News

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

FIR Live #19 set for October 9 with Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

Companies that encourage their HEROes—the label Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler apply to highly empowered and resourceful employees whose experiments and innovations on customers’ behalf result in extraordinary customer service—reap the benefits. That’s the subject up for discussion on the next FIR Live with the co-authors of Empowered the follow-up to the hugely popular Groundswell. The show—which you’re encouraged to be part of by calling in or participating in the live chat room, is set for Saturday, October 9, at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. London.

imageJosh Bernoff is the coauthor of the BusinessWeek bestseller Groundswell, the “best book ever written on marketing and media” (Advertising Age), and is senior vice president, idea development, at Forrester Research. Ted Schadler is a vice president and principal analyst in Forrester’s IT Research Group. His work over 13 years at Forrester has focused on disruptive technologies and how senior decision-makers should harness them.

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

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

Join us for what promises to be a stimulating discussion!

Posted by shel on 09/29 at 02:40 PM
FIR Live • News • (0) Comments • Permalink

Sunday, July 25, 2010

FIR Live set for August 14 on Facebook-focused campaigns

FIR Live is back!

Is it wise for companies to direct consumers to their Facebook pages instead of their websites? That’s the subject our panel will discuss on Saturday, August 14, at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. London.

The panel will include…

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

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

Join us for what promises to be a stimulating discussion!

Posted by shel on 07/25 at 06:35 AM
FIR Live • News • (0) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Introducing Pollstream, FIR’s newest sponsor

We’re delighted to welcome Pollstream as a new sponsor to “For Immediate Release.”

We learned several years ago that listeners welcome sponsors that offer content relevant to their work. Ragan Communications’ steady stream of opportunities for communications-focused professional development and CustomScoop’s insights related to monitoring fit right into that framework. Pollstream continues the tradition.

imagePollStream is a leading provider of interactive engagement and community building solutions. The company’s clients apply Pollstream’s two-way dialogue solutions to engage, educate and inform customers and employees online. Solutions include Poll, Quiz, Comment Engine, Sparkplug and Hive, each of which taps into participants’ fundamental desire to declare and compare ideas, opinions and recognition.

FIR listeners were first introduced to Pollstream in an FIR interview back in March 2009 with company founder Steven Green and TD Canada Trust communicator Wendy Arnott. The pair discussed TD’s use of The Hive as a tool to generate internal discussion of customer service among the bank’s employees.

The sponsorship will feature a 60-second repoortin each episode of “The Hobson & Holtz Report” that provides listeners with insights into interaction with audiences. Visitors to the FIR website will also be able to participate in a Pollstream poll that will change every couple weeks.

We encourage listeners to visit the Pollstream site and to explore how Pollstream can help achieve your objectives by visiting the special FIR page on the Pollstream site.

Posted by shel on 07/17 at 12:28 PM
News • (0) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

New FIR iPhone app available

We were sorely disappointed when the FIR smartphone apps from iSites no longer played the audio files. Luckily, we found a better alternative—at least, for the iPhone.

Wizzard Media, which owns Libsyn (which hosts FIR’s audio files) offers an iPhone app. It costs $2.99, but it’s a terrific app. If you’re looking to take FIR on the road with you—and have it available within seconds rather than waiting for a download—this app is the answer.

We’re still looking for an Android solution. In the meantime, if you have an iPhone, you’ll find our new app is loaded with features. Once the app loads (which takes about 15 seconds), you’ll find the latest episode ready for you to play. A giant “play” button means you won’t miss it, even if you’re driving. (You shouldn’t be screwing with your phone while you’re driving anyway.) It takes just a few seconds for the latest episode to buffer, and there’s no need to be on WiFi in order to listen (although the download will count toward your data consumption totals).

A button in the upper left-hand corner will take you to a list of episodes from all our feeds, including interviews, speakers and speeches, and book reviews in addition to The Hobson and Holtz Report.

A contact page lets you give us a call (although for now, it only lists the North America number; we’re in touch with Wizzard to figure out how we can get the app to display both numbers), email us, go straight to the FIR site, and follow us on Twitter. Too bad there’s no way to get this screen to take you straight to our Friendfeed page.

Episode extras allow you to play an episode in the background (while you’re doing other things on your phone) or recommend the show to a friend.

One other nifty feature of the app from our point of view: We control much of what it displays from an interface on the Libsyn website.

Be sure to listen to FIR episode 555 on Monday, July 12. We’ll announce a contest with free downloads of the app as prizes.

Again, you can get the app here.

Here are some screenshots of the app in action:

image

Posted by shel on 07/06 at 02:26 PM
News • (0) Comments • Permalink

Monday, April 12, 2010

FIR goes weekly, introduces format changes

Change is inevitable, even for FIR.

Effective today, FIR will be a weekly podcast, produced on Mondays. The Thursday installment is now a thing of the past.

Additionally, we have made several changes to the FIR format, most resulting from the 2009 listener survey, the results of which were released about a year ago.

The switch to a weekly schedule is the result of increased time pressures both co-hosts are experiencing, particularly Neville since he took a full-time job late last year. The need to be in his company’s London offices and on evening conference calls made it increasingly difficult to be available on Thursdays for recording at the usual time, 5 p.m. UK and 9 a.m. Pacific. We considered several alternatives but opted to return to the original but short-lived weekly format in order to concentrate our efforts on producing a podcast of the highest possible quality.

We know some listeners will be dismayed. Others have told us over the years that two shows is just too much to keep up with. We hope the weekly format will ultimately attract more listeners while continuing to satisfy the information needs of our loyal audience.

We are also committed to continuing to produce interviews and other content for our several feeds.

As for format changes, these include…

  • A new intro to symbolize the change to the show
  • Listener comments moved closer to the beginning
  • Correspondents integrated into the “News That Fits” segment (both weekly correspondents, Dan York and Michael Netzley, will be featured on the weekly podcast, along with any of the occasional correspondents who contribute to FIR)
  • Shorter news items with more conversation between Shel and Neville
  • A quick review of goings-on in the past week that won’t be covered in the news; this will occur just before listener comments

One note: We plan to experiment over the next few weeks with the intro. We’re not yet satisfied with the music, so we’ll try several different themes, then ask for your input. Stay tuned for an FIR poll to appear sometime in late May asking which intro you like best. We’ll include MP3s so you can review the options.

Of course, we’d love to hear what you think of these changes. And thanks for your continued participation in FIR.

Posted by shel on 04/12 at 02:20 PM
News • (5) Comments • Permalink

Monday, March 08, 2010

FIR #532 will be late, but it’s coming

Due to travel and work schedules, FIR #532 won’t be posted until late on Monday, March 8. We promise, though, it’s coming.

Posted by shel on 03/08 at 04:49 AM
News • (0) Comments • Permalink

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Announcing FIR for iPhone and Android

FIR iPhone appGetting hold of episodes of the For Immediate Release (FIR) podcasts to listen to on your mobile device whenever and wherever you want to is pretty easy.

The two most most popular ways to do this are subscribing via iTunes – a prime choice especially if you have an iPhone, iPod or iPod Touch – or subscribing via one or more of the RSS feeds on the FIR website.

In either case, you get the MP3 file on your computer which you then either synchronize to your mobile device with iTunes or other program that let’s you do that (Winamp is one), or manually copy the file to it.

If you have an iPhone, an iPod Touch or a device running the Android OS, there’s now an even easier way to get your podcast episodes with the new FIR app, now available in the iTunes App Store and the Android Market. There’s currently no cost – the app is free to download and use.

The FIR app presents the five distinct FIR podcasts – The Hobson & Holtz Report, FIR Cuts, FIR Interviews, FIR Book Reviews and FIR Speakers & Speeches – organized into categories that make it very easy to find just the content you want all in one place on your mobile device. The default category when you start is ‘Most Recent,’ a perfect way of auto-organizing content for most people.

Categories Most Recent

Episode Interviews

Categories brings some essential organization to your FIR collection on your mobile device, making it simple to select particular content you want.

The might notice one podcast not included – FIR Live on BlogTalk Radio, the live show we do once a month or so. That’s because recordings of those live shows are included in the Hobson & Holtz Report category.

App Store search result For the iPhone, etc, you can find the FIR app in the App Store. But the easiest way to find, download and install it is on your iPhone or iPod Touch:

1. Load the App Store on your device.

2. Tap the Search button and type FIR.

3. The FIR app should be the first result you get – it was when I installed it yesterday – as the screenshot shows.

4. Tap the listing, tap the word ‘free’ and then ‘install.’

There you have it – the FIR app installed on your device, ready to go!

The FIR app for iPhone and Android was created with iSites.us, a new app creation service launched in January by California startup GenWi. Just $25 and we have an app. A brilliant service.

Creating a mobile experience has never been easier nor cheaper.

We’re thrilled with our first app creation and hope you find it useful and an enjoyable experience. Do let us know what you think. If you have any suggestions for improvement, we want to hear that, too.

Posted by neville on 02/28 at 04:17 AM
News • (2) Comments • Permalink

Page 6 of 18 pages ‹ First  < 4 5 6 7 8 >  Last ›