
Monday, March 17, 2014
The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #747: March 17, 2014
Quick News: The top 10 companies in the US doing the most to make their employees happier, Wikipedia considering change to paid-advocate rules, why every employee should be building weak ties at work, pushing back on Arik Hanson’s Digg preference with 21 reasons your boss should pay you to browse Reddit; Ragan promo;
News That Fits: Deloitte study says employees are overwhelmed; Dan York’s Tech Report: ICANN meeting in Singapore, Getty Images, the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, and more; what to do if you’re up against Accenture or Deloitte in your next competitive pitch; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments from the FIR Podcast Community on Google+; the best PR advice you’ve never heard (from Facebook’s head of tech communications); Michael Netzley’s Asia Report: Andrea Vasceralli takes Singapore by storm while China cracks down on We Chat; 5 new shows this past week on the FIR Podcast Network; social media marks "the end of the focus group as we know it" says the FT;
Music by City and Colour; and more.
Get FIR:
- Download the MP3 file (36.0Mb, 89:26)
- Subscribe to the Hobson and Holtz Report RSS feed
- Get the show at iTunes
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.
For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report for March 17, 2014: An 89-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.
Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the "everything" RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.
So, until Monday March 24…
Friday, March 14, 2014
FIR on Higher Education #6 – Dan Schawbel on Millenials, Workforce Needs and Higher Education
What are hiring managers expecting out of university graduates? How should higher education innovate to meet these expectations?
Dan Schawbel, an expert on workplace trends and Gen Y careers, addresses these questions on episode six of For Immediate Release on Higher Education. He also delves into a recent research study he led on the future of education. According to this study, 50% of students surveyed noted that they don’t need a physical classroom, 53% believe that online colleges are reputable and 39% view the future of education as being more virtual.
I also provide a report on the recent Gallup study on what business leaders look for in university graduates, and technology correspondent Harry Hawk’s report focuses on Iversity, a platform for MOOC courses.
About Dan Schawbel
Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press), which is a #1 Barnes & Noble business bestseller and was named the “career book of the year” by the Chicago Tribune. His first book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, was a #1 international bestseller and was named the #1 career book of 2009 by The New York Post. Combined, his books have been translated into 15 different languages and are used as textbooks at many schools including Stanford University, Boston University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The University of Texas at Austin. Both bestsellers were published before Dan’s 30th birthday.
Get this Podcast:
- Download the MP3 file (24Mb, 25:20)
- Subscribe to “FIR on Higher Education with Kevin Anselmo RSS feed
- Get the show at iTunes
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
About Your Host
Kevin Anselmo is the Founder and Principal of Experiential Communications, a consultancy focused on education. He helps brands within academia - whether individual or corporate - communicate with stakeholders. He also teaches communications and public relations workshops to different individuals and groups.
Previously, Kevin was Director of Public Relations for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and prior to that managed the media relations for IMD Business School in Switzerland. In addition, he was an adjunct communications professor at Nyack College in New York.
Currently based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Kevin lived and worked in Switzerland for eight years and in Germany for two years. He has led public relations initiatives in various countries around the world.
Find Kevin on Twitter: @kevinanselmo.
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.
FIR on Higher Education is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.
Show Notes • Higher Education • (0) Comments • Permalink
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
FIR Presents Inside PR 365: MasterCard ties one on, Facebook going mobile and the New Klout
Gini Dietrich and I do a two-hander in this episode as Martin is on a train with only spotty online access.
This week we talk about MasterCard’s aggressive PR tactics around the Brit Awards, more evidence that we’re all going mobile and the New Klout.
MasterCard ties one on
Gini pointed to MasterCard’s efforts to tie coverage of MasterCard to access to the Brit Awards. Dominic Ponsford detailed exactly what happened, from the PR company’s suggestion that access would be tied to agreement to mention MasterCard through the reactions to the Twitter backlash.
Ponsford published the text of an email to a reporter in which MasterCard’s PR company asked reporters to agree to tweet MasterCard messages in their feeds. The PR company went so far as to suggest content for tweets before, during and after the event:
Pre event – e.g. Really excited to be heading down to @BRITAwards tonight with @MasterCardUK #PricelessSurprises
Event night – live tweeting from the event including @MasterCardUK handle and #PricelessSurprises and to retweet @MasterCardUK tweets throughout the night where appropriate
Post event – tweet directing followers to @MasterCardUK BRITs YouTube videos
Needless to say, this prompted a backlash, with Twitter comments like this:
Good press coverage is hard to bribe. For everything else there’s Mastercard. #PricelessSurprises
— Felicity Morse (@FelicityMorse) February 19, 2014
The managing director of the PR agency didn’t back down, arguing that:
“The role of the PR agency is to pursue all coverage opportunities on behalf of its clients. This includes providing accurate brand references from the outset, for use across all platforms. It is a two-way conversation between the journalist and the PR in order to reach a mutually beneficial outcome. Editorial control always remains with the journalist.”
Gini and I discuss our views about this type of tactic. Gini sees this as an illustration of the fine line between legitimately promoting an event and the questionable offering of a benefit for coverage.
I see it as a clear example of tied coverage. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. You give me reference to my client and I will give you access to the awards.” Yes we have seen this before. Think of auto journalists flown to exotic locations to review new cars. But in recent years, the trend has been against these kinds of junkets, with many news organizations telling their staff to refuse the benefits. “You can’t blame a guy for trying. But you can blame the other guy for playing along.”
What do you think of MasterCard’s media relations approach? Too cheeky? Or taking fair advantage of the an opportunity. Or somewhere in between.
Canadians go mobile with Facebook
The world truly is going mobile. New stats out of Facebook Canada indicate that Facebook Canada is making more money on mobile devices than on PCs and stationary devices. Of Facebook’s nineteen million Canadian users, ten million check their Facebook account once a day via mobile versus only four million who check it daily from non-mobile devices like desktops.
To me, this just underscores the importance of think mobile first. If you are thinking about communicating with people primarily in front of PCs or laptops, you’re failing to follow the audience where they’ve actually gone. They are looking at the mobile devices in their hand.
Gini cautions against following an overall trend without looking at your specific circumstance. In her experience, many sectors are lagging behind in the move to mobile, with many of her clients’ sites continuing to receive the majority of their traffic from desktop applications. It’s important that you know where your traffic is coming from. So check your analytics.
A New (Improved?) Klout
And finally, we discuss the new Klout. Gini finds it useful, because it surfaces content from people with whom she already engages. Gini also finds the measurement tab to be useful in that it’s suggests which individual pieces of content have generated the greatest engagement. For my part, I find the metrics to be even more dumbed down than they used to be and of the dubious value. It appears to me that Klout is positioning itself as a tool to assist content creators in competition with established players like HootSuite or Buffer.
What do you think? Is the new Klout a step forward or moved to irrelevance?
Get this podcast:
- Download this episode (6.90Mb, 15:53)
- Subscribe to FIR Presents Inside PR on iTunes
- Subscribe to the FIR Presents Inside PR RSS feed
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also reach Inside PR’s hosts by email at insideprcomments@gmail.com, or join the InsidePR Google Plus community or Facebook group. InsidePR is on Twitter at @Inside_PR. You can send us an instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
Thank you to the people behind Inside PR: Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine D’Arbelles and Ashlea LeCompte.
Check the FIR website for information about other FIR podcasts. To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed.
FIR presents Inside PR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.
Craig Jamieson on AMP Up Your Social Media
Craig Jamieson is a Managing Member/Owner of Adaptive Business Services. Craig shows businesses how to leverage social sales tools, techniques, strategies, and Social CRM to increase their revenues.
Craig recently joined AMP Up Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss the importance of social media in B2B sales.
[Through social networking], my connections convert to opportunities, and most importantly, these opportunities find me, rather than me having to go out and cold prospect.
Craig offers these tips to get your sales team started on social media:
- Understand the concept of the social media ecosystem and how it all works together.
- Understand the psyche of the sales person; typically their mindset is not marketing. You need to make social media fast, clean and easy.
- Teach your sales team how to not only networking using social media, but also create status updates and share content…this is how they will start to see results.
- Provide your sales team with content (good posts that are connected to landing pages, blog articles, etc.) that brings attention to them and the company or the product/service.
Craig would love to hear from you! Chat with him on Twitter @CraigMJamieson or email him at craig@salesresultsllc.com.
About Our Guest
Craig M. Jamieson is the owner and manager of Adaptive Business Services, a DBA of Sales Results LLC. Craig has been a Boise resident since 1982. Craig’s entire career since 1977 has revolved around business to business sales activities and he has held posts as a business owner; local, district, regional, and national sales manager; and as a trainer and consultant. His workshops and seminars are consistently rated 9+ out of 10 by those who attend and he also served as adjunct faculty at Boise State University where he taught “Salesmanship”.
For the past five years, Craig has owned and operated NetWorks! Boise Valley, which is the most sophisticated and serious leads group organization in the Treasure Valley and is currently two groups strong. He is a strong believer in all things “networking” and blogs extensively on this topic including the recent addition of social media applications as they relate to business uses only.
Throughout his business career, Craig has consistently deployed CRM solutions in his business ventures and is uniquely qualified to evaluate these tools from the standpoint of both management and the individual salesperson. He is very familiar with Salesforce, Zoho, ACT! and a number of other applications. Craig understands selling, social media, and CRM.
Please note that this episode was recorded outside the normal studio quality that we have used in the past. We apologize for this, but the conversation was so insightful in terms of getting into the mind of how salespeople look at social media, we wanted to share it. Thank you for bearing with the variable sound quality.
Get this podcast:
- Download this episode (27.7Mb, 15:53)
- Subscribe to the FIR Presents AMP Up Your Social Media RSS feed
- Subscribe via iTunes
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
Tweet about the show using #AUYSM or Tweet at us @AMPUpSocial. AMP Up Your Social Media is a proud member of the FIR Podcast Network.
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
Join the AMP Up Your Social Media Google Plus community or Facebook group. You can send us an instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
Check the FIR website for information about other FIR podcasts. To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed.
AMP UP Your Social Media is sponsored by:
- GaggleAMP - Empower your employees, partners and resellers to amplify your social media.
- SafeLinks - Know when your links on social media messages fail before you lose out on the people clicking on them.
The FIR Podcast Network is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.
Show Notes • AMP Up Your Social Media • (0) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Linked Conversations #11: Author, Speaker and Online Consultant Paul Gillin—3/11/14
Welcome to the latest episode of Linked Conversations with Chuck Hester.
In this episode I cover LinkedIn’s fourth quarter earnings – including a breakout of how they make their money. I’ll also talk about their acquisition of Bright, the data-savvy Job Search startup and what it means for members.
My guest this week is Paul Gillin, author, speaker and online marketing consultant. Paul has published more than 200 articles on the subject of new media while maintaining two blogs and contributing to several others. Paul’s books include The New Influencers (2007), Secrets of Social Media Marketing (2008), The Joy of Geocaching (2010), Social Marketing to the Business Customer (2011), and Attack of the Customers (2013). He wrote the monthly New Channels column for BtoB magazine for seven years before that publication was folded into Advertising Age at the end of 2013.
Paul is a veteran technology journalist with more than 25 years of editorial leadership experience.His website is gillin.com and he blogs at paulgillin.com and Newspaper Death Watch.
Paul is also the host, along with Allan Schoenberg of the FIR B2B podcast here on the For Immediate Release Podcast network.
More about Paul can be found on his LinkedIn profile:
Don’t forget to check out LinkedConversations’ Google+ community and our LinkedIn Group: “The Podcast I Can’t Name Due to the Rules Group!”
So thanks for listening and if you like what you hear, spread the word!
Get this podcast:
- Download the MP3 file (12147835Mb, 28:44)
- Get the show on iTunes
- Subscribe to the FIR presents LinkedConversations with Chuck Hester RSS feed
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
Check the FIR website for information about other FIR podcasts. To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the "everything" RSS feed.
FIR presents LinkedConversations with Chuck Hester is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.
Thought Leadership with Mitchell Levy and Michael Procopio, Episode 13: Mar 8, 2014

In this episode of Thought Leadership with Mitchell and Michael (hashtag #TLL) we interview Jay McKeever, Director of Worldwide Marketing at Cincom.
Jay talks about thought leadership, social marketing and social selling.
More about Jay on LinkedIn

Join us 11 am PT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm GMT on Saturday every week. The show blog is Thought Leader Life.
Any comments or suggestions for the show please send them. Thank you for listening and if you like what you hear, please leave a review on iTunes!
This episode was sponsored, in part, by THiNKaha.com, helping experts become thought leaders.
You can connect with Mitchell at MitchellLevy.com, @HappyAbout on Twitter, or join his Thought Leadership Best Practices Group on LinkedIn; and with Michael at MProcopio.com, on Twitter: @MichaelProcopio; or Google+: Michael J Procopio
Get this podcast:
- Download the MP3 file (16.7MB, 36:36)
- Get the show on iTunes
- Subscribe to the FIR presents Thought Leadership with Mitchell Levy and Michael Procopio RSS feed
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
- This show is recorded as a Google+ Hangout on Air, watch it on YouTube
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.
FIR presents Thought Leadership with Mitchell and Michael is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.
Monday, March 10, 2014
The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #746: March 10, 2014
Intro: Dan and Neville got together in London on Friday night for a chat, recorded and posted as an FIR Interview;
Quick News: Omnicom buys into Instagram paid ad program for $100 million, Greenpeace accuses P&G of organgutan-habitat destruction, the Church of England follows Sweden Twitter example, why Digg and not Reddit is a must-read for PR pros; Ragan promo;
News That Fits: Getty Images opens up library of 35 million images for free sharing; Michael Netzley’s Asia Report: social media and the missing Malaysian airliner, Tencent’s WeChat makes a bold move into e-commerce, and more; social visual tools are headed to the enterprise; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments from the FIR Podcast Community on Google+; O2 aims to transform customer service in real time with #TweetServe; Dan York’s Tech Report: thoughts on a week in London, teleprompter apps for the iPad; last week on the FIR Podcast Network; volunteer communicators form ad hoc agency to help Ukraine government messaging;
Music from Drive-By Truckers; and more.
Get FIR:
- Download the MP3 file (35.3Mb, 87:46)
- Subscribe to the Hobson and Holtz Report RSS feed
- Get the show at iTunes
- Get the FIR app for your mobile device - iPhone | Android | Windows
Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.
For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report for March 10, 2014: An 88-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.
Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.
Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.
You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.
To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the "everything" RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.
So, until Monday March 17…

