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.

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#804: Is the “full-stack” employee a viable model?

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IN THIS EPISODE: News from the world of podcasting, the viability of the “full-stack” employee, the employee engagement-employee ambassador connection, five reasons why Google+ died, The top companies for employee engagement, US federal government workers get a social media policy, Millennials want to connect with brands via email, Spain’s gag law produces a hologram protest, mobilegeddon, China’s Great Firewall.
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#803: Successful blogger relations

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Quick News: US Postal Service could find new business using augmented reality glasses, where to find and create your own animated GIFs, traveling employees embrace Uber and AirBnB, the Wall Street Journal’s approach to native advertising; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop;

News That Fits: How to run a successful blogger relations programme; Dan York’s Tech Report: Friendfeed really did shut down on April 9, Twitter ends its partnership with Datasift, and more; if leaders don’t use the internal social network, nobody will; listener comments in audio and in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+; Apple Watch: altering the face of technology retailing forever?; Igloo Software promo; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network; new modeling of the mediums of communication;

Music from The Pink Tiles; and more.
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Harry Hawk talks with Facebook marketing expert Dennis Yu

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While digital marketing dollars still flow into Facebook, marketers continue to express frustration at the social network, its reduced organic reach, and its ever-shifting algorithms. BlitzMetrics Chief Technology Officer Dennis Yu has a different perspective. A longtime Facebook marketing expert, Dennis believes good content can thrive organically on Facebook but that PR needs to adopt paid amplification of messages. He also makes the case that paid reach via Facebook should be seen as a gateway to using Google and other similar services (e.g., promoted tweets) to amplify messages, and that these buys should be aggregated for a more comprehensive analysis. They’re not traditional ads, however, and should not be viewed that way. They can, however, contribute to ROI and other success metrics.

In this FIR interview, FIR contributor Harry Hawk (@hhawk) delves into a variety of dimensions of Facebook marketing in a detailed conversation with Dennis.
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#802: The minefield that is Reddit’s AMA

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Quick News:

Collaborate/London intranet workshop from Igloo Software on April 16, alarming declines in social media among Inc 500, good advice in BBC’s updated social media guidelines, companies just aren’t listening to what reporters want from their online newsrooms; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop.

News That Fits:

Does it make sense to do online Q&As on Reddit, Twitter, etc?; Michael Netzley’s Asia Report: Gushcloud controversy and smear campaigns conducted by blogging cartels; would you use Periscope for employee communication as one CEO did?; listener comments in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+ and via email; The Economist study identifies Gen-narrators who could be effective brand advocates; Dan York’s Tech Report: Turkey blocks social networks, Flickr and the public domain, NASA space image library, and more; Igloo Software promo; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network; with social still treated as an ‘afterthought’ by PR agencies, we offer some advice.
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The Hobson & Holtz Report – Podcast #801: March 30, 2015

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Quick News: Brands flock to Periscope, being seen as innovative boosts a company’s bottom line says Ketchum survey, Slack is killing IRC, all 650 Members of Parliament in the UK will receive an iPad Air 2 after the May election; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: New apps – including Periscope, Meerkat and NewsByMe – could boost citizen journalism; Dan York’s Tech Report: Periscope and live streaming, Dave Winer’s MyWord, Facebook; drilling a social media crisis with Polpeo; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments in audio and in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+; wearable tech will shift from novelty to norm in the next five years; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network; Igloo Software promo; summary of what we learned from Facebook’s F8;

Music from Moon Taxi; and more.
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Bryan Person interviews consultant, author, and speaker Jon Burkhart

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Longtime FIR supporter Bryan Person caught up with social media consultant Jon Burkhart at the 2015 South by Southwest Interactive festival, where the pair talked about Burkhart’s focus on helping organizations avoid embarrassing themselves online.
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#800: Have a talk about race with your barista

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Quick News: Ryanair’s next stop is not New York, SHIFT becomes a Google Analytics Certified Partner, American Airlines is playing better music onboard thanks to passengers’ Twitter complaints, business use of social media by front-line employees increases; Ragan promo; News That Fits: Starbucks’ #RaceTogether campaign: right or wrong?; Michael Netzley’s Asia Report: reflections on Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew; latest Pew research on internet usage in emerging and developing countries shows text messaging and social media big in many countries; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments in audio and in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+; as PR rises and journalism falls, PR seems to be dropping the ball; Dan York’s Tech Report: 800th episode, eh?, Internet Society, the BBC’s new responsive website, Meerkat, and more; Igloo software promo; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network.
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Language Translation for Communicators

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Language translation has bedeviled communications and PR practitioners forever, but the rise of digital media has complicated the situation in a number of ways. The requirements for producing content right now have led to a need for almost instantaneous translation while access to the Internet has introduced languages spoken in regions that weren’t previously participants in the economy.
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The Mobile Mind Shift, by Ted Schadler, Josh Bernoff, and Julie Ask

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The Mobile Mind Shift: Engineer Your Business to Win in the Mobile Moment provides the first comprehensive overview of what it takes to develop mobile resources that accommodate the growing expectations of users who increasingly turn first to mobile devices.
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Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.