When executives justify their return-to-office mandates, they almost universally cite the collaboration and innovation that result from serendipitous encounters between employees. They also point to the need to boost productivity. The problem with these arguments is that the evidence does not support them. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel look at one financial services company that has seen eye-popping increases in performance metrics since listening to its employees and adopting a policy that lets employees work where they want. We also review a report on what it actually takes to build connections and collaboration in organizations.

Links from this episode:

• RTO mandates aren’t for everyone. Here’s what we did instead—and it’s working: Synchrony CEO
• Synchrony’s Rick Hartnack: ‘Remote Work Model Is A Competitive Advantage’
• What Employers Get Wrong About How People Connect at Work
• How to Improve Employee Engagement in the Workplace
• 5 Strategies To Boost Employee Engagement In The Workplace

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, November 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:03)
Hi everyone, welcome to episode number 435 of 4 Immediate Release. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz (00:11)
I’m Shel Holtz. I was reading an article the other day by Brian Doubles, the CEO of Synchrony, which is a financial services company that offers consumer finance products. My Chevron gas station credit card is a Synchrony product. Doubles wrote in Fortune that amidst all the CEO calls for employees to return to the office, he’s had no second thoughts maintaining Synchrony’s policy, which I can best sum up as whatever. Want to work from the office? Fine. Work from home?

That’s fine too. Wanna be hybrid? You got it. Doubles does ask employees to live close enough to an office that they can get there for occasional meetings, training, and culture events. This policy stemmed from a survey of employees who said they wanted to be able to have work at home as an option and have access to the office from time to time without concern about it threatening their career or being seen as a negative.

Now, despite everything we’re hearing from the CEOs who are justifying the return to office mandate, Synchrony, using its approach, has risen to fifth on the Fortune 100 best companies to work for list. That’s up from 51st in 2019. And 95 % of Synchrony employees say it’s a great place to work and that the company’s way of working gives them the flexibility they need. So what’s going on with all of this justification?

that other CEOs are providing for their mandates for everybody to come back five days a week. We’re gonna dive into that right after this. In the article he wrote, Doubles explains that what Synchrony did to make this approach work, including making in-person events matter, adopting a coaching culture, supporting career journeys, no matter where the employees are situated,

And measuring outcomes versus time in the office are what really drove this success. And by the way, on that last one, Double says the company has seen stronger productivity and business outcomes. Employee turnover is lower. The company has experienced a 30 % increase in job applications. Meanwhile, CEOs everywhere are insisting that having employees in the office produces key benefits.

These include enhanced collaboration, the belief that physical proximity leads to spontaneous interactions, brainstorming sessions, and seamless communication. But yeah, spontaneous interactions can occur in an office setting, but the forced nature of return to office mandates have proven to result in employee dissatisfaction and resistance rather than genuine collaboration.

They also argue that you get stronger company culture. The idea that shared physical spaces cultivates a unique organizational culture and reinforces company values. And the big one, they believe that you get better productivity when people are in the office. The assumption is that in office work environments minimize distractions and facilitate better oversight leading to higher productivity levels. These, it’s important to point out, are myths.

For example, a recent survey found that only one in three executives who imposed return to office mandates saw even a slight positive impact on productivity. Doubles calls this a failure of imagination on the part of leaders everywhere. And while these points have some merit, we really have to examine whether these assumptions hold true in the current work landscape. Recent studies and expert analyses offer a more nuanced perspective. Let’s start with collaboration and connection.

There was an article in the Harvard Business Review recently that agrees that in-person work can facilitate spontaneous interactions, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to meaningful collaboration. The quality of interactions rather than their frequency or spontaneity is what truly drives effective teamwork. Next, let’s turn to employee satisfaction and retention. Data from the Great Places to Work organization suggests that

Rigid return to office mandates can negatively impact employee satisfaction and retention. Employees who have autonomy over their work environment tend to exhibit higher engagement and are more likely to stay with their organizations. And as for productivity metrics, findings from Gallup reveal that remote workers often match or exceed the productivity levels of their in-office counterparts. The flexibility of remote work can lead to better work-life balance, which in turn enhances overall performance.

The fact is, the research finds that meaningful connections develop through intentional engagement, not just physical presence. And while a physical presence coupled with efforts to create meaningful connections can produce these results, careful thought and planning can produce meaningful opportunities for connection and collaboration, regardless of where employees are doing their jobs. Organizations like Synchrony are achieving success by focusing on intentional engagement strategies

rather than arbitrary office attendance requirements. Now I raised this issue a few months ago, but it’s worth reiterating in light of this data about what truly drives connection and collaboration. We have to stop acting like remote or hybrid work is temporary. We have to stop using patchwork methods for engaging with employees, for guiding their career aspirations, for managing them and for keeping the culture strong. We have to help our organizations and leaders figure out how to develop

practices based on remote and hybrid work being the way business is done in the post-COVID era. Understanding employee preferences is crucial for this kind of success. Surveys indicate that a significant portion of the workforce values the flexibility that remote work offers. For example, a study by Buffer found that 97 % of employees would like to work remotely at least some of the time, indicating a strong preference for the flexibility that remote work provides.

And companies that offer flexible work arrangements are more attractive to top talent. Rigid return to office policies could deter potential candidates who prioritize work-life balance and autonomy. Now, this is a podcast about communications and there is a role for internal communicators here. This is an opportunity to help leadership understand that effective collaboration stems from well-designed processes and cultural support, not physical proximity.

The key is shifting the conversation from where work happens to how it happens most effectively.

@nevillehobson (06:56)
It’s a big topic, is it not? It actually what you’ve highlighted, I think, suggests strongly that all those organizations whose leaders are saying to people in demanding their return to the office five days a week are nuts. They don’t understand the way of things. think, listen to what you’re saying, I was saying to myself, if I were working for organization that was

that had a policy of coming back to the office. To me, the best way to do this is the hybrid approach. And you mentioned surveys talking about what employees themselves value and what they would like to do, which speaks to that, it seems to me, that you’d like the option to work at home or the office, whatever suits you. And that financial services company you spoke about, that’s their approach in the sense of, know, whatever works.

So you work at home or wherever, go to the office when you need to to meet with someone perhaps, or because you feel like going into the office that they just see people. I wouldn’t appeal to me to be working 100 % away from the office. I’d like to go into the office. I think though, the question in my mind is, if this is so, and the arguments are compelling,

that the forced return, enforced return to everyone five days a week, the office is not a good thing to do at all. What needs to happen then for those companies? And there are many of them here in the UK as well. I read now and again about such a company is implementing a return to work policy. How do you deal with that?

Shel Holtz (08:42)
It’s a challenge because I think what’s driving a lot of this is not what the leaders of these organizations are saying is driving it. I think there are some hidden agendas here. I think that there is pressure from governments, for example, to get people back into downtown corridors to support local businesses, the dry cleaners and the bistros and the sundry shops, the 7-Elevens, the Starbucks and the like that have been suffering because people are not working.

@nevillehobson (08:54)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (09:11)
downtown, they’re not coming out during lunch and availing themselves of these services. I think there’s also the leases that these organizations are paying for these buildings that are sitting empty or half empty and some pressure to have people come in and occupy those spaces. I think there are probably some other

issues that are driving this. And what you’re hearing is that this whole collaboration and connection thing is this is the excuse that they’re making, even though there isn’t really data to support it. So I think that you need to do is is look at bottom line effectiveness of what’s happening in these organizations that have embraced remote and hybrid as just the way things are now companies like Synchrony and look at what they’re doing in order to make it work.

@nevillehobson (09:43)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (10:00)
I mean, they’ve reconfigured their spaces in the buildings that Synchrony owns to accommodate cultural events and big meetings and get togethers that reinforce the culture without saying you need to be here every day just so you can sit at your desk and do whatever it is that you would have done at home without having to go on that commute.

@nevillehobson (10:10)
Hmm.

Hmm.

I was reading as well the Harvard Business Review piece and there’s a really interesting section that speaks to this directly and it sets it out pretty well I think. Let me read this bit. So what might be happening when employers issue return to office mandates? Colleague connection may increase as HBR.

because employees are milling about the same office and benefiting from random and serendipitous interactions. But at the same time, leader connection might decrease because employees feel their supervisors don’t understand their motivations or don’t care about the impact of the return to office mandate on their autonomy and their lives. Employer connections can also take a dive as the desire to work hard to see the company succeed is undermined by a feeling of betrayal.

And without clear and unambiguous links to why employees need to be back in the office, role connection can be negatively impacted as people believe they’re being evaluated based on their attendance more than their performance. I think that’s absolutely spot on that assessment. And in my view, I think there is that and I and visualize myself in that situation. I would feel the same, I think. And you might also feel that I’m coming to the office because they told me I have to, in which case.

that’s not a good start to doing this. And your your own productivity is likely to be heavily impacted because when you’re in the office, under those circumstances, you’re going to be chatting with people, they’re to come up to you and say hi, and you suddenly you’re in that sort of environment, rather than be focused on meeting with someone to pursue a project or do something. I you might do some of those things, but the the the climate, as it were, is not conducive to any of that.

of the combination of the fact you have to be there, so that’s why you’re there. The feeling of betrayal. And if there is lack of trust in your manager, the thing is doomed because elsewhere, and indeed, Gallup talks about this, well-skilled managers, the ability to coach their teams experience much greater productivity and all the stuff that goes along with that than teams that don’t have.

a manager like that or a supervisor. I don’t see any and it’s interesting what you say, Shell, where think there’s, you know, it’s like governments are interfering with this. I’m sure it’s similar in the US, but here in the UK, you’ve got empty office buildings everywhere and companies are struggling to fill them. They’ve to pay the rents and so forth. So that’s an incentive for them to persuade people to come back to the office. But

Most or many of those businesses you talked about, the dry cleaner, the beast, have closed and gone. They’re not there anymore. And so in this country, and this is probably different to the states, I’m sure, that public transport, broadly speaking, in most big cities is potluck, frankly, whether that train is actually going to arrive and get you there on time. the stress is dreadful. hear this all the time from friends of mine who do commute into London in particular, but also Manchester.

So all of those things are drivers to make you want to perform well from your home office or go in or is and or go in at a time that isn’t the old traditional rush hour. It’s far more likely that it’s going to be valuable if you do that way. It just seems to me crazy to insist on these mandated returns to offices. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Shel Holtz (13:54)
Yeah, mean evaluating people on attendance is ridiculous. The company does not succeed. There’s not a business analyst out there that evaluates the performance of a company or its desirability as an investment based on how many employees show up at the office. Those are not outputs that they’re looking for. There are other things that we hear about that are important to employees. Young employees need to be seen and mentored. But again, I think what we’re doing is…

@nevillehobson (13:58)
crazy.

Thanks

Shel Holtz (14:24)
looking at this as temporary, so we’re figuring out, well, how do we do this for now until we can get people back in the office and mentor them and coach them the way that we are accustomed to, rather than identifying new means of doing this, which is where we have to go. We have to find ways to make people visible, to have them mentored by various people in the organization, to coach them effectively as a manager when they are working remote or.

It can be done. There are organizations like Synchrony that are doing it quite well. Look at the fact that their turnover rate has dropped as a result of this. So I agree with what Mr. Doubles said, the CEO of Synchrony. It’s a failure of imagination on the parts of leaders who say the only way that we can make this work is going back to the way things used to be. Employees have moved on from this.

@nevillehobson (14:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s about right. So it’s a leadership issue more than anything else. Yet, I worry that nothing will make this change. And if anything, you can see the pressure increasing for people to go back to the office. Here in the UK,

what I’ve seen in mainstream media now and again in the past few months are the calls for this getting stronger and more forceful. It was like insisting this is going to have to be the only way these companies will survive is all the employees that go back to the office. And even this way, I we’ve touched on this sort of area before, but those are the companies that seem to me to have people in roles of power and influence who are

adamant that they’re not going to allow working from home anymore. And you got to come to the office. And the unspoken bit to me certainly is so we can control you, we can know what you’re doing, and stop you doing stuff we don’t want you to do. I look at the story that was topical here recently. One of the big banks here, National Westminster Group, issued a statement publicly that picked up a lot of attention that they prohibit employees using WhatsApp. And they’re not allowed to use the communication methods that are unofficial.

Translation, we don’t want to use the encrypted messaging apps because we can’t see what you’re saying. Now, it turns out that there was something bigger behind the scenes on this, that this was to do with something happened in the US with companies and employees using third party apps that were very risky. So there was issues surrounding that pressure put on the UK to do the same that led to this, it seems. Yet, that is totally

ridiculous, frankly, to do that. But I get it, there are people who don’t get it. And they are in positions of control and organization to make some of these, these edicts out there or put them out there. So in this context, though, this they seem to be getting it wrong completely. And you mentioned some of them. And I think the one that struck me in particular was regarding that financial services company, you mentioned that they have gone up to what 51st.

higher even than that is one of the best companies in America to work for.

Shel Holtz (17:34)
Yeah, they were 51st, now they’re, I think, fifth. So, I mean, that’s quite a dramatic improvement.

@nevillehobson (17:37)
Right, So in five years, it is. So that’s what other people are saying about them. And so surely, these organizations that are insisting people go back to the office, because that’s the new terms and conditions of your employment, are hitting the sand, it seems to me. I mean, I don’t know what else to draw upon itself, but it doesn’t seem a very good idea to insist on this.

Shel Holtz (18:01)
No, and I think your top performers who have been forced to come back to the office when they get a call from a recruiter saying, we have a position for you and you can work remote, they’re going to be very inclined to take that. And you’re going to see these companies lose the cream of the crop from their employee populations. And they’re going to be left with mediocre employees who can’t get a job elsewhere and keep coming to the office because they just don’t have a choice.

@nevillehobson (18:12)
Ha ha ha ha.

Yeah.

So you mentioned earlier, when you were laying out this this whole situation, an opportunity for community. So what advice would you say or what tips would you give to fellow communicators who are in an organization that is insisting on returning to the office? What could they do to try and influence opinion to change that?

Shel Holtz (18:50)
Well, I think leaders are motivated by data. So whatever data you can pull together, and I think it’s a combination of what your own employees are saying. Remember, employee voice is a critical component of employee engagement. So elevate that voice and let the leaders know.

how employees are feeling and what they’re thinking, and combine that with the fact that, I mean, only one in three CEOs with return to office mandates saw even a little bit of productivity improvement. Meanwhile, the ones that continue to have remote and hybrid are performing quite well from a productivity standpoint. And then you might wanna propose some communication channels or communication activities that…

are new to the organization that support the idea of connection and collaboration with a hybrid or a remote workforce that the organization can start to employ on a regular basis or at least experiment with so that we’re not just using something that’s cobbled together to get us through until everybody’s back in the same place.

@nevillehobson (20:00)
tips.

Shel Holtz (20:01)
And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of Four Immediate Release.

The post FIR #435: Physical Presence is Not a Collaboration Magic Bullet appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Among the many post-election analyses flooding media channels are reports that mainstream media and social media wielded far less influence than they have in the past. Instead, influencers and podcasts held sway. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel break down the reports and discuss the impact on communicators far beyond the election and politics.

Links from this episode:

• Borkowski Media Trends: US Election Special
• Donald Trump’s America: Reflections on a Country in Flux – NevilleHobson .com
• Trump’s Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind
• How AI shaped the 2024 election: From ad strategy to voter sentiment analysis
• Victorious Trump campaign spent far less on social media than in 2020

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, November 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 434 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson. In a world closely watching the US political landscape, the outcome of the 2024 presidential election has left many stunned, not only by Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory, but by the speed and clarity with which it was achieved.

It reflects a shifting political landscape where traditional powerhouses of influence established mainstream media and celebrity endorsements found themselves increasingly limited. We will talk about what this means and more right after this.

On one hand, we see the reach of old media diminishing unable to

decisively sway public opinion or check political figures as effectively as it once did. Outlets like The New York Times and CNN rigorously reported on Donald Trump’s policies and authoritarian [00:01:00] tendencies. Yet Trump’s voter base remained unshaken, reinforcing the notion that mainstream media no longer holds the powerful gatekeeping role it once did.

Platforms like Joe Rogan’s podcast with its significant engaged, following, showcased how media consumption patterns are leaning towards unfiltered direct channels that sidestep traditional editorial influence, in essence says Semaphore Media in its latest newsletter. Old media now grapples with its own limitations as emerging platforms, often with looser content guidelines, reshape where and how people engage with political narratives.

Parallel the election highlighted the declining impact of celebrity endorsements once a defining force in shaping public support, high profile figures like Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, and Lady Gaga, through their support behind Kamala Harris, I. Echoing the once powerful endorsements of the past, such as Oprah’s game changing endorsement of Obama in 2007, [00:02:00] yet in 2024, this strategy appears to have lost its punch according to Mark Bukowski, in the sweeping analysis of the declining influence of celebrity endorsements.

Younger audiences while registering to vote in response to celebrity appeals did not sway the election outcome significantly, as these endorsements did not mobilize voters beyond their already polarized basis. The conservative counterculture appeal personified by figures like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan appears to have more traction in today’s fractured media landscape, particularly with audience that see celebrity endorsements as part of the very establishment they oppose.

Together. These trends reveal two sides of the same coin in modern US elections. The waning influence of legacy media and celebrity endorsements underscores a broader shift towards decentralized niche oriented information and influence raising crucial questions about the changing role of traditional institutions in American political life.

There’s more to such [00:03:00] assessments. According to a couple of reports you found Shell from the Wall Street Journal in Digiday. What does that add to the landscape We now see? There’s a lot for communicators to pay attention to here, and we need to pay attention to it because. It, it goes beyond politics. If this is how people are being influenced, and that is our role as communicators, particularly in the marketing and public relations realms that we need to figure out how we play in this particular space.

, Trump went on 30 some odd podcasts. , he spent considerably less. In this last election cycle on social media than he did four years ago. And social media doesn’t seem to have played a tremendous role beyond the fact that, TikTok, as we’ve talked about in the past, has become a place where a lot of younger people, gen Z, go for [00:04:00] news.

And I was, , intrigued to find in the last weeks of the election, a lot of people were being introduced to the Access Hollywood tape from. 12 years ago for the very first time, , because it was being shared , on TikTok and, , they were, shocked and distressed by it. , but beyond that, we didn’t see the fake ads and the fake posts and the fake news sites that were being.

Tossed around , in Facebook posts. , , we just didn’t see the influence of social media. it was going where people were. , in, in one of the articles I read, they made the point that 100% of the manosphere listens to podcasts. , this is the group of men who, , feel disenfranchised , and, , you know, they want , the manly men type, that.

View of masculinity that seems to be very popular, , with the political right. , but it was very shrewd to get onto the podcast that those [00:05:00] people listened to because generally they didn’t vote. And if you could get them out and casting votes for the guy that they said, well, there’s a man, it, it boosts his totals.

How many brands out there are trying to get onto podcasts in order to. Influence people who are listening and are you pitching the right podcasts? You and I get pitched daily, , for people who want to appear on our podcast, and nine 99% of those , are so completely irrelevant to the things that we talk about.

Obviously, it’s just decision. Distribution list and they’re hitting everybody. , but if you can find the podcasts that the market you’re trying to reach is listening to, seems to me that that’s the approach to take these days. Podcasts, listening has quadrupled in the last four years. I think I read, , more people are listening to podcasts than not, and it’s become an important channel for swaying people’s views.

, I [00:06:00] think that the Trump campaign figured that out. , kamala Harris had an opportunity to appear on Joe Rogan’s show and turned it down because her schedule wouldn’t accommodate the three hours he wanted. , what did she lose as a result of that? , the opportunity to reach that same, .

Was it 50, 60 million people between those who watch it on YouTube and those who listen to the audio? , we need to be paying attention to this numbers. We need to be understanding where people are going to formulate their opinions. These days. It’s not where it’s been, and I venture to say that in four years it may not be the same as it is right now.

No, I suspect you’re right. It is interesting. There’s been, a handful of surveys in the last month on podcast leadership in the us in particular, , all of it. Basically saying that this is increasing by X percent, that’s increased. , this has grown the works, and that’s been the story for some time, , which to my mind always stretches credulity a [00:07:00] lot of the time.

It is always growing. Well, guess what? We saw the proof of some of those metrics. In this election campaign, by way, what you mentioned, , the, , way in which Trump took advantage of podcasts. So there’s one medium that, , did seem to play a role in, influencing people not to vote per se. But, , influencing them to think about what Trump stood for his messaging, if you like.

And that was one of the things I thought that Kamala Harris and her campaign team weren’t able to achieve all those celebrities. And I, I mentioned a couple, there’s more George Clooney being one, Bruce Springsteen, , Beyonce, iconic names, yeah. Beyonce, who made a, a pretty racy video on YouTube. I watched it.

Legend. Right? , and yet none of that. Converted , into swaying people’s behaviors to vote for the Democrats. So, , we then looked at, , , the kind of undercurrent, , of, , , shifts , in the US that as at, literally at the grassroots level in almost [00:08:00] every community across the country, the New York Times had , a dramatic graphic, which has stuck in my mind quite a lot since showing.

, the outline of the US territory, , with these arrows, blue and red pointing right and left. , and , the wave was across the country to the right. , the red arrows were quite extraordinary. So with that, and them not seeming to realize it, I think that impacted the strategy they were following.

There was serious missteps with that strategy. , and I, in my mind too, is the, , monthly episode we did, I think it must have been August, it might have been September. Where we analyzed, if you like, Kamala Harris’ social media campaign, , trying to connect with Gen Z. And we were, pretty impressed with all the people she had there.

They’re all in the mid twenties who were running this campaign. And , the force of action that they were doing in engagement with people was truly stupendous, yet it didn’t. Produced the result, they didn’t win the election. So that there, there are so many elements in all this, aren’t there? Shell, I we are touching on particular, , , [00:09:00] avenue, , of interest to us as communicators.

, the social media aspect, you mentioned this earlier, , that all the alarm bells about disinformation, misinformation, fakery and all that stuff, just. Did not happen, it seemed, and that, in a sense, speaks to other issues about polling, for instance. How did they get it so wrong? All the predictions about this were wrong, basically.

, and so the alarm bells, , sound like crying wolf. And so when the real. Stuff hits the fan. , are people gonna be paying attention? But I agree with you that this is a milestone, it seems to me in political campaigning and political communication, engagement with voting public, , that could shape how they do this, , from now on.

But I think people generally. Aren’t so easily, aren’t so malleable as it might have been, or as people suspected they would have been in the past. , people are now questioning it. I, I read one piece, I [00:10:00] think it was in The Economist, it might have been in one of the US papers that talked about, when, , when Taylor Swift came out saying, I backed Kamala.

, the only reaction was what took you so long? The kind of, , acceptance of this that would erupt in, Hey, fantastic. Hey, the Swifton board didn’t happen at all. Why didn’t you do this sooner? I saw people asking. So that seems to be what’s reflected in a lot of other actions we saw happening. So you’ve got that, , the combination of mainstream media losing its luster, if you like, is, is its power is diminished.

, people , are themselves. Driving some of the, , focus to, , niche channels as we hear podcast being one example, but is it. Deeper than that even, is it that people are not swayed on mass as they used to be with traditional approaches to political messaging, making up their own minds from their peers even So , is that it?

Well, a lot of people, I mean, a, a lot of people had their minds made up [00:11:00] back in September, , and nothing the campaigns did was going to shift those. People’s perspectives that left a limited group of people who were undecided or maybe not planning to vote, who could be moved to vote one way or the other.

And that’s why it was so important to try to reach those people, to identify them and reach them. , I mean there’s a lot that that went on that. Of this campaign, there’s the fact that, , Harris only had about a hundred some odd days to a campaign where Trump had been running one for four years.

. Presidential politics, and they’ll tell you that’s woefully inadequate for mounting a presidential campaign. So there’s a lot of finger pointing at Biden for not getting out earlier and giving her the time or having an open primary. , there’s also the fact that on the view, , I read somebody say this was the defining moment that killed her campaign is when they asked, , what she would’ve [00:12:00] done different than Biden did.

So that probably hurt, but you know, you have to look at the fact that Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X and made it primarily a. A, a platform for com promoting the Trump candidacy. , he pumped what, $200 million in, into Trump’s campaign. So this is a factor that we have to think about who’s pouring money into these types of things.

, you also have, , there was controversy when Jeff Bezos, , spiked the Washington Post editorial board’s, plans for an endorsement and said, no. There was less outrage when the publisher of the Los Angeles Times did the same thing. He’s also a billionaire, but not well known as Jeff Bezos is. But ultimately, the New York Times did endorse Harris.

How much sway did that have? I’ve heard that newspaper endorsements hardly ever carry any sway. It’s more, , just demonstrating the [00:13:00] alignment of the paper with its values. , but. Was it really a big deal that, that the Washington Post. Decided that we’re done doing presidential endorsements?

, not if people aren’t paying attention to the mainstream media. I’m not gonna say they’re not paying any attention. What people talk about in social networks and what influencers talk about, , what they talk about on podcasts largely comes from mainstream media reporting, but it’s not. The main body of the politic, the people who are listening to what the mainstream media is reporting.

, it’s the podcasters, it’s the influencers. Yeah. Then they’re going out there and putting their own spin on it , and you know, is sharing their own. Thoughts and, , and opinions. , so that seems to me that’s who we need to reach for any of the external communication that we’re doing these days.

And you mentioned polling, , and how could it be so off? , and it’s the same thing. We’re polling the same way we were, in the 20th century. , we’re [00:14:00] calling landlines, , people aren’t picking them up. . We’re not reaching people on their mobiles. , so you’re getting a very skewed view from the people who do answer their phone and participate,, in the poll.

, so it’s inaccurate, and I’m not sure anybody’s figured out a better way to do this yet. I was following one guy who said, oh, the current methods of polling , , are completely useless these days. I’m doing something different. And it was all focus group based and things like that. But he called. All seven swing states for Harris, and they all went for Trump.

So yeah, kudos to him for trying something new didn’t work. , and what that suggests to me, again, if we take this out of the realm of politics and into the world of brands, are we researching correctly or are we relying on 20th century research methodologies that aren’t giving us the results that we need?

It clearly is that latter part. She, it seems to me, because this is [00:15:00] simply another sign of these huge shifts that are happening in societies and in this case the us , in American society. We talk about the increase in podcasts. We’ve discussed plenty of times before where people getting their news, TikTok and other social channels are primary , for certain generations.

Traditional media is. Imploding , in the sense of reach and influence. , in all the stories we’ve mentioned on national newspapers in our respective countries, regional, local newspapers, they’re all declining circulations, , in this country. Similar to the US I suspect local newspapers are simply.

Particularly online are peppered with popups, trash. They track you that you name it, so you don’t go there and no wonder they’re declining. So they have to put more ads in and, and all that is, is putting people off. They’re looking for alternatives and they’re looking for more trusted sources. So it’s a more.

, niche methodology at play here. So how do you therefore track them, and that’s probably the right word, track them to get their [00:16:00] voting intention. , you’re not gonna be able to do it with confidence because people , will actually lie to you and tell you one thing and do another. In, in, in fact, one of the interesting dimensions of all of this, and I was hearing this throughout the, the campaign is, is that Harris had a very effective ground game.

They had tons of volunteers knocking on doors. Trump didn’t make any effort to do that. He outsourced all of that to political action committees, , and yet he won. So how important is the ground game? , which, leads you to the, again, if we’re going to , shift this over into our thinking about communicating on behalf of , our products, our services, our companies, , are the local experiences, , still as valuable as as they used to be.

And one other point I wanted to make before we wrap this up, there were huge expectations about the role artificial intelligence. Was going to play in this election. You mentioned disinformation and, and deep [00:17:00] fakes earlier. And it turned out that they had very, very little impact on all of this.

But that doesn’t mean that AI wasn’t used. The Digiday article, , which will be linked in the show notes, makes the point that, , the campaigns did use, , LLMs and machine learning, , for content creation, audience analysis, voter targeting, and ad buying. So I. AI had an an impact, just not the one that people were expecting.

No, you’re absolutely right. So this was a shifting sands lecture without any doubt. All the old methodologies, the old values, , suddenly were, , not what you expected. You can’t really trust any of this anymore, and yet no one seems to know how to make changes here. This is a milestone.

It seems to me it is a big scale thing. American presidential election. It will have repercussions. It is starting already on a global level as attention is still on Trump as to what he gonna do before he gets to office. , it gets inaugurated. So, , it makes me think in a small parallel to [00:18:00] the general election in the UK in July, where the conservative party were.

Almost extinction level annihilation. They , were wiped out totally. And polling afterwards. So think about what people were predicting. , which policies would they go for? Which mps and, and what they stand for, would they vote for? It turns out, and this makes total sense ’cause this was how I felt, that they didn’t get the votes because people thought they were just simply damned incompetent.

I. All the scandals, the financial things. I mean, the post office scandal we had in an episode here, , the Horizon Post Office, , , thing with the software, , we’ve had , the tainted blood scandal. It’s even worse. Shell, it goes back four decades, people dying through tainted blood, and that was managed.

Terribly. And , the conservators were 14 years in power, so they took all the hits for everything, every government’s done, they were in the frame for it, and they lost big time. People didn’t vote for ’em. So that must have been partly to play in American elections too. , and I think many [00:19:00] of the folks, , to, to this other point we’ve been discussing had made up their mind months ago, not September.

Prior to that even. So everything since then, they just went out and voted for Trump no matter what. So it’s, political science , will look at this, , for months and we’ll get more knowledge, , in the coming months. This is what we know right now. So , this discussion is a little snapshot really of what , , we think happened.

But if there’s one thing that you can take away right now, start looking at the podcast space as a channel for getting your message out. Not your own podcast necessarily, but getting your people onto podcasts, getting your products on. , it’s the new TV is the new newspaper. You’ve gotta get out there.

To your point about we get approaches all the time and 99% of them are completely irrelevant. If you’ve got a relevant story you would like to pitch to us, do, but. Make it relevant to this podcast and this audience police, and that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #434: Podcasts Defeat Mainstream Media in 2024 U.S. Election appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Blogs have been with us for 30 years, which qualifies as “something old.” In this long-form episode of FIR for October, we’ll examine the state of the oldest social media category. We’ll also examine the state of generative Artificial Intelligence, which has been around, for all practical purposes, since November 2022, which makes it “something new.”

In this episode, we’ll also explore Reddit’s potential as a channel for government agencies and businesses to engage with stakeholders during a crisis and which agencies and brands are already there. Intuit’s chief communication officer didn’t like the direction a podcast interview with his CEO took, so he demanded the podcast trim the parts he didn’t like. Was he justified? The news media has gained a reputation for clickbait, but it recently took a dark turn. And, executives justify their return-to-office push by citing the need for greater collaboration and connection among employees. But does having everyone in the office produce those results? We’ll look at the research.

In his Tech Report, Dan York (joined by a special guest) shares details of a VC investment round for Bluesky, and how competitors like Mastodon reacted.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, November 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

• Is Reddit the Future of Crisis Communications? 
• From the technology community on Reddit: Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode – we declined
• Intuit Asks The Verge To Delete Part Of Interview With Its CEO; The Verge Declined
• Katherine Ross (@byKatherineRoss) on X (on the Intuit podcast episode)
• Streisand effect (Wikipedia)
• 2024 Blogging Survey: Trends and Insights from 12,000+ Bloggers Over 11 Years
• The milking of Liam Payne’s death for clicks won’t do Reach plc any good long-term
• What Employers Get Wrong About How People Connect at Work
• The State of AI Report (introduction)
• The State of AI Report
• Welcome to the State of AI Report 2024

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

• Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users
• Eugen Rochko (@[email protected]) (Mastodon’s founder responds)

Raw transcript:

[00:00:00] Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 433 of four immediate release, our long form episode for October, 2024. I’m She Holtz in Concord, California. And I’m Neville Hobson in Kruer Somerset in England. My new physical location as of two or three weeks ago, glad to be here. Kko, how do you spell that?

C-R-E-W-K-E-R-N-E. I never would’ve. Guess that in a million years. It’s a delightful part of southwest England. You’ve heard of Glastonbury? No doubt. That’s north of where I am. The English Channel South Coast is about 20 minutes to the south of me. , it’s a lovely part of the country. It rains a lot and I see tractors everywhere that I go.

Big ones ’cause farming country here. But we’re pleased to be here. And you have grandchildren there? Yeah. The family. That side of the family is here. All of them and the grandkids. I’ve seen more in the last week than I have in the last six months. It’s absolutely [00:01:00] delightful to be here for that reason.

Well, glad that you have finally made the move. I knew that was a long time coming. Yeah, it was. And I’m in my new, uh, in my new garden studio office. I’ll have something more to say about that in a blog post soon with photos. I hope indeed. And your move is one of the reasons we only had two short midweek episodes between the September long form episode and this one for October.

You have been moving house, as you say, in the uk. We just say moving. Yeah, and I have been away. I was at the Public Relations Society of America’s big annual icon conference the week before last. And this past week I was in Houston at a fascinating meeting of the construction communicators round table, an informal group of top communicators from about 20 of the nation’s [00:02:00] builders to get together , and talk about common communication issues.

And it was wonderful. I had a great time. I learned a lot. I should say I learned more there than I did at the PRSA conference. . It was absolutely worth going and, , it’s just been a busy month , for both of us. It, but I’m certainly glad to be back at the microphone. Me too. Yeah, me too.

When we recorded the, , I’ll mention this in a minute. When we get to the episode review, the one episode we did in between the beginning of October and today, I had moves, but I didn’t have any of my normal day-to-Day equipment, set up the computers, the microphones, nothing. So I recorded on a laptop, , with earbuds.

Uh and would you believe the, , laptop microphone? And when I listened to the recording after it, the LD wasn’t that bad. Did you have to do any editing with that? It was a considerable amount of editing. Your audio was, fine. It was absolutely [00:03:00] usable. But it did sound like it was coming through a third rate microphone, and I ran it through the Script’s Studio sound feature.

This is one of their Yeah. AI features. And it came out sounding wonderful. Yeah. This is an amazing, I had no idea that it could take, a telephone call sounding recording. Yeah. And make it sound like you had been sitting at a $400 microphone. A wonderful, that’s to hear Wonderful feature on the script.

Good to hear. Good to hear. I did think, hoping that it was great quality original recording, but now I know that Dell’s laptop microphone’s are crap, basically. I gotta tell you, when I listened to yours, I said, it’s all right. It’s a short midweek episode. It’s, yeah, it’s fine.

I had one of those ones where. When we signed into Riverside, , to do the recording, I didn’t notice that the microphone had defaulted to the one that’s baked into the camera and the audio wasn’t that good. , and if I had known that running it through Studio Sound, the [00:04:00] script would’ve fixed it. I.

Absolutely would’ve done that. That’s good to know that, Cheryl, I must admit. Good. So these two episodes that we have done since the September monthly episode, four, three oh 4 31 was on October the second. , we dove into PR weeks, the Evolution of Influence Report, exploring their dynamic shifts and how.

PR professionals exert influence in today’s fast changing landscape. It was a good discussion we had with that one. And then jump forward just over two weeks to October the 18th, and episode 4 32, the one that you had to do the audio editing with my recording. , CEOs and other senior executives are increasingly expected to nurture a presence on social media, especially LinkedIn, which has seen a 35% increase in c-suite professionals in the US over the last five years.

That’s where communicators need to step in. We said helping leaders find the most comfortable way to engage authentically online. That’s a key word there. Authentic. So that was [00:05:00] a good discussion. I actually did a follow up. Blog post myself, , with some further thoughts on that. But, in my mind, the authenticity is the kind of paramount word.

It’s worth a listen to that episode. It was pretty good, wasn’t it? And I know we got some comments somewhere amongst all this, haven’t we? We did, , got two comments on episode 4 32, 1 from Kerry Sullivan who said, leaders need to be present in order to attract and retain talent. They also need to write and show up in their own voice language is how we recognize one another.

Finally, if a leader isn’t confident enough to show up online, they’re probably not resilient enough to lead through anything more complex than a steady state business. And then we had a comment from Monique Nik who said, , many execs and public figures I know get others to do their content and approve it themselves, or only post once a month or so in, in a team photo.

Do you think it matters who actually creates the content or only that it aligns with the brand and is seen as authentic? So it’s an [00:06:00] interesting question from there’s Monique, there’s a whole topic. We could discuss that and maybe we will. With Monique, right? We might talk about that with Monique.

This is a great opportunity to let everyone know that this coming Tuesday, we are going to be speaking with Monique for an FIR interview. If you’re not already subscribing to the FIR interviews feed head over to FIR podcast network.com and subscribe. You don’t wanna miss this one. Uh she is among other things, the author of a new book, called Internal Communications in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

So looking forward to that conversation. We do have one additional comment. This is from an episode that goes back before our September episode. Sally Gch left a comment on this, and just by way of context, I should say that, as part of , the topic for that episode, rather than do the I [00:07:00] ident myself, that’s the little.

32nd introduction to the episode. At the very, very beginning, I wrote it and then had 11 labs produce my cloned voice. Reading it, it was apropos to the episode, and Sally said, as soon as the intro started, I thought Shell’s voice sounds different than something is off. And finally, is that ai, my brain got almost too wrapped up in trying to figure out what was wrong.

To take in what you were saying, it bothered me in a way that the synthesized voice of Google Maps doesn’t, and that in turn makes me wonder whether generative audio and video needs to be more real or less real to avoid the uncanny valley. , and it is actually an interesting point if it tries too hard to be really authentic.

Is that too distracting? Does it need to be? Inauthentic enough, obvious enough that it was [00:08:00] AI produced, that you go, oh, it’s an AI voice. Okay, I can now sit back and pay attention to what’s being said rather than, that’s really weird. Or discomforting, whatever. But, , it’s, it is an interesting point , that Sally makes.

Also wanna let everybody know that we have a new circle of fellows available on the FIR Podcast Network. This was an episode dealing with change management participants included ZORA artists, PRI Bates, Todd Hattori, and Cindy Schmid with Brad Whitworth. Moderating this one because I was at the PRSA conference and the next.

Circle of Fellows is scheduled for November 21st. It’ll be at 1130 in the morning, , Eastern Time. This is on executive Communication and leadership. Alice Brink, Bish Mukherjee, Julie Holloway and Maryanne McCauley will be the panelists for this one. And I will be moderating again, back in the [00:09:00] moderator’s chair.

And, , it should be , a great conversation. And if you’re able to participate live in real time, we love engaging with those people who are on the call with us. , but if not, it’ll be available as both a video replay and an audio podcast here on the FIR podcast Network. And that means that it is time to jump into our stories of the month, which we will do with vigor right after this, when there have been.

Natural disasters or other things that governments have needed to communicate. It became sort of a defacto rule that you would do some of that communication on Twitter. This was the place that Breaking News was communicated, and even if they didn’t have the audience that say, a Facebook has. They did have the attention of the media, and this tended to help [00:10:00] get the word out.

You had people who were looking for breaking news, but you also had journalists there who could turn it around and present it through their channels. So what are we doing today? Imagine that you represent a government trying to communicate critical information after natural disasters. We’re talking about the essentials, how to apply for FEMA assistance, updates on recovery efforts, basic safety information.

You would think press releases, press conferences, and social media posts. In today’s landscape, though, those channels aren’t necessarily. Going to be completely effective. Traditional media audiences have grown more and more fragmented and polarized. TV viewers are divided, and people’s social media feeds are clogged with a mix of algorithm filtered content and distractions.

The government’s posts on Facebook might not even make it to the people who need them. Instagram stories have limited reach for this purpose, and on TikTok or [00:11:00] X, which if you’ve been following, is what they’re calling Twitter these days with fewer people and less revenue. Anyway, these messages get lost in the noise, drowned out by conspiracy theories or just never seen or ignored well.

Reddit has stepped in to the rescue. This might not seem like the most usual platform for this kind of content, but it’s increasingly significant. In response to hurricanes, Helene and Milton, the White House chose Reddit as an outreach medium. Posts appeared in subreddits like R North Carolina and our Georgia aimed at directly communicating with communi communities in need.

Now, I know Reddit’s not the typical channel for a government to use to communicate. It’s known for its niche communities. Canid exchanges, occasional brand disaster. Ask me anything that go awry. But Reddit does something, , rare. In today’s online world. [00:12:00] It offers a level of genuine human engagement moderated by community members and not by algorithms.

The shift highlights a move toward, , thinking about Reddit, which has been a last resort. Up until this point, subreddits like these let basic communication that might otherwise get swallowed up on traditional media outlets happen. And this isn’t just about governments. Take Sonos for example. This is the smart speaker company.

they. Issued, , an app update that caused all kinds of problems. It really upset a very loyal community of customers and a Sonos employees started posting regular updates on an unofficial subreddit to engage and appease these frustrated customers. It worked well enough that eventually the CEO stepped in, showing up where the audience was engaged and paying attention.

So is Reddit the future for crisis communication? , [00:13:00] probably not the way you would think, but it’s becoming a really important back channel. Where real unfiltered information can be shared. It’s not without issues. Reddit’s reliance on unpaid community moderators is under strain. There’s actually been something of an uprising of sub redditers due to some pricing decisions that the company made.

There has been an influx of bots and spammers that threatening to erode the authenticity that gives it value, but it still stands out as one of the few online spaces where important messages can still reach and engage audiences. So for us as communicators, platforms like Reddit, may. Soon play a bigger role in crisis communication and brand management strategies, especially as traditional channels struggle with engagement and trust issues.

So if you’re not engaging on Reddit, maybe it’s time to start. It’s an interesting. Development. I think, I mean I’ve been on Reddit at least 15 years, [00:14:00] not very active there. I participate in maybe 15, 16 different, subreddits of things that are, , mostly personal interest, but a couple of business related things.

And I’ve always found it, , useful. , I’m conscious too that some I visited and had been part of. I’m no longer simply because of the awfulness of some of the people in those places. So this is, you mentioned the risks. Yeah. There are significant risks. if you went into Reddit in a major way, I would say, or had something that was controversial that you dunno what you’re gonna get.

, is that different to others? Well, I think it is. And maybe not Twitter, X whatever. , but it certainly is, so you’ve gotta take that into account. Isn’t it true though that, , any argument about is this the right platform? Is almost wholly dependent on, do you understand your audience? , is that where they are?

Or is that where people are that you would like to get to know? So you’ve gotta have those questions down Pat. I think, , the White House one’s interesting. , the example that, the article that [00:15:00] I, , that you linked to talks about those hurricanes, , that, , I’d actually love to know why they decided this as opposed to continuing using X.

, did they not feel, that given the audience they’re trying to reach this very specifically in that part of the us, , maybe they felt, I dunno what they felt, , X couldn’t deliver. I don’t know that they did stop using X. They might have added Reddit to. Post on X. Yeah, that’s, it’s possible. I don’t know, maybe they didn’t, but No, sure.

But that’s possible, isn’t it? But the other example you mentioned, Sonos, I found really interesting. , particularly di diving deeper into the article. , it mentions, , that this guy who was, , the kind of representing, , Sonos Keith from Sonos is his handle, , was diligently, dutifully and patiently according to the article, , posting on the brand’s unofficial subreddit.

, after that app update you mentioned, I remember reading about that update. It [00:16:00] really did en rage, people with genuine rage, not internet rage. This was real stuff. Unhappy, unhappy. He was there daily doing messaging, all that stuff. So they hated the company, but they didn’t hate Keith and he carried on and engaged with people.

Next thing, , the company’s CEO headed over to where Keith was. And had a great time because of Keith. Now that is fascinating. So it reminds me of the story we talked about maybe some years ago, shell, about the, kid who, what was it? Sherwood Williams or the big paint company and he was doing stuff there with the imaging and creating graphic.

They fired him. So he was picked up by a competitor. ‘ , ’cause outside the control of , the control freaks at the company basically. So this interest, well let’s go further back than remember. Remember Frank Eliason with Comcast Cares on That’s right. Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, in the other days, unsanction, he was just doing it on his own.

Yeah. And he ended up with a team of what, 11 or 12 employees early days. [00:17:00] This is recent and yet conceptually I think it’s not different. , so that, well you argue that wasn’t a crisis per se. , so I, I would say the question , is not so much for crisis communication specifically, or that it could be for that the future crisis communication, a future, maybe it’s your overall engagement, whether it’s in a crisis or not.

So we’ve got the examples of a crisis. So, , to me it’s like if you could answer the questions, do you know your audience? Is this where they are? Then that itself would be a reason why you wanna be there. Or maybe in the case of the White House, we don’t know if that’s our audience, but we do know certain types of people we wanna reach.

Probably are there. So let’s go there. I mean, maybe, I dunno, I’m guessing here. EEE Exactly. If there’s a subreddit for a state or a region, yeah. You’ve gotta believe that some people are there and if this is where this information is being doled out, other people will spread the word. You can go to other communities and say, Hey, there’s some really good information being shared in [00:18:00] the Georgia subreddit.

You should come over here and partake of that. Yeah. So it, it could build the audience. But going back to what the article said, I really believe it’s the fact that , it’s community moderated and there’s no algorithm. So it’s an opportunity to get the word out and engage with the people who care about this information without the platform getting in the way of that communication.

Yeah. That makes total sense. I agree. Good example. I think, so we have an interesting story here that is about. Well, egregiousness is one word that comes to mind. , stepping over a line, , from a communicator’s point of view, this is a story of, , Intuit, , and a podcast and someone wanting to erase part of it after the recording that didn’t like it.

So this was a recent episode of The Decoder podcast that’s a publication of The Verge, , where Nle Patel, who’s the [00:19:00] editor in Chief of the Verge and host of decoder, interviewed Saan Zi. Who’s the CEO of the Global Financial Technology Platform? Intuit, the interview is especially notable due to a request after the recording from Intuit’s Chief Communications Officer Rick Heinemann.

To delete a portion of the discussion, the Verge refused the request. So the Verge believes Intuit’s request reveals the ethical considerations at the heart of its editorial standards and ethics is something they played a, they blew a big trumpet about. In the decoder episode, Gazi responded to questions about Intuits lobbying against simplified tax filing processes in the us.

Specifically, the Verge raised concerns over Intuits lobbying history, which aims to protect its paid service. TurboTax from direct competition with free government-led filing options. When questions turned to Intuits lobbying activities and history of misleading free, quote unquote tax filing claims, [00:20:00] Azis firmly denied the portrayal.

Following the interview, Intuit’s CCO Rick Heinemann labeled the exchange as inappropriate and demanded that the verge remove the contentious five minute segment. Citing raised voices and overlapping dialogue is distracting the vote. Refuse citing. Its strict editorial independence and commitment to transparency.

The publication maintains that interviews should remain unaltered to preserve journalistic integrity, and it saw no basis for the edit beyond potential discomfort over the pointed questioning. The segment ultimately add uncut, placing the issue of corporate influence on media and editorial ethics front and center.

As Nle Patel explained, the Verge follows a clear non-negotiable editorial policy focused on journalistic ethics, transparency, and accountability. It says its long maintained an ethical stance that prohibits interviewees or their representatives from reviewing, approving, or altering published content.

By [00:21:00] refusing to delete the segment, the Verge says it underscored its commitment to maintaining an unfiltered public record, which it viewed as particularly relevant in this case due to the public interest surrounding tax reform and Intuit’s influential lobbying efforts against simplified free tax filing options.

Their decision to release the verbatim transcript was a trapped a step towards total transparency. They said enabling the audience to form their own opinions on the contentious interaction. There are a number of issues with this that we could discuss for a while. For starters, is the intervention of Intuit CCO in demanding a deletion, an egregious step over a red line.

What’s your take? She. Yes, yes. It’s in the word greatest step over a red line. I can’t be any more unequivocal than this. He was wrong. , and the verge was right in this, , you agree to do an interview. On a podcast, that’s no different [00:22:00] than agreeing to do an interview with a reporter from a mainstream newspaper.

The only way you get to say you can’t use the information that was shared in that interview is if you get the agreement from the journalist at the beginning that this is off the record. And I can’t imagine that anybody doing a podcast would get an off the record agreement from the podcaster. I mean, imagine one of our interviewees.

Yeah. This, I’m, I’m happy to go on FIR interviews, but, , it’s gonna be off the record. Okay. Or on background, maybe. , no. there, there is absolutely no justification for this. And anybody who’s graduated from journalism school should understand this. I am astounded that somebody who has attained a chief communication officer level in an organization thinks that they could get away with nonsense like this.

It’s ridiculous. Yeah. , that, that was my, no, that was my thought as well. Shell, I’m thinking [00:23:00] the Verge, like many publications, , whether they’re so-called new media or traditional media doesn’t really matter. You have, , policies you publish about your standards, your terms and conditions of use, all that, , and nowadays is very common for publications, whether they’re mainstream media, social media, even.

Even business blogs, so that matter, still a publication go into some detail, , about their ethical approach and accountability and responsibilities, et cetera. So they have all that. It’s public, so it’s not like , the, these people did an opportunity to see it. , I’m wondering whether they had something as simple as a literary disclaimer form that the interviewee sites, , I remember, , business podcasts I’ve done for companies always have those for guests, which make it quite clear what the ground rules are different.

If, let’s say the Verge had published something that was totally wrong, , , if something had happened that it was totally wrong, that might have been different perhaps, but they didn’t. And I’m wondering whether, and again, we’ve only got the words of how it was written about the CCOs kind of [00:24:00] demanding they do this and it was stepping over the line and all that.

If, if he went in with that approach, no wonder they said. we can’t really say these words on a podcast, family podcast like this, but they dismiss that out of hand. Maybe if he tries to negotiate something, he may have got somewhere, but I doubt it. He, like you said, she surely he should have known better than to do this for goodness sake.

So that, that makes disappointed if someone in a senior role like that making something like this become then the story, which is what this is. , but totally wrong and you shouldn’t ever even try to think of doing some of that after the event. Unless, like you said, you’ve got agreement about something beforehand or it’s serious.

It’s, it really is a mistake and you can justify your intervention and try your hardest to get it changed. But this was ridiculous. A few thoughts. One, I agree if he had gone to decoder and said, gosh, I. The CEO’s kind of unhappy about that [00:25:00] last five minutes and is asked if it’s possible, or I’m gonna ask on his behalf if it’s possible to trim that off.

And they’re probably gonna say no, but you’re probably gonna get farther and maintain a better relationship if you make it a request rather than a demand you have no standing, no basis , for making a demand. Now, however, that this has become the story, every journalist dealing with the communications department at Intuit’s gonna go into it knowing that this is a possible outcome and they’re going to treat into it differently.

And yeah, probably not in a good way. So I could see that. You gotta wonder what he was thinking. Intuit’s a big company. They get coverage. They have clout. So yeah, I think this is gonna affect the perception of the public based on the way that the media reports on them as a result of this.

Yeah, one thing that struck me thinking it through was the fact that this request, , stemmed from a disagreement [00:26:00] over the portrayal of a lobbying practice practices and not from factual inaccuracies. That’s the key thing to me, highlights this kind of conflict between public relations interests and transparency of information that impacts consumers of this particular case.

So their desire into its desire to control damaging dialogue. That’s how I’m reading this, , points to the influence corporations are gonna seek to wield over media portrayal, which you shouldn’t do that. There is another issue here that amazes me and that is that nobody should have been surprised that this point of discussion came up.

People have been talking about this. John Oliver did a segment on this on last week, tonight, years ago. People know that Intuit lobbies to maintain the ability to make money from tax preparation software when most people would like the IRS to provide that [00:27:00] software free, to make it easy for them to file their taxes and.

He should be prepared. The CEO , should be prepared to address that question. Is he not media trained for heaven’s sake, right? if the CCO is upset about this, what he’s probably really upset about is that he hadn’t prepared his CEO to answer this question and engage in a conversation about it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

No. That exactly , is a point , that, , I was thinking about as you were saying those words. How briefed was he? , maybe they didn’t see this as serious, which is why the hell are you doing it? In that case, every interview that you do, particularly if you know you’ve got a skeleton that ain’t in the closet, it’s right out there that people are gonna be asked about.

Surely they should tell. What if they ask about this topic, Mr. CEO, here’s what you need to, well, you didn’t tell ’em what he’s gonna say. Look, here’s the pros and cons of this. Do you refuse to talk about it? No, you can’t do that. Is it one of those situations where you could say. The best person to talk about this is this person can go there or deflect it in some way, but you need [00:28:00] to be prepared.

and like you said, they obviously weren’t if he were media trained, he would’ve been able to take that question and say, let’s look at three reasons why this is a good thing. First of all, it’s a better product than what the IRS is ever going to be able to provide.

Second, third, you do the threes. And you bring it around back to your talking points and then the podcaster moves on. The interviewer moves on rather than making it contentious. , looking through that script, it, it, it seems to me that it was the CEO who started to take that off the rails a bit.

Yeah. He wasn’t prepared. No. , and that’s shocking. Really is, yeah. Neville, I know that you continue to do a fair amount of blogging. I do. I don’t, I haven’t had the time. My, my blog, , sits there. I cross post the monthly episodes of [00:29:00] FIR there and not much else, but there are plenty of people who are still blogging and you, and they are, , the basis of the 2024 blogging survey that was published by Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media published on LinkedIn, interestingly, as opposed to in a white paper downloadable report, , a microsite now it was a LinkedIn article.

, the surveys in its 11th year, it draws on insights from over 12,000 bloggers and offers a comprehensive look at evolving blogging trends, tactics, and results. It’s a really rich. Report for content marketers who are looking to understand what’s working in content strategy and, where their emerging challenges are.

So let’s take a look at the key takeaways I have. Eight of these. And Neville, I thought what I would do is go through ’em one at a time and get your thoughts on each one. [00:30:00] the first one deals with the traffic challenge and zero click platforms. A zero click platform would be something like perplexity, where you get the answer thanks to what somebody published on a blog, but you never have to click through to the blog in order to get it because Perplexity has given it to you.

, this is one of the most critical challenges bloggers are facing. Driving traffic is a key challenge. Only 20% of bloggers are reporting strong results driving traffic, and that’s down from 30% just five years ago now, the decline largely stems from platforms like Google and social media increasingly keeping users on their sites leading to a rise in zero click.

Content marketing expert, Rand Fishkin suggests that content marketers need to rethink what success looks like, shifting their focus from traffic volume to building loyal niche audiences through methods like gated content or newsletters. This zero click phenomenon is reshaping strategies, [00:31:00] encouraging marketing marketers to nurture smaller engaged communities rather than depending on high traffic numbers alone.

Your thoughts, Neville? I’m kind of different how I use my blog, , since I reboot, relaunched a thing effectively last July. I don’t do this for monetary gain. I don’t do this for, , a kind of strategic approach to engagement. Indeed, there’s no, you can’t comment anymore on my blog. I disabled commenting about four years ago actually.

I don’t, I have different focuses. I get this though. I do understand this. I don’t, I’m not bothered at all by zero click and at all. , I’m quite happy for people to read my content that shows up in a perplexity search or they get it because of Google. Even Google search. I’ve seen blog posts, I’ve written show up in Google results sometimes.

So what benefit do I get from that? It’s kind of like, , my content is out [00:32:00] there. , unlike the days you and I talked about many over a decade ago, if content scraping was a big thing back in the, , late. Teens, the late zeros, , late, what do you call it? The two thousands. , not too bothered about that.

Don’t, yeah, I don’t see it much these days actually. Zero cake doesn’t bother me, but I understand why it does concern others. And indeed, we’ve talked about this in a recent podcast episode, so I do understand that. I’m not concerned by that. If I were doing this. Wearing a hundred percent a business hat and seeking some kind of engagement or recognition or reward that might bother me where I would be concerned about the traffic.

I do pay attention to traffic, to Google Analytics, to rank math, which is one of the SEO tools that I use, and I do pay attention to that so that also they guide me in terms of some of the keywords I might use, but it’s not front of mind. I tend to write naturally. So I know many people like that. By the way.

some running business blocks too, a hundred percent business blocks, , have similar thinking. [00:33:00] So to me , that’s how you can demonstrate authenticity, which is a significant thing that I care a lot about, the authenticity of content that you come across. There’s no hidden agenda, and I have critics who tell me everyone’s got a hidden agenda.

I do not believe that. And to which they call me terribly naive still, but hey, I don’t care, to be honest, shall so This is. An issue without doubt. And , I don’t believe that it’s gonna end well for anyone who believes zero issue, a zero click is going to go away sometime soon. Or it doesn’t matter anymore if you are a business looking for results that way.

’cause it will matter. So what do you think of the alternatives that are suggested here? Like, , switching to, a Substack style newsletter or gating your content? Don’t, I don’t buy any of those, options at all, but might be different. If I wore a business hat Substack, I wouldn’t recommend to anyone to use Substack.

And that’s all to do with the behavior they have exhibited with extremist, , content. Right. , that’s why I [00:34:00] said a Substack style. Got it. Got it. Well, yeah. Okay. , I use, I have a newsletter. That’s actually, , just WordPress that, , you sign up and you get emailed Every time I publish a new post, that’s all it does, and I see interesting engagement from that newsletter that otherwise wouldn’t be the case.

And I don’t pimp anything or push anything I. It’s free. And I’m not making any money outta that. That’s fine. I’m quite happy with that. I think that is something though, to explore. I, I hear lots of people talking about, I’m gonna do a newsletter and monetize my content. I remember using that phraseology 15 years ago and it produced results back then.

I mean, you and I had sponsors in the early days of podcast that, , was, worthwhile. , now today things are very different. , you have to be focused, I think, more on authenticity than ever before. There are so many people writing stuff. Much of it is drl Again, that’s subjective. I then look at the click bait stuff, like the story that, , in this episode we’re gonna talk about, , [00:35:00] that is, is everywhere you look.

How do you tell if something is real? , that’s another big issue. So, , these are all issues. She seems to me, did I answer your question by the way? Did that answer your question? Oh, yes, it did. Thank you. ,we’ll move on to the second key takeaway, , increase the increasing role of artificial intelligence and content creation.

, AI has become mainstream in blogging. 80% of bloggers are using it in various stages of content creation. , most are using it for idea generation headlines, outlines only a small percentage are relying on it for complete drafts of their posts, but the impact is mixed. While it boosts efficiency, it hasn’t yet translated into significantly higher engagement.

There are voices in the industry like Christopher s Penn and Mark Schafer who are pointing out that bloggers are navigating a steep learning curve, experimenting at this point in ways that accelerate their processes while [00:36:00] preserving authenticity and unique voice. I, I do assume you’re using AI at some level , in your blogging.

Oh, , utterly, , to generate ideas, to summarize articles. I don’t use it. I tried it. I don’t use it as I see some people talking about it, which is to literally ask it question, give me a good idea. I can blog about this topic. I don’t do that. , I, when I tried it, I found every single thing I tried with that is absolutely not what I would write about and the way in which it proposed I write.

So no, I don’t waste my time on that. But ideas, yes, in terms of, , an idea I’ve already got. How to flesh it out further, I might ask it. I often ask chat, GBT plus. a kind of a, here’s this thing, ask me questions about this. , what I’d like you to do is come up with a way in which I can talk about X on this topic.

And I found that helpful in every case that on how I use it, these are idea generators, hence generative ai, not creators of the overall [00:37:00] content that I’m gonna publish. I have yet to publish an article except one or two, which I’ve mentioned on my blog as part of my experimentation wholly generated by the ai.

And boom, there it’s, nah, that, that’s not what you should be doing. And looking at some of the metrics here, I find quite interesting. , the biggest percentage I see in the, , list given about how Blogger is using AI was, is 40, 54% using AI to generate ideas. And that’s 11% since the last time they did the survey.

Yeah, that, that makes sense. 40% to write outlines. , I’ve done that a couple times and. , not as good as, , as saying, for instance, to chat GPT and even perplexity sometimes, , write a draft of this topic, 400 words or 600 words, , in a couple of paragraphs, , or, , actually, I don’t tend to use the word, paragraph.

Let’s say give word counts. And that often, particularly in the case of chat, GPT, steers me in the direction that , I decide I want to go to you. Arguably, you could say if you [00:38:00] hadn’t done that, you’d have had to go in a different direction possibly. I would’ve had to think of all that myself, which is what I used to do.

I don’t see this any different at all, by the way, as using a colleague to bounce ideas off, , or, , as the phraseology goes, getting the intern to write a draft, this to me is no different to that. Happens to be. A bit of software. Yeah. I have baked AI into various parts of my article writing or post writing workflow.

So it’s become a habit that at this stage I’m going to use ai. , one of the things that I’ve done a couple of times is I have taken my notes, , from an interview and I, I do use a note taking app. I use auto ai, but in, in these cases, I didn’t, I was sitting there with my laptop interviewing somebody.

This is for a personality profile, and I found I just didn’t have the time to write this feature article. So I took my notes and I gave them, I, I think it was Claude, but I don’t remember for sure which one I was using. [00:39:00] And I said, here are my notes from this interview with this person. Here’s a little bit more information.

, write a first draft of, , an employee profile. , and it did a surfaceable job. I would say that I rewrote it. I’m not gonna say that I edited it heavily. It was a complete rewrite, but it took me probably half the time it would’ve taken to write it from scratch. It did not sound like a, nobody would look at this and go, oh, AI wrote this.

Because like I say, it was a complete rewrite. I don’t know how long I would spend on this, but the, I get that the longer you write it and the greater the depth of your content, the more it mentions you get better results. I don’t see what they mean by better results. Do they mean by more clicks, inbound links, , amplification, or what?

What does better result mean, do you think? I’m presuming it means more. Views and higher levels of engagement. I don’t have that data, but those are the results that I would consider to be better as a blogger. Yeah. [00:40:00] Yeah. , yeah, I guess so. what would I think about? , thinking about a couple of posts I’ve written recently, one of which got significant attention and sharing.

, it was a topic that seemed to resonate and some key people had shared it, and that drove more traffic to it. So that wasn’t a designed approach. If I write this way about this topic and they targeted to that kind of person, I didn’t do any of those things. I just write, , as I said in the description of my blog when I relaunched it.

This is a place to think out loud and get other people’s thoughts too. not necessarily in conversation here to spread the word. If. But there’s no strategy behind it for me. , so I’m not sure what that means. , better results either way. I get the connection between the longer, , your longer articles that are well thought through, hence the four hours, , likely.

, and I often find that when I’ve written a post from, say it’s had input from one of the ais in terms of structure, , [00:41:00] and looked at the first draft that I’d written and often do that and ask it, critique this, suggest how I could improve this. Something simple like that. I don’t give it to complex, requests.

Always comes back with, at least here are four things you could do. And often they’re typical things like, more subheadings or add some images or something to break it up. , but often not always the you think, oh, that’s a damn good suggestion that leads then to me to do something more. So I get, I sometime have spent four hours, but my time typically is a couple of hours.

, if that , on a 900 to 1200 word post, I tend not to count too much, but I think, and so what do I get out of it? , I look at the traffic, from, , Google Analytics in particular and see this post has got that much attention. Fine. , rarely are they comments. These days, except on some social networks, but that’s often not to the post.

, that’s if I’ve amplified it particularly on LinkedIn. [00:42:00] Although I do find, , threads is actually working pretty well in that regard too. But I’m actually not doing it for that reason. She, understand obviously, people, , publishing from a business point of view are doing it that way. I’m not, but I, I get why that’s important.

So I think that’s a good point to make, to show, to outline how long the typical blog post and that relationship between length and time spent, you can connect to better results, I guess. Yeah. It also says to me that there’s a thirst out there for longer form. Content if longer blog posts are producing better results.

But let’s move on to the fourth key takeaway, which is, , around blogging frequency and SEO impact. It’s interesting that while posting frequency has dropped, quality remains high. Fewer bloggers publish multiple times a week with a growing trend toward monthly updates, which, in the early days of blogging, people would’ve said, ah, you’ll never gain any traction posting once a month.

, but it remain. SEO [00:43:00] remains, , vital as consistency and freshness contribute to better ranking and traffic performance. Madi French and SEO strategist highlights the importance of maintaining regular updates and aligning the search intent to achieve visibility, especially in competitive spaces. Are you paying any attention to SEO.

not to the extent that this suggests, no, , not really. , but I think, , it is interesting about , the, the correlation and effort and performance you published more often and more likely to report strong results, quote unquote strong results. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Monthly blogging is more popular, but less effective than ever.

Reminds me of Richard Amo when he started his 6:00 AM blog. It was once a week, , every Monday at 6:00 AM his time. , I dropped into, , this year at times one, two posts per month. And then sometimes, I think it must have been August the, so-called Quiet Month, in which case probably the worst time to publish content you want people to get at.

I think I publish like six posts. I try, I tell myself, publish one a week. [00:44:00] It actually turns out about once every two weeks that I publish something, but I don’t feel any pressure to do that. So I have a long list. I’ve always had this shell. You’ve, you are the same, I’m sure. I’ve got a long list of ideas to blog about.

There’s like 20 items in there. I never get to half of them. You never know. Something might spark. So I use Evernotes, , particularly to note down topics I’d like to write about and usually it helps. , biweekly is the minimum for content performance. This, , this report says, , publishing 10 to 12 posts per year won’t cut it.

I’m sure that’s true, but, , I get skeptical about, stuff that talks about longer content, is therefore equal to greater success and spending more time on longer content. And then you’ve got this, , biweekly, not monthly, , more often than likely to report better results. Stuff like that depends what you’re measuring, I suppose.

Depends what your goal is. But, , I know businesses who are. Once, twice a month and are consistent at it. , what results are they getting out of it? If it’s thought leadership, [00:45:00] perhaps, , is it amplification elsewhere? You need to do an analytics report on that kind of thing. I think it’s good to see, , blogs still alive and well in spite of, , some of the downside of all of that, which is useless content, clickbait type content, , that you see employed by some media tabloids in particular.

, you see that reflect in some blog posts along with, and again, this is my kind of tired cynicism. , sometimes shell that you look at some con you think, why on earth did you even. Publishes drl. And that’s very subjective, and it’s cruel sometimes to say that. I wouldn’t say that to anyone. You often think it, I often wonder, do people say that about my stuff?

Sometimes I wonder, I’ll never know unless someone tells me. , I don’t go out and ask people. But, , it’s good to see blogging. It is not going away. This Fiori with WordPress I don’t think is helping anything. , with a fight with WP Engine. And then this whole argument about who owns the intellectual property rights to WordPress, , et cetera, , I see a lot of people, , what does that mean a [00:46:00] lot?

Maybe 15 or 20 over the past few weeks saying, I’m quitting WordPress. I’m gonna go to Ghost, or I’m gonna go to some other service, or whatever. Yeah. I suppose inevitable. Are we at a time then for the shakeout in the tools and the platforms that we’re using? To write blog posts. Has a definition of blogging shifted?

I suspect it has , the original definition of, reverse chronological content and you have tracks and the track backs and pings and all that stuff. It’s all automated now. , and I think it has changed in that regard. So if you are using a blog like I am, which is, the simplest way I can describe it is to think out loud, not to pitch anything, not to persuade anyone to a particular course of action overtly, where I can register an algorithmic outcome from that.

I have no interest in doing any of those things. Thinking out loud. Might get some comment from someone. I’ve had some interesting reactions to some of the content recently, like a week or two after I published it. Someone’s encountered it via LinkedIn or Facebook. So I enjoy though those are serendipitous in my book and [00:47:00] that’s definitely makes it all worthwhile.

, let’s go through the remaining four key takeaways, in a lightning round in the interest of time. The fifth is that content formats and, , the power of original researcher in play how two guides remain the top format for bloggers. The survey suggests that original research and collaborative content, like interviews yield the strongest engagement.

Nearly half of respondents reported conducting original research, which significantly contributes to perceived authority. And SEO Jay B the content strategist underscores that original resource is more resilient against AI driven content as it provides unique insights that readers can’t find elsewhere.

Then we have, , the six takeaway influencer collaboration and editing process. Successful bloggers are often those who work closely with influencers and editors. About half of the respondents collaborate with subject matter experts on occasion, and a small successful group does that [00:48:00] Consistently.

Bloggers who involve editors in their process report better results. There’s Amanda Milligan, director of Content Strategy. Who points out that these collaborations create organic authority boosts and improve content quality by integrating , multiple perspectives, making it more valuable and credible.

The seventh key takeaway, , around video and multimedia use, , the use of video and blogs has doubled since 2015, but only about 25% of bloggers consistently use it. Those who do report positive impacts on engagement and reach, aligning with broader social media trends, which where users increasingly prefer video content will.

Reynolds is an industry expert. He advises that marketers prioritize video considering that platforms like YouTube and TikTok continue to grow. Even if bloggers themselves aren’t maintaining videos, potential or maximizing videos potential just yet. And the final takeaway is around analytics and measuring success.

bloggers who consistently [00:49:00] track their analytics are two and a half times more likely to see strong results, but only 20% of bloggers admit that they, , don’t or can’t measure their content’s performance. , Karen Hopper, an analytics expert, stresses that reliable data allows content creators to refine their strategies and demonstrate value, especially as marketing budgets come under closer scrutiny.

So those are the key takeaways. , any thoughts on those Last four, Neville? Yeah, I, the one that struck me was, what a blog is putting in their articles, , visuals, , I’ve always had that. Every single post I publish has a hero image on it. It’s there. And it, I tend to use metaphors a lot and often generate them from, an, , generative AI tool.

, I don’t look for, perfection in terms of photorealistic images, they’re metaphors. I want to use, typically, I’m actually a big fan recently of, , Adobe, , Express that has Firefly built in and stock images built in. So I probably, funny enough, I use one on a, on the post.

[00:50:00] I mentioned at the beginning of this episode about, , additional comments I made to that article. We wrote, we featured in An episode. So I used , a picture of a board, , of a, , a c-suite example, young people. And I then noticed after I’d used it about three or four days later, that the woman front of image, attractive young woman, , is holding pencils in both hands.

I noticed that you gotta pay attention to these things, but, so in any case, I use images. , looking at the metrics here that virtually all bloggers add images to their content. , some bloggers use a lot, small minority adds seven or more. Again, depends on what you’re writing. I don’t do that, but a hero image, something to break it up again, depending on it.

Subheadings I use a lot too. I don’t use video a lot. And it’s interesting. Video , is getting huge attention, but not in blogging. Partly I suspect, , it’s often not easy to embed a video. I. Unless it’s on YouTube, some places don’t do this, and I’ve seen blogs including one of my posts recently, where you don’t control that content.

So [00:51:00] something happens to it. You don’t get it in the embed working. , the worst one is ones that say, you’re not allowed to watch this in your country. Stuff like that. So the permissions aren’t right, so you have that risk. , when I publish myself about episodes that you and I create, I always include an embedded, an embed from Libsyn that will play it and link back to the show notes page.

I tend to do that a lot of visuals and make it a, an interesting visual visit so the user experience is better. That’s, I care about stuff like that and the user interface. I just don’t. Thank So I’m may, I may or may not be , a really good example to, to have this discussion with you because my, , my, , attention on this and what I believe is worth spending time on is not the same as , your typical business block.

So, Jay Bear, for instance, would probably hate talking to me ’cause I wouldn’t be able to converse with him about the same things for the same reasons. But everyone’s different. , and I think, you share your thoughts. Thought leadership is something that I pay attention to. Not the phrase so much, but the act, [00:52:00] the demonstration of that as others perceive it.

So when I get comments to things are right, , I pay attention to that , when they come in. So. That’s my take on it, by the way. I just read this week that Midjourney has released an update that allows you to edit the images that it creates. Yeah. You could have told it to take the pencil out of one of the woman’s hands.

That’s it. That’s worth knowing. She, I should try Midjourney again. I’ve not tried it for a while, but, part of it is a journey. The experimentation , we are having, , what you and I talk about, what others talk about, what others talk about when they listen to what you and I are talking about.

it’s a bit like the , notebook, LM tool that , we tried out on, , experimenting on creating a podcast. A lot of excitement about that I was terribly excited about. It’s all gone dreadfully quiet since then. And I think, , that people realize, perhaps the initial excitement, this is not the intent of this tool.

This is not a viable solution to create a podcast unless you are creating something that you use in a podcast that you’re creating now that I could see for. There may be options for that kind of thing. [00:53:00] Greeting Shea Neville, and FR lists all around the world. It’s Dan York. Greetings coming at you from Shelburn, Vermont.

Actually, not in my home office. I’m in LaMarche and I , have a special guest right here. Charlie, Bernie, I’m so excited to be here. How are you? Charlie has been a devoted member of our FYR chat that we’ve had on on Thursday afternoon Yes. That anybody can join, but just a weekly Zoom chat that shell maintains, and some of us get there together for about a half an hour and talk about social media and everything else.

Yeah. So what are you doing up here in Vermont? Well, first of all, this is for you, Jeff Davis. You can join too. I’m, I’m visiting. Thank you, Dan. I’m visiting my daughter Isabel, who teaches at the University of Vermont and coaches debate. So Charlie’s, uh, when he was coming up here, he dropped me a note. Yeah.

And so we’re, we’ve had a nice coffee and conversation hanging out here at this, uh, little cafe and, uh, figured I’d go and do this. So, um, one thing I was gonna talk about today was that, uh, blue sky just announced that [00:54:00] they had a, do you use Blue sky? No. Okay. No. Where do you spend your time actually on social media these days?

Uh, a lot of time on LinkedIn, to be honest with you. Okay. I’ve, I’ve experimented when my wife was, uh, at, under the Weather a year ago, I experimented with TikTok and I have 500 followers. They’re mostly bots, uh, on TikTok to talk about podcasting and some of the stuff, stuff I did in my booking and a little bit on Instagram as well.

That’s more TikTok followers than I have. I, I’ve also played around with it a little bit. Yeah. But haven’t done a whole lot there. Yeah. That kind of stuff. So I’m not sure it’s worth the time, but I’m there, you know, so, and, and Instagram, I tend to keep an Instagram presence on behalf of PO Bill Media as much as anything else.

So the, uh, yeah. Yeah. My and my daughters are, one is really into TikTok and one is really in Instagram reel, so that’s kind of where they, they absorb a lot of life, but, you know, with the, with the move away from Twitter and x, Sony Evil gone to, to LinkedIn Right. Has been a big beneficiary. Right. But also, you know, mastodons where I spend my time with Fred’s.[00:55:00]

Mm-Hmm. Blue sky, all this. So Blue Sky has, uh, just been taking a little bit of, you know, getting some attention and flack because they accepted a, a round of investment that had $13 million, which the big, the big player in it was a company called Blockchain Capital, which is a, a, a blockchain, cryptocurrency kind of company.

And, and now, I mean, if you go back, you know, Jack Dorsey was behind the creation of Blue Sky and that stuff. Right. And he’s big into that whole world. Yeah. So this should not be a surprise on one level, but, but Blue Sky talked a good bit about how they’ve, they’ve grown, they’ve opened it up. They now have 13 million people.

They’ve, they’ve got Federation, they’ve got some people doing separate servers using this, the AT protocol as they call it. Mm-Hmm. They’ve got, um, custom feeds. They’re gonna be building more stuff that they’re doing. So they’re talking all about what they’re, what they’re trying to do here. And so that’s, uh, that’s their big news.

They’ve got a a, a lot of things happening, a lot of stuff going on that has not been universally well received because many people have been saying, you know, Hey, [00:56:00] here we are. This is the acidification, you know, is coming at some point. Because here we go with, with that. And over on Mastodon, where I spent a lot of time, there’s of course been a lot of commentary around, you know, here we go, VC investing, all this stuff, right?

And, uh, Eugene or Eugene Racho, who’s the kind of the co-founder or the founder of Mastodon, he had a post that said, Mastodon is financed by crowdfunding instead of venture capital. Not because we don’t know that venture capital exists, not because we don’t have bills to pay and not because venture capital isn’t willing to give money to new social media platforms.

VCs don’t want a sustainable business. They want a big exit. Every VC backed business is on a timer to deliver or die. And, and that’s true. That’s but true. It’s a, it’s a great. Soundbite because it’s absolutely true. You, it is absolutely true. I’ve worked at a couple startups that were VC backed and you had a timer.

Yeah. You had to, you know, this was your, your schedule that you had to go and do. It’s crazy. So, so that’s [00:57:00] kind of the big, the big thing. That’s, um, it’s a big deal. Yeah. It’s going on. So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. You know. We’ll, uh, we’ll, blue Sky, sky, the timer just started on blue sky. Right. Will they deliver what their, what their investors need?

Yeah. Or not, so, um, so you were telling me a little bit earlier when we were talking too. Mm-Hmm. You use a product called Riverside FM to record some of the podcast that you take. Right. And you were telling me about some of the cool new stuff. So maybe what is Riverside fm? Well, Riverside, so of course with the, with the, the pandemic and quarantine, we had to use much more zoom, much more remote podcasting, uh, than we ever did before.

We were doing it before sending out kits, sending out com, Rex lines, but then everybody got very used to Zoom. We built studios every got. Most people, and it’s talked about on this show, got better microphones, better headsets for their Zoom calls at Home. Riverside is is a step above Zoom and when I was at podcast movement a couple months ago, [00:58:00] the crew at Riverside told us they were coming out with a whole bunch of AI developments, better tools inside the unit.

So we did two hours of just the staff at Pod Media last week running through all the advancements that this new update in Riverside has. I couldn’t possibly list them all here. The AI searchability, the transcription, you can do word search, you can create social media assets, you can fine tune those, do them by topic.

It’s, it’s absolutely overwhelming. We are thrilled by these new tools, which most people aren’t using, but we are using now as of of today. What’s an example? So it’s a real advanced what’s, yeah. What’s an example of one of the tools that used to take you hours, but now you can do an in minutes? Well, let’s say you and I do this and I’m gonna go back and try and make a 62nd clip based on Blue sky.

I’ll take this audio and or audio and video back to Riverside and, and say, create a [00:59:00] 62nd clip on the word blue sky. I don’t have to do any of the work. All I have to do is the post editing, which you might have had to do after one or two people. Found that clip sourced the clip, it might give you five different versions of that that you can choose from.

And then do that sort of super editing process so you don’t have to search. Find the time. You don’t have to mark. Mark down the time when you were having that conversation like we used to. Oh yeah. Oh, at three minutes and 20 seconds. I did. I was talking with Dan about blue sky, none of that. It’s all taken care of.

So you just go and say, I want make me 62nd clips on Blue Cloud blue or blue sky and goes, wow, that’s really cool. Including, including subtitles. I mean, all the bells and whistles that we do manually can be created. You still can’t take the person out at the end of the editing process. Right. ’cause as, as you guys have talked about, as we’ve talked about, there are errors.

You can’t just post that. Right. ’cause then it blames on you, but it does take out the first edit, maybe the second and third. Wow. Then you’re in there going, [01:00:00] okay, does it sound better if I cut it here or there? But that first draft is taken care of for you on the podcast, on the social media assets.

That’s just one of the features. It’s really, really, really robust. That’s cool. Riverside do com. Well, I gotta wrap it there for the show, but, uh, it’s great to see you Charlie. Nice to meet. It’s great to meet after knowing you virtually for so long that I know it’s a face to face know. Look for our selfie.

There you go. Well, thanks. Uh, she Neville for, uh, this opportunity to talk and say a little bit more people. You can find more about that at Riverside. Ff and Charlie, where can people find you on social media? Well, as a result of listening to for immediate release, for many years I started podcasting and now run a media production company called Pod Ville Media.

So Pod ville Media one word.com. And please look me up or I’m just Charlie at Pod Bill Media. All right. Yeah. Thanks everybody. Thanks Deb. Yeah, thank you. Back to you. She Neville. Bye for now. Just a little PS I was recording that with [01:01:00] Charlie in the cafe using a new device I got called the Holly Land Lark, M two wireless lav mics.

They’re two little round circular microphones that you can just put on the shirt with a magnetic thing. They go to a connector. In this case that was going into my iPhone. There’s also A-U-S-B-C and also a connector. It can go into a, a camera or an audio device. But I was quite pleased we didn’t even use the noise cancellation feature that, uh, that is also there.

So again, it’s a Holly Land Lark M two, if you wanna play with something new, very inexpensive, very nice. thank you so much, Dan. I cannot tell you how it warms my heart to hear you talking with Charlie, Bernie. I saw the photo that you shared as well of the two of you together. , just knowing that FIR brought people together who would’ve never otherwise met, is just a wonderful feeling.

And, , also, of course, the [01:02:00] content of the report was interesting. blue Sky. Yeah, I’m spending very, very little time on Blue Sky. I would say threads between the two of them has really captured my attention more. , but , this investment, , might, boost their fortunes. So our next story, it follows a tragic death of Liam Payne, the former member of the One Direction Boy Band who fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Last week, a local news platform in the West Midlands in the uk owned by reach PLC, posted over 80 articles within 72 hours each. Aiming to garner online engagement. This was nothing less than the strategy of milking Liam Payne’s. Death for Clicks says Dan Slee, an award-winning, communicated with decades of experience in public sector communication in the media.

He argues that this highlights a shift in local journalism, which now prioritizes clicks over community relevance and sensitivity. This approach led to substantial [01:03:00] backlash with nearly half of the comments on the local news platforms article, expressing frustration at the perceived exploitation of Payne’s death.

Many readers criticized the flood of coverage suggesting it was disrespectful to Payne’s family and intrusive. SLE points out that modern news platforms like Reach PLC, prioritize digital metrics over traditional reporting resulting in loss of trust. This specific example of using repetitive emotion driven headlines reflects a widespread shift across local media where the focus is now on high traffic content rather than nuanced storytelling.

Slee emphasizes that while the if it bleeds, it leads mantra, once sold print papers. Today’s readers are quick to spot sensationalism. They expect higher standards from news outlets, particularly in times of tragedy. Tragedy in essence, slee cautions that reach PLC’s approach risks alienating its audience in the long term.

He suggests that while this strategy may succeed in the short term for engagement, it [01:04:00] ultimately devalues the community connection that local journalism wants upheld. Building on Dan s Lee’s critique author and crisis PR consultant, mark Bakowski adds a powerful layer about the consequences of this media machine on celebrities themselves in an opinion piece in The Guardian.

While Slee critiques reaches tactics as commercially unsustainable, Bakowski suggests that such practices are ethically fraught, diminishing the humanity of public figures like pain. Together these perspectives offer a comprehensive view. While outlets like reach exploit celebrity news to maximize engagement, they contribute to a dehumanizing culture that disregards the wellbeing of those at its center.

This combined perspective emphasizes that today’s media, by constantly feeding on the lives of celebrities, not only risks alienating audiences, but also enforces an unsustainable cycle of scrutiny on public figures. As Slee warns of the audience backlash against relentless clickbait, Bukowski’s insights encourage [01:05:00] people to consider the emotional toil on celebrities and ask if a change in how we approach celebrity culture is overdue.

Together they argue for immediate landscape, and that balances engagement with respect and empathy, acknowledging the impact on both audiences and those in the spotlight. A remarkable story in some regards. , just the chutzpah of a, of an organization to take that approach, , around something so tragic, , and yet unsurprising, , especially with the sensationalism that so many publications feel is necessary in order to draw eyeballs.

, unfortunate. But I think it’s just the way things are these days. You mentioned the old, if it bleeds, it leads mantra and that hasn’t changed. you’re, you’re no not going to see a story about, you know, it was a sunny day and people walked in the park. , the media is attracted to those types of stories in which people are [01:06:00] hurt or bad things have happened.

, that’s not gonna change, but this is different. , this is almost the glorification of a tragic event as opposed to, , incessant coverage of that event. This wasn’t more reporting or more analysis. , this was just hammering people with the fact that it had happened. And I can see why their audience was not happy with it.

This particular company reached PLC, published a number of tabloids in the uk and a swath of local newspapers up and down the country. , they’re in the news for a different reason. It’s , very related, I think, which is , the whole business model is geared to. Clicks on questionable content, on articles that lead you to click, they’ll talk about something happens in, in, in an industry and this particular company is gonna do X and they mention the company, you gotta click to get more information.

I’ve seen some people talking about, , the way in which they treat their employees, the reporters in particular [01:07:00] where they are incentivized to just literally churn out. Sheer volumes of content, , day in and day out, and manufacture stories where frankly there is no story. If you look at some of these papers, , I dunno what it’s like in the US shell, but local media in this country, broadly speaking, you go to a local media website and you are absolutely surrounded with popups, ads, the works and stuff popping up all the time, encouraging you to sign up and do this or whatever.

, and the illustrations within an article are typically third party, other articles from the likes of Tabula and those kinds of companies that sell this kind of content. So you know that your visit is being tracked inside out and back to front and upside down every time you click something. So they are, they seem to be at the forefront of this.

And so I expect to see more news like this criticizing reach PLC. , but like you said, the cynicism kicks in quite easily. Is anything really gonna change? I admire Mark Bukowski’s encouragement., to [01:08:00] think about this more than we tend to. And he’s written, , actually his article is really , worth reading.

, but will it move any needles in any meaningful way for anyone? I, I wonder, so is this something that regulators need to do anything about? I honestly can’t see that. it’s the business model. The people running this business are the ones who need to be in the frame for accountability. It seems to me.

Yeah, this won’t come as a surprise to anybody, but I did hear a journalist, I think it was at the PRSA conference, re recalling the days where they could spend all day working on a story, working their sources, getting more quotes. Yeah, getting more information, putting Polish to the finished product.

Now they’re expected to turn out five, six stories a day just to keep that flow of clickbait coming. Even the journalists aren’t necessarily happy with this, but it is sadly the state of affairs because there has to be a way for media companies to create revenue, otherwise they’re not gonna be able to.

Produce this content. And despite the fact [01:09:00] that there is, I understand low trust in the media, these are the folks who go out and spend the time, using up their shoe leather, , getting the facts. Getting the details, yeah. , and reporting them in coherent ways that are meaningful to people.

There, there has to be a way to maintain this. Is it public funding? I don’t know. , but there, there has to be, , a model for maintaining professional journalism. Not that I’m gonna call the publication that you highlighted, , professional journalism. Well, they get paid to do it. Right.

So it’s professional journalists, just not good professional journalism. No, this is the landscape, shall I agree with you? And, and it’s not a pretty site. That’s a fact. Something needs to happen. He says, , I dunno what though. Over the past few years, a lot of workers have become increasingly disconnected from their roles, from their peers, even from their employers.

We’ve seen this in trends like Quiet, quitting, and the Great resignation, both of which were topics here on FIR. For some, this fractured relationship is partly a [01:10:00] reaction to the uncertainty and isolation that was brought on by the Covid Pandemic, which fundamentally altered the way we work. In response, there are a lot of leaders who are asking employees to RTO, that is return to the office, believing that being physically together will foster better connections, drive collaboration and boost engagement.

And I have heard this from a number of people throughout the business world that, with people working remotely in hybrid, there’s less of that. Serendipitous encountering of somebody in the hallway where the conversation leads to a brainstorm or the solving of a problem. We need to get people back in the office, but according to the NeuroLeadership Institute and Akamai’s, latest research, physical presence alone.

Probably isn’t gonna deliver the results that you’re looking for. Forcing people back isn’t necessary necessarily a solution to disconnection. In fact, it [01:11:00] can backfire. Productivity can decline, and organizations risk losing some of their most seasoned employees. So how can organizations truly foster connection?

The researchers propose what they call the Clear Model, an acronym that breaks down the workplace connections into four types, colleague, leader, employer, and role. So let’s quickly review these. The Colleague Connection is what most of us envision when we think of a workplace connection relationship we have with our coworkers.

Colleague. Connection enables trust, support, and collaboration. Embracing both individual and team performance. Leader Connection looks at our bond with our immediate leaders who play a significant role in shaping. Our work experience, a good manager provides opportunities, clarity and balance Feedback research shows it up to 70% of engagement variants can be con attributed to the quality of this connection.

The employer connection considers the alignment between the employee and the organization’s mission and values. [01:12:00] This connection can be pivotal in shaping how meaningful and fulfilling one’s work feels, and the role connection. This is inspired by the concept of flow. A role connection is about how well a person fits with and enjoys the job.

It’s the engagement and clarity an employee feels in their specific role, knowing how their efforts can advance them personally and professionally. , these four elements suggest that connection is multidimensional, not a one size fits all. Solution. Leaders should consider this model when implementing return to office policies.

Take a mandate that only prioritizes colleague connection. It could inadvertently strain leader connection if employees feel their autonomy is being overlooked. That’s one of those intrinsic values that people hold dear employer. Enroll connections might also suffer if people feel undervalued or micromanaged simply for showing up in person.

And in fact, if you decide not to go the return to office route, the clear framework. Pretty clearly shows us that [01:13:00] nurturing all four connection types creates a stronger workplace connection. Even if people aren’t necessarily coming to the office. You might adopt a patchwork principle that accommodates different ways of working for different teams or individuals, rather than a single blanket policy.

But businesses are wrestling with low engagement, , wrestling with rapid change, diminished trust. It’s really important for leaders to recognize the nature of workplace connection and approach, approach it with intention and the clear framework, which by the way, came out of a Harvard Business Review article, , is an opportunity to rethink the workplace, aligning it more closely with the diverse needs of the workforce that we’re coping with today.

Yeah, that makes total sense. And one thing struck me from the Harvard Business View article, , is how things change over time. And, the precise wording that caught my eye, our connection preferences can also wax and wane depending on what’s going on in their lives. Change a big life events.

Someone got [01:14:00] married, perhaps, , takes up a hobby, , that materially alters their desire for partnership at work. , and I’m also thinking that this whole thing about working from home in particular arose during the pandemic and the strong efforts made by companies everywhere to, provide an appeal for employees to do that, to finance their offices home equipment.

And that’s now four. Since that happens suddenly reverse gears. , you gotta come back to the office. Now , you’re talking about material effects on people, again, wrenching them outta something they now got used to with the encouragement of their employer officially, even if some managers don’t like it.

, and indeed we were talking earlier that, , some managers are just blinked at this. Totally. You’ve gotta come to the office. I don’t believe any of this stuff at all about the benefits work at home. Nothing works except you physically being in the office. That doesn’t all go well for employer employee relations, particularly if that’s a senior person talking like that.

I [01:15:00] get the clear analogy. , but , , the article does go on about, the consequences if employee employers insist on return to the office, a blanket return to the office. We’ve talked about this before. We’ve written about it too. And I’ve seen lots of articles, , that tend to pop up , when some companies in the news, ’cause they’re insisting everyone goes back to the office.

I’m not. A kind of a wholesale action like that anymore if I’m judging it by what’s not being reported anymore in the mainstream media, let’s say. It’s not something I’ve paid huge attention to recently to get a sense of how serious is this return to the office thing, , as a mass return.

I don’t see that happening. But nevertheless, it’s, , it’s troubling when you hear people still saying that nothing happens outside the office, so you’ve gotta come back. That’s simply not true anymore. , not only because of the changes that have happened since the pandemic, but that just isn’t true. I like to think this is true.

I haven’t researched it, but I was in a session, , at a conference, I think it was at the IEPC conference in June where the speaker [01:16:00] said there’s actually no empirical evidence at all that being in the office leads to these serendipitous encounters in the hallway that produce brainstorms or problem solutions, at a rate that’s any higher than other means of doing it.

That , it’s just a myth. I would say if it’s so planned , and strategized, and it ain’t serendipitous in that case, these are chance encounters. I remember, yeah, I used to be a smoker. I haven’t had a cigarette since 1991, but I used to be a smoker. , and some of the best conversations I ever had was outside at the ashtray because you had to go outside and there were people from all different departments there.

And man, the information exchange , was terrific people that you wouldn’t be talking to otherwise. This is why I always like to tell clients, I say, if you really wanna know how information moves through this organization, go hang out with the smokers outside. , but does that lead to solutions that are going to produce revenues, , or solve big problems for the [01:17:00] organization somehow?

I doubt it for all those conversations that I had out at the ashtray, I can’t remember one of them. Leading to something big, , whether it was me producing that outcome or somebody else who was out there having a smoke. like you, I was a smoker. I didn’t stop actually until 2008, so that’s a good 15 years or more longer than you.

But I remember one job I had actually, it was at Mercer, , actually where my boss’s boss was a heavy smoker. And, catching up with him in the smoking group was always very beneficial, very relaxed, , and it was nice to have a chat with him. But the other thing, it may have been the only place you could go catch up with him, right?

You couldn’t get in to see this person. Otherwise, , those were the serendipitous moments I remember. I must have been anyway, this debate is not gonna go away anytime soon. This whole thing about come back to the office or not. We look forward to talking about it again in the upcoming episode, I’m sure.

Our final story in this month’s episode is [01:18:00] another report that we’re gonna take a look at. , but this is, , not like the blogging report. This is about AI and, , unlike the way you conducted that one, she, I’m not gonna talk so much about , the content of this report. We have a link to it , in the show notes.

It’s a big read. With a huge amount to unpack, , much of which, , is gonna be complex to many communicators. And indeed, that takes away the focus of what we want to focus on in this, which is, , something that’s utterly relevant to communicators who are seeking to understand AI’s business landscape. So the state of the AI report is what it’s called, published in mid-October, just a week or so ago.

, shows an industry at a turning point with AI expanding into new domains and redefining sectors while grappling with significant challenges around regulation, sustainability, and safety. , as I mentioned, it’s a big read, but this breakdown is. Geared, I hope to helping us [01:19:00] communicate is understand what’s actually important about this and what takeaways we can get from support without actually reading it.

So we are here to help you with that, but I encourage you to read at least the executive summary and then dive into some of these segments ’cause it is worth the takeaway. So the first of these five key insights, , is that AI is increasingly relevant across industries that were not traditionally tech heavy.

It moves outta the tech landscape entirely. So communicators should prepare to bridge these interdisciplinary opportunities, crafting narratives that resonate with diverse fields from healthcare to engineering. The second, the emergence of content creation. Startups suggest a new array of tools for business communicators, particularly in video and audio.

However, as model and hardware costs remain high, it will be crucial for communicators to advise on the cost benefit equation and to gauge the sustainability of AI driven solutions. Third, with regional regulations growing, it’s essential for communicators to articulate [01:20:00] compliance measures and to guide stakeholders in navigating the complex regulatory landscape.

Communicators have a role in demystifying these laws and explaining their business impacts, especially in Europe and the us. One tip I’d add to that is something I did. If you take for instance, the eus , AI law, I’ve forgotten the formal title of, it’s a massive document and ask chat GPT plus to summarize it all and highlighting certain things, , it will do that.

It will give you something digestible that you could take away from, or start to develop further and ask more questions to fine tune this. It will even do things like, tell me what this means from a professional communicator perspective, once you define what that kind of audience or persona is, actually is very handy.

, the fourth one. Is trust building around AI will be essential as companies emphasize deployment speed communicators can support transparency efforts by addressing safety and ethical considerations. This proactive approach [01:21:00] will help allay public concerns and sustain consumer confidence in AI products.

And the fifth one, increase adoption and retention of AI products indicator maturing market ready for long-term solutions Communicators have an opportunity to spotlight customer success stories and articulate the distinct advantages of new AI-driven products. So to summarize, overall communicators should be prepared to guide stakeholders through AI’s growing complexities, crafting messaging that clarifies both its transformative potential and the responsibilities it entails.

What do you reckon? Shell, isn’t it interesting that so many people are worried about job loss as a result of AI being able to do the work that they do? And indeed, there have been copywriters who have been laid off from advertising agencies because AI has taken that on. But if you look at this report and, uh some others like it.

For communicators who are strategic, , and who [01:22:00] are paying attention, AI is job security. There is so much that communicators can do to help organizations adopt, , and maximize , the potential of, , and use AI ethically. That this should keep us , very busy, , on top of our, our regular duties.

I, think it’s the first technology I have seen, and as you know, I’ve been paying attention to the technologies that impact communication since desktop publishing. But I think if, if we’re. Just staying current with all of this and developing a solid understanding, not just of how it can be used to write and create graphics, but the impact on the organization and how it can impact the organization, , both from the outside and the inside, and encouraging employees to use it effectively.

And the list goes on and on. , there’s just [01:23:00] a ton of work for us to do and we can demonstrate to the organization that we’re the ones to be doing it. These five points are made are just these, there’s a lot more you could dive into in this report. I just plucked out what I felt would’ve been, , some obvious ones to communicate.

They’re all to, all of these are aligned with what , you’ve just been saying. So yes, there is opportunity and it doesn’t really require anyone to tell you what to do. you, if you are a communicator, you’ve got a golden opportunity here to grasp this and take it to that next level that will benefit your organization.

Impress your boss, and, your job will be secure. This is as secure as any job can be, but it’s, it’s opportunity knocks. Yeah. And it, it’s important for communicators to read reports like this and. Ethan Malik’s book and follow him online , and follow Chris Penn and listen to some of , the better AI focused podcasts.

, I was just at , this meeting of construction [01:24:00] communicators. I was at, two of them had gone to Macon, , the marketing AI conference, which is just getting rave reviews. People love this thing. And, , the guy who runs that organization and one of his senior leaders do a weekly AI podcast, but I think , it’s just the two of them talking, but it’s excellent , what they cover.

So there are resources out there that make this easier to stay up to speed than there were with previous technologies. So really need to jump into those. And that’ll wrap up this episode of Four Immediate Release. You Dear Listener, have not heard the technical problems that we’ve had because I will have edited all of those out, but this has been a very challenging episode.

, our next episode, we’ll be doing the midweek shorter episodes now that we’re both back in the office. Although I will be gone for one week. I am speaking at an internal comms conference in Toronto the week after next, but we’ll get several of our midweek episodes up. Our next long [01:25:00] form monthly episode will drop on Monday, November 25th, so we’re recording that on the 23rd.

In the meantime, we hope that you will comment on anything you have heard here or on any of our midweek episodes. There are a number of ways to do that. The way that most people are doing that these days is by leaving a comment on the LinkedIn announcement of the Post, but we also announce those on Blue Sky, on threads, on Facebook, on Mastodon.

So whichever one of these you follow, , leave a comment. We’ll find it and we’ll share it. But you can also send an email to fir [email protected]. You can attach an audio file or record one on the FIR. Podcast Network website. Just click the record voicemail at the right hand side of the page and we will play your audio.

Man. We haven’t done that in ages. Nobody’s sent us any audio. Sent us [01:26:00] audio. , and you can also leave a comment in the post, on FIR podcast network.com. , and we hope that you will leave a review and a rating, , wherever you get your podcasts. And that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #433: Something Old, Something New appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

CEOs and other senior executives are increasingly expected to nurture a presence on social media—especially LinkedIn, which has seen a 35-percent increase in C-suite professionals in the U.S. over the last five years. These executives are also expected to be authentic in their online engagements, even sharing some details of their personal lives. Professionals also expect their leaders to speak out on pressing societal issues. It’s rare to find an executive who is comfortable displaying vulnerability. That’s where communicators need to step in, helping leaders find the most comfortable way to engage authentically online.

Links from this episode:

• Power and influencers: CEOs on social media
• Authenticity is the New Trend for CEOs to Forge Stronger Connections, According to the Weber Shandwick Report
• Why being “real” is the new power play for CEOs

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

 

The post FIR #432: The CEO Authenticity Balancing Act appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel dive into PRWeek’s “The Evolution of Influence” report, exploring the dynamic shifts in how public relations professionals exert influence in today’s fast-changing landscape. We break down the seven key themes revealed by the survey, including the growing challenges of decentralization, the increasing importance of AI in PR, and the ever-present threat of fake news and deepfakes. Join us as we unpack these insights and discuss how communicators can stay ahead of the curve in maintaining consumer trust, authenticity, and influence in a digital-first world.

Links from this episode

• New Notified/PRWeek Survey Sheds Light on the Evolving Nature of Influence

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

The post FIR #431: The Evolution of Influence appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Much of the content in this monthly long-form episode of FIR spotlights rising trends in marketing, including employee influencers, Gen Z’s rising power as influencers, the role of influencers in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and AI’s growing presence in the marketing space. All of this is raising alarms about the need for marketers to be transparent and laser-focused on what matters to their stakeholders. Also in this episode: the dominance of chat podcasts and Dan York’s money-focused Tech Report.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

• NotebookLM Drives AI Audio Conversations That Feel Human – NevilleHobson .com
• Gen Z powers the rise of the corporate influencer
• Will This Be The First Influencer Election?
• How to Do Meme Marketing, According to Memelord Jason Levin
• What is Meme Marketing and How to Use Memes to Boost Brand Voice
• What is Meme Marketing? Strategy, Benefits and Example
• Case Study: Learning a lesson in meme marketing with Unstop & Flipkart GRiD
• Silence, brand: Why McDonald’s meme marketing is a flop
• Why this meme marketing agency avoids hiring ad agency professionals
• Chat Podcasts Rule the Market—and Always Will
• The podcast listening habits of registered voters — Voxtopica
• How to Embrace Authenticity in a World Craving Transparency
• Products Labeled ‘AI Powered’ Could Alienate Consumers, Study Finds
• How Brands Can Embrace Authenticity in a World Craving Transparency
• Why being “real” is the new power play for CEOs
• Americans Want Labeling for AI Content

Links from Dan York’s Report:

• Introducing live video in the Substack app
• Substack is trying to turn its writers into streamers
• PE & Trademarks
• WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org
• The WCUS Closing I Wish We’d Had – Brian Coords
• WCUS: Freedom Isn’t Free – James Giroux
• Social Web Foundation Launched — How In Is W3C on Fediverse? – The New Stack 
• On the Social Web Foundation
• Launch of the Social Web Foundation

The post FIR #430: Influencers, Memes, and AI Boost Marketing Transparency Mandate appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Debunkbot was designed to talk people out of their beliefs in conspiracy theories — and it works. To discuss this remarkable chatbot, we turned to PDF2Audio, which creates an audio podcast discussion (or summary or lecture) from any uploaded PDF. It’s not Google’s NotebookLM, which features a similar capability within a more robust note-keeping tool, nor does it replicate the easy-going, conversational flow that Notebook LM delivers. However, it offers multiple voices, avoiding the sameness of NotebookLM’s outputs. Both tools — though jaw-dropping — have flaws, but given that the technology is just months old, it’s not hard to imagine what it will be capable of in the next few years.

Links from this episode:

• Durably reducing conspiracy theories through dialogues with AI
• Meet ‘DebunkBot’: Can AI truly combat conspiracy theories?
• How an AI ‘debunkbot’ can change a conspiracy theorist’s mind
• NotebookLM
• NotebookLM Drives AI Audio Conversations That Feel Human (Neville Hobson)
• Christopher S. Penn’s LinkedIn post on NotebookLM
• PDF2Audio

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 30.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

The post FIR #429: Fake Podcasters Discuss Real Debunkbot appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Edelman, the global PR agency, has vetted the current crop of AI tools, winnowing out those not enterprise-ready, categorizing them, and identifying those that excel at various tasks. Given the dozens (if not more) of new AI tools that appear every day, this can be a big help to overwhelmed communicators who can’t take the time to try out every app that looks potentially useful. Does the report measure up to its promise? Find out in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

• Edelman’s 2024 AI Landscape Report

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 30.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

The post FIR #428: Which AI Tool Is Best For What? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

When OpenAI released Chat GPT 3.5 in November 2022, conversations about virtually any other technology were sucked into the vacuum of space. Venture capitalists and other investors shifted priorities overnight, sinking billions into Gen AI and often turning their backs on other endeavors. That and the colossal failure that is Meta’s Horizon Worlds fueled a belief that the metaverse is dead.

It is not. Considerable work is still being done while well over 1 billion people use existing metaverse technologies. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at the state of the metaverse, which is more vibrant and active than you may have thought.

Links from this episode:

• You’re thinking of the metaverse all wrong, says Matthew Ball
• The future of the metaverse and Extended Reality
• Navigating beyond the hype: the metaverse, take two
• Metaverse Development Complete Guide — What You Need to Know About the Metaverse in 2024
• The State of the Metaverse 2024 | Challenges & Opportunities
• Metaverse in 2024

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 30.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

The post FIR #427: The Metaverse Lives! Just Don’t Call It The Metaverse. appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

“Share of model” refers to the frequency or prominence with which a particular brand, keyword, or phrase appears in an LLM’s responses to user prompts relative to competing brands or related terms. It measures how often and favorably an LLM mentions or discusses a specific entity or concept in its outputs. Marketers and PR practitioners were accustomed to measuring share of voice in search results as part of the SEO efforts. As searches shift to generative AI models, a new approach is needed. Hubspot has just introduced one, and Neville and Shel take a look at AI Search Grader in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

• AI Search Grader
• AI Search Grader: A New Era in Brand Awareness and Sentiment Analysis
• From SEO to LMO: HubSpot launches the first free tool for AI discovery
• FIR #417: As AI Adoption Grows, Is Share of Model the New Metric?

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

The post FIR #426: We’ve Got Your Share of Model Right Here appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The desire to stand out has declined significantly over the last 20 years, according to a new study. That has serious implications for society, business, and communicators. Meanwhile, shutting off comments on your social media channel could have worse repercussions than putting up with comments you don’t want to see. Also in this episode, The fediverse is gaining traction, which leads one commentator to wonder if it’s time for governments to set up their own instances. Corporate boards are bracing for more anti-DEI backlash, but does that mean they’re backing away from their goals? Gen Z’s enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s U.S. presidential bid is no accident, as her campaign cracks the content code, notably on TikTok.  Generative Artificial Intelligence is changing the search engine optimization (SEO) game. In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on new Threads features, Spotify and YouTube taking Apple’s podcast crown, the photo manipulation capabilities of Google’s new Pixel 9 line of phones, and one company’s stand against AI.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

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

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Links from this episode:

• Fediverse for Freedom
• Fewer people want to stand out in public than 20 years ago
• Corporate boards brace for DEI backlash
• DEI efforts may be under attack, but companies aren’t retreating from commitments
• FIR #418: These Are Our Rock-Solid Beliefs – Unless You Don’t Like Them – FIR Podcast Network
• Research: What Happens When Influencers Turn Off Comments
• You’re Wrong, Joel Spolsky & Dave Winer, Blog Comments Have Incredible Value
• Inside the Gen-Z operation powering Harris’ online remix
• Content is king at the DNC
• Kamala Harris’ Campaign Is Launching a Twitch Channel
• How the Harris Campaign Beat Trump at Being Online
• US election: Meet the Kamala Harris influencer army
• Kamala Harris’ Campaign Is a Windfall for Influencers
• ‘Hottie’ Dems and Chappell Roan stans: meet the 200 TikTokers who scored access to the convention
• 57+ MILLION VIEWERS: Massive TV and Online Viewership for Night One of Democratic National Convention
• The Evolution of Search: 5 SEO Trends in 2024 and 2025 [+ New Data]
• Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn: I have said it before, but marketers need to think about how to advertise

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

• Meta’s X rival Threads gains multiple drafts, audience insights and more
• Meta lets you cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads. Here’s how to do it.
• Threads confirms it is experimenting with ephemeral posts
• Apple Loses Its Podcasting Lead to YouTube and Spotify
• No one’s ready for this
• Procreate takes a stand against generative AI, vows to never incorporate the tech into its products

Raw Transcript (from Riverside.fm)

Neville Hobson:
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 425 of Four Immediate Release. This is the long form monthly edition for August 2024. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz (00:18)
And I’m Shel Holtz. We have six fascinating stories to discuss over the course of this episode. We’re going to be talking about some interesting activity in the Fetiverse. Whether or not people want to stand out is a fascinating research report that could have serious implications on communication. Great stories beyond that. Dan York is here with a tech report talking about

some activity on threads, among other things. Before we jump into all of that though, Neville, let’s review the episodes that we’ve recorded since the last monthly episode.

@nevillehobson (01:02)
Yeah. Yeah, we have recorded not as many as the previous month. We recorded three episodes since the last monthly episode 420 from July. So let’s start with that one. That one was the lead topic in that episode was that company CrowdStrike and that dreadful internet outages that occurred that had significant consequences around the world.

We asked how well did CrowdStrike handle its crisis? And we looked at their response and shared what some crisis experts have said and had that discussion ourselves. And we have a comment, don’t we, Shale?

Shel Holtz (01:46)
We do from Michelle Garrett, who goes by PR writer gal on threads, where we shared the episode on threads and asked whether CrowdStrike has handled their crisis communications well. She said, I haven’t listened yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb regarding did CrowdStrike deliver by saying no.

@nevillehobson (02:08)
That would, I would say, be a valid view at the time she made the view. I think they’ve actually, it’s turned out where they’ve actually done quite well in terms of crisis communication, wouldn’t you say?

Shel Holtz (02:21)
I think in terms of how they have handled this from a communication standpoint, yes, I think they’ve done an admirable job. They’ve made a couple of missteps, the gift cards, as the coupons as a mea culpa, I thought was a misstep, but overall they have been candid and open and accessible and honest about what happened and what they’re gonna do to fix it.

@nevillehobson (02:32)
coupon.

So episode 421 that we published a week after that, Gen .ai is paying off individual employees. We dug into a Gartner report along with a Washington Post study that ranks how individuals are using generative AI. And we have a comment for that too, don’t we?

Shel Holtz (03:08)
We do. Steve Lubeckin wrote that it seems like it’s reminiscent of the early days when companies wouldn’t let you use certain software and employees figured out ways to bootleg the software they needed to get the job done. I’m even seeing this with companies that block business units from using video platforms like Riverside FM but allow vendors to use it on behalf of the employees.

@nevillehobson (03:31)
good comments, Steve. So 422, we recorded that one and published it a week after that, 14th. Could AI be the nail in the coffin for the billable hour model, we asked. We examined the state of consulting in the AI age. And really it was to do with killing that model.

We had some slightly different views on that, think, show that we’re broadly in agreement that something is shifting, moving from time based fee structures to outcome based fee structures that are based on what the client, let’s say, as an example, estimates the value the work you’re going to do would give to his or her company and you work out a fee on that basis.

I’m not seeing, you know, a stampede to change, but you this is change and people don’t like change. It might take a while, but an interesting idea. We don’t have any comments to that one. And then 423, which we published just a week ago, titled as op -eds fade into history, where does thought leadership belong? And we discussed the state of thought leadership and the channels communicators may not be considering. And we do have a comment.

Shel Holtz (04:47)
from Frank Strong, who said the statistics were interesting. I certainly find Wall Street Journal opinion pieces are ungated. It’s not all of them, but maybe the ones they think everyone should read. That probably helps with the visibility, which is probably true. It’s not that op -eds are going away entirely. It’s just that a number of publications are either eliminating or shuttering the opinion sections. So there are fewer of them, but the Wall Street Journal…

Op -Ed space is prime real estate and I’m sure it’ll be with us for years to come.

@nevillehobson (05:21)
I noticed that in UK mainstream media too, opinion pieces, many, in newspapers like the Times, the Daily Telegraph sometimes, The Guardian tends to be completely open. They don’t block you, they kind of nudge you to sign up for free so you can access all the content. But the Times, the Sunday Times have started doing that.

which is, think, a good move. I subscribe to US papers like the New York Times, which give you the option to gift an article. But I’ve noticed too, like you said, the Wall Street Journal recently, I don’t subscribe to the journal. And of course, you get disappointed when you go somewhere and presents you with the login or register. But recently, there’s a couple of things I’ve been looking at, which are open completely. Bloomberg’s another one. They’re the gatekeepers par excellence of Bloomberg. But recently, I’ve seen a number of opinion pieces.

that are open. So maybe they are looking at the way the land is lying in this regard.

Shel Holtz (06:22)
Yeah, and it’s important to note that publications, media outlets that publish opinions don’t necessarily publish op -eds, which are opinions from people from outside the organization. Now, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, they’re going to publish op -eds. In fact, some very noteworthy politicians have been publishing op -eds lately as we’re in our endless presidential cycle.

But that doesn’t mean that all of those publications that used to do it, which would be the prime targets for a lot of thought leaders out there. And this includes, by the way, trade publications and industry publications that just don’t have the financial resources to maintain those sections anymore. Those are drying up. So I think it’s still important for communicators that work with thought leaders or manage thought leader efforts in the organization

find alternative channels for that content that produces the same kinds of results, gets the same kind of visibility.

@nevillehobson (07:25)
sense. So I’d also like to mention that we are restarting or kickstarting, let’s say, the FIR interviews podcast. This is a separate podcast. So if you subscribe to this podcast, you won’t get the interviews, you need to subscribe to that one separately. But we started the interviews in July 2006, long time ago.

Shel Holtz (07:50)
you

@nevillehobson (07:52)
It’s a separate podcast I mentioned to present conversations we host with newsmakers and influencers from the online technology and organizational communication worlds. That was the description we had back then. I think it’s still largely accurate now. I mentioned we’re kickstarting it anew with new episodes planned on a monthly basis. Our first was on August 12th, mid August with Pete Paschal, founder and CEO of the Media Co -Pilot. We explored the intersection of AI and media with a focus on how

Generative AI Influencers, Social Media Journalism and Brand Engagement. Next month, September, we’ll publish another episode, this one with Esri Karlovaak, a UK -based consultant on international multidisciplinary projects in business innovation and stakeholder engagement with clients that include UN and EU agencies, arts and cultural institutions, non -profit organizations and a wide range of businesses. I first met Esri about 15 years ago when we were both active in IBC volunteerism.

He’s also a keen advocate for science fiction as the literature of new ideas. And that’s the focus of our discussion in that interview coming up. While it doesn’t predict the future, he says, it can improve how we think about and prepare for the future. He’ll expand on that thought in our conversation. He’ll also tell us about applied SF and how a genre typically associated with entertainment can work in other ways. So don’t miss out on FI interviews. Sign up or…

to subscribe to the feed, go to firpodcastnetwork .com slash fir dash interview so you won’t miss a thing. You should be able to pick it up too on wherever you get your podcasts, whatever app you’re using or platform you’re using. But it’s definitely good. We’re keen to get this going again because we’ve got a list already of some really interesting people, including ideas we have to revisit some of the folks we interviewed back at that time.

from 2006, say to 2016, and a bit later, perhaps, who’ve got updated stories to tell, I’m sure. So look out for more news on that. But like I said, FIRpodcast .net, sorry, FIRpodcast.

Shel Holtz (10:04)
firpodcastnetwork .com slash.

@nevillehobson (10:06)
Yeah, that’s the one. FIRpodcastnetwork .com slash FIR dash interviews. That’s where you go.

Shel Holtz (10:14)
And you say that we’re going to do this monthly and that’s the plan. But if we have the opportunity to talk to somebody, it arises and it’s just too good to skip, then we may end up doing more than one a month. You never know. That wait and see. We did record an episode of Circle of Fellows in August. This is on the

@nevillehobson (10:27)
We may, you never know. Stay tuned.

Shel Holtz (10:38)
topic of raising AI, which focused on getting AI up and running and thriving in your organization. So we had a great international panel, Adrian Cropley, Sue Heumann, Mary Hills, and Robin McCasland. It was really an invigorating conversation. We had a lot of people participating in real time. So we were able to incorporate their questions and comments into the conversation. So.

If you are working with your IT department or in the IT department and trying to get people to adopt AI in the organization, this is a good episode to listen to. The next one is coming up on September 19th at noon Eastern time. I am going to be away for that one. So Brad Whitworth will be the moderator and it’ll be talking about mental wellness and how communication leaders can maintain their mental wellness amidst all the stress.

of the job. Participating in that one will be Amanda Hamilton Atwell, Ginger Homan, Andrea Greenhouse, and Mark Schaeffer. So that will be a good episode too, and a bit of a divergence from the topics that we usually look at on Circle of Fellows. I’m happy to see mental wellness being addressed more frequently and in more forums these days.

@nevillehobson (12:00)
Terrific. So I guess we dive into our conversational topics now. So I’ve got the first story, which I find this really fascinating, Shell. Last week, I wrote a post on my blog that discussed the unraveling of X, I described it, suggested by a large migration of UK users from that platform, mostly to threads and blue sky. The trigger.

was the riots in the UK in early August that have made headlines globally, where social networks, X in particular, played a major role in stoking the unrest. Elon Musk’s supportive comments of the rioters stimulated disgust among many people here, which directly influenced the migration and included a number of members of parliament. The post prompted some discussion, mostly on threads, including one comment from my friend Andy Piper, a technologist, writer and podcaster.

He was a developer advocate at Twitter for nine years, leaving in early 2023 after Elon Musk finalized his acquisition in 2022. Before Twitter, he spent 10 years as a technical consultant at IBM and was involved in various open source projects. Today, he supports the Mastodon open source projects with developer relations and community building tasks. Andy’s comments suggested the idea of creating a sovereign owned and operated Mastodon instance for the UK parliament.

He then followed up on that with a blog post on his blog titled Fediverse for Freedom, in which he discusses in detail the importance of governments owning and operating their own social media platforms, such as a Macedon instance or any Fediverse compatible activity pub based service. He argues that relying on privately owned platforms gives corporations undue control over national communication and data.

He speaks of growing interest in Fediverse platforms and technologies like Mastodon from several national governments in Europe and the EU itself. Many of these institutions are already running their own social media instances, he says, and actively encouraging their politicians to use them. He highlights how the EU has already embraced decentralization through Mastodon and emphasizes that the UK should follow suit to ensure digital sovereignty, protect democratic processes.

and maintain control of a public discourse. He says, if governments are concerned about the dominance of privately owned online platforms, they have a responsibility to run and own their own. Andy acknowledges the challenges and considerations to this idea, including the financial and technical resources required to maintain these platforms and the need to ensure wide discoverability and engagement. Additionally, there are complexities in determining who should be allowed to have accounts.

on these sovereign platforms. For example, while it makes sense for members of parliament to have accounts, would it be extended to political parties or other entities? He underscores that while these challenges are significant, the importance of maintaining democratic integrity and avoiding corporate chokeholds on communication channels outweighs these concerns. So what next? To take Andy Piper’s idea to the next level, a feasible course of action could be to form a coalition of UK government officials

digital policymakers and technology experts to initiate a pilot project to establish a sovereign Macedon instance for parliament. This would involve securing funding, setting up the infrastructure and defining clear guidelines for participation. The goal would be to demonstrate the benefits of digital sovereignty and expand the model to other public institutions, ultimately creating a decentralized government operated social network that safeguards democratic communication and public trust. Could a call to action like this happen?

As Andy notes in a comment in his own post, I’m just staking out the ground that an open standards based decentralized and not privately owned set of capabilities is better than handing over those channels to a private third party. So it seems to me that this is worthy of greater discussion if a pilot project is reaching too far at the moment. As the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Shel Holtz (16:15)
think this is an outstanding idea and I fully support it. I would love to see it implemented elsewhere around the globe. think, I mean, it solves a lot of problems. And the fact that we have the Fediverse available now is what makes this feasible because not a lot of people are going to add a new social network.

@nevillehobson (16:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shel Holtz (16:39)
to the ones that they are already engaged with. They’re not going to say, the UK government has a social network. I think I’ll go sign up there and make sure I can check that every day in addition to Facebook and threads and whatever other networks are already following. But here, because it’s in the Fediverse, they can see it where they are and stay on top of this information. And presumably the information would include things like, please be aware of this misinformation.

that’s being shared. This is the official instance of the UK government. And we’re telling you that this is not for real. This is a deep fake or this is Russian influence or whatever it might be. having that authoritative voice coming from an own service in the peso model, what they’re doing right now by being on threads or what have you is it’s shared.

just like any social media, you’re sharing somebody else’s space, but suddenly you’re doing the same kind of engagement in the same kind of platform, but it’s now owned media. And I think that’s a big deal. I think there are a lot of questions that have to be addressed. Not only does the party participate, what about staff? For example, I think about the US maintaining a mastodon instance or setting up an instance of one of the

other services that accommodates the Fediverse and is every Senate aide going to be able to participate? Every House committee employee, not the elected officials, but the employees who work there. So, I mean, they’re the ones doing the research. They’re the ones writing the legislation and writing the reports. So they have a lot to contribute. On the other hand, nobody elected them. So, I mean, there’s…

these types of issues that I think would have to be overcome and dealt with. And it would obviously be instance by instance that those things are considered. And you also, of course, have, are you going to have states with instance and within the states, are you going to have cities with instances and counties? You could end up with an awful lot of instances, but for people who care about what that particular entity is doing legislatively, regulatory wise,

I think they’d be thoroughly pleased to be able to follow them just like they used to follow on Twitter, but know that what they’re looking at is authoritative. So I love the idea.

@nevillehobson (19:14)
Yeah, I find it extremely appealing, I must admit. Here in the UK, of course, I’ve already anticipated what’s likely to come with this idea in some quarters. we have this big thing in the UK that people call the nanny state interference from government, know, too much interference in your daily lives and rules and regulations and stuff. So I can imagine the calls call outs on this. Yet, you’ve you’ve mentioned something I think which is

Shel Holtz (19:31)
Yeah, yeah.

@nevillehobson (19:43)
probably three levels up, i .e. this then becomes a huge entity that has got all these different people and groups on it. That may well be where it goes to. But starting out though, and the pilot idea would make it very straightforward, I think, to prove the point or not, or disprove it even, that this is worthwhile and address the critics.

So you’re not rolling it out suddenly to all at once. This is, you know, everything everywhere all at once kind of approach. This is actually a pilot where you might start with a group of MPs, but your point, I think, is a valid one. This should also include the staffers, the support infrastructure for those members of parliament and others, the, you know, the people who work behind the scenes in government, particularly in central government. And that’s where it sits for a while, until you prove the value of it.

I think the key thing about it, which Andy does take pains to point out, is the trust aspect to it, which is totally aligned with addressing misinformation, disinformation and fakery at large, where because it’s on the Fediverse, anyone who has an account to handle at the Fediverse location at the instance, is still able to engage and talk to anyone else out there, anywhere else on the Fediverse.

And now as we see coming, and indeed, Dan York is going to talk about this in his report about the developments at threads to connect things more with the Fediverse, that we now have the opportunity, and it didn’t exist until now, as an easy means to do something like this that is private on one hand, but at the other hand is very open because it’s connected to.

public feds of us, but you’ve got the safeguards there. It’s almost like a by osmosis, you got a transparent two way process to it, but you control in a way that people have belief in the authenticity and the trustworthiness of the entity that you’re representing. So you’ll have a member of parliament could be you know, I’m not saying this is a domain name, it could be parliament dot social, it could be something dot parliament, whatever, whatever the technical aspects of it.

are that make it worthwhile. I’ve not seen examples, Andy mentions these in his post, of institutions in the European Union who are doing this already, decentralized social network of their own. I’d love to see examples and hear how they’re going with those. But I do believe that, you know, I say to myself, why not do a pilot? Talk about it, sure, but get something going, it can be a very small group.

Why not try it out? This seems a great idea. And like you said, Shell, this is not the ideas coming out of the UK and relate specifically to the UK parliament. This could be anywhere. And I think, you know, does it could it suggest perhaps that we suddenly end up with something that would be seen by many to be it was like a parallel internet? Maybe. Is that a bad thing? I mean, the internet is arguably in a precarious

precipitous position of being splintered by state actors, by governments, notably Russia, China, for instance. Would it not be a bad thing if this was somehow embraced that way? again, that’s a bigger argument, perhaps, down another route. But this does have merit. think this idea is definitely worth talking about.

Shel Holtz (23:15)
Yeah, I’ll be accessible over the Internet. It’s not like you’d have to find a different way to connect to a whole different network. But one of the things that I think would be vital to making these things work would be to be very clear about what the role of this network is. Otherwise, I mean, if we had a U .S. Senate instance that had Republican and Democratic senators in it, it would turn into, in short order, some

@nevillehobson (23:42)
Ha ha ha.

Shel Holtz (23:45)
pretty vitriolic back and forth on this or not.

@nevillehobson (23:48)
Or not, or not as the case might be. I’m optimistic here, I’m optimistic here, okay.

Shel Holtz (23:54)
Yes, let’s let’s be optimistic. But I mean, in any country where there are two opposing factions sharing a network, that’s not the point of this. Right. It would have to be clear this is for sharing information and soliciting feedback from our constituents. This is this is not a partisan type of.

@nevillehobson (24:14)
Right, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be just that because you could have private aspects to all of this because you’re behind your own firewall in a sense that so you the rules of engagement you might set out. And maybe the and I’m thinking of taking getting everyone to shift from this toxic place we call X now that is not fit for purpose and looking at some of the comments I’ve read from some of the MPs who have quit.

And more significantly, some of the general folks who’ve migrated away and arrived on threats, set aside some of the rather hysterical comments about things, but some sensible comments. And even some from people saying, you know, I’ve given up 80 ,000 followers on X to come here and I’m starting over. What a sense of relief that kind of comment is repeated everywhere. And I’m thinking this could well be a way to

to kickstart a change in the toxicity that we’re seeing notably on X. It’s not the only place, but X by far is way out there. Even its proprietor is part of the toxicity and maybe and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon unless his investors boot him out. mean, reading in financial press about some of his investors are not happy at all with the 44 billion that they lent him. So who knows what’s going to happen there? But

I’m seeing things that, you know, he’s cancelling, he’s closing down all the operations in Brazil because of some legal rulings down there. doesn’t like it, right? We shut down. So you’re treading on as a user, particularly a business user or a political user on a platform, that treading on very thin ice, it could all suddenly cave in or suddenly restrictions will happen. It’s not a place for the future at all. So this could well give impetus to

people migrating en masse to a better looking place as long as it strikes, hence a pilot to see. This is not a rushed thing. This might take a while.

Shel Holtz (26:14)
And I think that you’re starting to see on threads the formation informally grassroots of a lot of communities. There’s journalism threads. I’ve been posting to internal comms threads and communities are building around these and people are introducing themselves. They’re saying, hi, journalism threads. I’m a reporter with, so that’s happening on threads where I see these instances having some real value is coming out and saying, let’s say we have a US Senate.

@nevillehobson (26:32)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (26:42)
instance on mastodon. It would be saying today, Senate Bill 47 was introduced. These are the authors. Here’s a link to where you can read the whole bill. But in essence, this is what it’s designed to do. We would like your input. Let’s have some public comment. And it wouldn’t necessarily replace other channels for public comment. But you might start getting a lot of engagement from people who haven’t participated.

through the more onerous channels and the more formal channels that are available to people. So I think for listening, this could be a really powerful thing and government could stand some listening.

@nevillehobson (27:09)
Yep, you might.

Yeah, they could everywhere. Absolutely. I think it definitely is a great idea that Andy’s taken the time to write his post. I would encourage you to visit his blog, read the post, we’ll have a link to it in the show notes and see what you make of it and add your voice to is this worth it.

Shel Holtz (27:39)
Well, there are certain aspects of business that depend on people wanting to stand out and be noticed when designing certain types of products. Think fashion or cars, for example, product designers appeal to the desire of customers and prospective customers to stand out from the crowd. Ditto consulting services in a lot of instances, even something as simple as a gymnasium appeals to people who want to look good.

And when we market these products or services, we rely on everything from user -generated content to influencers, all people who have taken steps to distinguish themselves from the crowd. So what would happen if we suddenly learned that people are more interested in being part of the crowd than standing out? That’s a growing number of people, according to a new study that tracked over a million people’s desire to stand out or be unique.

from 2000 until 2020 and found a dramatic decline. This study provides some of the first evidence -based data comparing people’s motivation to stand out in today’s hyper -digital world compared to the early 2000s. The study looked at three dimensions of uniqueness, concern about how other people are gonna react to what you say or do or share, desire to break the rules, and the willingness to defend your beliefs in public.

All three facets declined, but the most dramatic were people being hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly. That fell 6 .52 percent and becoming more concerned with what people think about you, which fell 4 .28 percent. The status suggests that individuals see that expressing uniqueness might compromise their ability to fit in with others or may even lead to being ostracized. The lead author of the study is William Chopic.

an associate professor in the psychology department at Michigan State University. And he says, a 6 .52 % decline is a dramatic population change in as short as 20 years. Our data confirms a lot of institutions, lot of intuitions that people have. It’s not just in their heads that we inhabit punitive spaces. Indeed, people are afraid of drawing too much attention to themselves, potentially because doing so leaves them vulnerable.

or at risk of being ostracized or canceled. This study acknowledges that people have valid fears and concerns about standing out so much so that they’re willing to, they’re less willing to do so. Now the researchers say that this decline in wanting to stand out has major societal implications. According to Chalpik, it’s really important to have people willing to go against the grain, say the occasional unpopular thing, challenge groupthink, highlight the need to compromise with people different than us.

and not cover up the diversity of options and opinions and people because they’re too scared to stand out. Withholding who we authentically are by trying so hard to blend in can ironically backfire and lead to guilt, anxiety, and sometimes even more animosity between people. Now, the societal implications are considerable if people aren’t willing to stand out, but communicators have their more immediate concerns. If you need to encourage people to stand out, what can you do?

Well, you can create campaigns that encourage customers to showcase their unique style or creativity. People may respond to a request more than just motivate themselves to put themselves out there. You can work with your influencers to get them to encourage their followers to stick their necks out. You can share stories from stakeholders that express their uniqueness or how they stand out, even if they didn’t think that was the point of the story. Encouraging reviews and testimonials is another way.

to get people to put themselves out there in a more benign way, contests or another. Neville, I know you’re not too concerned about standing out, but how would you go about getting someone else to, who maybe used to be more willing, but is now being more circumspect about it?

@nevillehobson (31:42)
It’s a good question. think I would start really by saying, what do we mean by standing out in public? I’ve never looked at it this way, I have to say myself even. So I don’t really think about doing something that makes me stand out. I do think about things that I’ve got a point of view, and I’m not afraid to express it, even if it might not be popular, although that’s rare, to be honest, I don’t do politics publicly in public spaces.

rarely, I might comment on as I did at the UK election, talking about poll results and stuff like that. But I certainly tend not to venture opinion about this or that person or this or that policy about a company or a government agency or whatever it might be on a public place. And the last place I’d even consider that is X that’s effect. But I do tend to kind of show my true self if you will, in private groups.

notably on LinkedIn and sometimes on Facebook. Facebook ones tend to be more personal stuff that really does interest me. know, automotive, software, WordPress, a lot of that. And so I don’t see it as standing out. Maybe that’s, I’ve never really looked at that way. And I truly don’t care about what people think of me at all. I don’t, I honestly don’t. I could care less.

in the broad sense, not to sound too kind of arrogant or silly about it. But I don’t post myself on the basis of I hope someone’s going to like this and therefore by some by some some kind of subconscious method, they’ll like me to know that never occurs to be that kind of thinking. So to your point to your question,

someone who’s not doing this, it truly would be a it depends. It certainly isn’t Hey, you need to get out there and expose yourself more to different opinions and so forth and join in conversation online. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone at all. It would depend on the like the famous it depends answer. What your goal is, what is it that you’re going to engage in conversation with what you expect to gain from it. But the survey is interesting. I have to admit when I was reading it, the

talk about being canceled or being ostracized. mean, really, that to me sounds pretty extreme. I’d certainly see that as probably a good thing if it was to do with someone who did something really bad in others’ eyes or was a jerk or something. good example might be, for instance, currently a hot topping in the news in the UK, a footballer in a Premier League team, now a presenter on one of the BBC shows and the sports.

presenter amongst across a wide range of media outlets. I was fired by the BBC last week. It was all a bit mysterious over complaints made about sexually oriented messaging sent to female colleagues. And he denied it and get lawyers on you. So this made the headlines for three or four days. And now today is all apologizing, say you made a mistake. It was very silly. Then I’m reading online.

that this that company that company three other companies all cancel the contracts the PR agency who handled him have fired him as well and his reputation is gone. He has been canceled without any doubt. But that was because he did something that goes against the norms of accepted behavior everywhere, particularly in this current climate where again, this is the power of social networks that amplify the reaction to someone who does something really bad.

So there’s that and that I see fits definitely in this, but that’s an extreme example. So from a business point of view, particularly, think, you know, I’d say to someone think twice, be careful if you’re going to go out there and put yourself out there as I’ve got an opinion about X and here it is. One reason I tend not to do that is just simply observing what happens to others who do do that on a public channel like X.

that you get the trolls, everyone with a grudge, you name it, or just nasty people pile in. And I think there’s absolutely no benefit to anyone to be part of that situation at all. So I think you need to be really careful doing this.

Shel Holtz (35:54)
One of the things that this study didn’t get into that I could read was the cause for this decline. And I have to wonder if the heightened vitriol in social networks has something to do with it. mean, 20 years ago, 24 years ago now in 2020, when they started tracking this data, you could get out there and talk about how you feel about something, what you think about something, your opinion without

@nevillehobson (36:08)
Yeah, I bet.

Shel Holtz (36:23)
worrying too much about being trolled for it or attacked or vilified for it. On the other hand, I think back to things that were going on in 2020, go, no, that was happening back then. mean, this is not new. And then I remember I was listening to an episode of a podcast. It’s a podcast I love called 99 % Invisible. And they were talking about the paint color for cars. And

the fact that these days there are really only about four or five colors available. And the most popular color, you want to guess the most popular? I think this was in the US, but I would suspect that it might be true in the UK. What’s the number one selling color of new cars? It’s white. And I remember when I was growing up, cars were all colors. It was the full spectrum of the rainbow.

@nevillehobson (37:11)
What? Yeah.

Yeah.

Shel Holtz (37:21)
And now you got white, black, gray, tan, maybe a metallic blue or something, but not a lot of color. And why? It’s because, and they were explicit about this, the experts that they had on this episode, they said, because people don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to be the red car on the road. They want to look like all the other cars on the road. And when I was growing up, everybody wanted to stand out. They wanted their car to be different.

@nevillehobson (37:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shel Holtz (37:51)
So there’s probably something else going on here that is not necessarily to do with trends in social media.

@nevillehobson (38:01)
Yeah, I think it is a societal issue. think it talks about the survey, you know, the facets they talk about declining, the most dramatic people’s being hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly. And then there’s a bit about being concerned about what people think of the hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly is in my example, you don’t do that because you will not have reasonable comments challenging you.

You might get lots agreeing with you, but you’re going to get an awful lot who are in false rage and outrage attacking you to the extent that it’s now common to hear people saying that, know, I’ve canceled my, I’ve shut down my account and so forth because I said this and said that and I started getting death threats or even message people say, we know where you live. mean, God, this has really got to that state. So that, right.

Shel Holtz (38:56)
flat out doxing you and sharing where you live.

@nevillehobson (38:59)
Right, and I think this is likely to be a significant reason for that decline.

Shel Holtz (39:05)
For communicators, again, this is a trend. It’s a 20 year trend. It’s precipitous. The numbers are significant. And if your products and services rely on this, or if your marketing relies on it, it’s just something to start thinking about.

@nevillehobson (39:23)
Well, in episode 418 of this podcast in mid -July, we discussed how a company called Tractor Supply caved into pressure from a politically motivated activist to abandon its values, leading some employees to quit and diverse members of the company’s customer base to speak up. We were quite critical of the company’s U -turn on DEI, that’s diversity, equity and inclusion. Titling the show notes for that episode, these are our rock solid beliefs, unless you don’t like them.

Well, it’s more in a similar vein, according to a report by Axios published on the 22nd of August. The report highlights how corporate executives and boards are intensifying their communication strategies to brace for potential attacks from activists, increasingly linking business performance with DEI policies. This preparation is driven by the growing political and social backlash against DEI initiatives, which Axios says have become a contentious issue in the corporate world.

Many companies are finding themselves under pressure as activists argue that DEI policies may negatively impact business outcomes, leading to more aggressive scrutiny of these programs. Some corporations in the US, such as Harley Davidson and John Deere, have already started to scale back their DEI commitments in response to the pressure. Axios says this trend suggests that the business community is increasingly concerned about the potential risks associated with maintaining robust DEI initiatives.

in the current polarized environment. Axios’s report suggests that for many public companies, the question is not whether they will face attacks related to their DEI policies, but when. As a result, there is a heightened focus on how these companies communicate about their DEI efforts, both internally and externally to mitigate potential fallout and maintain stakeholder confidence. But does this reflect a complete picture, I wonder? DEI efforts may be under attack.

But companies aren’t retreating from commitments, according to the results of a survey reported in USA Today in July, that you discovered, Shel. So maybe the overall picture is more complex than it appears.

Shel Holtz (41:32)
Yeah, I think what you get is a lot of reporting by anecdote when a company the size of a John Deere, a Harley Davidson, Microsoft is another one that has announced that they were closing up some of their DEI departments and shifting their focus. A lot of it based on their claiming that they have achieved some of those goals. I don’t know if that’s necessarily accurate. I think if you ask some of the…

protected classes in the organization. they’ve achieved equity, they might push back on that. But the study from USA Today was conducted by the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals and your cause from BlackBod and shared exclusively with USA Today found that 96 % of corporate social impact professionals in 125 major companies

say DEI commitments have either stayed the same, that’s 83%, or increased, that’s 13%. So across the business spectrum, it doesn’t seem that this anti -woke backlash that has led these companies to retreat is having that big an impact on that many businesses. However,

Nearly a third of the executives that were surveyed say they are describing DEI work differently now. 17 % said they talk about it less with people outside the organization. So I think people recognize that this is a contentious issue and how they frame it externally in conversation. They’re being a little more cautious about it, but they are continuing to pursue.

pursue those DEI goals internally. And the reason is, I am convinced this isn’t what is reflected in this report, but I have to believe it’s because it’s good business. It’s because you get better results when you do this. Your company performance is better. Your productivity is up. Your culture improves. I’ve never heard an organization say,

that we got better business results. I’ll take that back. know Tractor Supply actually had their stock price go up when they did this. I’m not sure what that says about their investors. So there are outliers and anomalies in this case, but mostly what you see in the data is that diversity pays off. And that’s why I don’t see this as a woke issue or an anti -woke issue. It’s just a good business issue.

@nevillehobson (43:54)
You

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I was reading the USA Today story that you’re referencing, and I’m actually a bit surprised Axios didn’t didn’t didn’t take in some of the stuff in this survey that the USA Today is, is commenting on their report came out in July accidents came out just a few days ago. So it’s puzzled me a bit, because USA Today does go into detail, for instance, about john Deere, talking about what they are now doing. What

What is the backlash producing? That’s quite interesting. It’s missing from Exos’s report. So maybe they just plucked that bit out, which seems to be what they’ve done, I think. But it does mention, though, that in the examples of those who are changing behavior as a result of the backlash, that they’re stepping away from being open and talking about their DEI initiatives.

that were all a big deal until very recently. So they are worried about this kind of publicity, I suppose, and activism that is going on. That’s reflective, I suppose, think about what we just discussed in the topic prior to this, that it’s kind of fits into that too, about the concern about you be attacked for something. And it’s noble what you’re doing, and it’s worthy, and yet there’s a pile of people externally who will hound you because of it.

and come up with all sorts of statistics and support articles to show why you’re bad. That’s new, I suspect, in the sense of it’s now completely scalable and global. Anyone with an internet connection can read all that kind of stuff. So it is a backlash. And indeed, USA Today talks about DEI policies were rushed into existence in 2020 and 2021, and they’re now increasingly out of the microscope. So maybe there’s something in there about, these rushed out too fast?

The interesting thing though, I think in the USA Today report as well, I mean, it’s all very interesting, is the alarm bells that I see, as opposed to hear, I I see alarm bells in what they’re saying, is what’s going to happen if Trump wins the US presidential election. The headline in their subhead piece talks about Trump and Vance talk about dismantling DEI. And he’s promised to reverse

as he calls it, the Biden administration’s woke equity programs, as Trump describes them. Every institution in America is under attack from this Marxist concept of equity. Good grief. So that’s what’s coming if this guy wins. And so I think this is possibly also a factor in organizational behavior to the activism, perhaps. don’t know. It’s probably more complex picture than that, Shell, but it certainly isn’t good.

Shel Holtz (46:50)
Yeah.

I suspect if you ask Donald Trump to define Marxism, he wouldn’t be able to give you a coherent answer. But this is an interesting

@nevillehobson (47:04)
Which is worse if he wins because he’ll be in office having a clue what he’s doing, right?

Shel Holtz (47:08)
That’s right. But this is an interesting tightrope to walk because on the one hand, you do have these forces that have framed this as an anti -woke activity, trying to put an end to DEI. They have framed all kinds of negative outcomes from DEI that I don’t believe are accurate or even honest.

@nevillehobson (47:13)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (47:33)
But it has led organizations to want to be more quiet about it. On the other hand, who are organizations recruiting from right now? The answer is Gen Z. What is the number one most articulated value of Gen Z, diversity and inclusivity? So it seems to me that at least for your employer brand, you want to be out there touting these things because that’s what matters to the generation.

that is graduating from college and coming into the workforce in droves right now. So it seems to me that if we’re going to try to avoid being the subject of kid rock blowing up our products with high powered weapons by a lakeside on X, and on the other hand, we want to appeal to the best and the brightest coming out of universities, you’re gonna have to talk out of both sides of your mouth and it’s.

@nevillehobson (48:15)
Thank

Shel Holtz (48:27)
going to be interesting seeing how we manage to do that. My recommendation is if these are your values, stand up for them. Screw the anti -woke mob.

@nevillehobson (48:40)
Well, interestingly, again, in the USA Today piece, they have this interesting little paragraph here. They say last week, and this is July, so it’ll be in July, the Society of Human Resource Management said it was dropping the word equity and would use the acronym IND. Their CEO, Johnny Taylor, told USA Today in May that his organization planned to lead with inclusion going forward. So inclusion, not diversity.

that could be significant that shift in perception and behavior. So factor that into what’s going on.

Shel Holtz (49:12)
Well, they each mean different things. the idea that D, E, and I are all synonyms is ridiculous. Otherwise, it would just be D.

@nevillehobson (49:15)
Right. They do.

That’s part of the argument, isn’t it? mean, this isn’t helpful though, it seems to me, to the overall picture of it all. So it’s under a threat. So yeah, there we have it.

Shel Holtz (49:27)
No.

@nevillehobson (49:42)
So can say, well, before we continue, I need to go to the loo. So let me just put you on pause on the audio and I’ll be back.

Shel Holtz (49:46)
Go for

@nevillehobson (51:19)
Okeydokey.

Shel Holtz (51:22)
So you’re gonna pick up on Dan’s report, right?

@nevillehobson (51:24)
yeah, yep.

Thanks, Dan. Great report. In particular, what you talked about on threads and the Fediverse. I’ve been experimenting a bit in the past week, actually, on seeing what happens to threads posts when they get spread out across the Fediverse via Macedon in particular. I’ve still got some work to do on that. It’s still very much technically focused. And so most people aren’t going to want to get involved in that.

The big deal, think, is that the lack of being able to reply to anyone who comments on your threads post they see out there in mastodon somewhere. You see the fact that someone on the Fediverse has commented. That’s all it can tell you. And finding the comment and your original post is really a challenge, as I’ve discovered. So that needs to get better, and I’m sure it will. So I think when I see people criticizing all of this, just be patient because Meta are working at this.

And as you pointed out, Dan, they’ve been adding a lot of functionality recently. So this is not a standstill project. There’s nowhere near finished yet. And more good things are coming. A big one to me is Fedover sharing of WordPress posts via threads that takes that will be doable from the 28th of August, so it’s in a few days time. So that means you publish a post on your WordPress blog and set up the function that does this.

It’ll post it to threads. can do that now, in fact, but then it will then send it on its further journey out to the third of us from threads, which currently doesn’t happen. Now, that could be a big deal that gets your content out there automatically. You don’t have to do an awful lot. The only worry I’ve got about some of this stuff, such as being able to simultaneously post messages to, you know, multiple channels such as buffer introduced on threads, blue sky and Macedon simultaneously.

Do you really want to do that? I often think about, I’ve got Fedover sharing enabled on my threads account. It’s only available in a handful of countries, if I recall correctly, UK being one, the US has always been available. And it’s a useful feature, but sometimes I wonder, is that what I want to be doing? Here’s my post on threads and there’s that same post that’s then out there on Macedon somewhere. I have a plugin for Macedon on my WordPress blogs, I end up with two, I got to switch one off, but things like that.

You need to have a better choice on how to deal with that. It needs to be more easy for users to use. But it’s all coming and it’s really good hearing what you had to say about ThreadStand, so thanks.

Shel Holtz (54:07)
Here’s a fun fact. Disabling social media comments can negatively impact the reputations of online influencers and public figures. First off, let’s acknowledge that public figures, Oprah Winfrey, Selena Gomez, they’ve restricted access to their social media comments in response to online criticism. This decision makes sense. Those in the public eye are often highly scrutinized and disabling comments can be a first line of defense.

just to protect their mental health. But the influencers you’re working with, whether they’re internal, like an executive thought leader, for instance, or external, you should think twice before agreeing to let them shut off comments because they don’t like hearing what people think. We know about the unintended consequences of disabling comments from research. It was shared in a recent Harvard Business Review article.

Across seven studies, it was found that online influencers ranging from digital content creators to celebrities turned influencers are perceived as less sincere, less likable and less persuasive when they disable their social media comments. Participants in these studies who saw the posts with disabled…

time codes too.

Participants in these studies who saw posts with disabled comments rated the influencer on average as less sincere, likable, and persuasive compared to those who saw the same posts with enabled comments. What’s more, it was found that participants were less willing to engage with influencers’ affiliate marketing when comments had been turned off. That means they’re not going to click to buy whatever it was that that influencer was pitching. So how should influencers manage their comment sections?

The article identifies three important considerations. First, understand the importance of being open to audience feedback. Consumers tend to feel like they have personal relationships with influencers, and some even come to regard them as friends. Establishing a perceived sense of intimacy with their followers allows influencers to gain their audience’s trust and increases their persuasiveness, but these benefits come with greater expectations from their viewership. Second,

disabling comments is worse than leaving comments publicly visible, even if they’re horribly negative. While you may be trying justifiably to shut down the onslaught of negative feedback, especially after a personal transgression or a public humiliation, doing that just produces the opposite effect. Finally, if your influencers find themselves needing a break from the feedback they’re post produce, advise them to be transparent about that.

It’s worth noting that online influencers disable social media comments not only to avoid negative feedback following a specific incident, but also just to protect their wellbeing. Fortunately, the article shows that consumers can be empathetic to those needs. In fact, two of the experiments show that the backlash against disabling comments is weakened or even eliminated when influencers are grieving a personal loss, say the death of a family pet.

or transparently acknowledging the need to take a mental health break. Influencers have become targets of online negativity and how they respond to this feedback that can have important ramifications for their personal brands and the effectiveness of their endorsement of your brand, your product, your service. We need to be strategic in how we handle their wish to avoid hearing what their followers think.

@nevillehobson (57:59)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I read this article, I scanned it, let’s say when I saw it come out, I assumed it was talking about things like blog posts, where you turn commenting off and it’s not. Now I’m reading it again, listen to what you’re saying. This is about posts on social networks, not about stuff like blogs or websites. That would be a different thing if it were. And I agree with much of what I heard you outline here about disabling comments as well. And I think

just my own experience on things that I’ve done recently, I’ve commented on or wanted to comment on what someone has been saying and it’s not possible to do it. So you’re frustrated, where are you gonna go to give you a point of view? You don’t and that might therefore would impact what I thought about that person or why they turned it off. Probably because of the trolls and the hate is what I would think possibly. So it’s…

This does make it quite clear and has some credible data to back it up, I think, where it talks about the importance of being open to audience feedback. And I think that is the kind of number one. Indeed, it is the first one of the list that you read out and understand the psychology of it. I can see this. Consumers often feel they have a personal relationship with influencers and some even come to regard them as friends. And I can see that in some of the people that I follow who have large followings on places like Instagram.

So turning it off, yeah, I can see this. So it’s good to see this kind of thing. I think if you need a break, be transparent, that again makes sense. But in the context of the big thing, I’m going back to the conversation we had earlier in this episode talking about, you know, being visible and standing up for your own beliefs, et cetera, and the risks of that. And I think you’ve got to take that into account as well about

being transparent wholly about why you’re taking a break, for instance. I I remember as you will show back in those early days of social media, when you know, I used to do it, the tool called foursquare in particular is check in everywhere you went. And anyone, yeah, anyone who had either good or ill will against you would know your movements, everything.

Shel Holtz (1:00:08)
Be the mayor.

@nevillehobson (1:00:17)
And it became not fast realization, but shortly over time that this wasn’t a good idea to be so open and transparent because there are people out there who will bear you ill will. And that was, you know, milestone marker to the innocence and openness of social media in those early days. And now here we are 20 years later, 25 years later, even, that you wouldn’t think

of doing such a thing, you would be very guarded about what you share publicly, most sensible people would. Even privately, you don’t know what someone’s going to do with that information. And so nowadays, for instance, you’ve now got screenshots and all that kind of stuff people can do. And these are tools everyone has access to. And it’s very easy. Back then, it wasn’t. You needed special tools and not everyone had them. So be transparent. I think, you know, I saw something on

X the other day, by the way, I do pay attention to what goes on at X, but it’s about once a week I go in there to look at something specific or more frequently if it’s something I’m researching. I noticed something the other day from someone who’s an artist posted on X that a pet had died, a favorite pet, member of the family, very emotive post. The comments would make you sick. They truly, truly would. Evil people with disgusting comments.

That’s the risk factor on a platform like that. Don’t see it on Facebook, although it does exist, but not to that extent, not like that. So you’ve got to be careful. I wonder, indeed, I guess my point is to say, I’m wondering if this is strictly true in the totality of what the Harvard Business Review’s report is saying, given that, that we talked about, about standing out, et cetera.

The risks are quite high, quite significant in doing that as a matter of course. Maybe that needs to be mentioned in here as well.

Shel Holtz (1:02:14)
Yeah, and of course the study did point out that having the negative comments is actually not as bad as shutting everything down in terms of the perception that it creates among your followers. But I just found a post, I was remembering you were talking about shutting off the comments on blogs, which is fairly routine these days. I know Seth Godin is among the folks who has a blog that you can’t comment on, but I remember

Back in 2007, Dave Weiner shut off the comments on his blog. He said, this is a place for me to share my thoughts. In fact, he said, see if I can find it here. He says, yeah, basically he said, you can say what you think without being shouted down. This makes it possible for unpopular ideas to be.

@nevillehobson (1:02:55)
But did he say like, I don’t care what you think, this is my place?

Shel Holtz (1:03:05)
expressed and if you know history the most important ideas are often the unpopular ones. That’s what’s important about blogs not that people can comment on your ideas and as long as they can start their own blog there will be no shortage of places to comment. That’s what he said if you want to comment do it on your blog. The problem is that there’s no connectivity there. Am I going to follow a link and go read the post that he’s talking about or do I want to see what people think about the post that was there?

And the quote I just read you was on a post that was written July 30th, 2007 by Rand Fishkin under the headline, You’re Wrong, Joel Spolsky and Dave Weiner. Blog comments have incredible value. So this is hardly a new argument. It just seems to have shifted from blogs where publishing without comment has become fairly routine to social networking spaces where engagement with comments seems to be the whole point.

@nevillehobson (1:04:00)
Yeah, it’s true. And I think when I was recently, I kind of rejigged my own blog, a new design, all this stuff. And when I was preparing for all of that, I was looking through some of the earlier posts in the pre 2010 era. And almost every single one is absolutely peppered with comments, including the track backs and the ping backs. That’s a hallmark of blogs, particularly WordPress. And that functionality, by the way, still exists.

And that’s where discussions took place, but they were all connected. And that was where you had polite discourse. Rarely was it, certainly nothing like you have today. So we had a shift and as you said, it’s now moved to this and now the debate is talking about this. I actually hadn’t thought about it until we’re this discussion that you could turn off comments on places like Instagram, Facebook. I’ve never done that. I didn’t know you could. I’d never thought about it even. So.

Yeah, that’s changed the landscape quite a bit. think the ability to do that, the fact people are doing it, is a big shift.

Shel Holtz (1:05:06)
Yeah, so just something to keep in mind in your communication planning. If you’re working particularly with executives who would rather not hear it for a couple of weeks while they’re busy with something else, for example, just have this in your back pocket is data to share. You you can turn it off, but it’s going to have an impact on how people perceive you.

@nevillehobson (1:05:25)
Yeah, good point.

OK, in the upcoming US presidential election, Democrat Kamala Harris’s campaign. Had you heard about that, Shel? OK.

Shel Holtz (1:05:33)
I’m sorry, there’s an election?

No, I’m one of those people who doesn’t pay attention until after Labor Day.

@nevillehobson (1:05:41)
Yeah, we had one in the UK, by the way. Did you know that? We had one in the UK recently.

Shel Holtz (1:05:44)
I think I saw that on a news crawl. That’s right. John Oliver probably mentioned it.

@nevillehobson (1:05:48)
On the comedy show. Well, in the US. Yeah, yeah, he would have done. So in the US, Kamala Harris’s campaign is not just targeting Gen Z voters, many of whom will be voting for the first time is redefining how political engagement happens online. I found this a really interesting aspect to political campaigning and communication. What Kamala Harris’s campaign is doing both

she herself and her role, but her communication team and what they have enabled. This is really quite interesting. And the Gen Z targeting is significant. The Gen Z is often called the first digitally native generation. We’ve said that quite a few times. It represents a critical voting bloc of young people born between 1997 and 2012, who grew up with smartphones and social media, making them a key demographic for shaping the election outcome.

Unlike her Republican opponent Donald Trump, who traditionally tapped into the internet’s darker fringes, Harris’s team has mastered the native formats of platforms like TikTok, Gen Z’s most favored digital space, with a team of young influencers and strategists, nearly all of them under 25. The Harris campaign is leveraging memes, trends and viral content to connect authentically with younger audiences. This strategy was evident at the Democratic National Convention last week.

where over 200 influencers offered an intimate behind the scenes look, further amplifying Harris’s message. Harris’s digital presence isn’t just about following trends though, it’s about creating them. For example, the Brat meme, inspired by British singer Charlie XCX’s album, embodies confidence and a bold carefree attitude with its lime green cover art and aesthetic, traits that resonate strongly with Gen Z. The Coconut Dream meme, based on a viral quote from Harris,

has also been humorously embraced by her supporters. By strategically co -opting these memes, the campaign has significantly enhanced Harris’s appeal to younger internet savvy voters, driving massive engagement that far surpasses Trump’s efforts. Furthermore, the strategic use of influencers at the DNC exemplifies Harris’s innovative approach. These influencers, credentialed alongside traditional media, provided a personalized, immersive experience for their followers.

bridging the gap between politics and everyday life in a way that resonates with the digital first generation. The campaign’s metrics are a testament to its success. Over 57 million viewers across TV and online platforms for the first night of the convention, with 30 million views on content created by influencers alone. This level of engagement suggests that Harris’s digital first strategy could significantly mobilize younger voters, potentially tipping the scales in the upcoming election.

As we move closer to the election on November the 5th, it’s clear that the battle for the White House is being fought not only on the ground, but also across social media feeds where Harris currently holds a significant edge. This campaign is not just about winning an election. It’s about reshaping how digital strategies can be used to engage and mobilize voters in the digital age, setting a new standard for future campaigns globally. While the Harris campaign’s digital strategy is clearly leading the way,

It’s important to remember that this election is far from decided. With over 70 days still to go, the race remains incredibly tight and many influential Democrats are cautioning against overconfidence. A lot can change in the final stretch, making every move in this digital battleground crucial.

Shel Holtz (1:09:26)
Yeah, this campaign is not going to be one with memes. In fact, I even saw a headline, I think it was in the New York Times, it was yesterday or today that said joy is not a strategy because people have been talking about how this has been a joyful campaign. But the fact is it’s a campaign where every vote is going to count, every vote is going to be needed.

and getting young people out to vote. And this is a block that traditionally doesn’t vote. And they certainly were not enthused about Joe Biden, rightly or wrongly. So the fact that they are motivated to engage with some pretty interesting content that is being created by some pretty savvy digital media people is perhaps what’s going to get them out to vote and maybe even out to volunteer. Knock on doors.

make phone calls, write postcards, all those things that volunteers do as part of the ground game. And you got to hand it to them for actually understanding what resonates with Gen Z. I did hear and I don’t remember where I heard it. was on a podcast or on a news program.

But the Harris campaign’s media expenditure is 75 % digital. Only 25 % is TV. That is a complete reversal from what every campaign has been before this. So they get how important this is. And it doesn’t hurt that both candidates, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, come off pretty well.

in these types of videos. Tim Walz has been on TikTok for a while as predates any even consideration that he might be on a national ticket. So he’s been out there at county fairs holding pigs. And, you you’ve probably seen the one with his daughter where he says, we’re going to celebrate with a hamburger. And she says, I’m vegetarian. He says, Turkey then. And she says, that’s meat. And he says, not in Minnesota.

@nevillehobson (1:11:38)
Very good.

Shel Holtz (1:11:41)
You know, and there was one from some retail shop. I think it was a pizza place. And it was the pizza place that shot the video, but it was him having this really, really natural conversation with the people in the shop. And I just saw that last night contrasted with JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, going into a donut shop and having a really kind of strained and unpleasant interaction with the staff there.

So the fact that they know how to do this, they know how to come off well in these videos. There was another one that I heard went viral. was just Kamala Harrison and Tim Walz having a conversation about when she called him to inform him that he had been her choice for vice president, but he didn’t recognize the phone number. So he let her go to voicemail.

The conversation was very natural and authentic. And by the way, what’s number four on the list of things that matter to Gen Z that they value authenticity and individualism. So they’re right on top of this. And I think this is going to bring a lot of people to the polls who might’ve otherwise sat it out.

@nevillehobson (1:12:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think you’re right. Absolutely. I think that’s worth a point emphasizing that they truly get this they do much better than their opponents. From the people in her campaign team, they’re all youthful, they’re all active themselves on all the platforms that they’re using. They have a clear idea of what they want to achieve. And they have a strategy that they can execute on.

One of the links you’ll find in the show notes is a report on CNN that has profiles, if you like, of people in the campaign is most interesting to read that where you’ve got you’ve got comments like one staffer talking about their role is to build the windmill and the the current Vice President Kamala Harris, her role is to blow the wind.

I think, yeah, that’s a good kind of metaphor, I suppose. But it actually is true, they are building the infrastructure to communicate and the means by which you can get a message is out, and she’ll have help doing it. But the bottom line is she is the prime messenger. And she is very believable. The Guardian had a terrific analysis of interviews with some of the influences at the DNC. And I want to mention, I want to quote a couple of them here, because they had some interesting things to say.

One called Alexis Williams, a TikToker with 262 ,000 followers on that network. She posts about fashion, STEM and social justice. She emphasized the challenge of bridging the gap between Gen Z and older politicians at the convention, noting that while young influencers understand the appeal of using trendy musical jokes, older politicians often don’t get it. She also highlighted their unique access, which often surpasses traditional journalists. So they were getting

into places that some of the traditional journalists couldn’t get into. Corey Aversa is a 51 year old publicist and content creator from Philadelphia with 130 ,000 followers on TikTok described his content style as making viewers feel like they’re right there with him, capturing the excitement of being up close to VIPs at the convention that connected with the Gen Z followers in his network. Heather Gardner, a 36 year old TikToker.

with 394 ,000 followers on that network, pointed out the distinctiveness of influencer content, which offers a more personalized and varied perspective compared to the predictable coverage of mainstream news outlets. She stressed though that good vibes alone aren’t enough. The content must also be insightful and educational, and I would add, delivers perhaps an unspoken call to action to get out there and vote. So.

You look at these elements of what’s going on and you can see they truly have something that the other side don’t seem to. That said, you know, this is the picture now, 70 days out. And I would be very surprised indeed if the Trump campaign is kind of sat on their hands until November the 5th. So they’re going to come out with something, who knows? Hopefully for the Democrats, it’s just Trump ranting. If they get smart and do strategy, that could be a problem.

But this is really interesting seeing how they have done this at some significant scale of mobilizing almost an army of supporters to tell Kamala Harris’s story as well as she telling it, but telling it in their words to their communities and engaging directly with them with the confidence that they, they got permission, B, they got connections and the support to do it. And they believe they can do this and they are.

This is really quite phenomenal seeing this unveiled before our very eyes.

Shel Holtz (1:16:40)
And lest anybody think we’re just sitting here gushing about a Democratic candidate, I would first remind everybody that Neville’s in the UK and doesn’t have skin in this game. But second, this is a communication podcast. And what the Harris campaign is doing is a clinic for any marketer looking to try to appeal to Gen Z. You got to look at the authenticity of the kind of posts that they are contributing. You’ve got to look at the people that they are.

bringing into their camp to post on their behalf. You’ve got to look at how fast they are moving to jump on memes that have emerged out of popular culture, like the brat thing with Charlie XCX, like the coconut tree meme. They’re capitalizing on things. And by the way, some of these are things that their opposition tried to turn into a negative, but they had already jumped on it and turned it into a positive. So

There are lessons to be learned here and applied outside of the political arena. And I don’t care if you’re the most rabid Trump supporter, if you’re a marketer and you’re not paying attention to the way the Harris campaign is appealing to Gen Z, then you’re gonna be less effective on your job.

@nevillehobson (1:17:39)
Yeah.

Shel Holtz (1:17:56)
Well, what’s one thing we haven’t talked about yet in this episode? Let me think here. AI. The rise of generative AI is accelerating everything it touches in the tech industry by orders of magnitude. AI -powered search engines like Perplexity are gaining mainstream momentum. And what’s feeling the pressure as a result of all of this? The age -old industry of search engine optimization.

@nevillehobson (1:18:02)
you

Shel Holtz (1:18:26)
Now, before we dive into the trends that will drive SEO for the next year or so, let’s take a quick look at how search has changed in the last three decades. There is a search expert, he goes by Demib, that is Mikkel Demib Svensson, who recalls the switch to mobile, which was first prophesied around Y2K, shortly after the introduction of

the wireless application protocol that allowed mobile devices to connect to the internet. It was another decade before Google adopted a mobile first philosophy and content publishers adopted mobile friendly user experiences. Now, DMIB sees upwards of 90 % mobile traffic in certain verticals like women’s fashion. So what trends should marketers and communicators be keeping an eye on in 2024 and 2025? Here are five things to watch.

D -MIB calls AI a fundamental shift in technology that is maybe as big, maybe even bigger than the internet. He points to AI powering chatbots, search engines, Google AI overviews, and more. In a HubSpot survey of over 100 US -based SEO professionals, 73 % either strongly or somewhat agreed that AI tools, features, or solutions are becoming an important part of the company’s SEO strategy.

So what are the trends communicators should be paying attention to when it comes to driving traffic to their websites or getting eyes on content? Well, first there’s zero click search. With the launch of Google’s AI overviews in May of this year, zero click search shifted from theoretical concern to waking nightmare for some people. However, DMib, he’s that search engine expert, believes that a zero click world is not likely to happen as people still want to buy products that are actually only available

on certain web shops, and they want perspectives from various news outlets. Still, we’ve been living in the world of one true answer ever since Amazon unveiled the Echo line of products. We talked about this whole one true answer concept a couple of times on the show when the Echo was new. So I’d still be trying to get my company name in those AI generated results. I can’t remember where I read this. I think it was a LinkedIn post, but the author said,

He was astounded when he asked a number of prospective customers who contacted him how they learned about his company. And they said it was in an AI chat bot’s response. Remember, AI scoops up web content. So the more you’re out there on the web in the right context, the more likely you are to show up in the response to a Gen. AI prompt. And that leads us to the next trend, which is ranch style SEO. Clear Scope CEO Bernard Wang

made ripples in the SEO world with a blog post he called, Why Ranch Style SEO is Your Future -Proof Content Strategy? Huang says that rather than focusing on long, in -depth articles, publishers should disaggregate content into precise, digestible pieces that strategically align with the user’s search journey. This goes hand in hand with advice that we’ve seen about follow -up search intent, which is the next point. Amanda Sellers, HubSpot’s manager,

of EN blog strategy emphasizes that the importance of considering follow -up searches is growing. Even with the increase in zero -click queries, some users won’t be satisfied with the initial answer and will refine their journey with follow -up searches. Anticipating follow -up search intent is key to content strategy in 2024 and 2025. And I would add that the experts out there on

using ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and the other frontier large language models are all telling us, don’t type in a question and then use the answer. Have a conversation, use follow -up questions. You get additional information. It could include what your organization strove to get into those search results. Next trend is video SEO. Expect more growth in that area as consumers increasingly turn to YouTube.

to research their pain points and seek human perspectives. Rory Hope is HubSpot’s head of EN growth and says that SEOs should be monitoring the search results pages for target keywords and topics to see which ones have video carousels and coordinate with media teams to create relevant video content. The through line in these trends is that AI is driving a lot of change in the search landscape, but SEO is alive and well, and the human element is still vital to search.

To accommodate these new trends, our experts recommend that… Yeah, it’s not our experts.

To accommodate these new trends, experts are recommending that marketers and SEOs write for their audience, embrace AI -based tools, monitor search engine results pages for target keywords and topics with video carousels, and deepen their topical coverage and sharpen their editorial angles.

@nevillehobson (1:23:49)
all eminently sensible suggestion shell. I was struck by one thing reading the HubSpot article right at the very beginning where they introduced the idea of how the search landscape has changed and talk about when Google search appeared in 1998, which it did. I remember when it came out, I switched immediately from, I think, AltaVista I was using could have been one of those others, but this was magical to today. But the interesting thing was a one line comment in that intro.

An entire generation has grown up never knowing a time before Google. That’s our Gen Z. So it’s fascinating. The evolution is very interesting, I think. The trends, the zero click search thing, I’d never really kind of thought deeply about that, but I can see why that is important to pay attention to what’s happening in that area. I think the…

Shel Holtz (1:24:25)
This is true.

@nevillehobson (1:24:47)
Other point to me that’s that stood out. What would decrease search traffic in the next six months? This is in line with what we’ve been talking about in recent episodes of the in between episodes, a short form ones we do in the week. Decrease search traffic in the next six months, generative AI chatbots 13%. That would decrease search traffic. That’s interesting. And that I think is in alignment with what we’ve been talking about with with

with what was it called, Shell, the tool that Google launched that you mentioned, Google interviews or something, or wasn’t that? Anyway, you know the one I mean. So I think also one other thing that did strike me too, what will improve search traffic? yeah, that was the thing, it was overviews, yeah. Social media search engines. And we’ve seen what’s already out there, and notably perplexity, where you can ask it,

the kind of questions that we’re now seeing the others coming up with. It’s not actually it’s not strictly social media, but it’s becoming more significant. And your point you mentioned about having a conversation with your search tool. I do that. I’m sure you do as well. think I know you do even. I just don’t use Google at all. Even what’s the phone number of the dentist that I’ve forgotten. I don’t I don’t do that. Although I must admit, you then get more information than you need in the answer from perplexity if you do that.

but it’s fast, I do voice a lot. I ask them audio audibly the questions. And by the way, Perplexi’s mobile app is really good. So these are all factors into all of this. And I think the numbers are definitely worth paying attention to. I’ve not read the whole report, but I will take a look through it.

Shel Holtz (1:26:37)
Yeah, and I think, first of all, I do use Google still. There are times where I say I’m looking for a good brunch near me and it’ll pull up Google Maps and have the markers on it and show 10 restaurants and I can. But yeah. I’ve been trying to hold that back.

@nevillehobson (1:26:58)
A bit of editing there.

Shel Holtz (1:27:05)
So let me start that again.

So I do still use Google. I’ll ask for, you know, good brunch near me and it’ll give me the Google map with the markers on it and give me 10 listings and I can move through them pretty seamlessly. I don’t find the perplexity does anything even remotely like that. Also, I am on the waiting list for OpenAI’s new AI, generative AI search tool that is in alpha. And I guess some people are in there using it, but I haven’t gotten an invitation yet. I can’t wait to…

Give that a try.

@nevillehobson (1:27:41)
I’m on the waiting list too, it’s not yet launched in the UK, so I don’t know when it will be, but they told me I’m on the waiting list.

Shel Holtz (1:27:48)
Right. It’d be interesting to see what approach they take, how that compares to perplexity. Perplexity has just announced, by the way, that there’s going to be advertising. They’ve struck some deals and we’re going to start to see that really soon. But I do think unlike what this expert in SEO said in the HubSpot article, that zero click is an issue. Yes, if I do a search that takes me in perplexity,

@nevillehobson (1:27:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, two -four.

Shel Holtz (1:28:16)
to or in Google where I get the overview that provides me with a great answer that now I want to buy the product. Yes, I’m going to have to click through to that site. Absolutely. No, duh, as they say. But if what I’m looking for is instructions on how to factory reset my Google Pixel phone and what comes up is here’s step one through five and that will do it for you.

I’m not clicking through to anything. That’s what I was looking for right there. And I think increasingly that zero click response that you’re going to get is going to satisfy most people. So that becomes an issue. I think getting your information, getting your content, even your links into these results is going to be an increasing area of focus. And there’s going to be more and more tricks to do that.

@nevillehobson (1:28:55)
Yeah, it will.

Shel Holtz (1:29:13)
and maybe even advice coming from the AI organizations on how to do that, the same way Google has always offered advice on how to get into their search results, which have always been fairly ethical. They weren’t telling you here are workarounds to get irrelevant content into somebody’s search. was being current. Keep updating your content. Make sure that the keywords are in there and not gratuitously that they are contextual.

And every time they do an update to Google, they’re going to tell you, here’s what’s changed and here’s what you need to do to accommodate this. So I’d love to see the AI tools start offering that kind of guidance.

@nevillehobson (1:29:55)
Yeah, I agree. I think it’s inevitable though, the evolution path. You said it, you search for something on one of these tools, whether it’s perplexity or chat, or whatever it might be. And if it gives you, what are the five steps to do X, or you don’t say what are the five steps, how do I do X? gives you step one, do this, step five, boom. You’re not gonna go anywhere else from that point.

And that is inevitable. There’s no point in saying, well, that shouldn’t be. That is how it is. It will improve. So on the one hand, you’ve got the the traditional search engine, if I can use that way of describing it, that need to up the game in that sense. Sounds an unfair point, but without the detail, but that’s what they need to do. But is it just that? What about the companies? I don’t know how it works, Shell, to be honest, but I remember the experience I had when I first wrote

a review of perplexity back either late middle of last year or early this, I can’t remember offhand. And I had screenshots comparing this search term I did on Google, this search term is perplexity. The Google one was pretty, pretty bad. And I know it has improved a bit since from my own experience even, but the search term gave me was a car, I think it was to do with electric vehicles or hybrids or something like that. So it gave me in Google links to

some car manufacturers websites and indeed some local dealers to where I am. And I clicked on a few of them, just took me to a sales page or this is the new model. And I think this does not anywhere come close to addressing my search term. Perplexion on the other hand, gave me an essay, almost a novel on the answer to my question with all the links to the various sources that I went to. thought, wow, this is the future. that’s, but I’ve yet.

Your point about restaurants and things, I’m a bit peculiar because I never do that. I never say what’s a good place to eat near me. I just never ask a search engine that question. Sometimes I’ll look for something on Google Maps that’s related to that. I don’t just generally go to Google. I mean, Google Maps. It’s usually when I’m in the car, I ask that kind of question. And I get great results with Google, actually. And in fact, Google is Google Assistant, but the

AI one Gemini is coming to Android Auto. And I have kind of mixed views about that from what I’ve been reading in some of the tech press. Nevertheless, this is the evolution that’s coming. And so it’s changed the landscape without any doubt. And I don’t know what the answer is going to be to those folks who are looking at their web traffic and finally it’s plummeting because no one’s coming to the website. Don’t know what the answer is.

Shel Holtz (1:32:35)
The answer is to find other ways to attract that traffic to your website. Stop relying on Google because that’s going to be less and less effective. And that’ll do it for this episode of for immediate release. Of course, we will be here with short midweek episodes between now and Monday, September 23rd, which is the date of our next long form monthly episode.

@nevillehobson (1:32:38)
Up you go.

Yeah.

Yeah, you got it.

Shel Holtz (1:33:02)
We do hope that you will comment on the episodes that we post, including this one. You can email us your comment. Just email it to fircomments at gmail .com. You can attach an audio file to about three minutes long. You can record that audio file right on the FIR website, firpodcastnetwork .com. You’ll see a little button that says record voicemail or send voicemail. I don’t even remember what it says, but you’ll see it. It says voicemail.

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