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Welcome to the first episode of For Immediate Release, the successor podcast to The Hobson & Holtz Report.

Our panel this week includes Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment-Dietrich, a Chicago-based public relations agency, and Frank Eliason, innovator of the Comcast Cares social media customer service program and former head of social media at Citi.

Today’s conversation addressed these stories:

• Josh Bernoff’s follow-up post to the blog-based conversation he and Augie Ray had about how close to death social media marketing is.
• Edelman has announced it will no longer work with coal-producing companies or any company that promote denial of climate change. Was this a PR move or is there substance behind the policy?
• Live streaming video is heating up, with new players from Facebook (with Facebook Live) to startup Blab, which one thought leader believes could overtake Periscope and Meerkat.
• Dan York’s Tech Report covers the release of the Wirecast Go beta, Skype’s outage and implications for business, and a broader discussion of the “messaging wars.”
• Google and Twitter are partnering to take on Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.
• Some journalists are now balking at producing content for brands’ content marketing program.
• Mark Zuckerberg believes Virtual Reality could one day connect everyone in the world in a fully immersive, 3D environment, while Satya Nadella said the Augmented Reality product Microsoft is working on — HoloLens — will first have an impact in the enterprise where once you use it, you can never go back.
• Some companies — like Target, Southwest Airlines, and Amazon.com — are scoring viral hits with content foduced by front-line employees. Is this a sustainable model for other companies?
• Uber has produced a print publication, following in the footsteps of Airbnb. Does print still matter?
• Social media changes politics forever in Scotland where the YES campaign attracted 45% of the vote despite virtually no supportive coverage from mainstream media. What can that tell us about social media in the current U.S. presidential campaign?

Links to the source material for this episode are on Delicious.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

Join us next week for our second episode, with Chip Griffin, Gerry Corbett, and Lionel Menchaca.

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