FIR Podcast Network

For Immediate Release: Podcasts for Communicators

  • Home
  • Shows
  • Episodes
  • People
  • Blog
  • Subscribe
  • Sponsors
  • Contact Us
    • Join the FIR Podcast Network
  • Archives
You are here: Home / For Immediate Release / FIR #7: Public Relations, meet blockchain

FIR #7: Public Relations, meet blockchain

November 2, 2015 by Shel Holtz Leave a Comment

http://traffic.libsyn.com/fir/forimmed-7.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:03 — 41.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Email | RSS | More

Welcome to episode #7 of For Immediate Release. This week’s panel includes Olivier Blanchard, director of Operations and Strategy at Frontspace Media; Sharon McIntosh, president of And Then Communications (and co-host of the EE Voice podcast on the FIR Podcast Network); and Ike Pigott, communications strategist at Alabama Power.

On this week’s show, we shared our views on the follow topics:

  • You’re probably underestimating how much of your content gets shared via SMS (text messaging). Is there anything you can do to make sharing your content via SMS easier? Would you want to?
  • By the end of next year, all 100,000 employees of Royal Bank of Scotland will be using Facebook at Work as their internal social network. It’s Facebook’s biggest win among the 300 or so companies that have signed on to the enterprise version of the world’s biggest social network.
  • Employees who aren’t engaged, along with those who are actively disengaged, are costing U.S. businesses somewhere around half a trillion dollars a year. Is there more communications can do to improve engagement levels? (Like providing channels that give employees more of a voice?)
  • South by Southwest ignited a firestorm when it canceled two panels dealing with online harassment after receiving threats of violence should the panels proceed. How well did SxSW handle the crisis?
  • Here’s a new word for PR practitioners to learn: Blockchain. It sounds geeky today. It could become a big deal sooner than you think.
  • As politics increasingly define media companies, are there implications for media relations?
  • Communicators struggle with “big data,” but you ain’t seen nothing yet as new data on visual communication is starting to appear.
  • In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on Google Play’s solicitation of podcast URLs as it plans to add podcasts to the content users can stream, the introduction of a Tor messaging tool, topics the Internet Engineering Task Force is tackling, and a country-by-country breakdown of freedom on the Internet.

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 sixth episode. Joining me on the panel will be Howard Greenstein, Francine Hardaway, and Mark Story.

About this week’s panel

olivierOlivier Blanchard is a French-born, American-based Brand Management and Digital Marketing consultant, the author of two best-selling books, and an acclaimed keynote speaker. As Director of Operations and Strategy at Frontspace, he draws from his years of experience in strategic Marketing and Business Management roles across a range of B2B, B2C and B2G industries, to help companies and their partners develop successful digital strategies, properly deploy social business capabilities across their organizations, and align their programs to business goals and objectives. Though based in the US, his geographic range extends beyond North America to Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Olivier is the author of the best-selling #1 social business desk reference for digital managers and business executives: Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts In Your Organization (Que/Pearson). Olivier is also a sought-after subject-matter expert and corporate trainer.

sharonSharon McIntosh is president of And Then Communications. With more than two decades of communications experience, she has a passion for creating and executing new ideas to drive employee engagement at companies both large and small. Most recently she served as PepsiCo’s vice president of Global Internal Communications, overseeing the company’s efforts to connect with its more than 274,000 employees worldwide. She and her team launched a number of innovative employee initiatives, including the company’s first social media training (SMART U), a social tool to share internal news externally and PepsiCo’s award-winning employee ambassador program. She and her team also developed a communications strategy to support the company’s first comprehensive, global and multi-year transformation initiative. Before joining PepsiCo in 2004, Sharon spent seven years at Sears. Among her greatest contributions there, she launched a marketing strategy for life events, ran user experience for the company’s e-commerce site and introduced the company’s first intranet. Prior to Sears, she worked at Waste Management, publishing more than 14 annual reports for various business units, managing shareholder meetings, drafting senior executive speeches and handling media relations. Sharon graduated with a B.A. in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. from DePaul University. She lives in Norwalk, CT.

ikeAfter more than 16 years in television news, Emmy-winner Ike Pigott left to feed his passion for crisis communication. While building his consultancy, he started working with the American Red Cross – first as a local communicator in Alabama, and finally as the Director of Communications and Government Relations for a five-state region. It was during his time at the Red Cross that he pioneered the use of social media, developed the first disaster-response blogs, as well as the non-profit’s Twitter account all the way back in 2007. For the last seven years, Pigott has worked as a communication strategist and spokesman for Alabama Power, an electric utility that serves more than 1.4-million customers. He helped shape the Social Media Guidelines for Alabama Power’s parent, Southern Company, and serves on the system-wide Social Media Advisory Council. In addition to media relations duties and serving as editor of the corporate NewsCenter site, Ike works across the company to help individuals and departments get the most out of social media tools. Ike has been a featured speaker at dozens of communication conferences in the United States and Europe, and is considered a thought leader in the integration of social media in utilities and other regulated industries.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related Posts

  • FIR #8: Doesn't Integrated Marketing Include Public Relations?
  • album art: Inside PR
    IPR 478: Public Relations and Data Science
  • FIR Book Review: Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

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

Filed Under: For Immediate Release Tagged With: blockchain

Share Your Comments on For Immediate Release

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Facebook.

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) or Skype: fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). 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.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Social connect:
Login Login with facebook
Login Login with twitter
Login Login with google

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Connect with FIR

Support FIR

Become a Patron

Pledge as little as $1 per month to help support the existing stable of shows, make new shows possible, and be part of the growth of the FIR Podcast Network.

FIR Podcast Network Shows

FIR SPONSOR

The FIR Podcast Network is made possible by the generous support of our sponsors, of which we currently have none. Please reach out to us if you are interested in sponsoring FIR. Contact us at fircomments@gmail.com.

Looking for Older Episodes?

Visit the FIR Podcast Network Archives at forimmediaterelease.biz.

Join Our Facebook Community

Facebook Group Icon

FIR Podcast Network on Twitter

My Tweets

We Want Your Feedback

Email comments with or without audio attachments (5 MB/3 minute limit) to fircomments at gmail dot com.

North America Comment Line:
+1.415.895.2971

Europe Comment Line:
+44.20.3239.9082

Skype: fircomments

Promote FIR!

Let your readers and colleagues know about FIR by adding a logo to your blog or web page. Get it here!

FIR Podcast Network Logo

Help Spread the Word about FIR!

GaggleAMP: spread the word about FIR!

License

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

FIR Podcast Network website © 2022 Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson | Community Guidelines | Privacy Policy

Website development by WP Fangirl. Album art and design by Effective Edge Communications.