FIR Podcast Network

For Immediate Release: Podcasts for Communicators

Shel Holtz, SCMP

Shel Holtz, SCMP (Certified Strategic Communication Management Professional), is currently director of Internal Communication at Webcor, a San Francisco-based commercial contractor. He is responsible for employee and executive communication, as well as social media. He also supports Webcor’s corporate public relations efforts.

Before joining Webcor in October 2017, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, where he brought more than 40 years of organizational communications experience in both corporate and consulting environments to his long list of clients. He is experienced in employee communications, corporate public relations, crisis communications, media relations, financial communications, investor relations, marketing communications, and compensation and benefits communications. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives, and communications research.

Before forming Holtz Communication + Technology, Shel was senior communications consultant and the communications practice leader for Alexander & Alexander Consulting Group in San Francisco, California. (A&ACG has since been acquired by Aon Consulting.) Other positions include director of corporate communications for Allergan, Inc., a Fortune 400 pharmaceutical company, and at Mattel, Inc. He also has worked for William M. Mercer, Inc., ARCO and Transamerica Financial Corporation.

In addition to his consulting and development work, Shel is a regular speaker on topics surrounding the application of online technology to strategic organizational communication. He speaks regularly at IABC and Ragan Communication conferences. He also has been on programs for the International Quality and Productivity Center, The American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business, the American Gas Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts, the Association of California Water Agencies, and the Western Pension & Benefits Conference, among others. He also spoke regularly on the Lexis-Nexis touring seminar, “Communicating in a Wired World.”

Shel is a five-time winner of IABC’s Gold Quill award (most recently winning in 1997 for external Web sites) and was named IABC/Los Angeles’s Communicator of the Year in 1988. Shel served six years on IABC’s executive board, two as director of U.S. District 6 and four as a director-at-large. While a director-at-large, he held the Technology portfolio, among others. During his term on the board, he served three times as a member of the executive committee. He has also served as chapter president for IABC/Los Angeles and in a variety of other volunteer positions in IABC at the chapter, district and international levels. Shel earned his IABC accreditation (ABC/Accredited Business Communicator) in 1984.

In 2005, Shel was named an IABC Fellow, the highest honor IABC confers on its members. He also is an Accredited Business Communicator through IABC.

Shel is a Senior Fellow with the Conference Board’s Marketing and Communications Center and a Platinum Fellow of The Mayo Clinic Social Media Network.

Shel has applied online technology to his communication efforts on behalf of companies and clients since the mid-1980s. His most recent book is “Tactical Transparency,” co-written with John C. Havens and published by Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. Shel is also the co-author of “How to Do Everything with Podcasting,” co-written with Neville Hobson and published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill and “Blogging for Business,” co-written with Ted Demopoulos and published by Kaplan. Earlier books include “Corporate Conversations,” a guide to employee communications, published by Amacom. “Public Relations on the Net,” published by AMACOM; and “The Intranet Advantage,” published by Ziff-Davis Press. He also wrote the manuals, “Communication and Technology” and “Communicator’s Guide to Intranets,” published by Ragan Communications and “Writing for the Wired World,” published by IABC.

Shel graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in Journalism from California State University, Northridge, in 1976.

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio

FIR #300: Communicating Pay Transparency

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In New York, pay transparency is required by law. It will also be a requirement in California after January 1. There’s a lot of good that can come from pay transparency, but for organizations with cultures unready for it, the consequences could be dire. Are companies enlisting their internal communicators to help lay the groundwork for this level of disclosure?
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FIR #299: From the Metaverse to the Fediverse and Back Again

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Despite the forecasts of some pundits, it is still too early to predict Twitter’s complete collapse. Still, it is not outside the realm of possibility. (Since we recorded this episode on Saturday, November 19, CBS has halted its activity on Twitter, blaming Elon Musk’s “turbulent and potentially devastating moves following his takeover of the company,” according to Variety. It is worth considering the consequences of Twitter’s demise. How big a loss to society at large would it be? We can take that idea one step further. With Facebook experiencing its own declines and Gen Z demonstrating a preference for smaller social networks over broadcast-style social media, what would happen if social media completely faded into the background? Also in the November episode of The Hobson and Holtz Report:

  • Thousands of Twitter users are migrating to Mastodon, a Twitter-like interface with some important differences, the key being that it is not owned by a single entity. Instead, it is a federation of Mastodon “instances” (including one Shel has launched for communicators). The fediverse could be awesome, one report suggests, assuming we don’t screw it up — and average users are able to figure it out.
  • Gallup has released a study on how connected people feel to others, whether it’s in person or online. It’s a field of study that has gotten scant attention in the past and the results could be useful to marketers.
  • There’s some nation-building going on in the metaverse, with one Pacific island country building a digital twin to preserve its heritage as global warming raises sea levels, threatening to completely submerge it. Another country — a physical entity not yet recognized by the global community of nations — is working with an architectural firm to build a metaverse version that it hopes will be the primary place its citizens interact.
  • Whether you believe it is ethical or not, there is a fair amount of ghostwriting going on in the social media space, notably with ghostwriters cranking out LinkedIn thought leadership posts for executives. But there’s more than that, with one social media ghostwriter, for example, earning close to $200,000 so far this year writing mainly Twitter DMs for employees. We’ll dive into this emerging cottage industry.
  • Dan York’s Tech Report is a buffet of topics this month, ranging from the fate of Twitter Spaces to Walmart’s Augmented Reality effort, and from enhancements to TikTok Live to Google’s “Live View in Maps.”

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Circle of Fellows #86: Brands and Branding

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Is your trademark your company’s brand? Your logo? Or is your brand what your customers say about you when you’re not in the room? What’s a brand promise and how do you develop one that everyone can buy into? How do you build the brand internally so every employee projects it externally? What’s the communicator’s role in protecting the brand? And what do you do when your company fails to live up to it?
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FIR #298: Social Listening in a Post-Twitter World

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While things are not looking good at Twitter, it is not yet time to characterize it as the social network’s death spiral. Still, speculation is fun (and inevitable), and one of the prospects about which some people are speculating is the impact a Twitterless world will have on social listening activities. Neville and Shel explore the possibility — along with some other potential fallout should Twitter shut down — in this short midweek episode of “For Immediate Release.”
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FIR #297: A Stirling Example of Augmented Reality

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The Scottish city of Stirling is investing in the creation of Augmented Reality (AR) layers throughout the city, available on a free dedicated app, to become what they claim is “the first augmented reality city.”
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FIR #296: What Elon Musk Can Learn From Patrick Collinson

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Twitter and Stripe both laid off employees last week. The contrast between how these layoffs were conducted is striking. One CEO went to great lengths to ensure the employees remaining post-layoff would feel the least amount of survivor’s guilt and be ready to move forward. The other didn’t seem to care how survivors felt. Neville and Shel examine these approaches and some of the other fallout from Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in this short midweek episode of “For Immediate Release.”
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FIR #295: The Value-Add Potential of NFTs

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Neville attended NFT.London, the UK version of the NFT.NYC, which has been held since February 2019. There, he attended sessions that covered various topics, but he was particularly struck by those addressing the value-add potential of NFTs as well as their community-building characteristics. He reports from a semi-quiet corner of the conference in this short mid-week episode.
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Communicating Your Brand: Watch the Discussion on November 17

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Is your trademark your company’s brand? Your logo? Or is your brand what your customers say about you when you’re not in the room? What’s a brand promise and how do you develop one that everyone can buy into? How do you build the brand internally so every employee projects it externally? What’s the communicator’s role in protecting the brand? And what do you do when your company fails to live up to it?

Four IABC Fellows will share their deep experience with brands and branding in the next “Circle of Fellows” episode, which will be broadcast live at 4 p.m. ET on Thursday, November 17. You will be able to ask questions and share your own experiences in real-time during the conversation or watch the video replay or listen to the audio podcast later when it’s more convenient for you.
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FIR #294: What Hath Elon Wrought?

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It’s not exactly a news flash that Elon Musk now owns Twitter (Chief Twit, he calls himself). Does he know what he’s gotten himself into? It’s doubtful, according to much of the evidence we’ve seen so far, in addition to some stinging commentary.
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FIR #293: Big Changes at Wikipedia

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For virtually all of its 22 years, Wikipedia has confined its technology to the wiki, which was already nearly 10 years old when the online encyclopedia was introduced. But some big changes are in store, including the use of machine learning, all in service of enticing more people to become editors.
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