employees representing over 5% of its global workforce.

This reduction is the largest in years for Edelman and was part of a strategic restructuring aimed at simplifying its [00:39:00] business model to better align with current client demands. Edelman’s restructuring reflects broader trends in the industry where firms are consolidating and adapting in order to stay relevant.

The recent $13 billion merger between Omnicom and Interpublic Group, creating the world’s largest advertising conglomerate is an example of this shift toward integrated services and technological investment. Edelman’s, CEO. Richard Edelman addressed the A os pretty candidly. He said, I don’t like to do this.

I’ve held off as long as I can. If I were running a public company, this would’ve happened months ago, but I need to run a business. And that’s the job I’m very sympathetic to that point of view. His layoff affected a number of very high level people in the organization, including our friend Steve Ruble.

Most of these folks took to LinkedIn to announce the fact that they were leaving. Now, Richard’s take underscores the financial [00:40:00] pressures even privately held firms face leading to difficult decisions to maintain fiscal health. There were a number of factors that influenced the decision, not the least of which was a revenue decline.

The firm anticipated an 8% decrease in US revenue and 3% globally for this year. If anything signals a need to make operational adjustments, that would do it. The question of course, is why are these revenues declining? We’re gonna get to that. There’s a growing demand for integrated services prompting Edelman to streamline its structure.

They had a bunch of specialty brands that were under Edelman Edel. There was Edible Revere, saludo Mustache, EGA, Delta. These were boutiques and every one of ’em had their own support staff. So Edelman was paying for accounting and it and the like for multiple companies. Now they’re all just gonna be hoovered up into Edelman and allow them to have that interdisciplinary.

Type of an approach to the work [00:41:00] that they do. There’s also been some significant shifts in the media landscape. The reduction in traditional media outlets and widespread newsroom layoffs have limited opportunities for PR professionals to secure earned media placements that challenges traditional PR strategies.

After all, how many people when they think of PR think that it’s media relations and there’s less and less media relations to be done these days. That media contraction is just one of the headwinds the industry is facing. There’s also, of course, the rise of AI and digital platforms that are forcing agencies to adapt by integrating new technologies into their service offerings.

Clients are more and more seeking comprehensive solutions to combine traditional PR with digital marketing, and this requires a more integrated approach. Now, despite these challenges, there are plenty of opportunities for agencies and their employees. Agencies can expand their offerings to include digital strategy, content creation, social [00:42:00] media management, data analytics, all to meet the evolving needs of clients.

They should embrace innovation, leverage AI and other technologies to enhance efficiency, open new avenues for client engagement, embracing technological advancements, particularly AI can streamline operations and provide deeper insights into audience behaviors. And. Improve your campaign effectiveness.

And then we need to focus on owned media. Because of the decline in earned media opportunities, agencies can help clients build and manage their own media channels. It could be blogs, social media platforms come up with some new stuff. If there’s a dearth of local media coverage, maybe that’s a vacuum that you could help fill, but this will maintain direct communication with target audiences.

Now, for PR professionals, this period of transformation offers a chance to develop new skills and expand your expertise [00:43:00] into areas like digital strategy and integrated communications. The client’s demanding versatile communicators. Who can navigate the complexities of mod modern media landscapes that’s rising.

That presents career growth opportunities for those who are willing to adapt. And if you’re an in-house communicator, like me thinking of working with an agency, I’m not, you should clearly define objectives and ensure that the agency’s capabilities align with the organization’s goals, particularly in digital and integrated communications.

Regular communication and setting measurable outcomes can enhance the. The effectiveness of your partnership with a PR agency and if you’re actually thinking of a career in a PR agency, then it’s important to recognize the industry’s dynamic nature. Challenges definitely exist. As I’ve outlined.

Agencies do offer diverse experiences and opportunities to develop a broad set of skills. Prospective professionals should seek agencies [00:44:00] that invest in employee development and embrace innovation. These are the agencies that are most likely to thrive as the industry continues to change. Yeah, that’s quite a picture you’ve painted there.

Shell, it is something I think that I see this in the UK as well. Not, there’re probably similar reasons. Basically you’ve gotta reinvigorate your business, you’ve gotta trim the fats and all the stuff that Richard DA was having to address as a leader of a business that IE is running a business for those affected by layoffs, redundancies as is the word used most frequently here in the uk.

It’s a challenging time without doubt where suddenly you are on the job market along with quite a large number of others with similar experiences and skills as you similar age typically. And therein is another issue, which is that of ageism. I hear people talking about that quite a bit.

That Hey, gray Lives matter. Yeah it’s challenging and some of the advice that common sense advice that you outlined is absolutely [00:45:00] spot on. You need to do this and even though you may not feel like doing it, use your time between now and the new year. You are on a break to update your profile on LinkedIn.

Friends, that’s gonna play a big role for you. Whether you believe that or not, it probably is going to. And all the things that you’ve been saying you haven’t had time to do, now’s the time. You should look at courses on LinkedIn learning. Get up to speed on ai. There’s some terrific content there.

And if you are an ai, if you’re a LinkedIn member on the premium lower, you’re paying for it. That’s part of the deal. Definitely worth it. I’ve been doing that. Not for the same reasons as the as we’re discussing here, though. So get up to speed with things. AI in particular. There’s a great article, one of the stories you shared in the show nutshell from o Dwyer.

This was good. No more stall promotions. RRIFs be your own PR firm. And written by Jane Genova, who’s a kind of a coach for seniors as describes the bio. Great tips here on on what to do. Some of things you can do, leverage your reputation when you’re talking to people. Approach everything as a grand [00:46:00] experiment.

There’s that word again, experiment. That’s what I tend to do anyway. Approach everything as an experiment and so that, that changes your outlook and okay, even in the face of the fact that you’re suddenly let go. And it may not be the financial aspects of that worry you ’cause you’re probably quite cozy if you’re a very senior role.

It’s the sudden lack of the environment that you’ve been accustomed to the kind of authority that it brings you by your role, by virtue of your role. There are still many people in organizations who see. Influence and worthiness as, as explained as, as basically explained by your job title.

And for me, a job title is the least significant thing I recognize others see it as one of the most significant things. So all that’s suddenly gone. So this is the time for that. And I think it’s the nature of things. So a word I hear a lot these days, she, you probably do fractional. I see people calling themselves a fractional CCO, chief Communication Officer.

In fact, Heidi Sullivan, who was one of our commenters who’s listed currently is a [00:47:00] fractional CMO. I find it a dreadful word to describe this, but I recognize that people like it. It also sounds those who say I’m fractional, 16 different roles, you are fractional. Wow. I’m trying to visualize the pie in imperial measure, not metric, how many eights of an inches.

That’s stuff like that. But that’s how it is. And we’re all this is how we use information online to explain our perception of people and where they’re at in their journey, let’s say. It’s a time for constant renewal. It seems to me that you’ve got to be on top of all of these things, particularly at a time when you know, coming up right behind you are those earlier generations who are younger more agile, physically, literally, than you are as you get older.

And you’ve got to be make yourself readily attractive to others from a work point of view. That, that’s an interesting challenge considering one of the things that I keep hearing about the younger generation is that they wanna show up when they wanna show up and they’re gonna sit at their desk on their phones and they just, those damn young whipper snappers [00:48:00] aren’t willing to do the work.

I tell you I’ve worked with people recently who are as clients who are a lot younger than me, and their attitudes, actually I’m more like the younger than them, even in my attitudes to behaviors in the workplace tools that I use. And they do. But it, this is a not a new thing.

This is how it’s always been. I, you’ll remember this. I know you will. Desktop publishing, when that came in, anyone could publish a newsletter, and they did. It’s, and they did exactly. You, I remember when employee communicator had to get their hands around all, every department distributing their own newsletter.

It’s incredible. Greeting Shell and Neville and FR listeners all around the world. It’s Danor coming at you on this last episode of 2024 on a very snowy and cold day in Vermont, having just returned this week from the desert Sands and warmer temperatures of Riyadh Saudi Arabia. I was there for the 19th Internet Governance Forum or IGF organized by the [00:49:00] United Nations and it was a remarkable event.

It brought together people from all across society, from government, from industry, from civil society, from the technical community, from just regular old users, from people of all walks of life and forms who are there to talk about how do we govern the internet in such a way that it can be, what are the future conventions, the norms, the things that we will do?

And it was a remarkable gathering, people talking, and of course, this being 20, 24, people could come in remotely. And so you had speakers from around the world who were there participating and talking about everything. Of course, AI had many sessions because it’s 2024 and we gotta talk about ai.

There were sessions, there were some sessions around the metaverse type of thing. There were lots of sessions around security, around safety, around cybersecurity, around resilience, around connecting the. The next, the remaining two and a half billion people, there [00:50:00] were sections on gender inclusion, on just, all of these things.

Closing a digital divide, the use of the internet, amazing conversations, talks, and everything else. And it was all of us talking about that. Which brings me to my two points this year as we close this time out. This next year, 2025 is gonna be a cha time of a lot of change around the world. Obviously here where I live in the United States, we have a new incoming administration with all the changes and challenges that may bring in different ways, but that’s happening elsewhere.

All across Europe, we’re seeing new governments coming into place and new elections happening just north of me and Canada. There are signs now that there will probably be a new election and new government next, early next year. It’s happening all over the place. Governments are changing, societies are changing in different ways, and one of the things that communicators should pay attention to some degree, [00:51:00] is what’s happening at the UN level.

Next year will be the 20th anniversary of something called the World Summit on the Information Society or WSIs. And that was an event that. Set up a lot of how we are talking about the internet, how we’re governing the internet, how we’re engaging, and what norms and conventions we’re doing. There’s gonna be a lot of work next year to look at review that where we’ve come in 20 years and where we’re going.

Part of that will be what is the future of this event? I just went to the IGF. Will it continue to be an event that goes on? And there are powerful forces that would like to end it. They would like the decisions about our future on the internet to be made only by governments and only by government representatives.

So you and I, the people who are out here in the industry or in the technical community or civil society, we would not get a voice in the future of where so many things go. So it’s important. [00:52:00] WSIs plus 20. You’ll see these acronyms. WSIS plus 20. You’ll see this being thrown around as it all happens, heading up toward meetings in June and July.

And it’s important because this will determine what voices will be part of the future of this at a government level anyway, and this can then cascade down into what we do. We, at the Internet Society where I work, we have a saying about the internet is for everyone. And we add to that now, of course, and everyone must have a voice in its future, so pay attention this year.

The second thing I’ll mention is that we are seeing all around the world a rise in wanting to protect the children, which has always been here. But what’s happening is this movement to impose legislation around age verification or age assurance. I think I mentioned in the last report maybe about Australia, was declaring that anyone under the age of 16 should not have access to social media sites.

Nevermind that they don’t know how they’re gonna do [00:53:00] that. But a number of these laws are happening here in the United States. Many individual states are saying that it’s also happening in other countries places. Everybody is trying to get on this game to say that, people under a certain age should not have access to content in some ways, and I’m a father of two daughters.

I get that. I understand it. I appreciate that. The challenge is how you do it. There aren’t easy ways, and what’s happening in many cases is that people are looking at solutions that will require all of us to provide some kind of id. You might get to the point where if you go to your local Starbucks and you want to get online, you might have to show some kind of ID that says what your age is.

It’s not a joke. There’s actually a law that would’ve created that. But the reason I say this for us as communicators is some of these laws could have extremely punishing fines. Extremely punishing, penalties. So you as a [00:54:00] communicator, you might have a forum for your members. You might have a forum for your community.

You might be engaged in something like that. But with some of these laws, you would have to be sure to gate and be able to know the ages of people being there, or else you might be fined incredibly. So you gotta pay attention. You’ll hear different names, age verification, age assurance, assuring the age.

They’re similar, but those are the words that we’re gonna hear as we go into 20, 25 and beyond, because a lot of the policy makers of the world want to solve this and are trying to put something in place even though the solutions aren’t that great. Let me just end it there and say thank you to all of our FIR listeners.

We are in a time of celebration, whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza or the winter solstice or whatever, this is a time of [00:55:00] celebration, a time of recovery reflection, and a little bit of a pause before the chaos of what will be this next year and more best wishes to you all. Thanks for listening over this past year.

You can find more in my audio in [email protected] and back to you, Shea Neville. Bye for now.

Thanks for that report, Dan. Really good explainer you gave on what you experienced in Riyadh at that UN meeting and the whole situation with regard to how the internet is evolving. I’ve read reports recently one that strikes me a lot about the disappearance of content online as sites go dark or people change web pages or whatever it might be.

And the fact that we’ve also got others who want to control it, and this is not new. You will know that at the Internet Society, the splint internet, there’s things going on. So seeing this kind or hearing you describing these sort of policy areas is really helpful. [00:56:00] Good report. I also enjoyed the discussion around the availability of social media to kids.

I remember seeing a headline the Day Australia passed the Law that banned social media for kids under 16. And it said something like, Australia banned social media for kids under 16. Good luck with that. And I was just hearing, I think it may have been yesterday on the news that, the Australian government has alerted social networking companies to be on the lookout for a mandate to have an age verification method in place that is something more robust than simply clicking a box that says I’m over 16 which of course any 12-year-old can do.

So we’ll see how that goes. At some point it may be easier to just not offer your service in Australia but it’s a genuine concern. We’ve seen Instagram come out with their teen version of Instagram with more controls [00:57:00] and some very warm family oriented TV commercials to promote that.

I, I am impressed by the way, with how much they’re investing in raising awareness of this. Tool how much adoption it’s getting. I haven’t seen, but it’s definitely a concern and it’s nice to see that whether it’s being done well or not. It’s nice to see people trying to address it.

Agree. We got the same here in the UK with the online safety bill, which is chugging along. It’s getting attention in some areas. The regulator is flexing muscles in that area in terms of what it requires of the major social networking companies. So I think we’re gonna see in 2025, the early part, certainly more on these attempts to.

Safeguard children but also to control access. The down the flip side of this, according to all those conspiracy theorists on X anyway, is that this is how you control your citizen’s access to the internet. Yeah. If you were China or somewhere, I’d say that’s [00:58:00] likely to be what you’re doing.

I don’t believe that’s the kind of prime reason the Australian government’s doing this at all, or the UK government, the online safety wheel, but that’s part of the discussion landscape to be Sure. Yeah and I do hope. Governments that are looking at implementing these kinds of restrictions are thoughtful in the approach they take.

I, I, a flat out ban is not a good thing. As I’ve heard a number of people point out. If you’re part, if you’re a, if you’re a child and I’m talking about maybe adolescent aged and you’re part of a marginalized community, if you are L-G-B-T-Q for example having access to that community online can be a lifeline for you.

As opposed to a place where you’re made to feel ugly or inadequate or whatever it might be, that is causing some of the distress along among a lot of youth. In ensuring that the access to those communities is still available to these people is important. A flat out ban could be very harmful to some people.

Yeah. [00:59:00] So let’s talk about surf. Last week, Flipboard maybe you’re familiar to many of you, the online magazine creator aggregator, et cetera, that you can read content on an app very visually. It’s very good. It’s been around a while. We’ve talked about it before with publishers on, on, you can do publish as well as a consumer.

Now we have publishers there individually, but Flipboard has had some success since the advent of the Fedi verse emerged a couple of years back in being one of the leading players that bring this to the forefront in people’s minds and how they use this. Last week they up unveiled surf.

An app that many people are calling a feed reader for the Fedi verse and described by Flipboard itself as the first browser for the open social web designed for Android and iOS Surf seamlessly integrates decentralized platforms like Mastodon Threads and Blue Sky with RSS feeds, podcasts, and even YouTube offering an all in one way to [01:00:00] explore and curate content from across the open web.

Unlike traditional feed readers, surf combines discovery, integration, and personalization into one user-friendly experience making decentralized networks accessible to a broader audience. Fast Company highlights how surf leverages decentralized protocols and open standards to build connections that weren’t feasible before, reflecting a shift towards a more decentralized and open internet.

The Verge notes that surf blurs the lines between feed readers and Fed Verse clients making such distinctions increasingly irrelevant. Meanwhile, TechCrunch calls surf a bold reinvention for Flipboard, moving from curating mainstream media to championing exploration of the open social web. A standout feature of surf is its customization as Sarah per notes in her TechCrunch report.

Surf allows you to build personalized feeds on specific topics, whether it’s AI model development or mounted biking by combining [01:01:00] real-time searches, hashtags, blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, and more. I’m on the beta wait list and can’t wait to see how surf might redefine how we engage with the decentralized web.

I’m on the wait list too, and I can’t wait to take advantage of this. I remember tools like this from long ago that would curate and aggregate for you and of course feed readers. There is a still a feed reader. Feedly is still functional. There’s quite a few and I still use it.

Yeah I use one, what’s it called? Innovator? I can’t remember now. I haven’t used it for a bit, but I’ve had been a member, I’ve been a user of it for about a decade. There are around, and of course we know much of the content we get. Football being one example is delivered via RSS. No one knows about that.

No one cares about, that’s right. R ss is still, it’s exactly what it is. It’s the plumbing of the internet. It just because Google did away with its Google news reader doesn’t mean that RSS went away. Podcasting wouldn’t be possible without [01:02:00] RSS. What’s what’ll be interesting for me with this will be to see how well it’s adopted because, feed readers.

I am, you and I lived on feed readers back in the salad days for blogging. Feed Demon. Feed Demon, that’s right. And there were others there, there was some early ones. Where you had to download and install them just software for any other application. But I don’t think that, if news readers were that popular, Google’s a news reader would still be around.

I think most people just went and found blogs to read and having this extra step for curating them that required an extra piece of software was too much. Just like starting a blog was too much for most people, which is why when Facebook came along, oh, I don’t have to start a blog. I’ll just post here.

And is it as, as Facebook, as good as blogging? I would argue it’s not for a number of [01:03:00] reasons. But. It accommodated all those people who weren’t interested. So yeah, I think this could be great. If it gets a lot of uptake, it could create a virtuous circle for the Fedi verse as more people adopt this tool, more clients open up for social networks that are part of the fedi verse that leads more people to adopt this and similar tools and round it goes.

We’ll have to see because again I question how many people out there in the, among the great unwashed are gonna be interested in using a tool like this. I will though. Yeah. Oh, me too. I could see a real advantage, but linking to what we talked about in one of our early topics today is for communicators to get a view across the landscape of what’s going on.

This would be helpful to do that where you are able to bring in content from all these different platforms into a single location. Now, I know I’ll hear some of you listening say, yeah, but we’ve been hearing about this kind of thing forever and there’s been apps that [01:04:00] you can do that with. True. This, though, the uniqueness of this is the social web, if you like, let’s call it the Fed averse for the time being.

This is what. Core of it. And it remains to be seen exactly how it’s gonna work, the features that it’s gonna offer other than what some have posted publicly with screenshots on the early alphas of this. The best reporting I have seen actually is Sarah Paris’s writing in Teran explains very clear very well done.

The features of this, but the customization one that’s one that appeals to me a lot because I’d like to have something that brought in content I’m interested in into a single location. And if it’s a mobile app, like this is, there’s a web version coming, they said, by the way, but the moment they just on the mobile app this would be great.

So for that reason, I’m looking forward to it. But communicators pay attention to this. If you are thinking, yes, I should be paying attention to more things, this could well be the thing that helps you most. Save you a lot of time. And Sarah Perez has been at TechCrunch forever. Her reporting has [01:05:00] always been top journalist.

Yep. Yeah. Yep. But we’re only about a month away from Donald Trump, assuming office for his second term. And communicators across various sectors are strategizing right now to navigate. What they’re anticipating is shifts in policy and public sentiment. The second Trump administration is expected to bring changes that are sig going to significantly impact communication strategies.

Communicators are gonna need a proactive and adaptable approach to deal with these changes. The administration is poised to implement substantial policy changes across multiple domains, and we’d be wise to be ready to have. Strategy in place proactively to deal with them. Let’s start with economic and regulatory policies.

A focus on deregulation is anticipated, particularly in energy and finance. And while this may reduce the cost of compliance for businesses, it could also introduce risks related to environmental concerns and [01:06:00] financial stability. If you work in financial services and there’s a lot of deregulation it was deregulation that led to the housing mortgage crisis in 2018.

So be on the lookout for those types of things. Look at the regulations that have been scrubbed away from your industry and do some risk analysis of what that could mean and start thinking in terms of your crisis preparation for those there’s technology and communication. There’s an expected emphasis on regulating online content moderation.

In the us that would mean reforms to Section two 30, which shields internet companies from liability for user-generated content. This could affect how organizations manage their digital communications and engagement strategies. That’s right in our wheelhouse. So we need to be ready to deal with that.

We’re looking at changes to environmental policies. The Trump administration is less concerned about climate [01:07:00] change than the Biden administration, and potential reversals of previous climate initiatives may alter the landscape for corporate sustainability efforts influencing how companies communicate their environmental commitments.

And of course, there’s DEI the Trump administration is wholly sympathetic to the war on DEI, and a lot of organizations are caving to that pressure. Others are just changing what they call it. In light of these anticipated changes, and probably lots of others, communicators should consider a number of strategies, and the first is proactive engagement.

You gotta remember the relations part of public relations. We need to develop a comprehensive understanding of the new administration’s policy agenda and then engage with policymakers and stakeholders early. That’s the only way we’re gonna be able to shape favorable outcomes and mitigate the challenges these things could create.

Adaptive messaging is another thing we should be looking at. Flexibility and communication [01:08:00] strategies are going to be just essential crafting messages that resonate with diverse audiences while aligning with shifting policies. That’s how you’re gonna maintain public trust and organizational credibility.

We also need to be crisis ready. Given the potential for increased scrutiny and politicization of having robust crisis communication plans in place is vital. This includes preparing for scenarios where company policies or statements may attract public or governmental attention, and think about how you’re going to communicate with your employees about all of these things.

Transparent and consistent communication with employees is critical, especially as policy changes may affect workforce dynamics. Keeping staff informed and engaged will foster a co a cohesive organizational response to external developments. Journalists are anticipating a renewed hostility toward their work under the incoming Trump administration.

We’ve already seen a, b, C agree to pay $15 [01:09:00] million to settle a suit with Trump, and he’s filed a new one against the Cleveland Plain dealer and the polling company that showed a poll just before the election with Trump winning in that state. He did not with Trump losing in that state, he actually won.

This could influence media relations strategies. Companies should be prepared for a potential potentially adversarial media environment. Consider building stronger media relationships than you have now. Establishing and maintaining those relationships with journalists can help facilitate more accurate and favorable coverage.

I think it’s more important than ever for your people to be trained as spokespersons. If they’re well prepared to handle challenging questions and convey key messages effectively, that’ll make life easier. And our need to monitor the media landscape is more important than it ever has been. We need to stay informed about changes in media dynamics and public sentiment so that we can adjust our communication messaging and strategies accordingly.[01:10:00]

But we need to be proactive, engaging with stakeholders, adapting our messaging strategies, preparing for crises, and navigating media relations thoughtfully. If we do that, we can guide our organizations through this period. It’s a complicated landscape without any doubt. And of course the major focus of everything you’re saying is in the United States.

Yet this is a global issue. Particularly if you just think of it purely from a business point of view that companies with business all over the world, many companies have operated in multiple countries, and therefore this is important to everyone. In that sense, I’m thinking of, how you would prepare for this when there is so much unknown still.

So you have to work on some assumptions, I would say, but there are some fundamentals you can do. Sure. This man is coming into the White House, that he’s said he’s gonna appoint this person, that person. And most of those appointees that he’s mentioned have attracted i, horror from normal people.

Let’s say particularly when you have someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who’s gonna [01:11:00] be in charge of what vaccines, at least anyway. Everything health related. He is. If he’s confirmed, he’ll be the Secretary of Health, human Health and Human Services. Yeah, I was reading an article by Paul Holmes in Provoke Media talking about this in relation to healthcare generally, and big pharma in particular, that got me thinking about this very thing.

How do you prepare for this when you truly do not know what policies are gonna be in place and the direction of travel, if you will. So it makes it tricky. But you’ve got a plan no matter what, and it could well be, you can have this happens then we do this, or if we do this to make that happen, we will do it this way or whatever.

So it’s, it is in a sense, I suppose crisis, communication, planning in one sense, looking at it that way. But this affects everything and everybody, it seems to me we don’t know what’s gonna happen. We do know in some areas that we are not gonna what happened again, lot does depend on your political perspective, I think.

So if you are a maga you’re gonna love what’s coming, I suspect, hopefully, [01:12:00] hopefully reason will win the day. But what we’ve seen with this shutdown I suspect not. So the US is very unique. It seems to me, in the openness and transparency of its really dirty laundry politically that is laundered further whole world to see.

And that’s what’s been happening with this, and this is now happening with this as well. Very interesting. Yeah. I spent three years in the pharmaceutical industry and if I were in the pharmaceutical industry today I would be focused on the prospect of RFK Junior as the head of HHS. I’d be looking at his beliefs the people that he and Trump are planning on putting into other positions of leadership like the FDA and what their beliefs are and what policies they’ve talked about.

And start strategizing. Do we need a, I have seen a ton of communication now, unfortunately, I don’t, I haven’t seen this from the pharma industry, although I don’t know how much they’re, controlling from behind the scenes, but [01:13:00] talking about measles and talking about polio and how great these vaccines were, and denigrating the belief as I would myself that, rFK Jr. And some others have that. Oh, it wasn’t really the vaccines that did that. It was the change in the weather or, whatever it might have been. And building public opinion matters, right? And if you see a surge of public opinion and heated public opinion saying, no, these, I don’t want polio bad, I don’t want my kid in an iron lung.

It could influence policies. So this is what we need to be thinking about now. You can’t wait until the legislation’s introduced right? Or signed even worse. We need to be anticipating based on our industries and what we know about what Trump has said he is going to do, and what the people he’s appointing have written what their policy positions are.

We need to be paying close attention to this right now. Yeah. Good call to [01:14:00] action there, Cheryl. So let’s explore a topic. We’ve discussed a great deal during this year, and that’s reshaping the way we work, which is the rapid adoption of generative AI tools like Chat, GPT in the workplace.

Employees in nearly every industry are turning to these tools to code, right and research. As we’ve mentioned before, many workers are adopting AI faster than their employers can issue guidance or policies. Consider this according to a Financial Times report. Last week, nearly 25% of the US workforce and almost half of those in software and finance are using AI weekly.

In many cases, workers are experimenting in secret, wary of being labeled as lazy or incompetent. There’s also a fear that productivity gains could lead to job cuts or for those who stay heavier workloads. That said, not all organizations are lagging behind. Many companies were initially cautious, some even implementing blanket bans over privacy concerns, but others are already far ahead [01:15:00] rolling out detailed policies and infrastructure.

Businesses like McKinsey, Walmart, and JP Morgan Chase aren’t just catching up. They’re leading the charge says the FT building, secure in-house tools and moving full steam ahead into execution mode. For them, AI is no longer an experiment. It’s a strategic asset embedded into their processes. It’s clear there is a transformative trend reshaping industries worldwide, where employees across various sectors are leveraging AI technologies to enhance productivity, automate processes, and modernize customer experiences.

Notably, many organizations are not just keeping pace. Are leading the charge with comprehensive AI strategies and implementations. Also, last week, Google published an updated list of 321 real world generative AI use cases from the world’s leading organizations. We’ll have a link to Google’s report in the show notes, but let’s briefly review six industry specific examples.

Retail fast food chain. [01:16:00] Wendy’s is piloting generative AI at their drive-through windows in Ohio, streamlining order processing and allowing staff to focus more on customer service, beauty and cosmetics. The Estee Lauder companies are partnering with Google Cloud to transform the online consumer experience using generative AI enhancing personalization and engagement.

Automotive Volkswagen of America has developed a virtual assistant within their My VW app, enabling drivers to access information and receive assistance through AI driven interactions. Telecommunications Telecom implemented a Google powered voice agent to address customer calls increasing efficiency by 20%.

Healthcare, Qlik Therapeutics leverages AI to describe, to develop prescription digital therapeutics, enhancing patient engagement and treatment outcomes. Education Beyond 12, a tech enabled nonprofit has developed an AI powered college coach to offer [01:17:00] scalable coaching to first generation students providing support through text app and web platforms.

These examples illustrate that AI integration is not a distant future, but a present reality with companies actively deploying AI to gaining competitive edge. However, this rapid adoption also brings challenges including the need for clear governance, balancing innovation with risk, and navigating evolved legal frameworks.

AI’s rapid adoption is undeniably transforming the workplace, offering opportunities for greater efficiency, innovation, and customer engagement. However, as organizations navigate this new reality, the CRI critical question remains, how can they strike the right balance between empowering employees to use AI effectively and mitigating risks related to privacy, ethics, and workforce dynamics?

The examples we’ve highlighted show that companies across industries are proving it’s possible to integrate AI in ways that drive value while remaining thoughtful about its implications as we explore this [01:18:00] topic. In episodes of this podcast, we’ll focus on what leaders, teams and communicators can do to harness AI’s potential responsibly and ensure it’s a tool for progress, not disruption.

Michelle thoughts? I’m trying to open my VW so I can see the, yeah, I was gonna say, you have a vw do you have this in your My VW app? I haven’t used the, my VW app in quite some time I need to log in and see, and of course it’s doing two factor authentication, so I have to go check my inbox.

Oh yeah. But I have an ID four electric vw, which I love, with the exception of the fact that the range is only about 185 miles, so I’m charging it all the time. But I don’t take it on long trips. We take Michelle’s Lexus on long trips, but, I think this is absolutely right, is the need to look at what other organizations are doing and how they’re using it in order to spark the ideas about how you can use it.

I think two things that are going to drive this much faster. One is the the introduction of agents, which we talk about [01:19:00] ceaselessly. Because as soon as an organization says, oh, we can get this done that way, it’s not just, here’s a query and I’m gonna get a response, but we can actually have these tests routinely taken over by ai.

And, the thing to keep in mind about agents is it’s not one agent that’s gonna do everything. There’s gonna be an agent that does one thing and an agent that does another, and an agent that does another, and that you’re gonna end up with, dozens or hundreds of agents running in your organization.

So that’s one of the things that I think is gonna drive this. And the other is, as more and more software has the AI baked into it, and you’re using the software anyway I think this is what’s going to lead organizations to realize that this is just part of price of admission now for doing business.

And it’s gonna end up in, in every organization at some level. I think those that are strategic about it are going to get the edge. But you see all of these case studies and all of these different organizations and you can’t imagine it’s gonna take long before their [01:20:00] competitors go, Hey, wait a minute we can’t fall behind with this.

You’re right. I think it’s worth to, to your point, knowing what or looking at what others are doing. These six examples I gave are just six outta the 321 in that Google document. They’re definitely worth looking at. There’s a handful I read and I then researched them online to find out more information.

You can do the same Google it. Actually, you know what that’s a generic word. Now Google the lowercase. Okay. It means search. And it probably isn’t gonna be Google. It’s not Probably flex it. Yeah, flex, yeah. Flex it. Exactly. It’s good to to read this the FTS piece. Was in, I thought initially when I first read it, there’s an opinion piece really unduly negative about no one’s doing anything in organization.

It corrected itself or it added in. But there are some highlights and there are some highlights, and this really relates to what we were discussing earlier about the PR business missing the boats. And a couple of years ago, they were definitely way [01:21:00] out there in understanding and even willingness to get involved in all this.

They’ve come a long way in that there are some examples in the 321 of companies in, in that area. But the main thing is to look at this in retail, in automotive, in telecommunications, what people are doing in those areas. There are other case studies too. I’ve used many, I think we’ve talked about some of these, of what’s advertising agencies are doing, how they are employing generative ai.

And of course you are right to mention, the the rise of agents ’cause that was in my mind when I was talking, when we were in the conversation about the the report from USC that doesn’t mention agents. So this is all written before the sudden awareness of AI and agents that has really captured imaginations over the past, literally the past month or two.

And the way you described it exactly was gonna light up bulbs in people’s minds about, oh, this is how this is gonna give us value. And you mentioned an ai, an agent for this and an [01:22:00] agent for that. You’re gonna need super agents to manage all the agents. So this is, that presents some really interesting scenarios, I think.

But we are in another time of rapid change with tools around us. There’s, you and I talk about ai. I see many other people talking about this. I see content constantly about this kind of sifting through all of that. To find the stuff of value is something that communicators ought to do very clearly.

And tools like this or resources like Google’s a big help for that. Yeah, I joked about plexing it but I talked to more and more people who are using either perplexity or chat GPTs new search functionality instead of Google. And that led to an article that I just saw yesterday that Google said, watch for it.

At the top of Google searches, you’re now gonna have an AI search capability too. They see the writing on the wall, they see people shifting over to perplexity and chat GPT for search and yeah, they know they need to do something about [01:23:00] that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I’ve noticed, and I’m sure you have now on Google search, if you used Google search for things, and I still do typically at the top of the search is an AI generated answer to your question.

What I’ve noticed recently though is that they’ve now giving sources to that they weren’t doing that to start with. So I tend to think how can I trust what they, who’s saying this now? They’re providing the sources. So if they are literally shifting as the goalpost is shifting, they need to do that and they can still offer something that people might find a value, but they need to move faster than the current doing.

I, it seems to me, yeah. The AI overviews with the footnotes is a step in the right direction, but I think they’re planning something much more robust and more along the lines of what you’re seeing from perplexity and open ai. That’ll do it for this episode of four Immediate release.

But don’t go away just yet. We have a few things to let you know about not the least of which is when our next monthly episode will drop. We’re planning to record that on Saturday, January 25th. So it [01:24:00] will drop on Monday, January 27th. Note your calendars, folks. Also to let you know that January the third, 2025 is the 20th anniversary of this podcast for immediate release.

We are not gonna do what we discussed a decade ago that when we hit our 20th we’ll be on a cruise somewhere at the Pacific, maybe around Hawaii or damn, or yeah, we’re not gonna make it. But we’ll do it on our 25th. Yeah. The third is actually in our calendars for one of the short form midweek episodes.

So we will devote that or we’ll talk about that on the anniversary date when we publish that episode, which will be on January the third. I will have done the math and I’ll know exactly what number episode that actually is. Good. We’ll have lots of statistics for you. Also to let you know that we have another FIR interview coming.

Sean, I had a terrific conversation just a few days ago with Martin Waxman. Many of you will be familiar with Martin in Canada, and [01:25:00] we chatted with him at length. Great conversation That will be published week commencing January the sixth. That’s the plan, so look out for that. It was a wonderful conversation.

It was he’s one sharp guy. He is A lot of people who listen to FAR may remember Martin from inside pr the podcast that he did with Joe Thornley and Ginny Dietrich. Yeah. We suggested that it would be nice to hear those three voices together again, they would one of these days, and he seemed amenable to that idea.

Yeah. In the meantime, as you’re waiting for all of this great content from the FIR Podcast Network you can comment on anything that you’ve heard about in this episode or anything that you think we ought to be talking about or would like us to consider. There are a lot of ways to do that. You can send email to fir [email protected].

We love audio comments and haven’t had one in a while, so attach an audio file to that email up to three minutes. We’ll play it and you can be part of this [01:26:00] conversation. If you don’t have the wherewithal to record that, go to the FIR website, fir podcast network.com. You’ll see a send voicemail button on the right hand side.

Just click that and you can record up to 90 seconds. You can record as many of those as you want, and I will get those and look forward to playing those on the show. You can leave a comment on the show notes at FIR. Podcast network.com. You can leave comments where we let you know that we have posted new episodes on Facebook and LinkedIn and on Blue Sky and Threads and MAs it on.

We’re everywhere except X. We’re not on X anymore. And we also very much appreciate your ratings and reviews. Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can also leave comments where we share the latest episodes on the FIR podcast network page on Facebook and the FIR group on Facebook. [01:27:00] So also to quickly mention, and you mentioned Blue Sky.

We just opened an account in the name of FIL podcast until now. We’ve been sharing in our individual accounts on threats. Okay. We’ll continue to Oh sure. And, but now we have a dedicated account that replaces the X account. So look for a widget at some point appearing on the VIA website. But in the meantime it’s FIR podcast on Blue Sky.

So if you wanna look for us, follow us, that’s where you’ll see news and information about upcoming episodes. And you can there too, of course. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #441: PR, AI, and Social Media Are All Shook Up appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Even when they know it has been rigged, people assign a lot of credibility to experiments. When they see the experiment produce favorable results, for example, potential customers might be more inclined to buy. Experiments can also influence decision-makers in your company — again, even if they assume you put your thumb on the scale. The phenomenon is similar to wrestling, with audiences knowing the match is staged by enjoying it all the same. Neville and Shel review some research on the subject and discuss ways communicators can apply experimentation to their work in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to four immediate release episode four 40. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shel Holtz, and Marketing. Is hard. Seriously it’s getting more and more difficult to influence people. Some businesses are finding that experimentation can be a powerful tool, not just for making decisions about the marketing approach that you’re gonna take, but as an actual instrument of influence.

A recent study by Harvard Business School’s, Rebecca Karp and her colleagues, reveals that business experiments can serve. Two purposes, gathering data and persuading stakeholders. We’ll dive into how this plays out in two distinct complimentary approaches right after this. First, let’s examine how experiments influence I internal decision makers.

Carps research shows that business experiments frequently become what she calls staged performances with scripted endings. Now, before you shrug this off as [00:01:00] just petty manipulation, consider an interesting parallel. She draws from of all things professional wrestling. Just as wrestling fans they’re known as smarts.

I didn’t know that. That’s a mashup of the word smart and mark. Smarts understand that they’re watching a performance, but they still appreciate the show. Now, shift that concept to business and you get sophisticated business audiences that are able to recognize that experiments also. Come with an agenda most of the time.

Think about a startup founder presenting experimental results to venture capitalists. The VCs know the startup team likely designed the experiment to favor a particular outcome, but they don’t view this as deceptive. As one VC told carp. It’s a feature, not a bug. The ability to structure compelling experiments demonstrates a founder’s strategic thinking and persuasive capabilities.

These are qualities that investors actually value now. So how does all of [00:02:00] this translate into the practice of PR and marketing? Keep in mind, transparency about experimental limitations doesn’t diminish the their persuasive power. In fact, acknowledging potential biases while still delivering valuable insights can enhance your credibility.

The goal isn’t to present. Perfect unbiased data, which let’s face it rarely exists in business context anyway, but to generate useful information that helps decision makers make their decisions while advancing strategic objectives. Now let’s pivot to the second approach, using experiments themselves as content to influence consumers and external stakeholders.

We’ve seen a lot of really great examples of this strategy in action considered Dove’s real beauty sketches experiment. They had an FBI trained forensic artist drawing women based on how they described themselves and then drawing the same women based on somebody else’s description. What they found was [00:03:00] that the women described themselves as being much less attractive than objective.

Third parties who didn’t know them, who described them. This generated massive engagement and reinforced Dove’s brand positioning around authentic beauty. Another example, remember Blend text? Will it Blend series? This started as a simple product demonstration and it became a viral sensation. They blended everything from iPhones to golf balls.

The experiments weren’t just tests. They were compelling contents that showcased product benefits and entertained audiences. There was re’s opt-out side campaign, which offered another masterclass in experimental marketing by closing stores on Black Friday and tracking outdoor activity, REI turned their businesses business experiment into a movement.

The campaign not only generated immediate buzz, it created a lasting impact on the perception of people have of the brand. Now for PR professionals, these examples [00:04:00] highlight an important evolution in how we think about experiments. They’re not just tools for gathering data or making decisions.

They’re opportunities to create compelling narratives and build deeper connections with audiences. The trick is to design experiments, serve multiple purposes. You definitely wanna generate those useful insights, but you also want to create that shareable content. Now this approach requires careful consideration.

For experiments to work as content, they need three key elements. They need authenticity, transparency, and relevance. It has to feel genuine, even if it’s designed with persuasion in mind. The methodology and limitations should be openly acknowledged. That’s transparency and most important, the experiment has to resonate with your audience’s interests and concerns.

This trend is likely to continue growing as consumers become more sophisticated and demanding of evidence-based claims experiments. Give us a powerful way to demonstrate value while engaging the audience. The [00:05:00] challenge is to find creative ways to turn research and testing into stories that drive both understanding and action.

So don’t limit your experiments to the ones that you conduct behind closed doors. The AB tests that of course we’re gonna continue to do, but you should consider how your testing and learning process become. Part of your story, could your product development experiments become content? Could your market research be turned into shareable insights?

The answer to these questions might just lead to your next breakthrough campaign. Yeah. A lot to think about there. Shel, the first thing that struck me, listening to what you were saying and indeed, I think Rebecca Kapa has done a super job with this in her studies that she mentions in that Harvard Business Review article, how experiments can play different roles in business.

But what struck me was, isn’t this something that. Businesses have been doing for years. Would it not be called thinking out loud, perhaps? Literally doing your experimentation in the open. Maybe they don’t [00:06:00] call it experimentation, because this strikes me as something that isn’t this what businesses have been doing for quite a while.

I think to some extent businesses have been doing this, but I don’t think that they’ve been doing it as a strategy. I think somebody in the marketing or the advertising department has an idea, Ooh, what if we had a sketch artist do this? As opposed to saying what experiments were conducted as part of our product research or our market research.

We can turn into content. So I think the difference is, yeah, there, there are great examples that Dove example is several years old. BlendTech you remember Will it blend? That’s what, 10, 15 years ago? So you it’s not new to see this employed. I just think it’s new to think about it in the context of experiments as.

A marketing asset to say what experiments have been conducted as part of the research for this product or service or brand identity, or whatever it is that the [00:07:00] campaign is focused on. Or what experiments could we conduct that would provide compelling evidence that would convince a skeptical audience while also entertaining them?

I think it’s considering experimentation as the focus of a marketing effort that Rebecca Karp has brought forward. Got it. So the Harvard article mentions that her in their words that her research comes at a time of consumer skepticism. And she, it also mentions that the audience the experiments cop talks about tend to be other business leaders.

They don’t expect such experiments to be exhaustive. So what do you think need needs to happen to make it far more strategic in the organization? Is there a particular thing communicators need to do to get this into a strategic approach as opposed to either not happening or happening in a limited scale that’s not no one [00:08:00] knows about?

On the internal side, I think it’s pretty much what we have been doing all along. I, yeah. One of the items that I read talked about the fact that, you’re going to do an AB test in order to convince somebody that you should be going with A and not B, frequently, you’ll make a really great, let’s say headline and B not so great a headline.

Yeah. So that. The movies shows your bus who are gonna make the decision will say of course a tested better, let’s go with a right. Yeah. So again, it’s performative. From the external standpoint though, no I think it comes down to stakeholder analysis. You really need to know your audience. Yeah.

As you mentioned, the article talks about an increasingly skeptical consumer base. In terms of the product that we want to sell or the service we wanna sell, or the brand that we want people. To appreciate what is the basis of that skepticism and what kind of. Experiment, could we conduct, what kind of [00:09:00] research could we present that would convince them, oh look, the data shows that this is true.

Okay. I’ll be less skeptical and consider a purchase. I’ll consider doing business with that organization. Design the experiment to address the source of the skepticism as opposed to just saying, Ooh, here’s a cool experiment that would look good on film and convince nobody of anything.

That makes sense. You mentioned Dove and of course they’re almost like a, poster chart for experimentation in public. I really am wondering why we don’t. Seem to do this more in organizations and do them publicly so that, is it fear of failure in public or is it that it’s, there aren’t smart people like there are in Dove?

Is it as simple as that? I think it may just be more habit and laziness. A lot of things to change. There needs to be pain, right? Oh my God, this isn’t working anymore. We need to do something different. We talk about this when we talk about the adoption of [00:10:00] technology by public relations organizations, whether they’re internal or agency.

Why would we learn a new technology when our billings are high and our clients are happy? It’s not until money is taken off the table by a boutique that. Learns how to make websites or do social media or whatever it might be that the public relations people say, oh, we’d better learn how to do this because either the clients are demanding it or they’re hiring other people besides us to do it.

So I think it’s the same thing here. Where is the pain that’s going to drive people to try something different when the approaches that we’re using now seem to be selling product? Yeah so then it comes down to perhaps the art of persuasion. Actually prior to that, it would come down to, do you see this I whole notion of experimentation or say, project X that we’ve been working on for a while.

Why don’t you do this with Project X? And therein is the hurdle that everyone seems to fall at. [00:11:00] If that’s true. Is it? I, that’s a good question. But perhaps we need to undertake an experiment to convince the powers that be, that experimentation would be a good communication or a good marketing approach.

I can see it from a PR standpoint where you’re not trying to sell, where you’re just trying to persuade that here’s an experiment that helps. Persuade you that this is the appropriate approach to take? Yeah, so in the strategic planning where you’re looking at the strategy that you’re going to employ in order to achieve the goal one of those strategies might be to present the results of an experiment that demonstrate the value of what we’re talking about.

So it’s thinking about it at that stage of your planning that I think might get the ball rolling on this type of thing. I’m, it comes to mind that the kerfuffle that arose in recent weeks over Jaguar, the car maker and the reader design of their logo and the introduction of concept car I.

That [00:12:00] created a huge amount of online chatter with opinions being ventured every which way you like on what a disaster it was. What are they thinking of, they’ve ruined the brand, et cetera. And then a few, I would call them smarts in Rebecca Rebecca’s cop description who said, hang on a second.

This is actually quite good. They are reinventing this. It’s a whole new approach, et cetera. All that’s been going on, this to me is in this realm now. Of course, not knowing anything about what the plans are they might say to me, you’re crazy. This is totally not that. But it looks like it to me.

This is in the do area. It seems to me of some really keen. Ideas are being are executed with significant resources behind. This is not like a quick petty cash operator. There’s se serious budgets behind this kind of thing, and it either fail or not, but they’ve got, I suppose you could argue from a brand point of view a whole lot of conversations about the brand [00:13:00] has been has been mentioned in mainstream and social media globally.

And that may be what is their goal, perhaps? I don’t know. But that’s big scale, right? And not everyone’s able to do that. So what about little things that might work in niche markets? And again, to your point earlier you mentioned you, you need to understand your audience. Exactly. I’m just wondering what’s really, what is preventing people doing more of this?

Or is it simply that it is a niche no matter what Rebecca Kas research shows, this is just a niche idea. It’ll never gain major traction. Yeah. A couple of thoughts. First on the Jaguar side that could well be an experiment, but it would be a different type because they’re not presenting the results of the experiment to the public.

Not yet. They’re engaging the public in the experiment. It’s covert experiment. We’ve decided to experiment with a new logo to see what kind of reactions we get from the public if that indeed is what they did. In, in terms of smaller organizations doing this, a again, I think it just doesn’t occur.[00:14:00]

To people. You don’t need to spend a ton of money. BlendTech spent whatever it cost to buy the item that they blended. They didn’t have a huge studio set up. It was all pretty simple. They needed one of their blenders in a golf ball, one of their blenders and an iPhone.

Most companies can afford the budget to do that sort of thing. So again, I think, when you’re doing your strategic planning, if your strategy says we’re going to. Use an experiment to present. Experiment results in order to help persuade people that this is the solution that they wanna, that you know they wanna spend money on.

Then when you’re developing your objectives being measurable approaches that you take to achieving the strategies that you’re putting in place. One of them would be that the experiment can’t cost more than. $20,000. That would be part of the measurable element of the objective that you set so that you can, stay within your budget.

But I would think that a couple of good [00:15:00] communicators could look at the whatever it is that they’re trying to communicate and come up with some ideas for experimentation. And if you can’t, you can always just go ask Chachi pt. Good advice there. Shel, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #440: Experimenting for Influence appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

There is a common thread among many of the predictions and trends posts that typically blossom across the web as the year draws to a close: AI agents are poised to revolutionize (a word we don’t use lightly) work in 2025. The frontier AI models — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama, and a few others — have captured imaginations and led to various uses throughout the business world. But these chatbots, which deliver answers to natural-language queries, will pale compared to agentic AI, which sets off to complete tasks that require multiple steps autonomously. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel delve into agentic AI and its possibilities for communicators, along with five other digital marketing trends.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 439 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson. We are close to Christmas, the time of year when marketers, communicators, and everyone comes out with predictions and trends for 2025, the come following year which is that year, we have one here.

We’ve talked about a couple recently, and this one’s actually quite interesting. Last week Google celebrated 25 years of they say transforming how we search and discover and shared its vision for the top marketing trends shaping 2025. From smarter tools like AI powered marketing mix models to the rise of shoppable video, Google says, the future promises more intuitive, ethical, and consumer centric approaches.

We’ll explore these trends right after this. We will also see AI agents simplifying complex workflows and mindful [00:01:00] marketing addressing consumer decision fatigue. These trends reflect a pivotal moment where technology meets responsibility, paving the way for a more sustainable and inclusive marketing future.

Google’s insights highlight six key digital marketing trends poised to shape 2025. Let’s look into what this means for businesses and marketers alike. The first one, the evolution of marketing mix models and is a statistical analysis tool that helps marketers evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and determine how different marketing tactics impact sales.

Media fragmentation and budget constraints, mms are becoming smarter, faster, and more granular. Tools like Google’s Meridian, a highly customizable modeling framework enable realtime transparent insights into cross channel performance. Second, AI agents as simplifiers. These will revolutionize data management enabling seamless integration of [00:02:00] multimodal information for business operations.

These chief Simplifier offices as Google dubs them simplify complex workflows and improve efficiency. This slots right into all the buzz and the hype and the talk in recent weeks about AI agents and how that is crucial in 2025. Third rise of shoppable video. Social commerce continues to grow with shoppable YouTube videos offering consumers seamless purchase options.

Brands are encouraged to integrate product feeds, turn ads into storefronts, and partner with creators. Fourth, mindful marketing for decision fatigue with consumers. Overwhelmed by information brands should prioritize hyper-relevant consented data to create meaningful, simplified marketing experiences that alleviate decision distress.

I was actually conscious shell when I was looking into this, all the buzz phrases that pop out in this decision. Distress. Great one, isn’t it? That’s a new one to me. Fifth AI driven app [00:03:00] marketing. The focus shifts from app installs to in-app engagement with AI powered features, enhancing user experiences and driving specific actions such as purchases and content discovery.

And sixth ethical and sustainable marketing. Ethical imperatives, including sustainability. Transparency in AI generated content and inclusivity are essential for long-term consumer trust and brand loyalty. So these trends reflect a shift towards more personalized, ethical, and technologically integrated marketing practices.

These are themes that are threaded through some of the conversations we’ve had in recent months in previous episodes of this podcast. You can take a look a bit more closely at some of these. One that strikes me as pretty key. I perhaps, based on my focus on what others have been talking about, AI agents as 2025 is the year forward, as I mentioned, is precisely this AI agents as [00:04:00] simplifies.

It strikes me, that is a nice phrase, chief simplify officers that you can really. Equate that to, as Google calls it, a representative advance transformative advancement in 2025, building on the foundation laid by large language models in 2024. So that’s one I think that we ought to be paying very close attention to.

What’s your thinking shell about these trends? I think they’re all spot on. I don’t disagree with any of them. The marketing mix model, I think is inevitable just based on the fact that this is data that’s available and it’s really just a matter of having the AI tools that can analyze it and, prompting them or setting them up to analyze effectively all of the different inputs against the output.

There’s so many different. Marketing elements that can be factored into these models. It can deal with time, it can deal with place, it can deal [00:05:00] with content. Just all kinds of different inputs and which ones are having impacts on the company’s sales. And the company’s bottom line yeah, is, it’s pretty clear that AI can simplify that and speed it up.

I the age agentic AI is what really excites me. These days. And as you probably know, Google launched Gemini 2.0, the first model in that family of models yesterday. And it is AgTech. That’s the whole point of the 2.0. And there was a post on LinkedIn. I don’t remember who shared this.

I copied it and. Saved it without noting who it was. I only saw it because our friend Jeremiah Ang was commenting on it. But it was just a list of some of the things that Agentic AI is going to do for you. And it’s things like imagine your acquisition agent runs 50 meme accounts simultaneously, testing hooks across different niches, including a thousand posts daily until it finds.[00:06:00]

What hits your research agent analyzes a hundred thousand tweets per hour. Finding unmet needs and feature requests that no one’s building for your content agent creates 200 unique hooks daily across X, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Learning from each response and optimizing for what works. And this list goes on and on.

The idea that you can assign. A task to an AI and it just goes out and does it, regardless of how many steps it takes and how much time it takes. Some of these things you’re probably looking at hours, days. Some of them could take weeks and it’ll come back to you if it has a question as it’s going through this process.

This is. Probably the most dramatic change that we’re going to see computing bring to work and life since the introduction of the pc. This is going to be huge and a among these trends that you listed this is the big one. This is the one that think people are gonna be latching onto.

Now think how quickly it’s going to [00:07:00] change is. Going to be a question of how quickly adoption happens in organizations and based on what we’re seeing so far. Probably not overnight, right? Because you’re still gonna have people dealing with the governance of these things and the security issues and the like.

But ultimately this is a really big deal. Yeah I Google talk about that at length and in fact the use of the word agentic. I saw a number of people talking last week and I was actually chatting with some folks on this very topic that’s predicted to be, you know how things are the word of the year for 2025.

I was curious myself even that I, I realized I knew the word and the use that’s being applied to now is apt for, its. Definition of, what is the word agentic. And according to many dictionaries including this one dictionary, which is actually the one that writes it in the most simple English something that behaves like an agent able to express or expressing agency or control of on one’s own behalf or on the behalf of another.[00:08:00]

That’s pretty good reference. I think there are though it surprised me, many who think it’s a made up buzzword. No, it’s not, no, it actually says it quite well. And a, an ai an agent ai, but Google there’s one man who contributed to this particular topic. Guillaume Rockets. He’s Google’s senior director of marketing for Google Cloud in emea, Europe, middle Eastern Africa.

He says, these intelligent systems, process multimodal information, that’s text, voice, images, video, and enabling them to reason, adapt and manage complex workflows. And in marketing, and this was a key focus of what Google’s talking about. They addressed the challenge of siloed data across disparate systems.

So AI agents simplify tasks like creating data lakes and streamlining operations. That’s an enterprise perspective. He gives some examples which I thought, yeah, this makes total sense. So many others will be doing this. Kingfisher he talks about, that’s an international home improvement company with 1900 stores owns brands like BNQ in the uk [00:09:00] screwfix integrated enterprise data with AI powered search tools.

And so created a system that improves access to critical information, both in customers and employees. Sounds very straightforward, that simple description, but. As you pointed out, and indeed as they referenced earlier these agents have characteristics that enable them on their own to reason, adapt and manage those workflows, and that you can’t underestimate how phenomenal that would be.

Set aside concerns people express, which I’ve seen being talked about on LinkedIn quite a bit. Is when they go outta control. This is some, this is a kind of a common strategy, not if, but when we have a problem. Be prepared for sorts of weird stuff to happen. But the reality is that the benefits are huge from this if you are able to implement and execute on this quite carefully.

Rock is Google’s Rockus says that ar ai agents are becoming increasingly accessible. To allow organizations to integrate advanced [00:10:00] intelligence seamlessly into their operations without overhauling existing systems. So they’re expected to play a central role in enhancing efficiency and adaptability across industries during 2025.

It’s a very optimistic view. I think you are right. There’s this, none of this is suddenly gonna happen, but you are seeing. The Kingfisher example being replicated and not being, horns being tooted, just casually you see references to this. If there’s now gathering momentum that is focused on these trends then you’ve got a lot more people paying attention to it, a lot more learning what others are doing.

And would like to hear a lot more about this during 2025, I’d say. Oh, absolutely. And going back to this, list of examples that this LinkedIn contributor shared. I’ll find out who it was. Credit him appropriately in the show notes. I just can’t get to it. Right now. But he makes the point in this post that what previously required 20 people and 2 million in salary now [00:11:00] happens automatically with 2000 in agent costs.

One founder becomes as powerful as a fund startup. Customer acquisition becomes predictable, growth becomes systematic. And I don’t think any of that is is incorrect. One thing to keep in mind about AG agentic AI is that it has computer vision. That means it can see your screen and it can take control of your mouse and your keyboard.

And it can sign into applications and. Create things and post things. One of the things that he offers here as an example is your content agent. Your community agent welcomes every new user personally. Handles support tickets in seconds and turns feedback into feature priorities.

Your email agent writes and tests 50 different sequences, personalizing every message based on user behavior. Your analytics agent spots trends before humans could adjusting strategy in real time. This is all stuff that you’re gonna be able to do. This doesn’t require [00:12:00] hiring an outside agency or.

Working with your IT team, these are things that, that, you know if you just take the time to learn how to use these and, if you have access to the tools, which, let’s face it. Yeah. Some of them are gonna be part of your $20 a month Gemini Pro account or your $20 a month Chachi PT Pro account.

You can start creating these agents and running them. So. The benefits that you’re gonna accrue from this in terms of your own productivity and the efficacy of your efforts is, it’s to be right there on a plate in front of you yeah. It’s vital to learn this.

We talked when OpenAI first released Chat, GT 3.0 that, uh. People are worried about whether this is going to take their job and the standard answer was no, it’s not going to take your job. But somebody know who knows how to use it will. That’s more true now than ever with the rise of the agents.

Because if it can do the work of [00:13:00] 10 people that took 40 hours before you don’t wanna be one of those 10 people. You wanna be the one who’s controlling this. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure we’ll see that kind of concern being articulated more and more during 2025. But I’m equally sure that we are gonna hear more from companies experiments.

We’ll hear what they’re getting, and they’re likely to be the large enterprises more than not. More often than not. But I would see. News emerging more than we’ve seen on the on the professional services side of businesses such as finance definitely communication, advertising, public relations, et cetera.

I’m intrigued to know something I read last week, and I didn’t bookmark it unfortunately, so I can’t remember which company it was talking about, was an experiment on an employee communication. Using AI agents on a limited scale in one division of this company. We’re gonna hear lots about that, I’m sure.

It’s all good. I think [00:14:00] though, the thing I would pay attention to is amongst the critiques and the critics, as it were, is the ones that are really informed opinion rather than. Would you call it worse than click bait, attention grabbing, negative stuff. We’re gonna see a lot of that too. So misinformation as I would describe that.

So latching onto the people who are informed. And I’m hoping that we’re gonna see more public speaking about these events, seminars, webinars, you name it, on the progress of all of this. Not from, just from the likes of Google, ’cause I’m sure we’ll gonna see lots of that, but from people actually at the coalface.

Implementing this stuff. So I’m keeping a close eye on LinkedIn, in particular, what people are saying there about this kind of topic. But I agree with you that this is the big one of all the ones that Google mentioned the mms, I think are key shoppable video. I’m not convinced about that, but I’ve not looked into it.

That’s. To me haven’t, isn’t that what we’ve been seeing all along? They talk about YouTube [00:15:00] and I’m sure that’ll play a big rubble. What about some of the other players, TikTok being one notwithstanding the potential of them not being able to be used in the US sometime quite soon. Newer ones, niche.

Video channels are emerging. So mindful marketing this phrase for decision and fatigue and decision distress. Yeah. The people are overwhelmed, so they need hyper-relevant data that absolutely is the case. So if that, we see that. I improving in 2025. That’ll be a damn good thing. I would say AI driven app marketing.

So shifting from app installs to in-app engagement. Yeah. So not just go and install our app. It’s what does it give you when you have done that? So focus on the, you’ve got it. This is what it’ll do for you. So AI featured AI powered features. I saw something the other day. I have a Samsung phone running every.

Everything’s the latest versions of everything. And I keep now getting these emails from Samsung about check out this AI feature in your Galaxy phone. [00:16:00] And I’ve been experimenting with some of it, and some of it is, whoa, really interesting. Others is okay, if I was a gamer, I’d really be interested, but I’m not.

Point is though that these things are happening. So the ethical and sustainable marketing, that to me fits right into the thing we’ve talked about quite a bit. Which is precisely that ethical approaches to business that people are interested in doing business with, an organization that has an ethical approach, a sustainable marketing.

Absolutely no more. I read a story the other, just the other day about a vegetable or a fruit grown in I think Argentina. It might, was a South American country that’s then air freighted to Thailand for processing and wrapping and packaging, and then shipped back or to the US for selling in supermarkets.

That to me is insane. Think of the carbon emissions apart from else, but the inefficiency of that. Oh, I guess it’s the most cost effective way currently to do that. But is it sustainable? No, it’s not. Is it ethical? Arguably, I probably say it probably isn’t. So [00:17:00] those are now issues in the midst of all this.

So maybe agent AI or AI agents as chief simplifier officers will play an even bigger role in businesses. I remember being in a gift shop in Hawaii and looking at a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts and seeing that they were packaged in Torrance, California. So they shipped to the macadamia nuts, grown in Hawaii to California.

They put the chocolate on it there packaged it up and sent it back to Hawaii to be sold in the. Probably the most cost effective way of doing it, but sustainability, ethical, et cetera. Sustainability, yeah. When it comes to sustainability and decision quality and things like that I, again, I think the agen AI is going to play a huge role here.

Because if you look at the decision quality and decision fatigue, think people, the way people are thinking about that now is based on the chatbot AI implementations that we see where you can share some data with it and it’ll do some analysis. I think [00:18:00] that’s great, but I think that it can also, perform the tasks that the communicator or the marketer has been assigned to do or needs to do.

From the outset with guidance from the marketer rather than just, yeah. Oh, I’m at this stage now where I need to analyze some data. Just start at the beginning of the project and tell the agent to do it, and then you can make adjustments along the way. You can tell it to check in. Each key milestone so that you can assess what’s done and ask it to make adjustments if necessary.

But, using the agents in these situations I, I think that’s what’s gonna turbocharge. All of this stuff, not just pouring more data in and doing the analysis that we’ve been able to do for the last couple of years. Yeah, I agree. Looking forward to 2025 in that case. Yep.

No question. And that will be a 30 for this episode of for immediate release.

The post FIR #439: Agentic AI Tops Digital Trends for 2025 appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

It doesn’t seem to be a big deal at first glance. A Google AI Overview answers a search query at the top of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Beneath it, all those traditional links and snippets are still there. However, analyses reveal that many people are reading the AI Overview and calling it quits — they never click a link to visit a website. That’s concerning to organizations that have relied on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to their pages. In this short midweek FIR podcast episode, Neville and Shel look at the data and the trends and recommend actions communicators can take to ensure their web properties still get attention as the shift to AI search continues.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to four immediate Release. This is episode 4 38. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. Search engine optimization. SEO has been a foundational activity for marketers and PR practitioners for decades now, but there’s a transformative development that’s reshaping how organizations communicate online.

Google’s AI powered search results known as AI overviews. It’s having a profound impact on search and SEO. We’ll jump into this in detail right after this. Let me set the context. In May of this year, Google launched AI overviews in the US fundamentally altering the search landscape. These aren’t just featured snippets or knowledge panels like the ones we’ve been seeing for a few years now.

They’re sophisticated AI generated summaries that appear at the top of search results providing comprehensive [00:01:00] answers. I heard this referred to once as one true answer when. Amazon’s Echo was first released and I think we did an episode on that. But these are answers to users queries. While this creates a smoother user experience, it’s presenting really unprecedented challenges for brands, for publishers, and for communicators.

Google’s testing a new ad format with AI overviews that’ll create opportunities for brands to reach users. At the moment they need information, but. Those aren’t available just yet, and the impact of AI overviews has been significant. Early data reveals that publishers are experiencing five to 10% decreases in traffic since AI overviews launched.

This might not sound dramatic, but some news outlets are reporting substantial drops in engagement, and the trend is expected to grow as the technology becomes more widespread. We’re seeing the acceleration of what’s known as the zero click phenomenon. Users getting the answers directly [00:02:00] from Google’s AI summary without ever visiting a website.

Now, I know we’ve discussed this before, but here’s a wrinkle that makes this a relevant opportunity for communicators. Right now. When brands are cited as sources in AI overviews, they frequently see increased click-through rates and longer site visits. This suggests that while overall traffic might decrease the quality of traffic is.

Improving. That’s quality over quantity. Users who do click through are more engaged and interested in deeper insights. Now, this shift is forcing organizations to rethink their digital communication strategies. The traditional SEO playbook is being rewritten. Smart brands are adapting by creating comprehensive, authoritative content that AI systems recognize as valuable sources.

They’re moving beyond keyword optimization to focus on establishing genuine thought leadership and authority in their space. To maintain [00:03:00] visibility in this new landscape, organizations need to consider a multifaceted approach. First, focus on creating high quality, brand aligned content that offers unique insights and genuine value.

Second, invest in digital PR and authoritative mentions. Third, develop sophisticated monitoring systems to track performance across AI powered search channels. Fourth, diversify your digital presence beyond Google to include other AI powered platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest to reach your audience.

Fifth and perhaps most critically build strategic relationships with key industry publications that AI systems frequently cite as authoritative sources. That’s a new approach to media relations. Sixth, take advantage of AI powered ad solutions to ensure your campaigns remain effective in the changing search landscape.

Finally explore alternative methods to engage consumers like interactive content and personalized [00:04:00] experiences to make up for potential declines in traditional website metrics. Now, here’s what’s particularly fascinating. We’re seeing the emergence of a new specialized role in communication teams. AI Search Channel Specialist.

These professionals work at the intersection of SEO Digital PR and content creation, understanding both the technical aspects of AI systems and the strategic elements of brand communication. Now the need for this expertise is clear, given that AI overviews synthesize information from multiple sources, which can dilute individual brand identities and make it harder for users to attribute content to specific brands.

Ensuring clear attribution within AI generated content is crucial to maintaining brand identity. Something an AI search channel specialist should be able to do. The implications extend beyond just search visibility. The shift is fundamentally changing how organizations need to think about their [00:05:00] digital footprint.

The era of creating content primarily for search engines is giving way to an age where authority, authenticity, and genuine expertise matter more than ever. Looking ahead, organizations that will thrive are those that embrace this change while maintaining their authentic voice. The goal isn’t to gain the AI system.

It’s to genuinely provide valuable enough information that AI systems NASH naturally recognize and amplify your expertise. Yeah. Interesting. That’s a good way you’ve explained that. I think, we have talked about this before, and I think the reality is, as I understand it certainly is that the the likelihood of more zero click searches is not a likelihood, it’s an inevitability, I believe.

Why would you click through to the website if you’ve got. Your answer right there in the search results. You’re not gonna do that, in which case you will see the brand owner is definitely gonna see a drop [00:06:00] in visits from search to the website. So the limited attention I’ve given to this topic actually shall shows.

That the people I’m seeing in the SAO business in particular talking about this actually presents new opportunities. If you tailor your search texts and everything else that shows up you’ve got to do things very differently to how you were doing things before. And in fact one of the articles you shared on this smart company as firm in Australia talks about that, and you actually mentioned it, I believe, create for users, optimized for Google, not create for search, create for the people searching.

That requires a rethink. And it talks this piece talks about the long-term, SEO, addressing the user experience and investing in high quality brand-led content. Sounds great. When you read a text telling you this how do you do that? That’s where you need people such as that expert you mentioned and SEO.

Savvy people who can advise you on this kind of thing, but there’s more to it than that [00:07:00] though, although that is quite essential, I would say so I, I think maybe this is one of those things that is on the very close horizon that no one’s really paying too much attention yet, that now is the time to do this.

I would say. Yeah, definitely. Now is the time to do this, given the fact that the acceleration of all of this is pretty rapid. I think the other thing that is really important to consider here and that I mentioned in the introductory remarks is the need to. Take the same approach to AI that we’ve taken with search engine optimization.

We studied what the keywords were that people were searching on. Now we have to study what are the sources that AI systems that people are using are routinely going to When they’re sharing information, I’m sure that eventually there will be a service that will help with that, but right now I think we’re on our own to figure out which.

Media outlets, which [00:08:00] influencers are being cited by. Chat, GPT by Perplexity, by Gemini, and by Claude. And the open source models like llama from Meta because those are the places where we’re going to have to direct content. And as I said, this is a shift in our media relations mentality.

It’s not just a matter of how many, column inches we get. There’s a. Blast from the past, call ’em engines, how much share of voice we get. It’s in which publications. It’s through which services. Because if they’re not the publications and the services that are finding their way into the answers that these AI systems are providing, then it’s not going to be as useful to you.

It’s not gonna produce the kind of results that you need. If you were investing time in SEO before so I. Recognizing where we want to get our information published who we want distributing it is something that’s gonna require a, a lot of thought. [00:09:00] Yeah, I think so. You are already seeing this.

And this is on a simple basis. I think just from my experience I see in chat GPT, but Plex has always been like this since it started, which is citations that’s now in chat, GPT, and I’m not meaning just the specific search. It’s in everything. You give it a prompt, tell yourself or do something and come back with a result.

It includes. Links to the sources. Perplexity does it better. In that it’s a lot easier to find that. I think though. Maybe this brings to the fore then that there needs to be ’cause it’s just from a user point of view, greater care in checking out the sources. So for instance, don’t just that blindly.

Oh, this link, it’s got links there. Great. It’s okay. Check the links. I had the experience just a couple days ago where I did something and I checked the link and had nothing to do with the question. So I think. How do they come up with an answer then? If you’ve got a bad source in there that it’s citing, it’s not perfect.

We know that it’s not perfect, so you need to check it. I’ve never [00:10:00] stopped doing that. Even if I’m happy with a result, I will still check it. Search, actual search I. I don’t tend still to do that. With chat. GPTI do that definitely with perplexity. Gemini not so much either, but I tend to stick with perplexity in chat GPT from my gender AI use typically.

But this is, this has a new dimension to it and I’m thinking that, you are searching for something. And again, thinking back to previous discussions on this topic, we’ve had that what does it mean to you? You need something that you are searching for and there’s gotta be something that’s gonna stimulate you to click through to the website, which is not.

The future. That’s not the future scene. I don’t see it. So maybe what brands need to consider in addition to what we’ve discussed, is how to and maybe this is at the heart of the content that, that they need to create. How do you present your information that satisfies the user? That still gives you.

A value from [00:11:00] that which traditionally you’d count on a visit to your website or whatever the destination is that you choose, you’ve gotta find another way of doing that now. And that’s at the heart of doing this for the user, not for Google. So maybe this is another challenge for the SEO business as a whole on this is a radical change that’s approaching us, it seems to me.

And they don’t seem to be ready for that. No, I don’t think they’ve caught up with this at all, frankly. I think they’re still in that mode of protecting their existing business model. But I think that there’s a, there’s just so much going on here that organizations that remain mired in the old world of search engine optimization are gonna be scratching their heads at this lost.

Traffic. Yeah, I worry about media organizations that rely on visits for revenue. It’s somehow organizations are gonna have to find new ways to entice people to their sites in [00:12:00] addition to the work that they’re gonna need to undertake in order to show up in these. Snippets these AI overviews that Google is presenting.

Now, the other thing is that if these don’t produce the kind of results that people are looking for, we may see greater uptake of perplexity and chat GPT search. And if that happens, it’s the same result. We need to get into AI results as opposed to the 10 link search engine results page that we’re so accustomed to.

I think that is exactly what’s gonna happen. Shell, I think perplexity and Chat, GPT and others who are coming on board with this this approach are going to be major beneficiaries of the shift that’s started already. They’ll refine their models to make it even more attractive from a user point of view.

I think Perplexity has probably got the edge on that right now. Track GPT is still from, again, anecdotally what I hear, not seen as the [00:13:00] kinda replacement for Google, whereas perplexity definitely is seen that way. I haven’t really used it except when it first is announced that it had the search capability actually for search.

So maybe I’ll try it again to see what benefit it gives me. I think they perhaps need to differentiate the. In the interface box because it’s not clear. Yeah. Basically there’s just a new little button there that says search that you have to click and that’ll give you a search result. Yeah. And it’s not quite clear why so that needs to be better, better done, I think.

But perplexity is definitely ahead on that. So if I want to search and I’m doing something in chat, GPTI tend to switch to perplexity to do that. I do too. Although I have used the search on chat GPT and I’ve been fairly pleased with it. Happy with it. It’s much better than the early reports were when it was delayed in its launch.

Because it wasn’t producing really good results. So the work that they did paid off, yeah. Okay. So there’s definitely work ahead for SEO folk, I think. Yeah. But also brands. And I would say for the brands it’s also gonna be harder work because [00:14:00] loading a blog post with keywords is one thing.

Creating really valuable thought leadership content is harder and will take more time and more effort. But that’s really what’s required. If the AI’s gonna pick it up and say, this is good, valuable content that I’m ready to share in response to this query that I just got. Yeah. Yeah. We’re still, this is still early stages we’re at with this, and it’s not polished from what Google’s doing and certainly not polished it by any means.

It’s still being developed these features, this overviews feature. So it’s still, I think. Anyone’s guess what, what’s gonna happen with this? But I would say that the longer this uncertainty goes on or this kind of volatility stage wreck goes on, the more the user, people like you and me, for instance, or anyone for that matter, is literally in charge now because you can go someplace that offers you what you want, like perplexity, [00:15:00] for instance.

It’s, as the, as one article I was reading says, fortunately, SEO industry is quite adaptable and is, and can change rapidly. They’re gonna have to do that, I would say. And sooner rather than later. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #438: Google’s AI Overviews Are Upending SEO appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Research finds that corporations no longer see AI as a novelty; it’s a full-blown business tool, one that is so critical that its development is mostly being done in-house. In the November long-form episode of “For Immediate Release,” Neville and Shel review new research about AI’s place in the business world and among employees. Also in this episode, we take a look at social media in 2024 — a consequential year — and what to expect in 2025. Beutler Ink has published its principles for ethically engaging with Wikipedia. Companies will twist themselves in knots deciding whether, and how, to respond to social and political issues that arise during the next four years of the second Trump Administration. Bluesky’s growing popularity, and an open API, has led to a burgeoning collection of third-party apps. And Coca-Cola misfired with an AI-generated holiday commercial…or did they? In his Tech Report, Dan York looks at the post-Twitter social media world, Bluesky’s looming challenges, X’s reminder that it owns your account; the impending court decision on the TikTok ban, and Australia’s new law banning social media for children under 16.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

Coca-Cola’s AI-Generated “Holiday Magic” TV commercial

Decision Tree for Public Statements on Social and/or Political Issues

Transcript:

Hi everyone and welcome to for Immediate Release. This is the monthly long form edition, episode 4 3 7 for November, 2024. I’m Neville Hobson coming to you from crew Kern Somerset in England. On a time when the weather’s weird as usual. We have high temperatures at the moment compared to snow.

We had a week or two back, but here we are with another episode. And boy do we have topics here. We do, I’m Shell Holtz in Concord, California. It’s California. It’s sunny and nice. That’s why I live here. Yeah. Nice. We do have a great episode for you today. We will be talking about social media in the year that is wrapping up and the year ahead.

We will look at the realities of generative artificial intelligence in the workplace today. Get beyond the hype and look at where things actually are ethical. Wikipedia editing is on our docket [00:01:00] today, as are the challenges the companies are going to face speaking out about social issues in the next four years.

Gosh, I wonder what’s happening in the next four years. We’ll also take a look at the growing ecosystem of apps for the social network, blue Sky and Coca-Cola’s advertising disaster. Dan York is here with terrific report and we will get into all of that after we do a quick rundown of the short midweek episodes that you ha may have missed since our October long form monthly episode.

Indeed, and we’ve only done three since the last monthly. But, and we’ve been busy. Yeah, there have been some time pressures, I must admit. But three’s good. Some great topics we talked about. So the first one, episode 4 34 that we published in November the 13th, was looking at the reports and what people have been saying about the.

The analyses following the US presidential election [00:02:00] and that fact emerged, or a view emerged that mainstream media and social media willed of far less influence than they have in the past and influences and podcasts helps sway. So we talked about that and the impact on communicators way for way beyond the election.

In fact, interesting topic we talked about. Episode 4 35 on November the 20th that talked about that topic. That is a recurring topic these days it seems, which is return to work. But this was the mandated returns was the theme of this one. And talking about the reasons executives give to their employees why this is important.

Talked about the serendipitous opportunities people miss if they don’t come back to the office and they need to boost productivity, which coming back to the office does. And of course there’s alternate views on that. That’s one of the reasons we talked about this. And indeed you had the example of a financial services company that has seen IPOing increases in performance metrics since listening to its employees and adopting a puzzle.

Let [00:03:00] it’s them, choose where they want to work. No mandated back to the office. That was a good one, and I think you’ve got a comment on that one, Cheryl. We do from Diane K, who said that the episode was timely. Given the move to return all federal employees to full-time in office, I suspect that’s a way to reduce the ranks more than anything else.

She wrote in a comment to the LinkedIn post on that episode. Interesting. So then episode 4 36 that we recorded just a week ago actually. That again Blue Sky. We’re gonna talk about Blue Sky, as you mentioned Shell at the beginning in this episode. And this was a midweek short episode just on Blue Sky.

That it was an interesting one that talked about what they’re trying to do how they’re growing it what’s important to them. And we looked at the potential of Blue Sky and whether communicators should consider establishing a presence for the competitor for other companies or clients and why they should do that.

A timely topic without [00:04:00] doubt, that’s the reason we did it. ’cause I keep seeing nothing but blue Sky being mentioned across mainstream media in the UK now has got that attention. So it’s definitely on an attention roll without any question. So that was a good one. We have a comment for this one too, don’t we?

Actually, two. The first one from our friend Lee Hopkins in Adelaide, Australia said totally agree joined nine months ago was Oh, underwhelmed ignored it. Now in involved with it because more and more of our tribes are appearing on it. And our friend Donna Papa Acosta said, same for me. I’m sure many have that view.

I see people talking about that themselves in post on Blue Sky. And just in case anyone didn’t know this, you and I joined Blue Sky during the during the private beta in 2003 2023 I should say. And it was a tool that. Sat there and we didn’t really do much whilst we were paying attention to threads at that time.

I I know, but suddenly, this has really kicked off [00:05:00] since beginning of November, coincidentally around the time of the US presidential election and Trump being the winner, an exodus, big time. Not the sense of closing down and moving, but moving and maybe keeping things back there. Things have evolved from that now and it’s certainly something that is getting attention from 7 million subscribers to 23 million in the space of a couple of months.

So this is no idle thing. Is it? The next big thing? That was something we talked about. That remains to be seen, but it’s a, it’s an interesting topic and a hot one for communicates without doubt. So the other thing we did in November was publish a new fi interview. On the 6th of November.

We published this. This was with Monique Nik. Her name will be familiar to you if you are focused on internal communication in particular. But we had a great conversation with Monique, didn’t we? Where she talked about trends, AI and authenticity and internal communication quite a bit about her book that she had [00:06:00] published a few months back.

But that was a really good conversation with Monique. It was, and we had a co a comment on that one too. This from IABC and Mina’s official account saying this is what IEBC is about. Members connecting, sharing insights, and inspiring others globally. It must have been talking about Monique and me, since you’re not a member.

Also wanna let everyone know that circle of Fellows has been posted as it is every month. Episode number 110 focuses on executive communication. I was joined by four IEBC Phil Fellows Alice Brink, Julie Holloway, Marianne McCauley, and Bish Mukerjee joined us from India to talk about executive communications that is up now on the FIR Podcast Network, both for video viewing and for listening.

As a podcast, there is a Circle of Fellows feed that you can subscribe to. Oh, episode 111 is coming on December [00:07:00] 19th at 11:30 AM Eastern Time. We will be talking about communication, serving as a foundation. I’ll be joined by Russell Grossman. He’s from over there in the UK with you, Neville. Theo Mary Car, Caras Martha Muzyka and Neil Griffith, who’s also UK based.

Again, December 19th. That’s a Thursday at 11:30 AM Eastern Time. I’ll be moderating that panel. I’m looking forward to it. I, it’s a, it’s an intriguing topic. I think it leaves us a lot of latitude for discussion. It should be fun. And now it’s time to jump into those stories that I listed at the beginning today.

But not until we’ve had an opportunity to sell you something.

I think most of us would agree that 2024 has been a tumultuous year in many areas of society in our lives, but our focus on social media in this topic, we’re gonna talk about wide ranging events in that landscape have characterized [00:08:00] 2024 threads hit 270 5 million users according to Mark Zuckerberg.

The turbulence and sharp decline of x formerly Twitter, the sudden emerges of blue sky as a compelling alternative, racking up 23 million users in a matter of weeks, as I mentioned earlier, and the rise of movements like Brett Summer redefining online culture. It’s been nothing short of a seismic year for social media.

As platforms rise and fall and user behaviors shift in real time, the need to anticipate the next wave of change has never been more urgent. Two standout reports from Batten Hall and we are social published just a few days ago, offer us unique lenses through which to understand each shifts in the year ahead.

In social, Batten Hall highlights the importance of social first strategies, AI driven insights, and the growing role of private digital spaces like messaging apps. At the same time, we are socials Think Forward 2025. The Livable Web Special Edition shines a [00:09:00] light on cultural and emotional trends such as users craving deeper connections, rejecting polished perfection, and seeking moments of joy in an overwhelming world.

Let’s unpack some of the key ideas from these reports and explore what they mean for communicators. Batten Hole predicts a shift where social media will no longer be an add-on to marketing strategies, but the primary focus in 2025 being social first means ensuring social platforms drive the entire user journey.

With ai, evolving the potential to refine messaging, protect communities, and unlock predictive insights will be transformative. However, brands must also navigate the rise of dark social spaces, those private networks where authentic personal engagement can thrive. And as users increasingly migrate to platforms like Threads and Blue Sky, the social sorting process will reshape the digital landscape, forcing communicators to rethink where and how they connect with audiences.[00:10:00]

On the cultural side, we are social emphasizes a broader emotional evolution in digital spaces. Gen Z rejects the polished, curated ideals of the past in favor of unfiltered authenticity, finding connection in chaotic, relatable content like Charlie X’s breadth Summer. Meanwhile, amidst global crises, many users are turning to lighthearted, low stakes interactions online, celebrating small luxuries, embracing wholesome hobbies, and seeking relief through uplifting content.

This trend compliments the rise of intentional consumerism where audiences increasingly cherish sustainability and meaningful use of what they already own over relentless consumption. We’re also seeing the growth of modern myth making where fans actively engage with hidden narratives and Easter eggs in brand storytelling, strengthening their emotional ties.

Finally, the push for new intimacies signals a shift back to the social roots of social media with users [00:11:00] craving more personal communal experiences in their digital lives. Together these trends highlight a social media ecosystem that’s becoming more strategic, more emotional, and more human communicators will need to adapt their strategies, not only to follow technological advancements, but also to align with shifting cultural values and emotional needs.

So as we take a look at these predictions, shell, do you have any trends mentioned here or others even that most resonate with you? There are several here that resonated with me. One being using the social space as a primary focus. I think that is important, but I don’t think that it is an all or nothing proposition.

I, I. I’m thinking about the fact that more and more people, particularly among Gen Z and millennials, are getting their news from Instagram and TikTok. The question is, where are the influencers who are presenting that news, [00:12:00] getting the news that they present? A lot of them are reading news. On TikTok, there are hundreds of people who have lots of followers who all they do is read news stories out of magazines and newspapers.

So if we stop. Getting our content into magazines and newspapers. Then the influencer influencers who are reading that are gonna read stuff that in which we have no share of voice. So I would not ignore the mainstream press. It’s just a reprioritization that I think we need to look at. Another one that really struck me is the need to get involved in private digital spaces, the WhatsApp groups.

Really attracting more and more young people who want to have the network, but they wanna have it with a group of people that they wanna interact with and not the whole world. And tools like WhatsApp and Snapchat allow them to do that. So how do we break through to those folks? So I these are trends that I think are absolutely coming [00:13:00] and, the social network that I still don’t hear people talking about very much. Ev everybody’s talking about blue sky and there’s a good reason for that. I’m not saying that it, we shouldn’t, and it’s not important, but Reddit is still there. Reddit is still one of the top visited sites on the web and tremendous influences wielded there.

I don’t know that it’s at the same level it was when they called it the front page of the internet. And when Buzzfeed was the hottest thing on the planet, they were getting the stories they were gonna do based on what was trending on Reddit. But it’s still an important place with some very granular communities that are not difficult to join.

And, if you’re a communicator looking to wield influence over people wielding influence over people on Reddit, it’s not a bad idea, but nobody talks about it. On the topic of Reddit, I’ve been user of Reddit since what, 2006, 2007? Active recently in particular. But I think it, it’s, I agree with you by the way, [00:14:00] but isn’t it really to do with.

If your audience is there, then that is where you need to go too, because you need to go where your audience is, but Right. And therefore, Reddit’s definitely not a kind of mainstream destination for everyone, again, depending on your audience. So I look at some of the some of the subreddits I’m participating, and these are niches.

These are absolutely not Oh, mainstream. They’ve got big numbers, no question. Did, I saw a report just yesterday saying that in the uk, Reddit has now got more action going on than any other social network that needs to be nuanced a bit in terms of understanding who is there actually, is it is it your millennial group?

They’re not there. It’s the Gen Zs there. But which topic? ’cause in this group over there, it’s actually full of boomers. So it’s a very complex network that needs you to be I think very clear on who you, your audiences are there. And if they’re there, then that’s where you need to be.

I think every organization should find out if there are subreddits that include [00:15:00] people talking about their space, and then analyze is this a large enough community that it warrants our attention who’s in this community? It doesn’t need to be large if these are all serious influencers. Who are taking what they learned through their interactions on Reddit and sharing it elsewhere to large audiences.

This is what used to happen with Buzzfeed, and I just think that the, by the way, the other thing is that I’m noticing more and more of my Google searches are pointing me to Reddit conversations where the answer is particularly on how to issues, because there are a lot of those out there.

There’s, subreddits around the Meta Quest VR headset. There’s subreddit. There’s subreddits for virtually every digital product out there where the fans of it and people who are wrestling with them are interacting with one another. So it’s actually driving traffic. Google drives traffic to Reddit.

So another reason to consider that another thing that you mentioned was unfiltered [00:16:00] authenticity. And I think that’s. Something that people really need to be paying attention to. We do something where I work. It’s a takeover Tuesday where young project engineers, this is an entry level position in the construction industry.

Take over our Instagram account and showcase whatever project they’re working on. And this is on Instagram stories and they’re pretty popular. There’s something about having these young employees talk authentically, but enthusiastically. It’s genuine authentic. Enthusiasm and it comes through that I think people really appreciate.

And, in terms of our audience, which, we’re not trying to convince people to build their $600 million building with us by watching an Instagram story. We’re trying to convince engineering students to come work for us. And it’s pretty enticing stuff when you see somebody just a little older than you just outta school a year or two, wearing their PPE out on a an active construction site, waxing poetic about how great this project [00:17:00] is.

That type of thing goes a long way. And I think companies would do well to consider that kind of, curated employee generated content. Yeah. One thing always surprises me when we talk about this kind of thing. Surely this can’t be like, oh, that’s a good idea for a listener. This is not a new thing.

This is what you should be doing. Always. Surely knowing your audiences, tailoring your communication to them, engaging with them in ways that I’ll use the word authentic, which has many meanings depending on a number of factors. So maybe this is part of it that what goes around, comes around in the sense that we are hearing in these reports, particularly from we are social or Bat Batten Hall too, for that matter, on the desire from certain origin, particularly younger generations for meaningful communication with brands, let’s say.

So the perfectionist the slick production values, created content that has been at the forefront for years. In fact, I was thinking today, looking [00:18:00] at on, on one of the TV channels that day, I actually watched, I. Terrestrial TV for a long first, for a long time seeing. We’re seeing now all the ads from the cosmetics firms and these are slick movie quality productions with celebrities doing the voiceovers.

And I often wonder, and I’m thinking this more now, who on earth relates to that? Normal people don’t really, maybe it’s aspirational. Again, I’m not gonna do an heavy analysis, but that surely is what we are moving away from. This is what the survey, these results of these reports tell us. People are looking for more honest, more relatable.

Messaging from brands they’d like to engage with, that they can actually believe. And that is not believable. Those amazing lifestyle ads for cosmetic brands. So I wonder why the hell they do that And they must make money at it, sell more stuff at Christmas. That could be it. They’re trying to reach the people who can afford those perfumes and colognes, right?

And that’s not, that’s gotta be it necessarily. Gen Z. That’s gotta be it right now. Johnny Depp isn’t gonna appeal to [00:19:00] anybody in Gen Z anyway, right? I don’t know if you’ve seen him. It’s gotta be the case. Yeah. Cologne. Yeah, he’s a pitchman now. What can I say? One other. Trend that you mentioned that I was intrigued by was this craving for communal experiences.

And I think there’s another opportunity. We used to have a lot of organizations that had departments focused on promotional activities. I remember when I worked at Mattel, we had hot wheel races and malls all around the country, people getting together and doing stuff together. And I don’t read about that kind of thing that much anymore.

And I think there are opportunities for brands to arrange activities and events for people to get together in the real world and do something. Imagine the Instagram photos that will come out of things like that. And, in the scheme of things, not the world’s most expensive approach to marketing either.

No, I think that’s what we are social refer to as new intimacies in their report [00:20:00] where people are craving deeper connections and seeking online spaces that foster community driven interactions. What does that mean for community? Goes well you’ve pretty much nailed it. Leverage niche communities and personalize your engagement strategies.

And I think, again, this seems so obvious, but focus on creating spaces where audiences feel seen and valued and that’s not new. But this is, again, something that we need to be doing more of in this changing environment. So there’s lots to take away in these reports, by the way. Batten Halls is a well produced, easy to digest, and in the content sense way, in the way in which it’s Pres presented.

So if you go to the website, fill out the form, and you’ll get a PDF version. We are socials. On the other hand, there’s what I called an everything reality presentation. There’s video, there’s animated graphics, animated texts, even talking heads popping up here and there only available in your browser.

So that’s a whole different proposition. It actually got me thinking a lot, the contrast between the [00:21:00] two. Maybe we are social as they absolutely at a Gen Z audience, at the exclusion almost of anyone else. If you want a nice comfortable PDF, you can read at your leisure. You’re not gonna get it. This is real time in the moment.

You’ll see this and you’ll need to have your headphones on or your speaker on because it’s an audio visual presentation. It’s very well done. Different approaches, they’re different topics, but they’re very complimentary both from Bassen Hall and we are social. I think they had a really good job presenting all of this as other reports have come out too in the past couple of weeks.

And you’ll find ’em if you search on similar themes, what’s been happening in 2024 for social media and what’s coming in 2025 and what you need to pay attention to. And a bit of overlap in all of them, but these two did strike me as definitely worth paying attention to. And there are, there will be links in the show notes.

No, no shortage of what’s coming in 2025 posts out. There’re the season, aren’t we? Shall this is the time for everyone to do their report? Yeah. Yeah. And also on, on we are social it’s a, it’s an unspoken final [00:22:00] comment that to their presentation, which is, if this is what we did to present our own report, imagine what we could do for you.

Nice one. The landscape of workplace AI adoption has undergone a pretty remarkable transformation over the last year. Speaking of looking back, organizations have moved beyond the g whiz phase into serious implementation and experimentation. According to comprehensive new research from the Wharton School and Marketing consultancy, GBK Collective, we’re witnessing what could be characterized as AI’s coming of age story in the enterprise.

Let’s start with the headline number that. Really grabbed my attention. 72% of companies now report using AI at least weekly for work purposes. That’s nearly double the 37% reported just last year. Now, what’s particularly fascinating is where this growth is happening. While you might expect IT departments to be leading the charge, we’re seeing dramatic [00:23:00] increases in adoption instead across all functional areas, including departments that were previously hesitant, adopters like marketing, operations, and hr.

This is entirely consistent with the message I’ve been sending as much as I can. This isn’t like Workday, where it implements software. Everyone will be using pretty much the same and can train everyone the same on how to use it with generative ai at this point especially use of the frontier models like Chat, GPT, Claude Gemini, every individual and department has to figure out for themselves how it’s gonna help.

Speaking of organizational structure, though, one of the most intriguing developments is how companies are adapting their leadership to accommodate AI Integration about one in five organizations, 21% to be exact, have now created Chief AI Officer. I. Physicians, we’ll see how long that lasts. I imagine there’s been a significant decline in the number of Chief Metaverse officers over the last couple of years.

I have to say, I still shake my head [00:24:00] at how loosely so many organizations imply the officer label anyway, the vast majority of companies, 91% are keeping their AI strategy development in-house. They’re not relying on outside consultants. This suggests to me that organizations are viewing AI not just as another tool to implement, but as a core competency they need to develop internally.

It also suggests there’s gonna be some serious consolidation among all those AI consultancies that have cropped up. The employee’s perspective has evolved significantly as well. Remember the early days when workers viewed AI with a mixture of anticipation, amazement, and trepidation that shifted fairly dramatically.

Today, 90% of employees see AI as skill enhancing rather than job threatening. That’s up 80% last year. I’m sorry, that’s up from 80% last year. The shift in perception from replacement to enhancement is crucial for successful adoption. I am, however, still [00:25:00] detecting reluctance to use it among a lot of employees, even millennial and Gen Z employees, largely due to personal security concerns.

What I find particularly telling is that about half of enterprises currently have few or no restrictions on AI usage in the work workplace. This repre represents a remarkable level of organizational trust in both technology and employees judgment. In using it, however, it’s worth noting that larger organizations tend to implement more stringent controls.

Only 15% of companies with annual revenue over $2 billion allow unrestricted AI use, suggesting a more measured approach. As the stakes increase, it may be in these companies, you’ll find those employees who won’t use it for fear of getting in trouble or use it, but don’t tell anyone for fear of getting in trouble.

Investment patterns tell an interesting story too. While 72% of companies plan to increase AI budgets next year, 57% anticipate these increases will be moderate [00:26:00] just between one and 10%. This suggests we’re entering a phase of more calculated ROI focused deployment rather than spend at all cost approach that we saw in the early adoption phases.

What we’re witnessing comes down to AI’s transition from a speculative technology to a practical business tool. The key now will be how organ organizations balance enthusiasm with pragmatism and innovation with responsible governance. It is interesting. You, it reminds me something you mentioned there about Chief AI Officer, we talked about that, the kind of expansion of c-Suite job titles quite a few times, maybe at least two episodes.

We’ve talked about that recently. And this strike struck me when I heard you say it. This is an example of that. Here we go again. You said how long it will last. That’s the thing. Yet for many organizations, I’m sure that is what they’re gonna have to do to get this on, get traction with this whole topic rather than being done piecemeal.

But it is [00:27:00] interesting. The Wharton report, I was reading the summary as you were talking. They are concluding that, and this will be like yeah. Type response you might have to this, which is what they’re saying. Organizations will keep experimenting with AI to figure out how it works best for them.

Yes. That’s what they should be doing. And you’ve got some metrics in here which kind of emphasize the value of doing that. It’s interesting, one thing they note as it evolves so will other technology required to make it more usable and practical, such as voice interface. So there’s a lot of things happening in parallel that may not be apparent when you first think about how am I gonna use AI in the workplace?

But also one thing it relates to what you said employees perhaps using a tool that without telling anyone because it’s not authorized, that’s exactly what’s going on in many organizations and the companies that. Don’t open that up in a better way than this are the ones who are likely to suffer, I would say.

Because what happens, [00:28:00] it’s inevitable. I was thinking back to some, something someone told me not long ago, that they’re not allowed to use chat GPT in the workplace. So what they do is download a copy from the website under a different name, even the student if you like, and they use that for their work stuff.

By contrast in a large organization where chat, GPT and others like it offer, what do we call ’em, an enterprise version of their tool, that’s a wholly different animal to the consumer version that you just download off the website. So you end up then through through bad policies in the organization is how I pitch it in a sense how I describe it.

Opening yourself up to all sorts of risks by not. Having a, an effective way that recognizes people’s concerns and enables them to do something about it rather than blanket, you’re not allowed to do this, and so they go ahead and do it anyway. That says a lot about the organization. That’s a different avenue to explore, but trust and belief [00:29:00] and all that stuff is in there and that’s lacking in that situation.

That’s dangerous to my mind. There’s lots to think about in this. It seems to be what a lot of employees are also doing is getting the chat CPT app on their personal phones. And it’s similar. Yeah. They just use it in a lot of organizations at this point, what employees have access to is Microsoft Co-pilot which is a difficult tool to parse considering the many flavors of co-pilot. But there is the base co-pilot that just comes with Office 365. That basically gives you an interface that is chat PT four. Oh, that’s, Microsoft does not have their own frontier model. They’re investing billions and billions in open ai.

And so this is what employees are using is chat PT for, even if if the company is saying you can’t use chat CPT they’re using co-pilot. So I think it’s interesting that organizations think that they’re preventing something bad [00:30:00] from happening. Although when you go through copilot.

Your queries your prompts don’t get saved and used as training fodder for future models. So that’s one reason companies may want employees to do that. I think those organizations that are saying, we don’t want you using chat, CPT use copilot employees should shrug and say, fine, because it’s the same damn thing I am.

I, I don’t use copilot. I have, Microsoft 365 subscription, all that. But I don’t like the style of it that’s the reality. And it may well be the best thing since Slice Brent, which I do not believe. It is quite well for employees who have no choice though. It’s there. They can use it.

But if you have choice I think I’d use something else, but it’s the landscape shell that’s basically it. There’s so many, ways you can use a generative AI tool. And there are many generative AI tools out there. To me that reinforces the reality in an organizational setting to [00:31:00] set out very clear guidance to employees on what to use, how to use, when to use it, and why without being, read the 65 page instructions on what you gotta do.

Don’t do that. People aren’t stupid. You gotta trust people. Although I hear people arguing that you can’t trust people. That’s a hell of a place to be if that’s your belief. We’ve done a ton of communication around AI where I work and employees know that it’s there. They know they have access.

What they’re asking is, okay, how do I use it? So we’re now planning some lunch and learns around effective prompting and things like that. I think this is what communicators need to be doing is one, they need to be. Promoting the responsible use of generative AI in the organization, highlighting whatever policy is in place, letting people know what the risks are, letting people know what the organization’s plans are for advancing the use of Gen ai, but also helping people figure out how they can figure [00:32:00] out how to take advantage of it.

In their jobs, how to write good prompts, how to figure out which tools are appropriate for you how to figure out how to identify those workflows in your job where AI can make you more productive, make you more effective, make you more creative. If that’s what’s called for. The more we do that and the more we share stories of employees who are doing it, the more everybody’s gonna get it and say, oh I can do that.

And start using it. So I think we have a very important role to play on the internal communication side of things. Totally agree. Opportunity for communicators. I have no question. We all know what Wikipedia is, the encyclopedia anyone can edit founded by Jimmy Wales back in 2001. I use it daily. Not often, not consciously.

If I’m searching for something, whether I do ask the question in Google, increasingly less likely [00:33:00] these days, or via perplexity, which is my preferred alternative to Google for the kind of how do I, where is, what is et cetera type questioning or even what’s the phone number of the pharmacy? It’s your favorite one, shall I know.

Wikipedia shows up still in typically in the top five or six search results, again, depending on what it is that you’re searching for. So it has evolved. It is a phenomenal resource. And it has, I have to say just. Because it fits in what you’re saying. I use it mainly when I’m watching tv.

For example, we watched a six part documentary about Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy Wars, and they talked about Kate Elder. And I said, yeah, I wonder if that was the same elder as Katie Elder in the movie, the Sons of Katie Elder. And I said, I’m gonna go to Wikipedia and find out. And I do that all the time.

When I’m watching anything with a historical context, I’m always using Wikipedia in front of the television. You’re a good use case. Shell. That’s a good use case. [00:34:00] In the organizational communication context, Wikipedia has a big role for communicators. And one of the things we’ll talk about now, and it’s a topic we have talked about before, and particularly going back some years is a valid topic ethical.

Editing of Wikipedia. So we’re gonna revisit this using the example of Butler Inc. And I’ll explain what Butler Inc is in a minute. So to set the scene a bit Wikipedia’s been a foundational pillar of the internet for over two decades from its founding. It’s the fifth most, most visited website globally.

Still. I remember it’s being claimed that for some time it’s an invaluable resource for billions of people. It’s a, it is critical in shaping public perception, often appearing at the top of search results. Additionally, it’s vast repository of information is a crucial source of training AI models. And by the way, it’s worth mentioning because some people think there’s only an English language version.

There’s not, there’s I think, 300 different language versions of Wikipedia, all of [00:35:00] different sizes in terms of content of what they have and how much of it. But Wikipedia’s, open and collaborative Nature poses unique challenge for communicators and PR professionals while its guidelines prohibit those with conflicts of interest from directly editing entries.

The temptation to bend these rules has led to controversies and mistrust between the Wikipedia community and corporate interests. We’ll revisit the topic of ethical Wikipedia entry, focusing on Butler, Inc. A digital agency that has set the gold standard for navigating this complex terrain. Founded by William Butler, a widely regarded expert in public relations for Wikipedia.

Euler Inc. Has pioneered ethical practices that aligned with Wikipedia’s principles such as neutrality and transparency. Earlier this year you and I shall had the opportunity to interview William in an FI interview where we explored the evolving relationship between Wikipedia and the PR industry, the growing influence of AI on Wikipedia’s ecosystem, and the nuances of ethical editing.

And by the [00:36:00] way, we’ll have a link to that interview in the show notes in an article published on the 25th of November. Butler, Inc. Set out their commitment to four core principles for engaging with Wikipedia. The first is neutral point of view, ensuring that all edits reflect a balanced and fair representation of the subject.

Second, transparency, disclosing conflicts of interest and intentions to the Wikipedia editing community. Third, collaboration, working with volunteer editors instead of circumventing them or attempting to exert control. And fourth, respect for Wikipedia’s rules following the platform’s, policies and guidelines without exception.

These principles speak to Butler Ink’s values in upholding the highest ethical standards. When engaging with the encyclopedia and this community of volunteer editors, they form a framework, not just for Butler ink’s work, but also as a model for how PR professionals and organizations should approach Wikipedia.

They demonstrate that ethical editing is not only possible, [00:37:00] but essential for maintaining trust between Wikipedia’s editors, readers, and the organizations that seek representation on the platform. In the article, William reflected on these guiding principles and how they have shaped Butler Inc’s success.

By prioritizing collaboration and transparency, the agency has avoided the pitfalls of unethical practices such as covert editing or promotional bias, which undermine Wikipedia’s credibility. But Inc’s work has proven that ethical consulting is not just a choice, it’s a responsibility for anyone engaging with Wikipedia.

This topic resonates deeply with me as I’ve directed projects in recent years requiring strict adherence to Wikipedia’s policies, ensuring neutrality and transparency. The But Inc model exemplifies how communicators can navigate this challenging space building trust with the editing community and their clients.

These principles should be the benchmark for anyone working on Wikipedia, setting a standard of ethics that others must follow. [00:38:00] So I’d like to hear your perspective shell, on the importance of these core principles. How do you think PR professionals can adopt these as benchmarks to foster credibility and alignment with Wikipedia’s ethos?

And what lessons can we take from butyl ink’s approach to ethical editing, especially given the increasing influence of AI on the platform? That’s two questions there. Actually. I thought there’s two questions You may have to remind me of the second one after I answer the first one. I think that these are.

Blinding flashes of the obvious. These are things that we have known for a long time. Butler Ink does a wonderful job of embodying these in its practice. The challenge is, I think, getting this information into the hands of people who are planning to, or needing to engage with content on Wikipedia.

I think there are organizations that routinely engage with Wikipedia. They’re big brands, for example, they have lots of products, lots of [00:39:00] trademarks. They’re in the news a lot what have you. But I would think that most people who engage with Wikipedia do it once, right? Somebody reaches out and said, Hey, did you know that the listing for your company shows your last earnings report from 2008?

And so you get in touch to try to see if you can get that updated and it can be a struggle they’ve never heard of you. You’re, you’re new to the platform. I went through this recently and I know how to engage with Wikipedia. I’ve been using it as long as you have.

I’ve done entries in the past. But they had our former now retired, CEO listed and as the head of communications, I didn’t want to go in there and make the change. I can’t do that. And so I went into the talk section and I explained I pointed to an article from a third party news source announcing the change in the CEO and absolutely nothing happened.

I had to go back in there and beg three or four times before somebody actually made that change. It can be [00:40:00] tough for somebody who doesn’t do this routinely to stay on top or even be aware of these rules. How do you get this information into the hands of people who are maybe doing this for the first time and maybe haven’t paid attention to the nuance in the, in, in the rules that Wikipedia has established?

It is not easy without doubt, and that’s something that has been a thorn in the side of Wikipedia ever since it. Was unveiled my experience. What you did was the right thing. By the way, you don’t try and edit it. You go through the talk pages and set out, make your case, declare your conflict of interest.

And I found my experience you have an account on Wikipedia. You create a profile page yourself, setting out who you are and why you’re, and if you’ve ever edited. Emphasize all of that. And so you say to people, look, go look at my profile. I’m legit and declare the interest.

And there’s ways to do that are the Wikipedia approved ways. My experience when I started doing this some years ago now is it’s labyrinth to understand the policies and guidelines. [00:41:00] It truly is seriously difficult, which is one reason why Butler Inc. In particular is doing well in this area because they have expertise from working with done tons of clients internationally on the pro policies and procedures.

I got an education on that, on a project I worked with with Butler Incon that required me to know how to do all this. And boy, that was a, an education, but it’s actually quite straightforward in, in following it. The difficulty, I think, or a difficult, not the only one, there are many is and Bill Butler mentions this in his article.

There are organizations out there and there are PR professionals out there unfortunately, who are quite willing to bypass where they can and go in and directly edit even. Through students intentionally bypass, they know the rules intentionally and bypass them anyway. Yes. Intentionally do that.

And that’s something Bill mentioned is a major issue that that we still have to overcome. I would argue this is certainly not [00:42:00] condoning it. This is people we’re talking about and it’s the good, the bad and the ugly in every community. And this is a reflection of that I think. There were issues 15 years ago now, probably 12 to 15 years ago now.

Where things came to a head. This was mainly in the uk I think between Wikipedia and pr, where there was a complete breakdown. Any kind of relationship, communication after a number of severe scandals through big. Well-known named agencies who were uncovered to have been lying through Wikipedia entries and falsifying entries in competitors pages of their clients.

And isn’t that where crew came from? Was all of those issues? I don’t remember the name, the big names. There was some big names. No Crew was the corporate representatives for the Ethical For Ethical Wiki. Yeah. Phil Gomes started that was Phil Gomes who started that. Yeah. And that was not as because of this, but this is one of the highlights of, but the point I’m making is that there were strong efforts made in the UK directed by the CIPR.

To engage with [00:43:00] Wikimedia Foundation about this. And I took part in that as a neutral. Interesting. This a neutral participant to bridge the gap. Philip Sherick was the other one. We made a presentation to a board meeting at Wikimedia Foundation and that led to the first, if you like, policy for PR professionals developed by the CIPR not long after that, which has then evolved into sixth edition or something.

So now. It’s difficult for anyone to say, oh, I didn’t know how we have to go about. Yes you do. If you are a member of the professional body, like the CIPR in the uk, and even if you’re not, you can access these guidelines that tell you these are the steps you need to take to do this. It ain’t rocket science to understand the process.

What is rocket science is actually understanding the process. If you had to wade through. Each of the pillars, if you will, on neutral point of view, declaring conflict of interest and a raft of others that are all to do with transparency and truthfulness and honesty. It is labyrinth and if you are [00:44:00] unlucky to then engage with the editor community, the volunteer editor community, and not hear anything forever.

Or you get one of them who’s just arrogant as hell ’cause they do exist. You have to realize to another thing that this whole structure is volunteer driven. So if you don’t hear anything, there’s not someone central. You can go and chase and say, Hey, what happened to my, it isn’t like that. You have to keep repeating it and you’ll find avenues and workarounds to get allies to make your case for you.

That requires a lot of time and hence why firms like Inc are doing well. I. Though that we are in a time when, again, those surveys we just talked about on authenticity, et cetera, is always been important in a case like this I honestly don’t see how anyone who is a practicing public relations or communicator, let’s say and a member of any of the well-regarded professional bodies could approach Wikipedia in anything [00:45:00] other than following absolutely all these principles and guidances.

And yet there are people who aren’t doing that. It needs to be, I think, emphasized that you shouldn’t be doing stuff like that. You need to understand the right way to do this. It ain’t difficult except understanding it, it is difficult. I’ll keep this short since it’s my broken record routine because there are PR people out there who.

Have not been trained who do not belong to an association, who do not feel compelled to abide by a code of ethics, who are unprincipled in their approach to their job and do it any damn way they want to. And until we come to the realization that practicing PR people must be certified and are at risk of losing that certification, and as a result losing their livelihood will continue to have PR people who will do this any damn way they want, regardless of what [00:46:00] the rules are and regardless of what resources are available out there.

Agree. I’m gonna that off my soapbox now. No, that adds to that bigger picture. We’ve talked about, I wrote about this myself on my blog a month or two back on the real issues that ought to be addressed, please, in the profession. That is to do with its credibility and this is absolutely the heart of it.

But in the meantime, for the 90% of PR professors out there who are honest, reasonable folks, I would say Wikipedia has a place in your role if you’re acting, if you’re working for. Large clients in particular, but not exclusively so that it is worth finding out how to address things and indeed to, to anyone.

Take a look at your own company’s Wikipedia entry page. Go and look at what it says about your company. Do you recognize that? And again, put out of your mind any notion of marketing talk. This is neutral point of view wars and all bad things that happened. That’s part of your history. You can’t cover that kind of thing up.[00:47:00]

So it requires reeducation for many people to get into this. The core issue though that we’ve been discussing here is just, concluding point to mention that the ethical approach is the only way you can do this as a PR professional and sleep at night basically. So this is what you need to do.

But Inc. Sets make it a good case. They’ve published their ethical guidelines and they note they’ve always had this, but they’ve never published them publicly. They’ve now done this. And if you read that, you’re thinking, yeah, we could do this, we should do this too. In which case you’ve got your blueprint there to do something greeting she and Nevo ever.

This was all around the world. Is Daniel coming at you from Shelburn, Vermont And this past month I’ve been looking a lot at where do people go in a post Twitter world? Because Twitter, of course is not Twitter anymore. It’s X and it’s a different company, a different vibe, a different thing. And now, controlled by Elon Musk and in the wake of the US presidential elections, I.

Where X was used particularly in [00:48:00] support of the campaign of Donald, of now President-elect Donald Trump. And where Elon Musk himself was very adamantly, pro-Trump, many people are starting to question, is X the place I wanna be? For some people it is, and I think it’s important to recognize that some people are finding that X still does what they want, still has the audience and is still there.

But for others, they’re saying, eh, I think I want to go somewhere else. The Guardian was one of the big ones that made this change and announced very prominently that they will no longer post on Elon Musk’s ex from its official accounts, but others are looking at that too. The challenge, of course, as communicators is that we’re moving into a much more fragmented world.

The interesting part about Twitter was that you could connect with people from all across pretty much all sectors of our society in different ways. And now we’re moving into places where it’s not that easy. It’s different, blue Sky and Threads were two of the big [00:49:00] recipients coming out of this election season.

Blue Sky had announced first that they’d added a million new members as people left X and they later announced that they’d come up. They were now at 20 million users for of the platform. Of course, threads rolled out, commented that they’ve been getting over a million people a day in November signing up, they’d have had over 35 million.

Take that blue sky where Threads and Mark Zuckerberg had announced in an earnings call that they had over 275 million users of threads. So, it’s a big player in that space. Where do you spend your time? Who’s there? Where’s your audience? These are questions that are there. I’m over on Macedon, which also saw an uptick, but not at the same scale as these two platforms, but, and I recognize it’s not for everyone there, but that’s where I’m at, and this is all happening in this space right now.

One of the reasons I haven’t been as excited about Blue Sky, people have asked me, why aren’t you just joining in like everybody else [00:50:00] is? Because it’s another centrally controlled platform now. It is, it has the promise of decentralization. And that’s one of the interesting parts is that it was developed spun out of Twitter by Jack Dorsey to go and create a decentralized social media platform.

And Jay Grabber, who’s the CEO, she and her team have done a fantastic job with developing a very, compelling platform. But it’s not quite where I would personally like it to be. There’s a great article by Christine Lemer Weber about how decentralized is blue sky really, which dives into technical pieces talking about how.

It has a promise of decentralization, but many parts of it are still centralized right now. You, there isn’t, you can’t move your account. Mine is Dan York. You can’t move that to another blue sky server in the same way you can like in Macedon, where you can move to a different instance in different server and work with that.

It’s not there yet. There’s some key components and [00:51:00] pieces around discovery, around messaging that still require the centralized services. And Blue Sky’s a company, they’ve taken some venture capital funding, which is a common way to grow, but VC companies typically want an exit. They wanna have some kind of return on their investment at some point.

And so this leads typically to the ification of other platforms that we’ve seen, whether there’ll be some method of getting that return back for the investors. Blue Sky’s also done some things like changing around the way the displays are. It used to be just reversed chronological. Now they’ve introduced.

Displaying replies by how hot they are in terms of interaction, engagement, so there’s some different pieces and parts that are moving in there, so I’m a little wary. And on top of this, we were reminded that we don’t control the handles, the account names that we have on, these social networks that are centralized.

If you’ve been paying attention at all to what’s been happening here in the United States, Alex Jones’s, [00:52:00] Infowars media sites have been up for bankruptcy due to his legal issues and with conspiracy theories and other stuff that’s been going on. The Onion purchased is in the process of purchasing all of that, coming outta the bankruptcy auction.

And that included some of the X handles and stuff. X made a legal filing saying, wait a minute, X owns every account. It can do with them, whatever it wants and it can go and do that now. Sure it’s their platform, they can control that. But it’s a reminder you are not in control. And that to me is the part that I think I worry about with some of these new platforms.

I want to be in control of my own destiny in some form, which is again, why I am partly spending a good bit of my time on Mastodon, where I have some more control. But we’ll see where this all shakes out. Speaking in platforms, tiktoks obviously a big one for short form video as we know, and it’s been under fire here in the United States with a law [00:53:00] that required its Chinese parent company by dance to dis to divest of its company, of TikTok in order to stay active in the US That’s gone through a chain of legal pieces and now it’s at a court in the in Washington DC where in theory, the first week of December, by Friday, December 6th, we’re supposed to hear a verdict, which will say, is the law valid?

Does TikTok have to divest or. Or not probably, regardless, it’s gonna go on up to the US Supreme Court. But anyway, we’ll see where that all goes. There could be changes coming to TikTok and how it’s working. A final thing, pay attention to what’s happening in Australia right now. They just passed a law banning children under the age of 16 from all social media platforms.

There’s a lot of vagueness in the law. It doesn’t actually specify which platforms. There’s a bunch of pieces. It doesn’t say how to do it. It doesn’t say how you’d limit somebody to Australia. There’s a whole host of [00:54:00] issues with the law, but they’ve put a stake in the ground that said nobody under 16 can access these platforms.

And it’s getting a lot of press right now, and it could change a lot of how we interact and engage with people and everything else. There’s a host of issues around that I could go into at great technical length around why this is broken and why it won’t work. Just geographic blocking doesn’t work.

Geographic location the means aren’t there. In theory, the law says that that you’re somehow gonna be able to be age verified without showing a government id. So who knows? The key point is watch what’s happening. The law is supposed to take effect a year from now, so in late 2025, and they’re gonna be doing some trials of different technologies and things, but a lot of other countries and states here in the US and others are looking at this.

And so pay attention to what’s happening in Australia because out of this will be some of [00:55:00] what will probably be brought into other places of the world. With that, I’m gonna wrap this up, send it back to you, shell and Neville, you can find more of my write audio and writing at Dan york, me and talk to you soon in December.

Bye for now. Thank you so much, Dan. Great report as always. Good collection of stories a couple that jump out at me. Having read about the band that Australia has imposed on people under the age of 16 for using social media I just can’t see that working. I don’t see how they’re gonna police that at all.

Be interested in watching how that unfolds. And I am very curious to see how that court decision shakes out on. TikTok although I don’t expect TikTok to go anywhere regardless of how that case ends up, because the Trump administration comes into office in January and Trump has on the campaign trail expressed his reversal [00:56:00] of opinion.

And then I was fully supportive of TikTok, which means that, it was Congress who passed the law that said it would be banned if it wasn’t sold by sometime in January, 2025. But it’s up to the Trump administration to enforce that ban. And he could easily just instruct the powers that be not to enforce it just to ignore it.

And it will just continue rolling along as it has. So interested to see how all of that turns out as well. But great report, do appreciate it. And speaking of that second Trump administration, which is. Coming in corporate America faces a critical strategic challenge, and that is when and how to engage on sociopolitical issues.

Companies are working hard right now to avoid being caught unawares as they were during Trump’s first term. When events like the 2017 Muslim travel ban Trump to nearly a hundred tech CEOs to speak out [00:57:00] against the policy. The dynamics are markedly different this time around as DEI, consultant Anne-Marie Malecha notes, during Trump’s first term, a tight labor market gave employees significant leverage in pushing companies to take stance.

Today’s economic environment has shifted that balance of power, potentially giving companies more latitude in choosing their battles. That’s likely why you’re seeing so many companies here in the us abandoning their DEI practices and goals. Walmart being the latest and one of the largest to make such a pronouncement after the George Floyd murder.

There was so much pressure to right a wrong that companies quickly fell in line around their employees sentiments. Today with right-wing extremists like Robbie Starbuck framing the narrative and employees with fewer levers of power to pull, companies are just as quick to cave to pressure and revert to.

Pre George Floyd practices a particularly valuable framework for navigating these decisions has emerged in the form of a [00:58:00] comprehensive decision tree that’s being shared among corporate communications teams. This model begins with a fundamental question. Is there a precedent? From there, it guides organizations through crucial considerations like whether the issue impacts business operations or stakeholders, whether it violates corporate values and whether employees’ rights are in immediate danger.

The framework’s strength lies in its nuanced approach to both proactive and reactive scenarios. This framework has been published in an article about this issue in Axios, and we have a link to it in the show notes, but I’m gonna walk you quickly through just one. Path in, in this decision tree Starting again.

Is there precedent? You have yes and no options. So let’s say the answer is yes. Then it says address changes with key stakeholders. But if the answer is no, then it asks the question, are you changing course? If that’s the case, then the questions are, does it impact employees? Does it impact [00:59:00] business operations or shareholders?

And does it impact corporate missions corporate values or mission? So let’s just walk through. Does it impact employees? If the answer is no, a statement’s likely not needed. If the answer is yes, the question is, are they or their rights in immediate danger? If the answer is no, then the question is, are employees calling for a response?

And there are options there, yes, but not in ma in mass, no. And yes but then the the answer is yes to are there are they, are their rights in immediate danger? If the answer is yes, then internal communications are recommended. If the answer is unclear, it says, consider internal communications that acknowledge the issue, offer support for employees even if a stance is not being taken at the moment.

Now looking ahead, companies are particularly focused on policy areas like immigration, healthcare, and trade that could directly impact their operations and workforce. A lot of these are also preparing for [01:00:00] response strategies in case they become targets in culture, war debates, or social media callouts, and that’s a possibility that is growing given the Trump approach to governance by tweet.

The key insight emerging from communication experts is that companies should prioritize issues where they have both authority and something meaningful. To add to the conversation, and I might add a dog in the hunt, as Janet Stovall and Kim Clark arguing their depth model approach, organizations must develop their own authentic voice rather than simply following the crowd on every issue.

The depth model, by the way, stands for dialogue, education, purpose, transparency and Humility, a framework to help organizations communicate effectively on DEI and social justice issues. By fostering authentic and strategic conversations. It’s out of their book, which is titled, and I love the title, the Fine Art of Not Saying Stupid Shit.

Anyway. The Smartest Strategy may be [01:01:00] establishing clear processes now for evaluating when and how to engage rather than trying to predict specific scenarios. The whole Trump thing is around chaos, right? Makes it hard to predict. So with the potential for rapid policy changes and social media confrontations, having a robust decision making framework could improve could prove invaluable in navigating the complex landscape ahead.

This decision tree is a good place to start. It’s in the Axios report and we have a link to it in the show notes. Yeah, it is useful. Listening to what you were saying, how you were describing all this show it struck me that I. The landscape has changed in that, a kind of decision tree like this reflects the times when the the structure was such that you had a model structure to follow and everyone knew that, and it was all fine.

Not anymore. You mentioned what AX has talked about govern the governance by [01:02:00] tweet. That’s definitely the landscape and it’s fast and it’s comes out, comes blindingly out of your left field where you don’t expect it to come. And you’ve gotta react quickly and there isn’t time for a chain of approvals to be gone through.

So you need to change your structure. That’s gonna affect everyone and I. Just, I got no research. I’m gonna, I’m gonna share with you saying, because it says so. Hey, my feeling is we’re gonna see this. You’ve got Musk and the scene. He’s gonna have a role in this what’s it called? This department for reducing employees in the federal government, whatever it’s called.

You’ve got him there and you’ve got a raft of people from what I’ve been reading, appointed who was like a DJ on a radio station. Someone else who was some whatever with no political experience. Fox News host, right? No political experience and strong agendas. They’re all either anti-vaccine or they don’t believe in any of this stuff, or it’s all rubbish and it’s lies and everything else.

And it’s the Democrats who are behind all the.

You might [01:03:00] have a policy, and I wonder this is likely to happen. I’m sure that you know us, the new government’s in place from January and announcements are made about this happening or that happening, and then Trump goes and posts a post on his true social network that’s completely the opposite to that.

So what’s the federal government gonna do? The spokes scrambled around and change it. And I think in a short order, you’re gonna see what you believe and who you’re going to pay attention to. And this is chaos coming. Yeah. But more, more relevant, I guess to the, to our conversation on this topic. This is global.

This is not just American companies need to figure this out because you’ve got already, I’m seeing almost daily people talking about if Trump does this for the, the tariffs if there’s a trade war coming and this company’s gonna do that, and how are we gonna do this?

You’ve got that. As part of the scenario, and it may be second or third person down the track as it were, compared to the primary audience, which is in the United States. This [01:04:00] does affect everyone effectively. I would say wherever you are, if you are a communicator, you need to be cognizant of these developments and these trends or these movements, whatever you might wanna call them, in preparation for what’s coming after January.

And Trump is signaling, already thinks I’m gonna do this when I’m inaugurated or after I’m inaugurated. So you’ve got, on the one hand the dire stuff that we hear about, which is deep mass deportations out of the US You, you’re hearing people say that can’t happen. So you’ve already got chaos surrounding that.

How’s it gonna happen? Who’s gonna do it? Is it gonna happen? What about, what are you saying? Are you gonna deport everyone? Including all those legally settled, Trump doesn’t seem to make much distinction overall this, no one else is able to fill the vacuum. So we are looking to, I. Chaotic period.

And if I were a communicator in a senior role in a big organization, I’d be having attention paid galore to all of this and enabling me to be able to [01:05:00] make, to provide counsel to the senior leaders of that organization. Because you have to be prepared for the un unpreparable basically. Yeah. He hasn’t he doesn’t take office for seven weeks and he is already created this kind of chaos.

He’s already getting all the attention. He had a phone call with the president of Mexico and he gets out there and says she promised to deal with the border and she had to come out and said, I never said anything like that. That’s right. He’s just continuing to make shit up. I think, and that’s chaos.

I have a feeling he does, I think he does a lot of this and he’s laughing to himself as he’s doing this thing. No, he knows what he’s doing. Yeah. Yeah. He does. But getting back to the corporate side of this since I don’t want it to just become a biased political diatribe what organizations need to do in their planning, and it wasn’t covered in any of the material I read on this is considered that shift in the media that you use to get your message out.

This is not just to deal with sociopolitical issues during the Trump administration. Look what happened during the [01:06:00] campaign. We addressed this in one of our midweek episodes in the past month, that podcasts wielded undue influence in social media. Very little this time around. Nobody talked about, the Russia or China.

Influenced social media feeds and the like, having influence. We didn’t hear about the sending people to a rally that didn’t exist and things like this just didn’t come up. The DeepFakes didn’t play that big an issue. Everybody was worried about that. Social media. It’s because the attention has shifted to other sources of information and as we are planning those.

Statements, those positions where we do feel compelled to take a position then we have to consider how are we gonna do that? Are we gonna be talking to influencers? Are we gonna have them on deck ready to help us on our behalf? Are we going to have podcasts we can reach out to and get our spokespeople onto episodes to discuss it?

Podcasts that have [01:07:00] audiences that we wanna reach. So we really need to be rethinking the priorities that we have for the media that we’re going to use. Sending out a tweet these days may reach the audience. You distinctly don’t want to reach with these types of things. So I think it’s time to be rethinking our media hierarchy.

Anyway, this is a particularly urgent reason to jump on that. Yeah, we’ve got less than two months to get prepared for this.

Let’s talk about Blue Sky for a change. I’m sorry. Blue sky. Blue sky, that new network. We have talked about Blue sky and you can’t really escape from this in terms of what’s happening with this. Most people, I suspect, don’t care at all. And I probably still quite happy on Twitter or X rather.

Some are just blank not doing anything. But in reality, this is a shift in the landscape of of how you engage with people on social media, across social networks, and it’s worth adding this. [01:08:00] Topic, this kinda subtopic to it all, which is the growing apps ecosystem. So tools that you can use to do certain things in blue sky or use its data to do or whatever.

It’s quite interesting because we’re seeing this emerging quite quickly as a haven for developer creativity. That echoes the app building energy we saw in Twitter’s early days. And that was, in my mind when I was thinking about this topic. This reminds me of the 2007, 2008 period. Twitter was founded in 2006.

I joined in December that year. And in a sense, not a lot happened for six, seven months or so until developers suddenly started doing things and things began to pick up in a very interesting way in terms of functionality, in terms of enjoyment of what you were doing and how you could achieve things that otherwise you couldn’t.

If developers had not got involved, Twitter was a developer friendly. Service at that time. So those early [01:09:00] days are very much an echo. While platforms today, like threats have yet to nurture innovation like this, blue Sky’s fostering an expanding ecosystem of third party applications and tools.

This open approach to development is a crucial differentiator, creating exciting opportunities for both users and developers. A, an emerging hub for this, it’s not. Topi built yet, but it’s emerging. Is the Blue Sky directory launched in November by Muhar Ikal, a prolific creator with a history of building impactful side projects according to his bio, the directory aggregates tools, apps, and community resources, making it easier for users to navigate and maximize their blue sky experience.

Al was inspired to create the directory after noticing the lack of a centralized resource for tools and starter packs within the Blue Cut Sky ecosystem. In his words, like everyone getting active here, I’m looking for resources to help me make the most of the platform. I found a couple of GitHub repos and blog posts with lists of [01:10:00] tools to get started, but not a great directory.

So I’m gonna build one. That’s how it started a few weeks ago. Currently, the directory includes really useful sections curated by him, startup X. This is a new thing that features custom feeds and user collections, people that people have created that are tailored to specific interest and communities and are very useful for new people coming to be sky and suddenly find there’s a place or there’s a tool they can use that includes other users and you can follow them straight away, all in one place, sub attune to your own interests.

Lists which provide themed, shareable groups of accounts or content for easier engagement, that the, there’s a directory of those clients, meaning apps, third party apps showcasing alternative apps for accessing blue sky, such as gray sky and deck blue. If you use TweetDeck in the ages, in the days of Twitter pre and post 2010, by the way, deck Blue will be very familiar.

And there are utilities [01:11:00] tools like the Blue Sky Feed Creator that lets users build custom feeds without coding knowledge. So IQ Bal updates the directory dynamically incorporating new tools and PAC shared across the platform. His approach demonstrates the power of user-driven development, and the commitment to making Blue Sky an accessible and resource rich environment.

This openness has also inspired developers outside the directory to innovate in unique ways. For instance, I recently started experimenting with Auto Blue, a WordPress plugin by Daniel Post, a WordPress developer that automatically shares blog posts to blue sky. Seamless integration of blogging and social media underscores.

Blue Sky’s potential to become a hub for creators. We might see a resurrection of the bloggers fish because of stuff like this. Another standout is Blue Sky comments, which allows comments on a blue sky post, but a blog entry to appear directly on the blog itself. This reminds me a lot of the functionality of tools like Chat Catcher for Twitter created by Shannon Whitley in 2008, [01:12:00] which I used to unify social conversations around my WordPress blog post back then.

So again, the parallels between early Twitter I. Early blue sky are, I think, quite marked. This is not X, this is nothing to do with the toxicity on that platform. This is harking back to the embracing of innovation and ideas and openness to enable things to work for lots of people. I think it’s phenomenal.

So these tools highlight that spirit of creativity and openness in Blue Skyes develop a community, a stark contrast to the closed ecosystems of competitors like threats. By encouraging such innovation, blue Sky is cultivating an environment that empowers users and developers to shape the platform collaboratively.

So question view then. How do you see this renewed app building energy, influencing Blue Sky’s growth and positioning in the social media landscape? And what can we learn or what can other platforms take from this approach to fostering third party innovation? Do. I think [01:13:00] what I it’s really smart on Blue Sky’s part to allow this, there is a case to be made that Twitter took off because of the creation of all of these third party apps that they allowed through an open API tweetbot, terrific Phoenix, TALEN for Twitter tweet deck, a huge one Echo phone.

And then there was the integration of Twitter into other tools like Hootsuite and Buffer. They’ve been shut off of Twitter because of the closing of the API. And I think that’s why I. I’m wondering if some of these third party developers are a little nervous because the owner of the platform can decide arbitrarily at any moment that we’ve gotten big enough, we want all of the views coming through our apps and not third party apps for the variety of reasons that they would have to do that.

And keep in mind that blue sky started with Jack Dorsey. I know he’s not [01:14:00] involved anymore, but his DNA is still in the organization. In fact, when he brought in the CEO of Blue Sky, she’s the CEO now, it was to create a federated approach for Twitter. And as she dug into the code, she said, I can’t do that, but I could do that with a new social network.

So he funded the startup of Blue Sky. That’s how it got started. His DNA is there I’d be a little worried that. Any third party app is not long for this world. Once it becomes more advantageous from a business perspective to control all of the apps rather than have all of the third party apps that help them build their user base.

I see where you’re coming from with that. I wouldn’t have that worry in the sense that you say Dorsey’s DNA is still there. I don’t think it is. It was at the very beginning, but this is not. What you see now is not what he envisaged back then, because this was gonna be part of Twitter. This is part of how Twitter would evolve.

[01:15:00] But from what I’ve read he got impatient with things, certain stuff he didn’t like. So he quit and he left. So Jay Graber, the CEO, interesting woman reading a bio in the background. And you’re right, others have said this too. Oh yeah. But what happens if they suddenly say, sorry, we’re closing everything.

I don’t believe they’re gonna do that. And I feel. That what I see there and what I hear this is not the same environment as Twitter at the time they did that when Dorsey was still there, by the way this is a different place in my opinion, and I think that you hear it and you think, fine keep an open mind on it then.

But I don’t see this at all. And I think any of these developers who are building stuff take a huge risk in that case. And they’re willing to do it. I’ve not seen anyone really seriously making the claim that, watch out. You’re gonna lose your shirt because they’re gonna do this.

I’m not seeing that. But I think more positively, as you yourself noted, that this is truly extraordinary, that they are enabling this, which is great. [01:16:00] And if they’re doing this so that they can say, thanks a lot guys. We’re now gonna do this in the road. I don’t believe they’re gonna, that hope I’m right.

I hope you’re right too. But business is business and businesses make unpopular well, there’s ethical s in their own self interest and there’s not ethical business. Yeah. I think I, if I were advising an organization who asked me the same question, I’d say there the, there might, that’s the possibility.

Keep in mind, take it into account in your planning in that case. Yeah. Yeah. Keep in mind that their goal is not to make money through advertising, but through fees for extended services and that’s what people are speculating about, and they have indicated that is something they’re under considering, but it’s not set yet.

They’re not making any money, by the way. It’s not like every startup. Yeah. They’re no they’re getting investor dollars, making a nickel from they’re not making money, they’re not making profits. No. They’ve got money to keep going and pay the staff and stuff like that. Yeah. But this is very early days.

This is only just now taking off. Yep. I’d have a very open mind about what speculation is about. What’s I wouldn’t avoid as a user, I wouldn’t avoid using any of these tools. When Twitter shut down [01:17:00] access to the tool that I was using, I just switched to another one that they, was a Twitter.

Based tool. And it was fine. I didn’t like it as much, but I could still participate on the platform. So take advantage of these while they’re there and if they indeed never close the API and allow this ecosystem to continue to grow, that’ll be great. If they don’t, we’ll deal with it with, I think there’s things about their plans we don’t know about.

Oh, clearly there’s things about what possibilities are. Maybe APIs will change in terms of how we regard them, how people might use them. There are too many no unknowns. And then to quote a famous American politician, there are a lot of unknown unknowns that we don’t do know about. So there, there’s a question mark over a great deal of this.

So it’s a leap of faith, I suppose you could argue, but I think that in the spirit of of support that yeah. Listen to what people say about that. Make up your own mind. But in the meantime get to know what you can do with this. And [01:18:00] if blue skies suddenly turn around in six months to a year and say, we’re actually gonna do that, then your worst fears will have arisen.

I don’t believe that’s gonna happen. One of the things that was discussed recently on Blue Sky was Coca-Cola’s Holiday commercial. When Coke released its holiday advertisements this year, they weren’t expecting the firestorm that erupted. Their decision to use AI to generate its highly anticipated Christmas commercial sparked immediate controversy, particularly among advertising and marketing professionals who labeled the results as soulless and disastrous.

The controversy highlights attention that has been growing in the worlds of advertising and marketing. On one side, are creative professionals committed to human artistry and Hollywood quality production values. On the other are companies eager to demonstrate their technological prowess to Wall Street, particularly through high visibility holiday campaigns.

Coca-Cola’s approach is particularly noteworthy working with three AI [01:19:00] focused agencies. They created multiple versions of their classic 1995 holidays are coming commercial now. The company maintains that this wasn’t about cost cutting, but rather about personalization. They can now target 12 different US cities with customized versions of the commercial, each showing local landmarks local to that city, which yeah, makes sense as a sound reason to use ai.

That’s the same thing we’ve been talking about with your CEO delivering remarks at a town hall in America in English, and then being able to. Create that video with them saying the same things in all the languages your employees speak around the world. It’s AI enhanced dubak for all practical purposes.

But the feedback came from people like Al Hirsch, a TV series creator who commented on X fun fact. Coca-Cola is red because it’s made from the blood of out of work artists, and that tweet had nearly 700,000 views. [01:20:00] Other comments read Pepsi. Now’s your chance to make a live action ad bashing on Coke for using AI and nothing like celebrating the spirit of Christmas with the most solace commercial possible.

Even Shelly Palmer, advanced media professor at Syracuse University and digital marketing consultant said that it sucked. Now, Coca-Cola issued a statement, and I’m gonna read the whole statement. It’s a full paragraph here. The Coca-Cola company has celebrated a long history of capturing the magic of the holidays and content, film events, and retail activations for decades around the globe.

We are always exploring new ways to connect with fans and experiment with different approaches. This year we crafted films through a collaboration of human storytellers and the power of generative ai. Coca-Cola will always remain dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology.

That was a big screw you to everybody who was complaining about the ad, but here’s where we get a twist in the [01:21:00] story. While advertising professionals mocked the badly rendered logos and shiny faces, consumers mostly seemed unfazed the flood of insulting comments on YouTube. Notwithstanding research from System one shows the ads scored really well with viewers who either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the AI generated imperfections that horrified critics.

Now this disconnect points to a broader shift in advertising. As pr, the car, Coca-Cola’s, global head of generative AI suggests, and I would note that he’s the global head, not the Chief AI officer. Much of the backlash may reflect industry professionals anxieties about their own futures. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has already transformed its advertising approach, shifting 60% of its media budget to digital and creating thousands of contextually relevant content pieces measured in real time.

And we’re not seeing the same level of complaints around all of those. While advertising purists [01:22:00] may yearn for the days of, I’d like to buy the world a Coke, consumers appear ready to accept AI generated content as long as it maintains emotional resonance. And that goes back to a point you made Neville in, in the look ahead about what consumers are looking for from social media.

This suggests we’re witnessing not just a technical evolution, but a fundamental shift in how brands connect with their audiences. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that last sentence. She I have to admit I yawned, when I heard about all the criticism, it reminds me of what’s been going on here in the UK over the past couple of weeks about the rebranding of Jaguar, the car maker, new logo that has had everyone from politicians to celebrities to whoever complaining they destroyed the brand venerable British brand.

My goodness, what’s going on? But they’re holding firm and basically doing the same kind of response idea as you suggested CO’s doing. I just wonder if [01:23:00] the critique is mostly from industry people, IE advertising folks and so forth, and yet the consumers that the ad is aimed at, like it how do you deal with that?

What do you do? Is that not the same perhaps as. The Hollywood movie comes out, the critics absolutely slam it, but it goes on to make billions in the box office. Do you care what the critics say in that case? I think that’s when you issue a statement like the one the Coca-Cola did that said, we’re fine with this.

This is very consistent with our history and we’re gonna keep on doing it. Yeah, I’d not seen the ad. I’ve just dug it out now on YouTube and I see all the 3000 comments, including the top of the list. Is that one you mentioned about Pepsi, now is your chance to make a live action. Ad bashing coke.

You are a multi-billion dollar company. Says one comment, hire some animators. Yeah I get it. I get it. I can’t really say much, so I have not having seen the ad, I’m gonna take a look at it. Yeah. I read probably four or five articles about this because when this erupted, it really erupted.

And [01:24:00] so I read several articles and then I went and found the ad and watched it, and I shrugged and I said, I don’t see what the big brouhaha is here. I should say. I don’t see what the kerfuffle is here. It seemed fine to me. I had no issue with it. And if I was just, sitting back on the couch watching a football game and during the commercial break that commercial came up, I would not lean forward and go, Hey, that’s really lousy AI they used there.

I, I, unless. Unless you’re in the industry then you would, yeah. Yeah, this may be if I was worried about my job and I saw that, although I have to tell you, if I didn’t know that had been produced using AI and I watched it casually during a commercial break and a football game, I wouldn’t have wondered, I would’ve just said yeah, there’s another animated Coke commercial, so I may actually, it’s more than one ad, right?

There’s a series, because I saw some maybe 12 versions of it. Okay. I saw I saw something the other day on, actually on Blue Sky, which I looked at for about 10 [01:25:00] seconds before I my phone rang. And so I didn’t, which was an animation of a giant Santa Claus in a store leaning behind him and picking up a Coca-Cola truck and placing it on the street outside, and the truck then drives away, and I first thought was, that’s ai.

I said to myself, that must be part of it though. I don’t recall that particular scene, but I’ve only watched it once. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll, because it’s on YouTube, I’ll embed that video in the show notes for this episode when I get around to doing the show notes. When you get around to the show notes, it’s a, it’s an interesting situation.

And I think like the Jaguar situation I mentioned what I see the outcome from this, the immediate outcome from this is that the brand is getting huge attention. Everyone is thinking about Jaguar cars and even the ones who aren’t commenting I’ve not seen a huge amount of support. I’ve seen lots of people saying, look, get over this for God’s sake.

It’s a, it’s just a car logo. It’s actually more than [01:26:00] just a car logo. So you might have the same with the Coca-Cola thing. But nevertheless, bottom line, the brand’s getting a lot of attention. Who was it who said no publicity is bad publicity? This could be in that scenario.

People are thinking about Jaguar, so that can’t hurt. But yeah, I remember the discussion with Mitch Joel years ago about the fact that when radio emerged, a lot of Vaudeville theaters went out of business because the entertainment shifted to radio. And the same thing. It’s happened hundreds of times for various reasons as innovations have taken root and become default ways of doing things to suggest that AI is not going to become a typical and regular component of video production is ridiculous.

So get used to it and figure out how to make a living in that world. It actually applies to general areas we’ve talked about, which is, oh, you are a [01:27:00] copywriter and using AI to write some of your stuff. That it fits into that area too. Oh, you, we can’t have this. You need a copywriter to do.

There’s still that thinking there. And I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying that things are evolving quite fast in these areas and it would be a grave error, I think, for any organization or individual to say, to just dismiss and say, you can’t use that for that purpose. And maybe part of it is articulating the underlying fear of change the underlying belief.

In many cases it’s probably true in some that. Deploying this technology in that industry is gonna lead to job losses. And you can do the thinking yourself to think of a certain role. One, one thing I think a lot about when I see the recycling crews coming around the neighborhood to empty the recycling, if ever there was a job desire for robots, that this is it.

And those six guys in this brand new truck who do a great job their days are numbered. Is the thought I have sometimes. So [01:28:00] is that bad? I don’t know. It’s change and at a time when every industry, everywhere is struck for money and resourcing all this stuff, these are an inevitability about some of this unpleasant though.

Much of it is. It’s people we’re talking about, right? Yeah. This is part of that. It seems to me. The other thing to keep in mind is that as jobs are lost, jobs are also going to be created. Different 30 years ago, how many web developers were there? How many social media consultants and employees were there?

How many companies had departments that were, digital? How many podcasters were there? It’s, that’s right. And podcast advertising services. And yeah. This is creative destruction. This is the way it works. It’s been that way for, centuries the old buggy whip manufacturer complaining about automobiles.

It’s this, just, this is the way the world works. So tune in next. Tune in next time for more good news about what’s happening in our world. And that will draw this episode of four Immediate Release [01:29:00] to a close. Our December episode is scheduled to drop on Monday, December 23rd. We will be recording that the Saturday before.

In the meantime, I hope that you will drop us a comment. The way most people do that these days is commenting on the LinkedIn or Facebook posts that we offer up to let you know that a new episode’s available. We also post those on threads on Blue Sky on Mastodon. We haven’t talked about Mastodon in a while, but we do.

Share our posts there. And there are other ways to comment. You can send us an email send that email to fir [email protected]. Attach up to a three minute audio if you would like. We haven’t had one of those in ages. So you know, that’s because Kim Hansen retired so we don’t get audio comments anymore.

You can record that audio comment directly from our website at fir podcast network.com. There is a send voicemail tab on the [01:30:00] right. Just click that you can leave a comment on the show notes at FI comment or FI podcast network.com. And we do hope that you will leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts so that new listeners can find us and that dear listeners will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #437: AI Takes Root in the Workplace appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Bluesky — the Twitter-esque social network that has suddenly started attracting refugees from Elon Musk’s X — had its start when Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey asked software engineer Jay Graber to introduce federation to Twitter. She told him she couldn’t, but she could create a new social network based on a new federation protocol called AT, a decentralized foundation for public social media. At first, Bluesky was an invitation-only network. Many of those who scored invites were underwhelmed. But a surge of migrations from X has reinvigorated Bluesky, which is also adding features as a further incentive for people to join and stay. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel discuss Bluesky’s potential and whether communicators should consider establishing a presence for their companies or clients.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 2.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

00:00:00] Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 436 of four immediate release. I’m Shell Holtz. And I’m Neville. Hobson. In this episode, we are gonna talk about Blue Sky. It’s something that you probably will have heard of. It’s a social network. The new Challenger one in the news hugely. This past week, today, blue Sky, surpassed 22.7 million users.

That’s a significant leap from 7 million. Just three months ago, disillusioned users are migrating from x former Twitter in search of healthier online spaces. This surge mainly since the US presidential election, early this month and widely reported across mainstream and social media during the past week highlights a broader shift in professional and organizational engagement as users abandoned platforms that feel no longer serve their needs.

Are we watching the next big shift in the media landscape, or is this simply the latest fat? We’ll share our thinking [00:01:00] right after this.

Blue Sky’s rapid growth presents both opportunities and challenges. Casey Newton, the platformer noted yesterday that the platform faces significant hurdles in scaling its infrastructure and implementing robust content moderation systems to ensure user safety and trust as blue sky expands. Balancing its decentralized ethos with these operational demands will be critical.

Organizations too are taking note. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, CIPR in the UK under CEO Alistair MCC Capra announced it would cease engagement on X immediately due to concerns over the platform’s direction. The CIPR set up an account on Blue Sky yesterday complimenting its established presence on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Similarly, Paul Holmes, founder of Provoke Media stated that his publication will no longer post on x. Reflecting a growing trend among professional media outlets. The Guardian’s decision last week to stop posting new content on X marks a pivotal moment in how [00:02:00] major media organizations are rethinking their social media strategies with over 27 million followers across its accounts on X.

This isn’t a small shift. It’s a significant recalibration of priorities for one of the world’s most respected media outlets. Charities and advocacy groups are also finding a new space for connection on Blue Sky. According to Civil Society News, many charities are setting up accounts on the platform, leveraging its community driven ethos to engage audiences authentically.

The scientific community has been quick to embrace Blue Sky as well with Science magazine reporting that researchers and academics are increasingly using the platform to share knowledge and collaborate. This migration underscores Blue Sky’s potential as a hub for professional and intellectual discourse.

We’re also seeing political communities making moves. Political engagement on social platforms is often a key indicator of their relevance and staying power. Blue Sky’s adoption by UK Labor Party members of Parliament and discussion among influential [00:03:00] voices in the European Union about Blue Sky’s potential role are significant developments.

These shifts highlight the platform’s growing appeal as a space for public discourse, one that feels safer, more transparent, viable, and far less chaotic than X on whether organizations should leave X entirely. Luke Brinley Jones, founder of OST Marketing, argues for a balanced approach. In his piece on the Exodus, he highlights the importance of carefully weighing the cost and benefits before making such a move, noting that abandoning X prematurely could leave organizations out of important conversations.

Blue Sky’s decentralized framework and user-friendly design have attracted praise, but its long-term viability will depend on its ability to address scalability and trust. As Casey Newton noted, the Columbia Journalism Review has highlighted how American journalists have found blue Sky to be a promising alternative to X.

Though retaining their engagement will depend on the platform maintaining its unique appeal without succumbing to the [00:04:00] challenges that plagued its predecessor. And what about threads? Meta’s Ex Challenger that now boasts over 275 million users is not getting the same attention and buzz as blue sky with its vibe, open, creative, and refreshingly free of the corporate polish.

That makes threads feel well a bit lifeless by comparison. Yet Meta says Threads is now getting over a million new signups every day, and X has over 600 million monthly users at the moment. Blue Sky is tiny by comparison. Still, blue sky feels like a place where people actually do want to be, and we’re already seeing a third party app ecosystem taking shape.

A definite sign of strong interest from the developer community. The energy on the platform is unreliable, and the moment is hard to ignore. I think it’s fair to say that if blue sky keeps surging, it’s hard not to see threads slipping further into the background, no matter the numbers. Looking ahead the next few months will be crucial for Blue Sky.

The platform must navigate its growing pains while continuing to [00:05:00] attract and retain users and organizations. Its ability to scale responsibly while preserving its community driven ethos could well determine whether it becomes a viable alternative to x. Or just another chapter in the ever-changing social media landscape.

What do you think? Shell, is Blue sky poised to become the next big thing, or will it fade like so many others? I think it depends on the steps that they take going forward. They can, it depends. Good answers certainly stumble and it depends. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. They certainly could stumble make some mistakes that drive people away or slow their growth.

On the other hand, they could take steps that attract more people. They seem to be. Taking the approach of slow and steady implementation of new features adopting some of the ones that are popular over on threads. One of the things that I think is going to drive its adoption. Is that they’ve taken a hands off approach [00:06:00] to the content that people share.

Both on X and on threads. They are tamping down posts with links in them. They don’t want those. What made Twitter, what it was the real time nature of people sharing information. People used Twitter. To find out what was happening in the news because it’s where news broke and it’s where journalists were sharing links to what they were reporting or.

Giving you heads up on what they were reporting. And you can’t really do that on threads because the algorithm is not real time. It’s more geared toward, social fun stuff. And without links rising to the top on X, you’re not gonna be able to do it there either, even though. There are still some journalist communities that have not made a move from x.

I was listening to a podcast just yesterday on my way home from work where they were talking about the fact that the whole national [00:07:00] football league sports reporting community continues to thrive on X. It has, nobody’s made the move over to either threads or. Blue sky. This is all happening at the same time that we’re seeing a tremendous fragmentation.

We have generations that are more inclined to spend time in their groups on WhatsApp or on TikTok. So are we gonna see Blue Sky become the next Twitter? I have serious doubts that anybody, regardless of what they did could. Assume that kind of popularity because people have too many options and they have their preferences.

They like what they like. There were fewer options back in 2007 when Twitter was first introduced, it was the first Microblogging tool and people gravitated there the real time. Nature of it made it very exciting compared to some of the other options that are out there. Even [00:08:00] if they do have 600 million over on X monthly users that’s a drop in the bucket.

Compared to what the 4 billion on Facebook. All these things are relative. But it will continue to grow. And the other thing I wanted to mention real quickly is that its federated model is mostly aspirational at this point. There are not a lot of servers that have been set up with the AT protocol.

You’re seeing more of that with the activity pub protocol. From Mastodon. There are a lot of instances that have been set up which is the one that threads uses, which is why we’re seeing that kind of cross-posting through threads, but you’re not seeing a lot of it. It, it is pretty much a monolith right now, even though that protocol exists.

Just this morning, by the way, I was reading a website that explained how to set up an at server and it’s involved compared to. Process. This is not for the casualty or the average user. Certainly not. And in fact, I think the point about mention [00:09:00] numbers, I think we need to stop mentioning these numbers because that’s not the important thing.

Twitter’s rather blue sky is not suddenly gonna overtake Twitter and eclipse it. It’s simply not possible. It’s totally and your point about, football league and others who are massive on. X and haven’t ported over that is absolutely the case with many others. So I think to put this in the correct perspective, this is not like a sudden tsunami about to happen.

Of all these people suddenly gonna flood over to blue sky. I can’t see that happening. It’s it. If things are moving, there is definitely something in the air. On the examples I mentioned on who is leaving or who is in fact more significantly, I think, is to talk about who is setting up shop on Blue Sky rather than who is migrating from x.

Most of these people aren’t closing down X, they’re still there in one form or another, which to me is a sensible thing. No matter how you feel about Elon Musk and his behavior and the interference he does, and all these [00:10:00] stuff that he seems to do that upsets a lot of people. Reality. There are people using x in their millions.

As ways of keeping in touch as ways of alerting people about something, whether it’s an event or a disaster or some other thing. The weather even. All that flight information isn’t suddenly all gonna migrate. So this is for, I think for those who feel they just don’t want to be on X anymore and want to be someplace more pleasant.

And I would argue from experience. Blue Sky is a much more pleasant place. It’s not the same as XO got 600 million against 22.7. Of those 600 million, what half are bots probably. And the other half are mixture of nice people and some pretty nasty characters in there too. So it’s that kind of difference yet.

Something is shifting. The sands are moving. It seems to me when you’ve got things like the vibe is changing too. Yeah. You mentioned about the AT protocol. So I’m testing something which I’ve just installed. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, which is a plugin for WordPress. [00:11:00] That when you post a blog post, it’ll also share it to Blue Sky.

We already have that with threats. Now we’ve got something like this on blue sky. That’ll appeal to a lot of people. Another one, not WordPress specific, lets you host your comments on Blue Sky. That appeals to me hugely reminds me of the outstanding work Shannon Whitley did back in before 2010 I think it was, where he created tools that, had huge takeup. And I look back on my blog in those days and find it’s absolutely cram full of comments made on Twitter that were then posted to the blog as well. And that was a, actually it was a plugin that Shannon created. So if we can get to that area, then that adds, I think, momentum to a platform that would make it easy to to attract attention from a lot of people.

We are early days. This is early. Early adoption days. Where we’re at currently. So this is not mass migration time at all. Yeah. But the other thing that I think will drive [00:12:00] adoption is it’s not the media coverage it’s getting now, which is all about how people are. Migrating from X, it’s the media coverage is gonna get when the media starts reporting news based on posts on Blue Sky and you have enough influential people moving to Blue Sky from X saying things that the media might want to cover, that you’re gonna see and increased volume.

Of you remember how you used to see tweets all the time embedded in news coverage of events. You still do on the websites, you still do, but you’re gonna start to assuming that they’re gonna allow you to. Do that. I’m sure they will. You’re gonna start to see the blue sky posts, whatever they’re called.

I don’t, what do they call it? No do not use the word skeet. Whatever you do, it’s a disgusting word in my opinion. I, you didn’t hear me say it, did you? No. I said it. So did no, I don’t up yet. She. No one’s set that up yet. No one has set up embedding from from Blue sky too early days.

You can always do a screen grab if you needed to. Yeah, but the point is to [00:13:00] do it like you do it with Twitter or X doesn’t exist yet. You can’t do it. But that’s something they should consider because they are the real time. Their algorithm does not favor anything. No, it does let you follow a list.

I mean there’s Blue Sky books and writers and things like that. I did, by the way, love, I have to share. It was a tweet from Austrian Air Airlines. Yeah, that was a good one A few days ago it chose a flight attendant. With her arms out, like she’s pointing to the exits. And it says, we took a moment to locate our nearest exit, and the exit is not ex it’s the logo for XIT.

And beneath that, in very small type it says Austrian is closing this account effective immediately. So I think there are brands that are actually taking advantage of leaving X to. Make an exclamation point of that action. Yeah. But this is, this is, individual steps here and there, which get media attention.

It’s not gonna drive huge people to, to leave without question. But [00:14:00] like I said, this is, to me, the feel is there is a shift, there’s something in the air, something is moving. It’s not mass, it’s not a migration, it’s not an exodus of some say, although to individuals that you see it as an exodus. That’s fine.

It’ll coexist. You and I have talked about this quite a few times before that whatever we feel about X, like I mentioned, Elon Musk himself, the way he’s, he, depending on your point of view, ruined it or whatever he is done to it. It’s not gonna suddenly vanish as far as we can see right now.

Although anything’s possible tomorrow, who knows what he might do or not do. In the meantime, we have this alternative place that is attracting a huge amount of tension right now, and it’s being driven in mainstream media typically, and echoed in social and then reverberated back into mainstream.

I’m seeing media stories in some of the UK media talking about who’s saying what on. Blue sky. That’s because it’s a news story. Not because a matter of course they’re gonna do this. And the other thing you mentioned about threats not being a news place. Yeah. They actively [00:15:00] discouraged news in those early days.

And wouldn the surface news stories. I think they made a huge mistake doing that, frankly, because you didn’t get. Media, people, journalists, and anyone else going to thread at all? You didn’t at all. That’s beginning to change. I saw an announcement this morning, my time that thread had announced that now you can customize the feed.

What is your default rather than this for you? Stuff that, that. Pushes stuff out. You don’t want to wanna see really, or you don’t know whether you do, the algorithm thinks you might, you can now choose your own. They’ve pinched that idea from Blue Sky according to all the reporting I’ve seen about it.

In which case, what does that signify? Are they getting a little nervous about Blue Sky? Possibly. They’ve upped the ante and some competition’s good in that case, so it is still. Early days, you, we cannot say that this is the ex successor at all. We are seeing something that many people, including me, for that matter, find quite attractive.

Up until now, threads has been my primary social network. It still is, but Blue Sky is looking increasingly [00:16:00] attractive from my point of view. And I don’t see some are people talking about there’s too much US politics there. The magazines are in there. I don’t see any of that stuff. I really don’t.

So is that an algorithmic thing or is it because I’ve chosen feeds of what I pay attention to, which is not. The stuff that has, that you can decline seeing some of the stuff or the people you follow? As well. Some of the people I follow don’t talk about that kind of thing, or there’s one person who does, you’ve gotta have someone in there so you know what you don’t wanna be seeing.

It is very much like Twitter, 2008 period, as I see it, frankly. It’s a pleasant place. That was what that was like back then. Before algorithms, before the advertisers got in, before the ugly people got there. And the cesspit it is now is a different thing. It is not comparative. So it is interesting and I’m seeing people building lists a useful tool in blue Sky as a good half dozen I’ve seen of communicators of different.

Plays a lot of overlap between them. There’s a big one on internal communicators, a huge one on PR [00:17:00] people. And these you can get hold of and keep ’em yourself as well. And in which case you could follow just those if you wanted to. I like following things I don’t know yet because that’s how you get interesting stuff as well as the stuff you can avoid, but you’ll know it when you see it.

So it, it’s got that air of Twitter in those early days. The exploratory, the experimenting times, it’s good. Yeah. And get better as they add more features and tweak it. And I find that I’m spending more time on blue sky than I am on threads these days. Yeah. Just because I tend to find more interesting stuff there now.

And I suspect that’s the algorithm not pushing stuff down that I would be more interested in. Yeah, we’re here where I work we’ll be opening a blue sky account. We don’t wanna miss out on this just because of the 20 seconds it would take to cross post something there. Yeah. That’s actually what I would suggest to anyone who’s wondering, I work for x, y, Z company, what should I do something there?

Set up an account. Don’t close anything else. Yeah, just try it out. See, join things, talk to [00:18:00] people, see what it’s like, get a handle on it and make your decision then and see what others are doing that would be a smart move that would apply to any new social network by the way. That’s worth doing.

I think so. We’ll watch this with great interest. And also as people are creating those. I was gonna say is people are creating those topic driven lists. Find out where people are talking about things that your customers are interested in and join those conversations. Yeah, so we’ll keep an eye on this.

They’ve got some serious work to do. Casey Newton said that quite well, I think, and particularly on moderation and filtering out really vile content. And his interview with the guy who runs the trust and moderation team, there is quite. Eyeopening, quite insightful. I did read that, where he shares some insights on literally the issues they’re having to deal with, which is a microcosm of what the bigger networks are having to deal with.

Except of course the big one, Twitter, who doesn’t seem to do anything because they haven’t got the staff anymore. So they’re talking on Blue Sky, ramping up the [00:19:00] moderation team to currently 20 people to a hundred plus. And it’s still, maybe that’s a drop in the ocean because as.

Keep attracting new members. If this continues this wave, then they’re gonna need to do probably more than that. So it’s quite a challenging time for them, and I think we need to kinda recognize that this has got risks if you go there where you might get something. They did talk today about some overzealousness in preventing some of this stuff by suspending accounts that.

Just got caught up in the way. ’cause they mentioned a word that the algorithm actually is not the right word ’cause it has the wrong connotation. But they’re using a tool that is designed to spot and call out prohibited content. Stuff that, that doesn’t meet the parameters that humans can then look at.

So it’s used by many companies from what I read in an article. So I think awareness of this behind the scenes is useful to know as they’re building out something that. Will be trustworthy. I see people saying, yeah, but is it I’m worried about if I go there, I’ll see all this bad [00:20:00] stuff I see on x.

I think it’s unlikely. It’s worth a shot. Mind you, I think to just give it a go and do it carefully. Yeah, you have to be serious about content moderation. There are things that you just can’t allow. Even x can’t allow, child pornography on its site. So you’ve gotta be looking for all this stuff.

Blue Sky I think I read that the EU says it’s out of compliance with eu. Was it privacy rules? I think yeah. That’s a, they got work to do. They only have 20 employees. I think that’s a red herring shell. They’re not even the size in terms of use in terms of users how many they’ve got and all that stuff.

They don’t meet the minimum standard where the EU would pay attention to them. So this is a red herring. They did respond to that, by the way, by saying that they just looking for some help to identify who they should talk to. The eu. So they don’t have an office anywhere there. There you go.

I don’t think they do have an office. Yeah so does say EU has a website that makes it easy to find who to talk to and customer support. Yeah. Oh yeah. Anyway, they only have 20, they’re startup and they [00:21:00] employees, they haven’t got, they haven’t gotten themselves established yet. They’re only a startup.

They have only 20 employees that are full-time. They have no revenue stream. Everything that they’re getting right now is investment. They’re not talking about advertising as a means of producing revenue. They’re talking about subscription fees for special features and the like. So we’ll see how that all shakes out.

But yeah, it’s definitely worth watching. And that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #436: Nothin’ But Bluesky (and TikTok and Threads and Instagram and WhatsApp…) appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

When executives justify their return-to-office mandates, they almost universally cite the collaboration and innovation that result from serendipitous encounters between employees. They also point to the need to boost productivity. The problem with these arguments is that the evidence does not support them. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel look at one financial services company that has seen eye-popping increases in performance metrics since listening to its employees and adopting a policy that lets employees work where they want. We also review a report on what it actually takes to build connections and collaboration in organizations.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, November 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:03)

Shel Holtz (00:11)

That’s fine too. Wanna be hybrid? You got it. Doubles does ask employees to live close enough to an office that they can get there for occasional meetings, training, and culture events. This policy stemmed from a survey of employees who said they wanted to be able to have work at home as an option and have access to the office from time to time without concern about it threatening their career or being seen as a negative.

Now, despite everything we’re hearing from the CEOs who are justifying the return to office mandate, Synchrony, using its approach, has risen to fifth on the Fortune 100 best companies to work for list. That’s up from 51st in 2019. And 95 % of Synchrony employees say it’s a great place to work and that the company’s way of working gives them the flexibility they need. So what’s going on with all of this justification?

that other CEOs are providing for their mandates for everybody to come back five days a week. We’re gonna dive into that right after this. In the article he wrote, Doubles explains that what Synchrony did to make this approach work, including making in-person events matter, adopting a coaching culture, supporting career journeys, no matter where the employees are situated,

And measuring outcomes versus time in the office are what really drove this success. And by the way, on that last one, Double says the company has seen stronger productivity and business outcomes. Employee turnover is lower. The company has experienced a 30 % increase in job applications. Meanwhile, CEOs everywhere are insisting that having employees in the office produces key benefits.

These include enhanced collaboration, the belief that physical proximity leads to spontaneous interactions, brainstorming sessions, and seamless communication. But yeah, spontaneous interactions can occur in an office setting, but the forced nature of return to office mandates have proven to result in employee dissatisfaction and resistance rather than genuine collaboration.

They also argue that you get stronger company culture. The idea that shared physical spaces cultivates a unique organizational culture and reinforces company values. And the big one, they believe that you get better productivity when people are in the office. The assumption is that in office work environments minimize distractions and facilitate better oversight leading to higher productivity levels. These, it’s important to point out, are myths.

For example, a recent survey found that only one in three executives who imposed return to office mandates saw even a slight positive impact on productivity. Doubles calls this a failure of imagination on the part of leaders everywhere. And while these points have some merit, we really have to examine whether these assumptions hold true in the current work landscape. Recent studies and expert analyses offer a more nuanced perspective. Let’s start with collaboration and connection.

There was an article in the Harvard Business Review recently that agrees that in-person work can facilitate spontaneous interactions, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to meaningful collaboration. The quality of interactions rather than their frequency or spontaneity is what truly drives effective teamwork. Next, let’s turn to employee satisfaction and retention. Data from the Great Places to Work organization suggests that

Rigid return to office mandates can negatively impact employee satisfaction and retention. Employees who have autonomy over their work environment tend to exhibit higher engagement and are more likely to stay with their organizations. And as for productivity metrics, findings from Gallup reveal that remote workers often match or exceed the productivity levels of their in-office counterparts. The flexibility of remote work can lead to better work-life balance, which in turn enhances overall performance.

The fact is, the research finds that meaningful connections develop through intentional engagement, not just physical presence. And while a physical presence coupled with efforts to create meaningful connections can produce these results, careful thought and planning can produce meaningful opportunities for connection and collaboration, regardless of where employees are doing their jobs. Organizations like Synchrony are achieving success by focusing on intentional engagement strategies

rather than arbitrary office attendance requirements. Now I raised this issue a few months ago, but it’s worth reiterating in light of this data about what truly drives connection and collaboration. We have to stop acting like remote or hybrid work is temporary. We have to stop using patchwork methods for engaging with employees, for guiding their career aspirations, for managing them and for keeping the culture strong. We have to help our organizations and leaders figure out how to develop

practices based on remote and hybrid work being the way business is done in the post-COVID era. Understanding employee preferences is crucial for this kind of success. Surveys indicate that a significant portion of the workforce values the flexibility that remote work offers. For example, a study by Buffer found that 97 % of employees would like to work remotely at least some of the time, indicating a strong preference for the flexibility that remote work provides.

And companies that offer flexible work arrangements are more attractive to top talent. Rigid return to office policies could deter potential candidates who prioritize work-life balance and autonomy. Now, this is a podcast about communications and there is a role for internal communicators here. This is an opportunity to help leadership understand that effective collaboration stems from well-designed processes and cultural support, not physical proximity.

The key is shifting the conversation from where work happens to how it happens most effectively.

@nevillehobson (06:56)

that had a policy of coming back to the office. To me, the best way to do this is the hybrid approach. And you mentioned surveys talking about what employees themselves value and what they would like to do, which speaks to that, it seems to me, that you’d like the option to work at home or the office, whatever suits you. And that financial services company you spoke about, that’s their approach in the sense of, know, whatever works.

So you work at home or wherever, go to the office when you need to to meet with someone perhaps, or because you feel like going into the office that they just see people. I wouldn’t appeal to me to be working 100 % away from the office. I’d like to go into the office. I think though, the question in my mind is, if this is so, and the arguments are compelling,

that the forced return, enforced return to everyone five days a week, the office is not a good thing to do at all. What needs to happen then for those companies? And there are many of them here in the UK as well. I read now and again about such a company is implementing a return to work policy. How do you deal with that?

Shel Holtz (08:42)

@nevillehobson (08:54)

Shel Holtz (09:11)

issues that are driving this. And what you’re hearing is that this whole collaboration and connection thing is this is the excuse that they’re making, even though there isn’t really data to support it. So I think that you need to do is is look at bottom line effectiveness of what’s happening in these organizations that have embraced remote and hybrid as just the way things are now companies like Synchrony and look at what they’re doing in order to make it work.

@nevillehobson (09:43)

Shel Holtz (10:00)

@nevillehobson (10:10)

Hmm.

I was reading as well the Harvard Business Review piece and there’s a really interesting section that speaks to this directly and it sets it out pretty well I think. Let me read this bit. So what might be happening when employers issue return to office mandates? Colleague connection may increase as HBR.

because employees are milling about the same office and benefiting from random and serendipitous interactions. But at the same time, leader connection might decrease because employees feel their supervisors don’t understand their motivations or don’t care about the impact of the return to office mandate on their autonomy and their lives. Employer connections can also take a dive as the desire to work hard to see the company succeed is undermined by a feeling of betrayal.

And without clear and unambiguous links to why employees need to be back in the office, role connection can be negatively impacted as people believe they’re being evaluated based on their attendance more than their performance. I think that’s absolutely spot on that assessment. And in my view, I think there is that and I and visualize myself in that situation. I would feel the same, I think. And you might also feel that I’m coming to the office because they told me I have to, in which case.

that’s not a good start to doing this. And your your own productivity is likely to be heavily impacted because when you’re in the office, under those circumstances, you’re going to be chatting with people, they’re to come up to you and say hi, and you suddenly you’re in that sort of environment, rather than be focused on meeting with someone to pursue a project or do something. I you might do some of those things, but the the the climate, as it were, is not conducive to any of that.

of the combination of the fact you have to be there, so that’s why you’re there. The feeling of betrayal. And if there is lack of trust in your manager, the thing is doomed because elsewhere, and indeed, Gallup talks about this, well-skilled managers, the ability to coach their teams experience much greater productivity and all the stuff that goes along with that than teams that don’t have.

a manager like that or a supervisor. I don’t see any and it’s interesting what you say, Shell, where think there’s, you know, it’s like governments are interfering with this. I’m sure it’s similar in the US, but here in the UK, you’ve got empty office buildings everywhere and companies are struggling to fill them. They’ve to pay the rents and so forth. So that’s an incentive for them to persuade people to come back to the office. But

Most or many of those businesses you talked about, the dry cleaner, the beast, have closed and gone. They’re not there anymore. And so in this country, and this is probably different to the states, I’m sure, that public transport, broadly speaking, in most big cities is potluck, frankly, whether that train is actually going to arrive and get you there on time. the stress is dreadful. hear this all the time from friends of mine who do commute into London in particular, but also Manchester.

So all of those things are drivers to make you want to perform well from your home office or go in or is and or go in at a time that isn’t the old traditional rush hour. It’s far more likely that it’s going to be valuable if you do that way. It just seems to me crazy to insist on these mandated returns to offices. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Shel Holtz (13:54)

@nevillehobson (13:58)

Thanks

Shel Holtz (14:24)

It can be done. There are organizations like Synchrony that are doing it quite well. Look at the fact that their turnover rate has dropped as a result of this. So I agree with what Mr. Doubles said, the CEO of Synchrony. It’s a failure of imagination on the parts of leaders who say the only way that we can make this work is going back to the way things used to be. Employees have moved on from this.

@nevillehobson (14:57)

Yeah, I think that’s about right. So it’s a leadership issue more than anything else. Yet, I worry that nothing will make this change. And if anything, you can see the pressure increasing for people to go back to the office. Here in the UK,

what I’ve seen in mainstream media now and again in the past few months are the calls for this getting stronger and more forceful. It was like insisting this is going to have to be the only way these companies will survive is all the employees that go back to the office. And even this way, I we’ve touched on this sort of area before, but those are the companies that seem to me to have people in roles of power and influence who are

adamant that they’re not going to allow working from home anymore. And you got to come to the office. And the unspoken bit to me certainly is so we can control you, we can know what you’re doing, and stop you doing stuff we don’t want you to do. I look at the story that was topical here recently. One of the big banks here, National Westminster Group, issued a statement publicly that picked up a lot of attention that they prohibit employees using WhatsApp. And they’re not allowed to use the communication methods that are unofficial.

Translation, we don’t want to use the encrypted messaging apps because we can’t see what you’re saying. Now, it turns out that there was something bigger behind the scenes on this, that this was to do with something happened in the US with companies and employees using third party apps that were very risky. So there was issues surrounding that pressure put on the UK to do the same that led to this, it seems. Yet, that is totally

ridiculous, frankly, to do that. But I get it, there are people who don’t get it. And they are in positions of control and organization to make some of these, these edicts out there or put them out there. So in this context, though, this they seem to be getting it wrong completely. And you mentioned some of them. And I think the one that struck me in particular was regarding that financial services company, you mentioned that they have gone up to what 51st.

higher even than that is one of the best companies in America to work for.

Shel Holtz (17:34)

@nevillehobson (17:37)

Shel Holtz (18:01)

@nevillehobson (18:12)

Yeah.

So you mentioned earlier, when you were laying out this this whole situation, an opportunity for community. So what advice would you say or what tips would you give to fellow communicators who are in an organization that is insisting on returning to the office? What could they do to try and influence opinion to change that?

Shel Holtz (18:50)

how employees are feeling and what they’re thinking, and combine that with the fact that, I mean, only one in three CEOs with return to office mandates saw even a little bit of productivity improvement. Meanwhile, the ones that continue to have remote and hybrid are performing quite well from a productivity standpoint. And then you might wanna propose some communication channels or communication activities that…

are new to the organization that support the idea of connection and collaboration with a hybrid or a remote workforce that the organization can start to employ on a regular basis or at least experiment with so that we’re not just using something that’s cobbled together to get us through until everybody’s back in the same place.

@nevillehobson (20:00)

Shel Holtz (20:01)

The post FIR #435: Physical Presence is Not a Collaboration Magic Bullet appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Among the many post-election analyses flooding media channels are reports that mainstream media and social media wielded far less influence than they have in the past. Instead, influencers and podcasts held sway. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel break down the reports and discuss the impact on communicators far beyond the election and politics.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, November 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 434 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson. In a world closely watching the US political landscape, the outcome of the 2024 presidential election has left many stunned, not only by Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory, but by the speed and clarity with which it was achieved.

It reflects a shifting political landscape where traditional powerhouses of influence established mainstream media and celebrity endorsements found themselves increasingly limited. We will talk about what this means and more right after this.

On one hand, we see the reach of old media diminishing unable to

decisively sway public opinion or check political figures as effectively as it once did. Outlets like The New York Times and CNN rigorously reported on Donald Trump’s policies and authoritarian [00:01:00] tendencies. Yet Trump’s voter base remained unshaken, reinforcing the notion that mainstream media no longer holds the powerful gatekeeping role it once did.

Platforms like Joe Rogan’s podcast with its significant engaged, following, showcased how media consumption patterns are leaning towards unfiltered direct channels that sidestep traditional editorial influence, in essence says Semaphore Media in its latest newsletter. Old media now grapples with its own limitations as emerging platforms, often with looser content guidelines, reshape where and how people engage with political narratives.

Parallel the election highlighted the declining impact of celebrity endorsements once a defining force in shaping public support, high profile figures like Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, and Lady Gaga, through their support behind Kamala Harris, I. Echoing the once powerful endorsements of the past, such as Oprah’s game changing endorsement of Obama in 2007, [00:02:00] yet in 2024, this strategy appears to have lost its punch according to Mark Bukowski, in the sweeping analysis of the declining influence of celebrity endorsements.

Younger audiences while registering to vote in response to celebrity appeals did not sway the election outcome significantly, as these endorsements did not mobilize voters beyond their already polarized basis. The conservative counterculture appeal personified by figures like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan appears to have more traction in today’s fractured media landscape, particularly with audience that see celebrity endorsements as part of the very establishment they oppose.

Together. These trends reveal two sides of the same coin in modern US elections. The waning influence of legacy media and celebrity endorsements underscores a broader shift towards decentralized niche oriented information and influence raising crucial questions about the changing role of traditional institutions in American political life.

There’s more to such [00:03:00] assessments. According to a couple of reports you found Shell from the Wall Street Journal in Digiday. What does that add to the landscape We now see? There’s a lot for communicators to pay attention to here, and we need to pay attention to it because. It, it goes beyond politics. If this is how people are being influenced, and that is our role as communicators, particularly in the marketing and public relations realms that we need to figure out how we play in this particular space.

, Trump went on 30 some odd podcasts. , he spent considerably less. In this last election cycle on social media than he did four years ago. And social media doesn’t seem to have played a tremendous role beyond the fact that, TikTok, as we’ve talked about in the past, has become a place where a lot of younger people, gen Z, go for [00:04:00] news.

And I was, , intrigued to find in the last weeks of the election, a lot of people were being introduced to the Access Hollywood tape from. 12 years ago for the very first time, , because it was being shared , on TikTok and, , they were, shocked and distressed by it. , but beyond that, we didn’t see the fake ads and the fake posts and the fake news sites that were being.

Tossed around , in Facebook posts. , , we just didn’t see the influence of social media. it was going where people were. , in, in one of the articles I read, they made the point that 100% of the manosphere listens to podcasts. , this is the group of men who, , feel disenfranchised , and, , you know, they want , the manly men type, that.

View of masculinity that seems to be very popular, , with the political right. , but it was very shrewd to get onto the podcast that those [00:05:00] people listened to because generally they didn’t vote. And if you could get them out and casting votes for the guy that they said, well, there’s a man, it, it boosts his totals.

How many brands out there are trying to get onto podcasts in order to. Influence people who are listening and are you pitching the right podcasts? You and I get pitched daily, , for people who want to appear on our podcast, and nine 99% of those , are so completely irrelevant to the things that we talk about.

Obviously, it’s just decision. Distribution list and they’re hitting everybody. , but if you can find the podcasts that the market you’re trying to reach is listening to, seems to me that that’s the approach to take these days. Podcasts, listening has quadrupled in the last four years. I think I read, , more people are listening to podcasts than not, and it’s become an important channel for swaying people’s views.

, I [00:06:00] think that the Trump campaign figured that out. , kamala Harris had an opportunity to appear on Joe Rogan’s show and turned it down because her schedule wouldn’t accommodate the three hours he wanted. , what did she lose as a result of that? , the opportunity to reach that same, .

Was it 50, 60 million people between those who watch it on YouTube and those who listen to the audio? , we need to be paying attention to this numbers. We need to be understanding where people are going to formulate their opinions. These days. It’s not where it’s been, and I venture to say that in four years it may not be the same as it is right now.

No, I suspect you’re right. It is interesting. There’s been, a handful of surveys in the last month on podcast leadership in the us in particular, , all of it. Basically saying that this is increasing by X percent, that’s increased. , this has grown the works, and that’s been the story for some time, , which to my mind always stretches credulity a [00:07:00] lot of the time.

It is always growing. Well, guess what? We saw the proof of some of those metrics. In this election campaign, by way, what you mentioned, , the, , way in which Trump took advantage of podcasts. So there’s one medium that, , did seem to play a role in, influencing people not to vote per se. But, , influencing them to think about what Trump stood for his messaging, if you like.

And that was one of the things I thought that Kamala Harris and her campaign team weren’t able to achieve all those celebrities. And I, I mentioned a couple, there’s more George Clooney being one, Bruce Springsteen, , Beyonce, iconic names, yeah. Beyonce, who made a, a pretty racy video on YouTube. I watched it.

Legend. Right? , and yet none of that. Converted , into swaying people’s behaviors to vote for the Democrats. So, , we then looked at, , , the kind of undercurrent, , of, , , shifts , in the US that as at, literally at the grassroots level in almost [00:08:00] every community across the country, the New York Times had , a dramatic graphic, which has stuck in my mind quite a lot since showing.

, the outline of the US territory, , with these arrows, blue and red pointing right and left. , and , the wave was across the country to the right. , the red arrows were quite extraordinary. So with that, and them not seeming to realize it, I think that impacted the strategy they were following.

There was serious missteps with that strategy. , and I, in my mind too, is the, , monthly episode we did, I think it must have been August, it might have been September. Where we analyzed, if you like, Kamala Harris’ social media campaign, , trying to connect with Gen Z. And we were, pretty impressed with all the people she had there.

They’re all in the mid twenties who were running this campaign. And , the force of action that they were doing in engagement with people was truly stupendous, yet it didn’t. Produced the result, they didn’t win the election. So that there, there are so many elements in all this, aren’t there? Shell, I we are touching on particular, , , [00:09:00] avenue, , of interest to us as communicators.

, the social media aspect, you mentioned this earlier, , that all the alarm bells about disinformation, misinformation, fakery and all that stuff, just. Did not happen, it seemed, and that, in a sense, speaks to other issues about polling, for instance. How did they get it so wrong? All the predictions about this were wrong, basically.

, and so the alarm bells, , sound like crying wolf. And so when the real. Stuff hits the fan. , are people gonna be paying attention? But I agree with you that this is a milestone, it seems to me in political campaigning and political communication, engagement with voting public, , that could shape how they do this, , from now on.

But I think people generally. Aren’t so easily, aren’t so malleable as it might have been, or as people suspected they would have been in the past. , people are now questioning it. I, I read one piece, I [00:10:00] think it was in The Economist, it might have been in one of the US papers that talked about, when, , when Taylor Swift came out saying, I backed Kamala.

, the only reaction was what took you so long? The kind of, , acceptance of this that would erupt in, Hey, fantastic. Hey, the Swifton board didn’t happen at all. Why didn’t you do this sooner? I saw people asking. So that seems to be what’s reflected in a lot of other actions we saw happening. So you’ve got that, , the combination of mainstream media losing its luster, if you like, is, is its power is diminished.

, people , are themselves. Driving some of the, , focus to, , niche channels as we hear podcast being one example, but is it. Deeper than that even, is it that people are not swayed on mass as they used to be with traditional approaches to political messaging, making up their own minds from their peers even So , is that it?

Well, a lot of people, I mean, a, a lot of people had their minds made up [00:11:00] back in September, , and nothing the campaigns did was going to shift those. People’s perspectives that left a limited group of people who were undecided or maybe not planning to vote, who could be moved to vote one way or the other.

And that’s why it was so important to try to reach those people, to identify them and reach them. , I mean there’s a lot that that went on that. Of this campaign, there’s the fact that, , Harris only had about a hundred some odd days to a campaign where Trump had been running one for four years.

. Presidential politics, and they’ll tell you that’s woefully inadequate for mounting a presidential campaign. So there’s a lot of finger pointing at Biden for not getting out earlier and giving her the time or having an open primary. , there’s also the fact that on the view, , I read somebody say this was the defining moment that killed her campaign is when they asked, , what she would’ve [00:12:00] done different than Biden did.

So that probably hurt, but you know, you have to look at the fact that Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X and made it primarily a. A, a platform for com promoting the Trump candidacy. , he pumped what, $200 million in, into Trump’s campaign. So this is a factor that we have to think about who’s pouring money into these types of things.

, you also have, , there was controversy when Jeff Bezos, , spiked the Washington Post editorial board’s, plans for an endorsement and said, no. There was less outrage when the publisher of the Los Angeles Times did the same thing. He’s also a billionaire, but not well known as Jeff Bezos is. But ultimately, the New York Times did endorse Harris.

How much sway did that have? I’ve heard that newspaper endorsements hardly ever carry any sway. It’s more, , just demonstrating the [00:13:00] alignment of the paper with its values. , but. Was it really a big deal that, that the Washington Post. Decided that we’re done doing presidential endorsements?

, not if people aren’t paying attention to the mainstream media. I’m not gonna say they’re not paying any attention. What people talk about in social networks and what influencers talk about, , what they talk about on podcasts largely comes from mainstream media reporting, but it’s not. The main body of the politic, the people who are listening to what the mainstream media is reporting.

, it’s the podcasters, it’s the influencers. Yeah. Then they’re going out there and putting their own spin on it , and you know, is sharing their own. Thoughts and, , and opinions. , so that seems to me that’s who we need to reach for any of the external communication that we’re doing these days.

And you mentioned polling, , and how could it be so off? , and it’s the same thing. We’re polling the same way we were, in the 20th century. , we’re [00:14:00] calling landlines, , people aren’t picking them up. . We’re not reaching people on their mobiles. , so you’re getting a very skewed view from the people who do answer their phone and participate,, in the poll.

, so it’s inaccurate, and I’m not sure anybody’s figured out a better way to do this yet. I was following one guy who said, oh, the current methods of polling , , are completely useless these days. I’m doing something different. And it was all focus group based and things like that. But he called. All seven swing states for Harris, and they all went for Trump.

So yeah, kudos to him for trying something new didn’t work. , and what that suggests to me, again, if we take this out of the realm of politics and into the world of brands, are we researching correctly or are we relying on 20th century research methodologies that aren’t giving us the results that we need?

It clearly is that latter part. She, it seems to me, because this is [00:15:00] simply another sign of these huge shifts that are happening in societies and in this case the us , in American society. We talk about the increase in podcasts. We’ve discussed plenty of times before where people getting their news, TikTok and other social channels are primary , for certain generations.

Traditional media is. Imploding , in the sense of reach and influence. , in all the stories we’ve mentioned on national newspapers in our respective countries, regional, local newspapers, they’re all declining circulations, , in this country. Similar to the US I suspect local newspapers are simply.

Particularly online are peppered with popups, trash. They track you that you name it, so you don’t go there and no wonder they’re declining. So they have to put more ads in and, and all that is, is putting people off. They’re looking for alternatives and they’re looking for more trusted sources. So it’s a more.

, niche methodology at play here. So how do you therefore track them, and that’s probably the right word, track them to get their [00:16:00] voting intention. , you’re not gonna be able to do it with confidence because people , will actually lie to you and tell you one thing and do another. In, in, in fact, one of the interesting dimensions of all of this, and I was hearing this throughout the, the campaign is, is that Harris had a very effective ground game.

They had tons of volunteers knocking on doors. Trump didn’t make any effort to do that. He outsourced all of that to political action committees, , and yet he won. So how important is the ground game? , which, leads you to the, again, if we’re going to , shift this over into our thinking about communicating on behalf of , our products, our services, our companies, , are the local experiences, , still as valuable as as they used to be.

And one other point I wanted to make before we wrap this up, there were huge expectations about the role artificial intelligence. Was going to play in this election. You mentioned disinformation and, and deep [00:17:00] fakes earlier. And it turned out that they had very, very little impact on all of this.

But that doesn’t mean that AI wasn’t used. The Digiday article, , which will be linked in the show notes, makes the point that, , the campaigns did use, , LLMs and machine learning, , for content creation, audience analysis, voter targeting, and ad buying. So I. AI had an an impact, just not the one that people were expecting.

No, you’re absolutely right. So this was a shifting sands lecture without any doubt. All the old methodologies, the old values, , suddenly were, , not what you expected. You can’t really trust any of this anymore, and yet no one seems to know how to make changes here. This is a milestone.

It seems to me it is a big scale thing. American presidential election. It will have repercussions. It is starting already on a global level as attention is still on Trump as to what he gonna do before he gets to office. , it gets inaugurated. So, , it makes me think in a small parallel to [00:18:00] the general election in the UK in July, where the conservative party were.

Almost extinction level annihilation. They , were wiped out totally. And polling afterwards. So think about what people were predicting. , which policies would they go for? Which mps and, and what they stand for, would they vote for? It turns out, and this makes total sense ’cause this was how I felt, that they didn’t get the votes because people thought they were just simply damned incompetent.

I. All the scandals, the financial things. I mean, the post office scandal we had in an episode here, , the Horizon Post Office, , , thing with the software, , we’ve had , the tainted blood scandal. It’s even worse. Shell, it goes back four decades, people dying through tainted blood, and that was managed.

Terribly. And , the conservators were 14 years in power, so they took all the hits for everything, every government’s done, they were in the frame for it, and they lost big time. People didn’t vote for ’em. So that must have been partly to play in American elections too. , and I think many [00:19:00] of the folks, , to, to this other point we’ve been discussing had made up their mind months ago, not September.

Prior to that even. So everything since then, they just went out and voted for Trump no matter what. So it’s, political science , will look at this, , for months and we’ll get more knowledge, , in the coming months. This is what we know right now. So , this discussion is a little snapshot really of what , , we think happened.

But if there’s one thing that you can take away right now, start looking at the podcast space as a channel for getting your message out. Not your own podcast necessarily, but getting your people onto podcasts, getting your products on. , it’s the new TV is the new newspaper. You’ve gotta get out there.

To your point about we get approaches all the time and 99% of them are completely irrelevant. If you’ve got a relevant story you would like to pitch to us, do, but. Make it relevant to this podcast and this audience police, and that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #434: Podcasts Defeat Mainstream Media in 2024 U.S. Election appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Blogs have been with us for 30 years, which qualifies as “something old.” In this long-form episode of FIR for October, we’ll examine the state of the oldest social media category. We’ll also examine the state of generative Artificial Intelligence, which has been around, for all practical purposes, since November 2022, which makes it “something new.”

In this episode, we’ll also explore Reddit’s potential as a channel for government agencies and businesses to engage with stakeholders during a crisis and which agencies and brands are already there. Intuit’s chief communication officer didn’t like the direction a podcast interview with his CEO took, so he demanded the podcast trim the parts he didn’t like. Was he justified? The news media has gained a reputation for clickbait, but it recently took a dark turn. And, executives justify their return-to-office push by citing the need for greater collaboration and connection among employees. But does having everyone in the office produce those results? We’ll look at the research.

In his Tech Report, Dan York (joined by a special guest) shares details of a VC investment round for Bluesky, and how competitors like Mastodon reacted.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, November 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

Raw transcript:

[00:00:00] Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 433 of four immediate release, our long form episode for October, 2024. I’m She Holtz in Concord, California. And I’m Neville Hobson in Kruer Somerset in England. My new physical location as of two or three weeks ago, glad to be here. Kko, how do you spell that?

C-R-E-W-K-E-R-N-E. I never would’ve. Guess that in a million years. It’s a delightful part of southwest England. You’ve heard of Glastonbury? No doubt. That’s north of where I am. The English Channel South Coast is about 20 minutes to the south of me. , it’s a lovely part of the country. It rains a lot and I see tractors everywhere that I go.

Big ones ’cause farming country here. But we’re pleased to be here. And you have grandchildren there? Yeah. The family. That side of the family is here. All of them and the grandkids. I’ve seen more in the last week than I have in the last six months. It’s absolutely [00:01:00] delightful to be here for that reason.

Well, glad that you have finally made the move. I knew that was a long time coming. Yeah, it was. And I’m in my new, uh, in my new garden studio office. I’ll have something more to say about that in a blog post soon with photos. I hope indeed. And your move is one of the reasons we only had two short midweek episodes between the September long form episode and this one for October.

You have been moving house, as you say, in the uk. We just say moving. Yeah, and I have been away. I was at the Public Relations Society of America’s big annual icon conference the week before last. And this past week I was in Houston at a fascinating meeting of the construction communicators round table, an informal group of top communicators from about 20 of the nation’s [00:02:00] builders to get together , and talk about common communication issues.

And it was wonderful. I had a great time. I learned a lot. I should say I learned more there than I did at the PRSA conference. . It was absolutely worth going and, , it’s just been a busy month , for both of us. It, but I’m certainly glad to be back at the microphone. Me too. Yeah, me too.

When we recorded the, , I’ll mention this in a minute. When we get to the episode review, the one episode we did in between the beginning of October and today, I had moves, but I didn’t have any of my normal day-to-Day equipment, set up the computers, the microphones, nothing. So I recorded on a laptop, , with earbuds.

Uh and would you believe the, , laptop microphone? And when I listened to the recording after it, the LD wasn’t that bad. Did you have to do any editing with that? It was a considerable amount of editing. Your audio was, fine. It was absolutely [00:03:00] usable. But it did sound like it was coming through a third rate microphone, and I ran it through the Script’s Studio sound feature.

This is one of their Yeah. AI features. And it came out sounding wonderful. Yeah. This is an amazing, I had no idea that it could take, a telephone call sounding recording. Yeah. And make it sound like you had been sitting at a $400 microphone. A wonderful, that’s to hear Wonderful feature on the script.

Good to hear. Good to hear. I did think, hoping that it was great quality original recording, but now I know that Dell’s laptop microphone’s are crap, basically. I gotta tell you, when I listened to yours, I said, it’s all right. It’s a short midweek episode. It’s, yeah, it’s fine.

I had one of those ones where. When we signed into Riverside, , to do the recording, I didn’t notice that the microphone had defaulted to the one that’s baked into the camera and the audio wasn’t that good. , and if I had known that running it through Studio Sound, the [00:04:00] script would’ve fixed it. I.

Absolutely would’ve done that. That’s good to know that, Cheryl, I must admit. Good. So these two episodes that we have done since the September monthly episode, four, three oh 4 31 was on October the second. , we dove into PR weeks, the Evolution of Influence Report, exploring their dynamic shifts and how.

PR professionals exert influence in today’s fast changing landscape. It was a good discussion we had with that one. And then jump forward just over two weeks to October the 18th, and episode 4 32, the one that you had to do the audio editing with my recording. , CEOs and other senior executives are increasingly expected to nurture a presence on social media, especially LinkedIn, which has seen a 35% increase in c-suite professionals in the US over the last five years.

That’s where communicators need to step in. We said helping leaders find the most comfortable way to engage authentically online. That’s a key word there. Authentic. So that was [00:05:00] a good discussion. I actually did a follow up. Blog post myself, , with some further thoughts on that. But, in my mind, the authenticity is the kind of paramount word.

It’s worth a listen to that episode. It was pretty good, wasn’t it? And I know we got some comments somewhere amongst all this, haven’t we? We did, , got two comments on episode 4 32, 1 from Kerry Sullivan who said, leaders need to be present in order to attract and retain talent. They also need to write and show up in their own voice language is how we recognize one another.

Finally, if a leader isn’t confident enough to show up online, they’re probably not resilient enough to lead through anything more complex than a steady state business. And then we had a comment from Monique Nik who said, , many execs and public figures I know get others to do their content and approve it themselves, or only post once a month or so in, in a team photo.

Do you think it matters who actually creates the content or only that it aligns with the brand and is seen as authentic? So it’s an [00:06:00] interesting question from there’s Monique, there’s a whole topic. We could discuss that and maybe we will. With Monique, right? We might talk about that with Monique.

This is a great opportunity to let everyone know that this coming Tuesday, we are going to be speaking with Monique for an FIR interview. If you’re not already subscribing to the FIR interviews feed head over to FIR podcast network.com and subscribe. You don’t wanna miss this one. Uh she is among other things, the author of a new book, called Internal Communications in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

So looking forward to that conversation. We do have one additional comment. This is from an episode that goes back before our September episode. Sally Gch left a comment on this, and just by way of context, I should say that, as part of , the topic for that episode, rather than do the I [00:07:00] ident myself, that’s the little.

32nd introduction to the episode. At the very, very beginning, I wrote it and then had 11 labs produce my cloned voice. Reading it, it was apropos to the episode, and Sally said, as soon as the intro started, I thought Shell’s voice sounds different than something is off. And finally, is that ai, my brain got almost too wrapped up in trying to figure out what was wrong.

To take in what you were saying, it bothered me in a way that the synthesized voice of Google Maps doesn’t, and that in turn makes me wonder whether generative audio and video needs to be more real or less real to avoid the uncanny valley. , and it is actually an interesting point if it tries too hard to be really authentic.

Is that too distracting? Does it need to be? Inauthentic enough, obvious enough that it was [00:08:00] AI produced, that you go, oh, it’s an AI voice. Okay, I can now sit back and pay attention to what’s being said rather than, that’s really weird. Or discomforting, whatever. But, , it’s, it is an interesting point , that Sally makes.

Also wanna let everybody know that we have a new circle of fellows available on the FIR Podcast Network. This was an episode dealing with change management participants included ZORA artists, PRI Bates, Todd Hattori, and Cindy Schmid with Brad Whitworth. Moderating this one because I was at the PRSA conference and the next.

Circle of Fellows is scheduled for November 21st. It’ll be at 1130 in the morning, , Eastern Time. This is on executive Communication and leadership. Alice Brink, Bish Mukherjee, Julie Holloway and Maryanne McCauley will be the panelists for this one. And I will be moderating again, back in the [00:09:00] moderator’s chair.

And, , it should be , a great conversation. And if you’re able to participate live in real time, we love engaging with those people who are on the call with us. , but if not, it’ll be available as both a video replay and an audio podcast here on the FIR podcast Network. And that means that it is time to jump into our stories of the month, which we will do with vigor right after this, when there have been.

Natural disasters or other things that governments have needed to communicate. It became sort of a defacto rule that you would do some of that communication on Twitter. This was the place that Breaking News was communicated, and even if they didn’t have the audience that say, a Facebook has. They did have the attention of the media, and this tended to help [00:10:00] get the word out.

You had people who were looking for breaking news, but you also had journalists there who could turn it around and present it through their channels. So what are we doing today? Imagine that you represent a government trying to communicate critical information after natural disasters. We’re talking about the essentials, how to apply for FEMA assistance, updates on recovery efforts, basic safety information.

You would think press releases, press conferences, and social media posts. In today’s landscape, though, those channels aren’t necessarily. Going to be completely effective. Traditional media audiences have grown more and more fragmented and polarized. TV viewers are divided, and people’s social media feeds are clogged with a mix of algorithm filtered content and distractions.

The government’s posts on Facebook might not even make it to the people who need them. Instagram stories have limited reach for this purpose, and on TikTok or [00:11:00] X, which if you’ve been following, is what they’re calling Twitter these days with fewer people and less revenue. Anyway, these messages get lost in the noise, drowned out by conspiracy theories or just never seen or ignored well.

Reddit has stepped in to the rescue. This might not seem like the most usual platform for this kind of content, but it’s increasingly significant. In response to hurricanes, Helene and Milton, the White House chose Reddit as an outreach medium. Posts appeared in subreddits like R North Carolina and our Georgia aimed at directly communicating with communi communities in need.

Now, I know Reddit’s not the typical channel for a government to use to communicate. It’s known for its niche communities. Canid exchanges, occasional brand disaster. Ask me anything that go awry. But Reddit does something, , rare. In today’s online world. [00:12:00] It offers a level of genuine human engagement moderated by community members and not by algorithms.

The shift highlights a move toward, , thinking about Reddit, which has been a last resort. Up until this point, subreddits like these let basic communication that might otherwise get swallowed up on traditional media outlets happen. And this isn’t just about governments. Take Sonos for example. This is the smart speaker company.

they. Issued, , an app update that caused all kinds of problems. It really upset a very loyal community of customers and a Sonos employees started posting regular updates on an unofficial subreddit to engage and appease these frustrated customers. It worked well enough that eventually the CEO stepped in, showing up where the audience was engaged and paying attention.

So is Reddit the future for crisis communication? , [00:13:00] probably not the way you would think, but it’s becoming a really important back channel. Where real unfiltered information can be shared. It’s not without issues. Reddit’s reliance on unpaid community moderators is under strain. There’s actually been something of an uprising of sub redditers due to some pricing decisions that the company made.

There has been an influx of bots and spammers that threatening to erode the authenticity that gives it value, but it still stands out as one of the few online spaces where important messages can still reach and engage audiences. So for us as communicators, platforms like Reddit, may. Soon play a bigger role in crisis communication and brand management strategies, especially as traditional channels struggle with engagement and trust issues.

So if you’re not engaging on Reddit, maybe it’s time to start. It’s an interesting. Development. I think, I mean I’ve been on Reddit at least 15 years, [00:14:00] not very active there. I participate in maybe 15, 16 different, subreddits of things that are, , mostly personal interest, but a couple of business related things.

And I’ve always found it, , useful. , I’m conscious too that some I visited and had been part of. I’m no longer simply because of the awfulness of some of the people in those places. So this is, you mentioned the risks. Yeah. There are significant risks. if you went into Reddit in a major way, I would say, or had something that was controversial that you dunno what you’re gonna get.

, is that different to others? Well, I think it is. And maybe not Twitter, X whatever. , but it certainly is, so you’ve gotta take that into account. Isn’t it true though that, , any argument about is this the right platform? Is almost wholly dependent on, do you understand your audience? , is that where they are?

Or is that where people are that you would like to get to know? So you’ve gotta have those questions down Pat. I think, , the White House one’s interesting. , the example that, the article that [00:15:00] I, , that you linked to talks about those hurricanes, , that, , I’d actually love to know why they decided this as opposed to continuing using X.

, did they not feel, that given the audience they’re trying to reach this very specifically in that part of the us, , maybe they felt, I dunno what they felt, , X couldn’t deliver. I don’t know that they did stop using X. They might have added Reddit to. Post on X. Yeah, that’s, it’s possible. I don’t know, maybe they didn’t, but No, sure.

But that’s possible, isn’t it? But the other example you mentioned, Sonos, I found really interesting. , particularly di diving deeper into the article. , it mentions, , that this guy who was, , the kind of representing, , Sonos Keith from Sonos is his handle, , was diligently, dutifully and patiently according to the article, , posting on the brand’s unofficial subreddit.

, after that app update you mentioned, I remember reading about that update. It [00:16:00] really did en rage, people with genuine rage, not internet rage. This was real stuff. Unhappy, unhappy. He was there daily doing messaging, all that stuff. So they hated the company, but they didn’t hate Keith and he carried on and engaged with people.

Next thing, , the company’s CEO headed over to where Keith was. And had a great time because of Keith. Now that is fascinating. So it reminds me of the story we talked about maybe some years ago, shell, about the, kid who, what was it? Sherwood Williams or the big paint company and he was doing stuff there with the imaging and creating graphic.

They fired him. So he was picked up by a competitor. ‘ , ’cause outside the control of , the control freaks at the company basically. So this interest, well let’s go further back than remember. Remember Frank Eliason with Comcast Cares on That’s right. Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, in the other days, unsanction, he was just doing it on his own.

Yeah. And he ended up with a team of what, 11 or 12 employees early days. [00:17:00] This is recent and yet conceptually I think it’s not different. , so that, well you argue that wasn’t a crisis per se. , so I, I would say the question , is not so much for crisis communication specifically, or that it could be for that the future crisis communication, a future, maybe it’s your overall engagement, whether it’s in a crisis or not.

So we’ve got the examples of a crisis. So, , to me it’s like if you could answer the questions, do you know your audience? Is this where they are? Then that itself would be a reason why you wanna be there. Or maybe in the case of the White House, we don’t know if that’s our audience, but we do know certain types of people we wanna reach.

Probably are there. So let’s go there. I mean, maybe, I dunno, I’m guessing here. EEE Exactly. If there’s a subreddit for a state or a region, yeah. You’ve gotta believe that some people are there and if this is where this information is being doled out, other people will spread the word. You can go to other communities and say, Hey, there’s some really good information being shared in [00:18:00] the Georgia subreddit.

You should come over here and partake of that. Yeah. So it, it could build the audience. But going back to what the article said, I really believe it’s the fact that , it’s community moderated and there’s no algorithm. So it’s an opportunity to get the word out and engage with the people who care about this information without the platform getting in the way of that communication.

Yeah. That makes total sense. I agree. Good example. I think, so we have an interesting story here that is about. Well, egregiousness is one word that comes to mind. , stepping over a line, , from a communicator’s point of view, this is a story of, , Intuit, , and a podcast and someone wanting to erase part of it after the recording that didn’t like it.

So this was a recent episode of The Decoder podcast that’s a publication of The Verge, , where Nle Patel, who’s the [00:19:00] editor in Chief of the Verge and host of decoder, interviewed Saan Zi. Who’s the CEO of the Global Financial Technology Platform? Intuit, the interview is especially notable due to a request after the recording from Intuit’s Chief Communications Officer Rick Heinemann.

To delete a portion of the discussion, the Verge refused the request. So the Verge believes Intuit’s request reveals the ethical considerations at the heart of its editorial standards and ethics is something they played a, they blew a big trumpet about. In the decoder episode, Gazi responded to questions about Intuits lobbying against simplified tax filing processes in the us.

Specifically, the Verge raised concerns over Intuits lobbying history, which aims to protect its paid service. TurboTax from direct competition with free government-led filing options. When questions turned to Intuits lobbying activities and history of misleading free, quote unquote tax filing claims, [00:20:00] Azis firmly denied the portrayal.

Following the interview, Intuit’s CCO Rick Heinemann labeled the exchange as inappropriate and demanded that the verge remove the contentious five minute segment. Citing raised voices and overlapping dialogue is distracting the vote. Refuse citing. Its strict editorial independence and commitment to transparency.

The publication maintains that interviews should remain unaltered to preserve journalistic integrity, and it saw no basis for the edit beyond potential discomfort over the pointed questioning. The segment ultimately add uncut, placing the issue of corporate influence on media and editorial ethics front and center.

As Nle Patel explained, the Verge follows a clear non-negotiable editorial policy focused on journalistic ethics, transparency, and accountability. It says its long maintained an ethical stance that prohibits interviewees or their representatives from reviewing, approving, or altering published content.

By [00:21:00] refusing to delete the segment, the Verge says it underscored its commitment to maintaining an unfiltered public record, which it viewed as particularly relevant in this case due to the public interest surrounding tax reform and Intuit’s influential lobbying efforts against simplified free tax filing options.

Their decision to release the verbatim transcript was a trapped a step towards total transparency. They said enabling the audience to form their own opinions on the contentious interaction. There are a number of issues with this that we could discuss for a while. For starters, is the intervention of Intuit CCO in demanding a deletion, an egregious step over a red line.

What’s your take? She. Yes, yes. It’s in the word greatest step over a red line. I can’t be any more unequivocal than this. He was wrong. , and the verge was right in this, , you agree to do an interview. On a podcast, that’s no different [00:22:00] than agreeing to do an interview with a reporter from a mainstream newspaper.

The only way you get to say you can’t use the information that was shared in that interview is if you get the agreement from the journalist at the beginning that this is off the record. And I can’t imagine that anybody doing a podcast would get an off the record agreement from the podcaster. I mean, imagine one of our interviewees.

Yeah. This, I’m, I’m happy to go on FIR interviews, but, , it’s gonna be off the record. Okay. Or on background, maybe. , no. there, there is absolutely no justification for this. And anybody who’s graduated from journalism school should understand this. I am astounded that somebody who has attained a chief communication officer level in an organization thinks that they could get away with nonsense like this.

It’s ridiculous. Yeah. , that, that was my, no, that was my thought as well. Shell, I’m thinking [00:23:00] the Verge, like many publications, , whether they’re so-called new media or traditional media doesn’t really matter. You have, , policies you publish about your standards, your terms and conditions of use, all that, , and nowadays is very common for publications, whether they’re mainstream media, social media, even.

Even business blogs, so that matter, still a publication go into some detail, , about their ethical approach and accountability and responsibilities, et cetera. So they have all that. It’s public, so it’s not like , the, these people did an opportunity to see it. , I’m wondering whether they had something as simple as a literary disclaimer form that the interviewee sites, , I remember, , business podcasts I’ve done for companies always have those for guests, which make it quite clear what the ground rules are different.

If, let’s say the Verge had published something that was totally wrong, , , if something had happened that it was totally wrong, that might have been different perhaps, but they didn’t. And I’m wondering whether, and again, we’ve only got the words of how it was written about the CCOs kind of [00:24:00] demanding they do this and it was stepping over the line and all that.

If, if he went in with that approach, no wonder they said. we can’t really say these words on a podcast, family podcast like this, but they dismiss that out of hand. Maybe if he tries to negotiate something, he may have got somewhere, but I doubt it. He, like you said, she surely he should have known better than to do this for goodness sake.

So that, that makes disappointed if someone in a senior role like that making something like this become then the story, which is what this is. , but totally wrong and you shouldn’t ever even try to think of doing some of that after the event. Unless, like you said, you’ve got agreement about something beforehand or it’s serious.

It’s, it really is a mistake and you can justify your intervention and try your hardest to get it changed. But this was ridiculous. A few thoughts. One, I agree if he had gone to decoder and said, gosh, I. The CEO’s kind of unhappy about that [00:25:00] last five minutes and is asked if it’s possible, or I’m gonna ask on his behalf if it’s possible to trim that off.

And they’re probably gonna say no, but you’re probably gonna get farther and maintain a better relationship if you make it a request rather than a demand you have no standing, no basis , for making a demand. Now, however, that this has become the story, every journalist dealing with the communications department at Intuit’s gonna go into it knowing that this is a possible outcome and they’re going to treat into it differently.

And yeah, probably not in a good way. So I could see that. You gotta wonder what he was thinking. Intuit’s a big company. They get coverage. They have clout. So yeah, I think this is gonna affect the perception of the public based on the way that the media reports on them as a result of this.

Yeah, one thing that struck me thinking it through was the fact that this request, , stemmed from a disagreement [00:26:00] over the portrayal of a lobbying practice practices and not from factual inaccuracies. That’s the key thing to me, highlights this kind of conflict between public relations interests and transparency of information that impacts consumers of this particular case.

So their desire into its desire to control damaging dialogue. That’s how I’m reading this, , points to the influence corporations are gonna seek to wield over media portrayal, which you shouldn’t do that. There is another issue here that amazes me and that is that nobody should have been surprised that this point of discussion came up.

People have been talking about this. John Oliver did a segment on this on last week, tonight, years ago. People know that Intuit lobbies to maintain the ability to make money from tax preparation software when most people would like the IRS to provide that [00:27:00] software free, to make it easy for them to file their taxes and.

He should be prepared. The CEO , should be prepared to address that question. Is he not media trained for heaven’s sake, right? if the CCO is upset about this, what he’s probably really upset about is that he hadn’t prepared his CEO to answer this question and engage in a conversation about it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

No. That exactly , is a point , that, , I was thinking about as you were saying those words. How briefed was he? , maybe they didn’t see this as serious, which is why the hell are you doing it? In that case, every interview that you do, particularly if you know you’ve got a skeleton that ain’t in the closet, it’s right out there that people are gonna be asked about.

Surely they should tell. What if they ask about this topic, Mr. CEO, here’s what you need to, well, you didn’t tell ’em what he’s gonna say. Look, here’s the pros and cons of this. Do you refuse to talk about it? No, you can’t do that. Is it one of those situations where you could say. The best person to talk about this is this person can go there or deflect it in some way, but you need [00:28:00] to be prepared.

and like you said, they obviously weren’t if he were media trained, he would’ve been able to take that question and say, let’s look at three reasons why this is a good thing. First of all, it’s a better product than what the IRS is ever going to be able to provide.

Second, third, you do the threes. And you bring it around back to your talking points and then the podcaster moves on. The interviewer moves on rather than making it contentious. , looking through that script, it, it, it seems to me that it was the CEO who started to take that off the rails a bit.

Yeah. He wasn’t prepared. No. , and that’s shocking. Really is, yeah. Neville, I know that you continue to do a fair amount of blogging. I do. I don’t, I haven’t had the time. My, my blog, , sits there. I cross post the monthly episodes of [00:29:00] FIR there and not much else, but there are plenty of people who are still blogging and you, and they are, , the basis of the 2024 blogging survey that was published by Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media published on LinkedIn, interestingly, as opposed to in a white paper downloadable report, , a microsite now it was a LinkedIn article.

, the surveys in its 11th year, it draws on insights from over 12,000 bloggers and offers a comprehensive look at evolving blogging trends, tactics, and results. It’s a really rich. Report for content marketers who are looking to understand what’s working in content strategy and, where their emerging challenges are.

So let’s take a look at the key takeaways I have. Eight of these. And Neville, I thought what I would do is go through ’em one at a time and get your thoughts on each one. [00:30:00] the first one deals with the traffic challenge and zero click platforms. A zero click platform would be something like perplexity, where you get the answer thanks to what somebody published on a blog, but you never have to click through to the blog in order to get it because Perplexity has given it to you.

, this is one of the most critical challenges bloggers are facing. Driving traffic is a key challenge. Only 20% of bloggers are reporting strong results driving traffic, and that’s down from 30% just five years ago now, the decline largely stems from platforms like Google and social media increasingly keeping users on their sites leading to a rise in zero click.

Content marketing expert, Rand Fishkin suggests that content marketers need to rethink what success looks like, shifting their focus from traffic volume to building loyal niche audiences through methods like gated content or newsletters. This zero click phenomenon is reshaping strategies, [00:31:00] encouraging marketing marketers to nurture smaller engaged communities rather than depending on high traffic numbers alone.

Your thoughts, Neville? I’m kind of different how I use my blog, , since I reboot, relaunched a thing effectively last July. I don’t do this for monetary gain. I don’t do this for, , a kind of strategic approach to engagement. Indeed, there’s no, you can’t comment anymore on my blog. I disabled commenting about four years ago actually.

I don’t, I have different focuses. I get this though. I do understand this. I don’t, I’m not bothered at all by zero click and at all. , I’m quite happy for people to read my content that shows up in a perplexity search or they get it because of Google. Even Google search. I’ve seen blog posts, I’ve written show up in Google results sometimes.

So what benefit do I get from that? It’s kind of like, , my content is out [00:32:00] there. , unlike the days you and I talked about many over a decade ago, if content scraping was a big thing back in the, , late. Teens, the late zeros, , late, what do you call it? The two thousands. , not too bothered about that.

Don’t, yeah, I don’t see it much these days actually. Zero cake doesn’t bother me, but I understand why it does concern others. And indeed, we’ve talked about this in a recent podcast episode, so I do understand that. I’m not concerned by that. If I were doing this. Wearing a hundred percent a business hat and seeking some kind of engagement or recognition or reward that might bother me where I would be concerned about the traffic.

I do pay attention to traffic, to Google Analytics, to rank math, which is one of the SEO tools that I use, and I do pay attention to that so that also they guide me in terms of some of the keywords I might use, but it’s not front of mind. I tend to write naturally. So I know many people like that. By the way.

some running business blocks too, a hundred percent business blocks, , have similar thinking. [00:33:00] So to me , that’s how you can demonstrate authenticity, which is a significant thing that I care a lot about, the authenticity of content that you come across. There’s no hidden agenda, and I have critics who tell me everyone’s got a hidden agenda.

I do not believe that. And to which they call me terribly naive still, but hey, I don’t care, to be honest, shall so This is. An issue without doubt. And , I don’t believe that it’s gonna end well for anyone who believes zero issue, a zero click is going to go away sometime soon. Or it doesn’t matter anymore if you are a business looking for results that way.

’cause it will matter. So what do you think of the alternatives that are suggested here? Like, , switching to, a Substack style newsletter or gating your content? Don’t, I don’t buy any of those, options at all, but might be different. If I wore a business hat Substack, I wouldn’t recommend to anyone to use Substack.

And that’s all to do with the behavior they have exhibited with extremist, , content. Right. , that’s why I [00:34:00] said a Substack style. Got it. Got it. Well, yeah. Okay. , I use, I have a newsletter. That’s actually, , just WordPress that, , you sign up and you get emailed Every time I publish a new post, that’s all it does, and I see interesting engagement from that newsletter that otherwise wouldn’t be the case.

And I don’t pimp anything or push anything I. It’s free. And I’m not making any money outta that. That’s fine. I’m quite happy with that. I think that is something though, to explore. I, I hear lots of people talking about, I’m gonna do a newsletter and monetize my content. I remember using that phraseology 15 years ago and it produced results back then.

I mean, you and I had sponsors in the early days of podcast that, , was, worthwhile. , now today things are very different. , you have to be focused, I think, more on authenticity than ever before. There are so many people writing stuff. Much of it is drl Again, that’s subjective. I then look at the click bait stuff, like the story that, , in this episode we’re gonna talk about, , [00:35:00] that is, is everywhere you look.

How do you tell if something is real? , that’s another big issue. So, , these are all issues. She seems to me, did I answer your question by the way? Did that answer your question? Oh, yes, it did. Thank you. ,we’ll move on to the second key takeaway, , increase the increasing role of artificial intelligence and content creation.

, AI has become mainstream in blogging. 80% of bloggers are using it in various stages of content creation. , most are using it for idea generation headlines, outlines only a small percentage are relying on it for complete drafts of their posts, but the impact is mixed. While it boosts efficiency, it hasn’t yet translated into significantly higher engagement.

There are voices in the industry like Christopher s Penn and Mark Schafer who are pointing out that bloggers are navigating a steep learning curve, experimenting at this point in ways that accelerate their processes while [00:36:00] preserving authenticity and unique voice. I, I do assume you’re using AI at some level , in your blogging.

Oh, , utterly, , to generate ideas, to summarize articles. I don’t use it. I tried it. I don’t use it as I see some people talking about it, which is to literally ask it question, give me a good idea. I can blog about this topic. I don’t do that. , I, when I tried it, I found every single thing I tried with that is absolutely not what I would write about and the way in which it proposed I write.

So no, I don’t waste my time on that. But ideas, yes, in terms of, , an idea I’ve already got. How to flesh it out further, I might ask it. I often ask chat, GBT plus. a kind of a, here’s this thing, ask me questions about this. , what I’d like you to do is come up with a way in which I can talk about X on this topic.

And I found that helpful in every case that on how I use it, these are idea generators, hence generative ai, not creators of the overall [00:37:00] content that I’m gonna publish. I have yet to publish an article except one or two, which I’ve mentioned on my blog as part of my experimentation wholly generated by the ai.

And boom, there it’s, nah, that, that’s not what you should be doing. And looking at some of the metrics here, I find quite interesting. , the biggest percentage I see in the, , list given about how Blogger is using AI was, is 40, 54% using AI to generate ideas. And that’s 11% since the last time they did the survey.

Yeah, that, that makes sense. 40% to write outlines. , I’ve done that a couple times and. , not as good as, , as saying, for instance, to chat GPT and even perplexity sometimes, , write a draft of this topic, 400 words or 600 words, , in a couple of paragraphs, , or, , actually, I don’t tend to use the word, paragraph.

Let’s say give word counts. And that often, particularly in the case of chat, GPT, steers me in the direction that , I decide I want to go to you. Arguably, you could say if you [00:38:00] hadn’t done that, you’d have had to go in a different direction possibly. I would’ve had to think of all that myself, which is what I used to do.

I don’t see this any different at all, by the way, as using a colleague to bounce ideas off, , or, , as the phraseology goes, getting the intern to write a draft, this to me is no different to that. Happens to be. A bit of software. Yeah. I have baked AI into various parts of my article writing or post writing workflow.

So it’s become a habit that at this stage I’m going to use ai. , one of the things that I’ve done a couple of times is I have taken my notes, , from an interview and I, I do use a note taking app. I use auto ai, but in, in these cases, I didn’t, I was sitting there with my laptop interviewing somebody.

This is for a personality profile, and I found I just didn’t have the time to write this feature article. So I took my notes and I gave them, I, I think it was Claude, but I don’t remember for sure which one I was using. [00:39:00] And I said, here are my notes from this interview with this person. Here’s a little bit more information.

, write a first draft of, , an employee profile. , and it did a surfaceable job. I would say that I rewrote it. I’m not gonna say that I edited it heavily. It was a complete rewrite, but it took me probably half the time it would’ve taken to write it from scratch. It did not sound like a, nobody would look at this and go, oh, AI wrote this.

Because like I say, it was a complete rewrite. I don’t know how long I would spend on this, but the, I get that the longer you write it and the greater the depth of your content, the more it mentions you get better results. I don’t see what they mean by better results. Do they mean by more clicks, inbound links, , amplification, or what?

What does better result mean, do you think? I’m presuming it means more. Views and higher levels of engagement. I don’t have that data, but those are the results that I would consider to be better as a blogger. Yeah. [00:40:00] Yeah. , yeah, I guess so. what would I think about? , thinking about a couple of posts I’ve written recently, one of which got significant attention and sharing.

, it was a topic that seemed to resonate and some key people had shared it, and that drove more traffic to it. So that wasn’t a designed approach. If I write this way about this topic and they targeted to that kind of person, I didn’t do any of those things. I just write, , as I said in the description of my blog when I relaunched it.

This is a place to think out loud and get other people’s thoughts too. not necessarily in conversation here to spread the word. If. But there’s no strategy behind it for me. , so I’m not sure what that means. , better results either way. I get the connection between the longer, , your longer articles that are well thought through, hence the four hours, , likely.

, and I often find that when I’ve written a post from, say it’s had input from one of the ais in terms of structure, , [00:41:00] and looked at the first draft that I’d written and often do that and ask it, critique this, suggest how I could improve this. Something simple like that. I don’t give it to complex, requests.

Always comes back with, at least here are four things you could do. And often they’re typical things like, more subheadings or add some images or something to break it up. , but often not always the you think, oh, that’s a damn good suggestion that leads then to me to do something more. So I get, I sometime have spent four hours, but my time typically is a couple of hours.

, if that , on a 900 to 1200 word post, I tend not to count too much, but I think, and so what do I get out of it? , I look at the traffic, from, , Google Analytics in particular and see this post has got that much attention. Fine. , rarely are they comments. These days, except on some social networks, but that’s often not to the post.

, that’s if I’ve amplified it particularly on LinkedIn. [00:42:00] Although I do find, , threads is actually working pretty well in that regard too. But I’m actually not doing it for that reason. She, understand obviously, people, , publishing from a business point of view are doing it that way. I’m not, but I, I get why that’s important.

So I think that’s a good point to make, to show, to outline how long the typical blog post and that relationship between length and time spent, you can connect to better results, I guess. Yeah. It also says to me that there’s a thirst out there for longer form. Content if longer blog posts are producing better results.

But let’s move on to the fourth key takeaway, which is, , around blogging frequency and SEO impact. It’s interesting that while posting frequency has dropped, quality remains high. Fewer bloggers publish multiple times a week with a growing trend toward monthly updates, which, in the early days of blogging, people would’ve said, ah, you’ll never gain any traction posting once a month.

, but it remain. SEO [00:43:00] remains, , vital as consistency and freshness contribute to better ranking and traffic performance. Madi French and SEO strategist highlights the importance of maintaining regular updates and aligning the search intent to achieve visibility, especially in competitive spaces. Are you paying any attention to SEO.

not to the extent that this suggests, no, , not really. , but I think, , it is interesting about , the, the correlation and effort and performance you published more often and more likely to report strong results, quote unquote strong results. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Monthly blogging is more popular, but less effective than ever.

Reminds me of Richard Amo when he started his 6:00 AM blog. It was once a week, , every Monday at 6:00 AM his time. , I dropped into, , this year at times one, two posts per month. And then sometimes, I think it must have been August the, so-called Quiet Month, in which case probably the worst time to publish content you want people to get at.

I think I publish like six posts. I try, I tell myself, publish one a week. [00:44:00] It actually turns out about once every two weeks that I publish something, but I don’t feel any pressure to do that. So I have a long list. I’ve always had this shell. You’ve, you are the same, I’m sure. I’ve got a long list of ideas to blog about.

There’s like 20 items in there. I never get to half of them. You never know. Something might spark. So I use Evernotes, , particularly to note down topics I’d like to write about and usually it helps. , biweekly is the minimum for content performance. This, , this report says, , publishing 10 to 12 posts per year won’t cut it.

I’m sure that’s true, but, , I get skeptical about, stuff that talks about longer content, is therefore equal to greater success and spending more time on longer content. And then you’ve got this, , biweekly, not monthly, , more often than likely to report better results. Stuff like that depends what you’re measuring, I suppose.

Depends what your goal is. But, , I know businesses who are. Once, twice a month and are consistent at it. , what results are they getting out of it? If it’s thought leadership, [00:45:00] perhaps, , is it amplification elsewhere? You need to do an analytics report on that kind of thing. I think it’s good to see, , blogs still alive and well in spite of, , some of the downside of all of that, which is useless content, clickbait type content, , that you see employed by some media tabloids in particular.

, you see that reflect in some blog posts along with, and again, this is my kind of tired cynicism. , sometimes shell that you look at some con you think, why on earth did you even. Publishes drl. And that’s very subjective, and it’s cruel sometimes to say that. I wouldn’t say that to anyone. You often think it, I often wonder, do people say that about my stuff?

Sometimes I wonder, I’ll never know unless someone tells me. , I don’t go out and ask people. But, , it’s good to see blogging. It is not going away. This Fiori with WordPress I don’t think is helping anything. , with a fight with WP Engine. And then this whole argument about who owns the intellectual property rights to WordPress, , et cetera, , I see a lot of people, , what does that mean a [00:46:00] lot?

Maybe 15 or 20 over the past few weeks saying, I’m quitting WordPress. I’m gonna go to Ghost, or I’m gonna go to some other service, or whatever. Yeah. I suppose inevitable. Are we at a time then for the shakeout in the tools and the platforms that we’re using? To write blog posts. Has a definition of blogging shifted?

I suspect it has , the original definition of, reverse chronological content and you have tracks and the track backs and pings and all that stuff. It’s all automated now. , and I think it has changed in that regard. So if you are using a blog like I am, which is, the simplest way I can describe it is to think out loud, not to pitch anything, not to persuade anyone to a particular course of action overtly, where I can register an algorithmic outcome from that.

I have no interest in doing any of those things. Thinking out loud. Might get some comment from someone. I’ve had some interesting reactions to some of the content recently, like a week or two after I published it. Someone’s encountered it via LinkedIn or Facebook. So I enjoy though those are serendipitous in my book and [00:47:00] that’s definitely makes it all worthwhile.

, let’s go through the remaining four key takeaways, in a lightning round in the interest of time. The fifth is that content formats and, , the power of original researcher in play how two guides remain the top format for bloggers. The survey suggests that original research and collaborative content, like interviews yield the strongest engagement.

Nearly half of respondents reported conducting original research, which significantly contributes to perceived authority. And SEO Jay B the content strategist underscores that original resource is more resilient against AI driven content as it provides unique insights that readers can’t find elsewhere.

Then we have, , the six takeaway influencer collaboration and editing process. Successful bloggers are often those who work closely with influencers and editors. About half of the respondents collaborate with subject matter experts on occasion, and a small successful group does that [00:48:00] Consistently.

Bloggers who involve editors in their process report better results. There’s Amanda Milligan, director of Content Strategy. Who points out that these collaborations create organic authority boosts and improve content quality by integrating , multiple perspectives, making it more valuable and credible.

The seventh key takeaway, , around video and multimedia use, , the use of video and blogs has doubled since 2015, but only about 25% of bloggers consistently use it. Those who do report positive impacts on engagement and reach, aligning with broader social media trends, which where users increasingly prefer video content will.

Reynolds is an industry expert. He advises that marketers prioritize video considering that platforms like YouTube and TikTok continue to grow. Even if bloggers themselves aren’t maintaining videos, potential or maximizing videos potential just yet. And the final takeaway is around analytics and measuring success.

bloggers who consistently [00:49:00] track their analytics are two and a half times more likely to see strong results, but only 20% of bloggers admit that they, , don’t or can’t measure their content’s performance. , Karen Hopper, an analytics expert, stresses that reliable data allows content creators to refine their strategies and demonstrate value, especially as marketing budgets come under closer scrutiny.

So those are the key takeaways. , any thoughts on those Last four, Neville? Yeah, I, the one that struck me was, what a blog is putting in their articles, , visuals, , I’ve always had that. Every single post I publish has a hero image on it. It’s there. And it, I tend to use metaphors a lot and often generate them from, an, , generative AI tool.

, I don’t look for, perfection in terms of photorealistic images, they’re metaphors. I want to use, typically, I’m actually a big fan recently of, , Adobe, , Express that has Firefly built in and stock images built in. So I probably, funny enough, I use one on a, on the post.

[00:50:00] I mentioned at the beginning of this episode about, , additional comments I made to that article. We wrote, we featured in An episode. So I used , a picture of a board, , of a, , a c-suite example, young people. And I then noticed after I’d used it about three or four days later, that the woman front of image, attractive young woman, , is holding pencils in both hands.

I noticed that you gotta pay attention to these things, but, so in any case, I use images. , looking at the metrics here that virtually all bloggers add images to their content. , some bloggers use a lot, small minority adds seven or more. Again, depends on what you’re writing. I don’t do that, but a hero image, something to break it up again, depending on it.

Subheadings I use a lot too. I don’t use video a lot. And it’s interesting. Video , is getting huge attention, but not in blogging. Partly I suspect, , it’s often not easy to embed a video. I. Unless it’s on YouTube, some places don’t do this, and I’ve seen blogs including one of my posts recently, where you don’t control that content.

So [00:51:00] something happens to it. You don’t get it in the embed working. , the worst one is ones that say, you’re not allowed to watch this in your country. Stuff like that. So the permissions aren’t right, so you have that risk. , when I publish myself about episodes that you and I create, I always include an embedded, an embed from Libsyn that will play it and link back to the show notes page.

I tend to do that a lot of visuals and make it a, an interesting visual visit so the user experience is better. That’s, I care about stuff like that and the user interface. I just don’t. Thank So I’m may, I may or may not be , a really good example to, to have this discussion with you because my, , my, , attention on this and what I believe is worth spending time on is not the same as , your typical business block.

So, Jay Bear, for instance, would probably hate talking to me ’cause I wouldn’t be able to converse with him about the same things for the same reasons. But everyone’s different. , and I think, you share your thoughts. Thought leadership is something that I pay attention to. Not the phrase so much, but the act, [00:52:00] the demonstration of that as others perceive it.

So when I get comments to things are right, , I pay attention to that , when they come in. So. That’s my take on it, by the way. I just read this week that Midjourney has released an update that allows you to edit the images that it creates. Yeah. You could have told it to take the pencil out of one of the woman’s hands.

That’s it. That’s worth knowing. She, I should try Midjourney again. I’ve not tried it for a while, but, part of it is a journey. The experimentation , we are having, , what you and I talk about, what others talk about, what others talk about when they listen to what you and I are talking about.

it’s a bit like the , notebook, LM tool that , we tried out on, , experimenting on creating a podcast. A lot of excitement about that I was terribly excited about. It’s all gone dreadfully quiet since then. And I think, , that people realize, perhaps the initial excitement, this is not the intent of this tool.

This is not a viable solution to create a podcast unless you are creating something that you use in a podcast that you’re creating now that I could see for. There may be options for that kind of thing. [00:53:00] Greeting Shea Neville, and FR lists all around the world. It’s Dan York. Greetings coming at you from Shelburn, Vermont.

Actually, not in my home office. I’m in LaMarche and I , have a special guest right here. Charlie, Bernie, I’m so excited to be here. How are you? Charlie has been a devoted member of our FYR chat that we’ve had on on Thursday afternoon Yes. That anybody can join, but just a weekly Zoom chat that shell maintains, and some of us get there together for about a half an hour and talk about social media and everything else.

Yeah. So what are you doing up here in Vermont? Well, first of all, this is for you, Jeff Davis. You can join too. I’m, I’m visiting. Thank you, Dan. I’m visiting my daughter Isabel, who teaches at the University of Vermont and coaches debate. So Charlie’s, uh, when he was coming up here, he dropped me a note. Yeah.

And so we’re, we’ve had a nice coffee and conversation hanging out here at this, uh, little cafe and, uh, figured I’d go and do this. So, um, one thing I was gonna talk about today was that, uh, blue sky just announced that [00:54:00] they had a, do you use Blue sky? No. Okay. No. Where do you spend your time actually on social media these days?

Uh, a lot of time on LinkedIn, to be honest with you. Okay. I’ve, I’ve experimented when my wife was, uh, at, under the Weather a year ago, I experimented with TikTok and I have 500 followers. They’re mostly bots, uh, on TikTok to talk about podcasting and some of the stuff, stuff I did in my booking and a little bit on Instagram as well.

That’s more TikTok followers than I have. I, I’ve also played around with it a little bit. Yeah. But haven’t done a whole lot there. Yeah. That kind of stuff. So I’m not sure it’s worth the time, but I’m there, you know, so, and, and Instagram, I tend to keep an Instagram presence on behalf of PO Bill Media as much as anything else.

So the, uh, yeah. Yeah. My and my daughters are, one is really into TikTok and one is really in Instagram reel, so that’s kind of where they, they absorb a lot of life, but, you know, with the, with the move away from Twitter and x, Sony Evil gone to, to LinkedIn Right. Has been a big beneficiary. Right. But also, you know, mastodons where I spend my time with Fred’s.[00:55:00]

Mm-Hmm. Blue sky, all this. So Blue Sky has, uh, just been taking a little bit of, you know, getting some attention and flack because they accepted a, a round of investment that had $13 million, which the big, the big player in it was a company called Blockchain Capital, which is a, a, a blockchain, cryptocurrency kind of company.

And, and now, I mean, if you go back, you know, Jack Dorsey was behind the creation of Blue Sky and that stuff. Right. And he’s big into that whole world. Yeah. So this should not be a surprise on one level, but, but Blue Sky talked a good bit about how they’ve, they’ve grown, they’ve opened it up. They now have 13 million people.

They’ve, they’ve got Federation, they’ve got some people doing separate servers using this, the AT protocol as they call it. Mm-Hmm. They’ve got, um, custom feeds. They’re gonna be building more stuff that they’re doing. So they’re talking all about what they’re, what they’re trying to do here. And so that’s, uh, that’s their big news.

They’ve got a a, a lot of things happening, a lot of stuff going on that has not been universally well received because many people have been saying, you know, Hey, [00:56:00] here we are. This is the acidification, you know, is coming at some point. Because here we go with, with that. And over on Mastodon, where I spent a lot of time, there’s of course been a lot of commentary around, you know, here we go, VC investing, all this stuff, right?

And, uh, Eugene or Eugene Racho, who’s the kind of the co-founder or the founder of Mastodon, he had a post that said, Mastodon is financed by crowdfunding instead of venture capital. Not because we don’t know that venture capital exists, not because we don’t have bills to pay and not because venture capital isn’t willing to give money to new social media platforms.

VCs don’t want a sustainable business. They want a big exit. Every VC backed business is on a timer to deliver or die. And, and that’s true. That’s but true. It’s a, it’s a great. Soundbite because it’s absolutely true. You, it is absolutely true. I’ve worked at a couple startups that were VC backed and you had a timer.

Yeah. You had to, you know, this was your, your schedule that you had to go and do. It’s crazy. So, so that’s [00:57:00] kind of the big, the big thing. That’s, um, it’s a big deal. Yeah. It’s going on. So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. You know. We’ll, uh, we’ll, blue Sky, sky, the timer just started on blue sky. Right. Will they deliver what their, what their investors need?

Yeah. Or not, so, um, so you were telling me a little bit earlier when we were talking too. Mm-Hmm. You use a product called Riverside FM to record some of the podcast that you take. Right. And you were telling me about some of the cool new stuff. So maybe what is Riverside fm? Well, Riverside, so of course with the, with the, the pandemic and quarantine, we had to use much more zoom, much more remote podcasting, uh, than we ever did before.

We were doing it before sending out kits, sending out com, Rex lines, but then everybody got very used to Zoom. We built studios every got. Most people, and it’s talked about on this show, got better microphones, better headsets for their Zoom calls at Home. Riverside is is a step above Zoom and when I was at podcast movement a couple months ago, [00:58:00] the crew at Riverside told us they were coming out with a whole bunch of AI developments, better tools inside the unit.

So we did two hours of just the staff at Pod Media last week running through all the advancements that this new update in Riverside has. I couldn’t possibly list them all here. The AI searchability, the transcription, you can do word search, you can create social media assets, you can fine tune those, do them by topic.

It’s, it’s absolutely overwhelming. We are thrilled by these new tools, which most people aren’t using, but we are using now as of of today. What’s an example? So it’s a real advanced what’s, yeah. What’s an example of one of the tools that used to take you hours, but now you can do an in minutes? Well, let’s say you and I do this and I’m gonna go back and try and make a 62nd clip based on Blue sky.

I’ll take this audio and or audio and video back to Riverside and, and say, create a [00:59:00] 62nd clip on the word blue sky. I don’t have to do any of the work. All I have to do is the post editing, which you might have had to do after one or two people. Found that clip sourced the clip, it might give you five different versions of that that you can choose from.

And then do that sort of super editing process so you don’t have to search. Find the time. You don’t have to mark. Mark down the time when you were having that conversation like we used to. Oh yeah. Oh, at three minutes and 20 seconds. I did. I was talking with Dan about blue sky, none of that. It’s all taken care of.

So you just go and say, I want make me 62nd clips on Blue Cloud blue or blue sky and goes, wow, that’s really cool. Including, including subtitles. I mean, all the bells and whistles that we do manually can be created. You still can’t take the person out at the end of the editing process. Right. ’cause as, as you guys have talked about, as we’ve talked about, there are errors.

You can’t just post that. Right. ’cause then it blames on you, but it does take out the first edit, maybe the second and third. Wow. Then you’re in there going, [01:00:00] okay, does it sound better if I cut it here or there? But that first draft is taken care of for you on the podcast, on the social media assets.

That’s just one of the features. It’s really, really, really robust. That’s cool. Riverside do com. Well, I gotta wrap it there for the show, but, uh, it’s great to see you Charlie. Nice to meet. It’s great to meet after knowing you virtually for so long that I know it’s a face to face know. Look for our selfie.

There you go. Well, thanks. Uh, she Neville for, uh, this opportunity to talk and say a little bit more people. You can find more about that at Riverside. Ff and Charlie, where can people find you on social media? Well, as a result of listening to for immediate release, for many years I started podcasting and now run a media production company called Pod Ville Media.

So Pod ville Media one word.com. And please look me up or I’m just Charlie at Pod Bill Media. All right. Yeah. Thanks everybody. Thanks Deb. Yeah, thank you. Back to you. She Neville. Bye for now. Just a little PS I was recording that with [01:01:00] Charlie in the cafe using a new device I got called the Holly Land Lark, M two wireless lav mics.

They’re two little round circular microphones that you can just put on the shirt with a magnetic thing. They go to a connector. In this case that was going into my iPhone. There’s also A-U-S-B-C and also a connector. It can go into a, a camera or an audio device. But I was quite pleased we didn’t even use the noise cancellation feature that, uh, that is also there.

So again, it’s a Holly Land Lark M two, if you wanna play with something new, very inexpensive, very nice. thank you so much, Dan. I cannot tell you how it warms my heart to hear you talking with Charlie, Bernie. I saw the photo that you shared as well of the two of you together. , just knowing that FIR brought people together who would’ve never otherwise met, is just a wonderful feeling.

And, , also, of course, the [01:02:00] content of the report was interesting. blue Sky. Yeah, I’m spending very, very little time on Blue Sky. I would say threads between the two of them has really captured my attention more. , but , this investment, , might, boost their fortunes. So our next story, it follows a tragic death of Liam Payne, the former member of the One Direction Boy Band who fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Last week, a local news platform in the West Midlands in the uk owned by reach PLC, posted over 80 articles within 72 hours each. Aiming to garner online engagement. This was nothing less than the strategy of milking Liam Payne’s. Death for Clicks says Dan Slee, an award-winning, communicated with decades of experience in public sector communication in the media.

He argues that this highlights a shift in local journalism, which now prioritizes clicks over community relevance and sensitivity. This approach led to substantial [01:03:00] backlash with nearly half of the comments on the local news platforms article, expressing frustration at the perceived exploitation of Payne’s death.

Many readers criticized the flood of coverage suggesting it was disrespectful to Payne’s family and intrusive. SLE points out that modern news platforms like Reach PLC, prioritize digital metrics over traditional reporting resulting in loss of trust. This specific example of using repetitive emotion driven headlines reflects a widespread shift across local media where the focus is now on high traffic content rather than nuanced storytelling.

Slee emphasizes that while the if it bleeds, it leads mantra, once sold print papers. Today’s readers are quick to spot sensationalism. They expect higher standards from news outlets, particularly in times of tragedy. Tragedy in essence, slee cautions that reach PLC’s approach risks alienating its audience in the long term.

He suggests that while this strategy may succeed in the short term for engagement, it [01:04:00] ultimately devalues the community connection that local journalism wants upheld. Building on Dan s Lee’s critique author and crisis PR consultant, mark Bakowski adds a powerful layer about the consequences of this media machine on celebrities themselves in an opinion piece in The Guardian.

While Slee critiques reaches tactics as commercially unsustainable, Bakowski suggests that such practices are ethically fraught, diminishing the humanity of public figures like pain. Together these perspectives offer a comprehensive view. While outlets like reach exploit celebrity news to maximize engagement, they contribute to a dehumanizing culture that disregards the wellbeing of those at its center.

This combined perspective emphasizes that today’s media, by constantly feeding on the lives of celebrities, not only risks alienating audiences, but also enforces an unsustainable cycle of scrutiny on public figures. As Slee warns of the audience backlash against relentless clickbait, Bukowski’s insights encourage [01:05:00] people to consider the emotional toil on celebrities and ask if a change in how we approach celebrity culture is overdue.

Together they argue for immediate landscape, and that balances engagement with respect and empathy, acknowledging the impact on both audiences and those in the spotlight. A remarkable story in some regards. , just the chutzpah of a, of an organization to take that approach, , around something so tragic, , and yet unsurprising, , especially with the sensationalism that so many publications feel is necessary in order to draw eyeballs.

, unfortunate. But I think it’s just the way things are these days. You mentioned the old, if it bleeds, it leads mantra and that hasn’t changed. you’re, you’re no not going to see a story about, you know, it was a sunny day and people walked in the park. , the media is attracted to those types of stories in which people are [01:06:00] hurt or bad things have happened.

, that’s not gonna change, but this is different. , this is almost the glorification of a tragic event as opposed to, , incessant coverage of that event. This wasn’t more reporting or more analysis. , this was just hammering people with the fact that it had happened. And I can see why their audience was not happy with it.

This particular company reached PLC, published a number of tabloids in the uk and a swath of local newspapers up and down the country. , they’re in the news for a different reason. It’s , very related, I think, which is , the whole business model is geared to. Clicks on questionable content, on articles that lead you to click, they’ll talk about something happens in, in, in an industry and this particular company is gonna do X and they mention the company, you gotta click to get more information.

I’ve seen some people talking about, , the way in which they treat their employees, the reporters in particular [01:07:00] where they are incentivized to just literally churn out. Sheer volumes of content, , day in and day out, and manufacture stories where frankly there is no story. If you look at some of these papers, , I dunno what it’s like in the US shell, but local media in this country, broadly speaking, you go to a local media website and you are absolutely surrounded with popups, ads, the works and stuff popping up all the time, encouraging you to sign up and do this or whatever.

, and the illustrations within an article are typically third party, other articles from the likes of Tabula and those kinds of companies that sell this kind of content. So you know that your visit is being tracked inside out and back to front and upside down every time you click something. So they are, they seem to be at the forefront of this.

And so I expect to see more news like this criticizing reach PLC. , but like you said, the cynicism kicks in quite easily. Is anything really gonna change? I admire Mark Bukowski’s encouragement., to [01:08:00] think about this more than we tend to. And he’s written, , actually his article is really , worth reading.

, but will it move any needles in any meaningful way for anyone? I, I wonder, so is this something that regulators need to do anything about? I honestly can’t see that. it’s the business model. The people running this business are the ones who need to be in the frame for accountability. It seems to me.

Yeah, this won’t come as a surprise to anybody, but I did hear a journalist, I think it was at the PRSA conference, re recalling the days where they could spend all day working on a story, working their sources, getting more quotes. Yeah, getting more information, putting Polish to the finished product.

Now they’re expected to turn out five, six stories a day just to keep that flow of clickbait coming. Even the journalists aren’t necessarily happy with this, but it is sadly the state of affairs because there has to be a way for media companies to create revenue, otherwise they’re not gonna be able to.

Produce this content. And despite the fact [01:09:00] that there is, I understand low trust in the media, these are the folks who go out and spend the time, using up their shoe leather, , getting the facts. Getting the details, yeah. , and reporting them in coherent ways that are meaningful to people.

There, there has to be a way to maintain this. Is it public funding? I don’t know. , but there, there has to be, , a model for maintaining professional journalism. Not that I’m gonna call the publication that you highlighted, , professional journalism. Well, they get paid to do it. Right.

So it’s professional journalists, just not good professional journalism. No, this is the landscape, shall I agree with you? And, and it’s not a pretty site. That’s a fact. Something needs to happen. He says, , I dunno what though. Over the past few years, a lot of workers have become increasingly disconnected from their roles, from their peers, even from their employers.

We’ve seen this in trends like Quiet, quitting, and the Great resignation, both of which were topics here on FIR. For some, this fractured relationship is partly a [01:10:00] reaction to the uncertainty and isolation that was brought on by the Covid Pandemic, which fundamentally altered the way we work. In response, there are a lot of leaders who are asking employees to RTO, that is return to the office, believing that being physically together will foster better connections, drive collaboration and boost engagement.

And I have heard this from a number of people throughout the business world that, with people working remotely in hybrid, there’s less of that. Serendipitous encountering of somebody in the hallway where the conversation leads to a brainstorm or the solving of a problem. We need to get people back in the office, but according to the NeuroLeadership Institute and Akamai’s, latest research, physical presence alone.

Probably isn’t gonna deliver the results that you’re looking for. Forcing people back isn’t necessary necessarily a solution to disconnection. In fact, it [01:11:00] can backfire. Productivity can decline, and organizations risk losing some of their most seasoned employees. So how can organizations truly foster connection?

The researchers propose what they call the Clear Model, an acronym that breaks down the workplace connections into four types, colleague, leader, employer, and role. So let’s quickly review these. The Colleague Connection is what most of us envision when we think of a workplace connection relationship we have with our coworkers.

Colleague. Connection enables trust, support, and collaboration. Embracing both individual and team performance. Leader Connection looks at our bond with our immediate leaders who play a significant role in shaping. Our work experience, a good manager provides opportunities, clarity and balance Feedback research shows it up to 70% of engagement variants can be con attributed to the quality of this connection.

The employer connection considers the alignment between the employee and the organization’s mission and values. [01:12:00] This connection can be pivotal in shaping how meaningful and fulfilling one’s work feels, and the role connection. This is inspired by the concept of flow. A role connection is about how well a person fits with and enjoys the job.

It’s the engagement and clarity an employee feels in their specific role, knowing how their efforts can advance them personally and professionally. , these four elements suggest that connection is multidimensional, not a one size fits all. Solution. Leaders should consider this model when implementing return to office policies.

Take a mandate that only prioritizes colleague connection. It could inadvertently strain leader connection if employees feel their autonomy is being overlooked. That’s one of those intrinsic values that people hold dear employer. Enroll connections might also suffer if people feel undervalued or micromanaged simply for showing up in person.

And in fact, if you decide not to go the return to office route, the clear framework. Pretty clearly shows us that [01:13:00] nurturing all four connection types creates a stronger workplace connection. Even if people aren’t necessarily coming to the office. You might adopt a patchwork principle that accommodates different ways of working for different teams or individuals, rather than a single blanket policy.

But businesses are wrestling with low engagement, , wrestling with rapid change, diminished trust. It’s really important for leaders to recognize the nature of workplace connection and approach, approach it with intention and the clear framework, which by the way, came out of a Harvard Business Review article, , is an opportunity to rethink the workplace, aligning it more closely with the diverse needs of the workforce that we’re coping with today.

Yeah, that makes total sense. And one thing struck me from the Harvard Business View article, , is how things change over time. And, the precise wording that caught my eye, our connection preferences can also wax and wane depending on what’s going on in their lives. Change a big life events.

Someone got [01:14:00] married, perhaps, , takes up a hobby, , that materially alters their desire for partnership at work. , and I’m also thinking that this whole thing about working from home in particular arose during the pandemic and the strong efforts made by companies everywhere to, provide an appeal for employees to do that, to finance their offices home equipment.

And that’s now four. Since that happens suddenly reverse gears. , you gotta come back to the office. Now , you’re talking about material effects on people, again, wrenching them outta something they now got used to with the encouragement of their employer officially, even if some managers don’t like it.

, and indeed we were talking earlier that, , some managers are just blinked at this. Totally. You’ve gotta come to the office. I don’t believe any of this stuff at all about the benefits work at home. Nothing works except you physically being in the office. That doesn’t all go well for employer employee relations, particularly if that’s a senior person talking like that.

I [01:15:00] get the clear analogy. , but , , the article does go on about, the consequences if employee employers insist on return to the office, a blanket return to the office. We’ve talked about this before. We’ve written about it too. And I’ve seen lots of articles, , that tend to pop up , when some companies in the news, ’cause they’re insisting everyone goes back to the office.

I’m not. A kind of a wholesale action like that anymore if I’m judging it by what’s not being reported anymore in the mainstream media, let’s say. It’s not something I’ve paid huge attention to recently to get a sense of how serious is this return to the office thing, , as a mass return.

I don’t see that happening. But nevertheless, it’s, , it’s troubling when you hear people still saying that nothing happens outside the office, so you’ve gotta come back. That’s simply not true anymore. , not only because of the changes that have happened since the pandemic, but that just isn’t true. I like to think this is true.

I haven’t researched it, but I was in a session, , at a conference, I think it was at the IEPC conference in June where the speaker [01:16:00] said there’s actually no empirical evidence at all that being in the office leads to these serendipitous encounters in the hallway that produce brainstorms or problem solutions, at a rate that’s any higher than other means of doing it.

That , it’s just a myth. I would say if it’s so planned , and strategized, and it ain’t serendipitous in that case, these are chance encounters. I remember, yeah, I used to be a smoker. I haven’t had a cigarette since 1991, but I used to be a smoker. , and some of the best conversations I ever had was outside at the ashtray because you had to go outside and there were people from all different departments there.

And man, the information exchange , was terrific people that you wouldn’t be talking to otherwise. This is why I always like to tell clients, I say, if you really wanna know how information moves through this organization, go hang out with the smokers outside. , but does that lead to solutions that are going to produce revenues, , or solve big problems for the [01:17:00] organization somehow?

I doubt it for all those conversations that I had out at the ashtray, I can’t remember one of them. Leading to something big, , whether it was me producing that outcome or somebody else who was out there having a smoke. like you, I was a smoker. I didn’t stop actually until 2008, so that’s a good 15 years or more longer than you.

But I remember one job I had actually, it was at Mercer, , actually where my boss’s boss was a heavy smoker. And, catching up with him in the smoking group was always very beneficial, very relaxed, , and it was nice to have a chat with him. But the other thing, it may have been the only place you could go catch up with him, right?

You couldn’t get in to see this person. Otherwise, , those were the serendipitous moments I remember. I must have been anyway, this debate is not gonna go away anytime soon. This whole thing about come back to the office or not. We look forward to talking about it again in the upcoming episode, I’m sure.

Our final story in this month’s episode is [01:18:00] another report that we’re gonna take a look at. , but this is, , not like the blogging report. This is about AI and, , unlike the way you conducted that one, she, I’m not gonna talk so much about , the content of this report. We have a link to it , in the show notes.

It’s a big read. With a huge amount to unpack, , much of which, , is gonna be complex to many communicators. And indeed, that takes away the focus of what we want to focus on in this, which is, , something that’s utterly relevant to communicators who are seeking to understand AI’s business landscape. So the state of the AI report is what it’s called, published in mid-October, just a week or so ago.

, shows an industry at a turning point with AI expanding into new domains and redefining sectors while grappling with significant challenges around regulation, sustainability, and safety. , as I mentioned, it’s a big read, but this breakdown is. Geared, I hope to helping us [01:19:00] communicate is understand what’s actually important about this and what takeaways we can get from support without actually reading it.

So we are here to help you with that, but I encourage you to read at least the executive summary and then dive into some of these segments ’cause it is worth the takeaway. So the first of these five key insights, , is that AI is increasingly relevant across industries that were not traditionally tech heavy.

It moves outta the tech landscape entirely. So communicators should prepare to bridge these interdisciplinary opportunities, crafting narratives that resonate with diverse fields from healthcare to engineering. The second, the emergence of content creation. Startups suggest a new array of tools for business communicators, particularly in video and audio.

However, as model and hardware costs remain high, it will be crucial for communicators to advise on the cost benefit equation and to gauge the sustainability of AI driven solutions. Third, with regional regulations growing, it’s essential for communicators to articulate [01:20:00] compliance measures and to guide stakeholders in navigating the complex regulatory landscape.

Communicators have a role in demystifying these laws and explaining their business impacts, especially in Europe and the us. One tip I’d add to that is something I did. If you take for instance, the eus , AI law, I’ve forgotten the formal title of, it’s a massive document and ask chat GPT plus to summarize it all and highlighting certain things, , it will do that.

It will give you something digestible that you could take away from, or start to develop further and ask more questions to fine tune this. It will even do things like, tell me what this means from a professional communicator perspective, once you define what that kind of audience or persona is, actually is very handy.

, the fourth one. Is trust building around AI will be essential as companies emphasize deployment speed communicators can support transparency efforts by addressing safety and ethical considerations. This proactive approach [01:21:00] will help allay public concerns and sustain consumer confidence in AI products.

And the fifth one, increase adoption and retention of AI products indicator maturing market ready for long-term solutions Communicators have an opportunity to spotlight customer success stories and articulate the distinct advantages of new AI-driven products. So to summarize, overall communicators should be prepared to guide stakeholders through AI’s growing complexities, crafting messaging that clarifies both its transformative potential and the responsibilities it entails.

What do you reckon? Shell, isn’t it interesting that so many people are worried about job loss as a result of AI being able to do the work that they do? And indeed, there have been copywriters who have been laid off from advertising agencies because AI has taken that on. But if you look at this report and, uh some others like it.

For communicators who are strategic, , and who [01:22:00] are paying attention, AI is job security. There is so much that communicators can do to help organizations adopt, , and maximize , the potential of, , and use AI ethically. That this should keep us , very busy, , on top of our, our regular duties.

I, think it’s the first technology I have seen, and as you know, I’ve been paying attention to the technologies that impact communication since desktop publishing. But I think if, if we’re. Just staying current with all of this and developing a solid understanding, not just of how it can be used to write and create graphics, but the impact on the organization and how it can impact the organization, , both from the outside and the inside, and encouraging employees to use it effectively.

And the list goes on and on. , there’s just [01:23:00] a ton of work for us to do and we can demonstrate to the organization that we’re the ones to be doing it. These five points are made are just these, there’s a lot more you could dive into in this report. I just plucked out what I felt would’ve been, , some obvious ones to communicate.

They’re all to, all of these are aligned with what , you’ve just been saying. So yes, there is opportunity and it doesn’t really require anyone to tell you what to do. you, if you are a communicator, you’ve got a golden opportunity here to grasp this and take it to that next level that will benefit your organization.

Impress your boss, and, your job will be secure. This is as secure as any job can be, but it’s, it’s opportunity knocks. Yeah. And it, it’s important for communicators to read reports like this and. Ethan Malik’s book and follow him online , and follow Chris Penn and listen to some of , the better AI focused podcasts.

, I was just at , this meeting of construction [01:24:00] communicators. I was at, two of them had gone to Macon, , the marketing AI conference, which is just getting rave reviews. People love this thing. And, , the guy who runs that organization and one of his senior leaders do a weekly AI podcast, but I think , it’s just the two of them talking, but it’s excellent , what they cover.

So there are resources out there that make this easier to stay up to speed than there were with previous technologies. So really need to jump into those. And that’ll wrap up this episode of Four Immediate Release. You Dear Listener, have not heard the technical problems that we’ve had because I will have edited all of those out, but this has been a very challenging episode.

, our next episode, we’ll be doing the midweek shorter episodes now that we’re both back in the office. Although I will be gone for one week. I am speaking at an internal comms conference in Toronto the week after next, but we’ll get several of our midweek episodes up. Our next long [01:25:00] form monthly episode will drop on Monday, November 25th, so we’re recording that on the 23rd.

In the meantime, we hope that you will comment on anything you have heard here or on any of our midweek episodes. There are a number of ways to do that. The way that most people are doing that these days is by leaving a comment on the LinkedIn announcement of the Post, but we also announce those on Blue Sky, on threads, on Facebook, on Mastodon.

So whichever one of these you follow, , leave a comment. We’ll find it and we’ll share it. But you can also send an email to fir [email protected]. You can attach an audio file or record one on the FIR. Podcast Network website. Just click the record voicemail at the right hand side of the page and we will play your audio.

Man. We haven’t done that in ages. Nobody’s sent us any audio. Sent us [01:26:00] audio. , and you can also leave a comment in the post, on FIR podcast network.com. , and we hope that you will leave a review and a rating, , wherever you get your podcasts. And that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

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