In this episode, Chip talks with Jody Sutter of The Sutter Company, a frequent contributor. They discuss strategies for small agencies, emphasizing the importance of clear positioning and targeted messaging for effective business development.

They highlight the necessity for agency owners to identify their strengths and leverage them, using methods like 12-week sprints to achieve incremental progress. They also address the challenges agencies face when looking for quick revenue boosts and the significance of tapping into existing networks. [read the transcript]

The post CWC 103: Building Effective Business Development Systems (featuring Jody Sutter) appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this short midweek episode, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson unpack the findings of the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, revealing a global crisis of grievance and eroding trust in societal institutions—government, business, media, and NGOs. Key topics include the impact of trust inequality, the rise of hostile activism, and the expectations placed on CEOs to address societal issues.

Neville and Shel explore the challenges and opportunities for businesses and communicators, emphasizing the need for empathetic leadership, authentic dialogue, and community engagement. They also discuss the implications of income disparity, the role of stakeholder capitalism, and how communicators can help foster trust through two-way listening and collaboration.

Links from this episode:

• Edelman Trust Barometer: Welcome to the Age of Grievance
• 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer
• Economic grievances fuel support for hostile actions, Edelman global survey shows
• Trust in CEOs erodes, new report shows
• We Are on the Precipice of a Grievance-Based Society

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

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 446 of four immediate release. I’m She Holtz. And I’m Neville. Hobson. We are recording this episode on Monday, the 20th of January, 2025. A memorable day for many in the United States of a public holiday, Martin Luther King Day, but you’ve also got the inauguration of a new president today and Mr.

Donald Trump is coming back for Trump 2.0 his second. Term of office, and it’s kind of, I think, really appropriate that this day is also the day we’re gonna be talking about the latest Edelman Trust Barometer from the Edelman PR firm. This is an annual product. We’ve been reporting on it a lot over the last 25 years, and I actually remember she, I think I was at the first maybe and or the second of these when they were done, 1999 to 2000.

So it’s been with us a long time, but we have reported on this quite significantly. This one though is I think quite different to what we’ve seen [00:01:00] before in a number of areas. It’s a weighty volume. We’re not going to attempt to dissect the whole thing in this short form episode. That just isn’t the time to do that or just to do it.

So, we’ll, we’ll come back to it in our monthly. But we’ve got a few things we have to say about this. So we should get on with this. So. It was actually over the weekend at Davos that Aman unveiled the results of this trust parameter. It’s the latest annual report and public sentiment of trust in governments business, the media and NGOs from a survey of 33,000 people in 28 countries carried out last October.

Overall, the picture is a desperate one, I would say, showing that in Edelman’s words, widespread grievance. Eroding trust across the board. Those with a high sense of grievance, distrust all four institutions, business, government, media, and NGOs. We’ll discuss a report on what the survey findings mean for communicators right after this message.[00:02:00]

We are living in a time of gre grievance says Edelman, CEO, Richard Edelman, defined by a belief that government and business make our lives harder and serve narrow interests, and that wealthy people benefit unfairly from the system while regular people struggle in this age of grievance, disillusionment with societal institutions, that’s government, business, media, and NGOs is pervasive and widespread around the world.

According to the survey, 61% of respondents have a moderate or high sense of grievance. People around the world feel betrayed by leaders and left behind by societal institutions, government, business, media, and NGOs. The erosion of trust is across the board. None of the four key institutions are trusted universally, all face significant distrust among those with high grievance levels.

Trust inequality, particularly among income groups, exacerbates the issue. In addition, aggrieves people distrust [00:03:00] CEOs, as well as innovations like artificial intelligence. For any organization to succeed now and in the years ahead, its leaders cannot ignore grievance. A significant finding is that four in 10 people approve of hostile activism, where radical tactics such as online attacks, disinformation, and even violence, are seen by many as viable ways to address systemic issues.

Hostile activism is most prevalent among respondents aged 18 to 34 with 53% supporting these tactics. Over the last decade, society has devolved from fears to polarization to grievance. As Richard Edelman incumbents in the US, uk, France, Germany, South Korea and Canada were ousted amid voter anger over job losses to globalization and inflation.

He added. We now see a zero sum mindset that legitimizes extreme measures like violence and disinformation as tools for change. Other findings are many. They [00:04:00] include globalization, recession, and technology fears. They’re heightened where the percentage of employees who worry about losing their jobs because of these forces has re risen significantly since last year, free of discrimination surges.

Nearly two thirds of respondents worry about experiencing prejudice, discrimination, or racism up 10 points in the last year, and with significant increases across countries and demographics, including among white respondents in the us. CEOs must take action. They have permission to address a societal issue.

When their business contributed to the problem, it harms their stakeholders. They could have a major positive impact or it would improve their business’s performance. As communicators and leaders, we stand at a critical juncture where trust is in free for grievances are deepening, and the potential for societal instability grows.

This is just a high level snapshot, I, I should add, but clearly there’s major concern about the state of trust and what to do about it. This crisis of grievance surely is [00:05:00] a moment for decisive, empathetic leadership, grounded in action and authenticity shall. It seems that trust is declining precipitously, as you mentioned, it’s across all four institutions.

Mm. A couple glimmers of hope, at least for communicators working in business. First business is still the most trusted institution and the only one above water among the four institutions business. Has the highest trust level at 62%, and it’s viewed both as competent and ethical, but still eroding.

It’s not as high as it has been in previous surveys. Another glimmer of hope is that despite trust challenges, CEOs are expected to address societal issues. So there is an expectation that business is going to do something about this. So I, I think communicators need to take this to heart and use it as at least to inform strategies for communication.

[00:06:00] And, and this would be both internal and external. I think we need to think about what the role of businesses in societal change, and I, I don’t, I, I, I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I know that here in the US businesses retreating from the idea of societal change. Right now with the Trump administration taking power today they are retreating from DEI, for example.

And yet that is one of the things, that a lot of people are looking for and feeling that they’re not getting because of that divide largely between rich and poor. So and, and that’s one that just confounds me here in the US because of, of all of the outpouring of support from business and from large sector of the population for the Trump administration, and yet the people who are going to be leading that administration have a net worth.

It is larger than the gross domestic. Product of most of the countries in the world. Hmm. And so you’re being led by the ultra rich. Some people are already calling it an oligarchy, and yet [00:07:00] it’s this divide of, of wealthy and not wealthy that is driving a lot of this grievance. But we need to be combating misinformation.

We need to be engaging people locally. I think we need to have our CEOs and other leaders, and frankly even our frontline employees more visible in the communities because when you know people, you trust them more, and it’s easier to get a handle on what that the organization that represent is doing in order to address the concerns.

That they have. We, we need to be cognizant of the risks that people perceive with technology and talk about how we’re employing them and why this is perhaps good for the general population. We need to navigate the polarized societal landscape carefully. But mostly there’s opportunities here for CEOs to position themselves as not just thought leaders, but empathetic and action oriented.

People [00:08:00] who can foster trust particularly when they’re addressing pressing issues that matter to people that they have told us matters to them. In this survey issues like inequality, discrimination and environmental challenges. Mm. Yeah, there’s a lot to take in from that. I think shell, you are right.

The lessons for communicators and their clients internally, if you are in that sense or externally, doesn’t really matter on taking a lead and initiative, if you will, for authentic communication that addresses these grievances. I don’t know, as we’re talking what form that might take. I don’t think there’s a single form.

It’ll depend on a lot of things. The flip side of that, I think is the fi, the actual findings of diet distress and negativity across the board in all these key metrics. The one that worries me, in fact many of them do, but let’s pick one. One that worries me quite a bit is the majority of people are convinced that wealthy people take more than their fair share.

So [00:09:00] the metric is quite . Staggering. Two thirds of people believe that they don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and almost two thirds believe that they’re the cause of many problems. And you combine that then with hostile activism, and it’s not hard to see for instance, that that dreadful murder of that health healthcare company’s CEO in New York a month or so back.

Some of what I’ve read subsequently I understand it’s, it’s hard to even say that, but I do understand why that an event like that might happen, particularly in light of some things I’ve read recently, for instance. And of course this is where you then have to pause a bit and say, did I verify all this stuff?

It was in a reputable journal that talked about, there’s evidence that they overcharged patients over a thousand percent. And so there’s a, a prime example. The hostile activism metric. The staggering too. The one I think that’s the least worrying ’cause it doesn’t involve violence, is intentionally spreading disinformation.

A quarter of the respondent said they’re okay with that, [00:10:00] and we are seeing it every single day. I think it’s also combined and this adds to the is part of the grievance certainly, but it adds to the destruction of trust is the way in which leaders. And I’m using that word very loosely including politicians lie.

They absolutely lie. They do not tell the truth. And so no wonder people don’t trust them. And you then have, in my opinion, the egregious display of wealth by some people, and you’ll know who I mean when I talk about those people sending rockets into space and doing all that kind of stuff that flaunt their success and wealth and no wonder.

That’s a, that’s the wrong message sense then political leaders doing the same. And you mentioned Trump, who’s taking office today. He’s gotta be a prime example here, but he is not the only one. So this all adds to this climate of, of this time of, of grievance that translates into this where people feel that they have to take their own actions ’cause they can’t trust anyone.

I. From a business point of view where we’re talking about what [00:11:00] can, what can we do in our for our employers or our clients to help them with this? Well, there’s plenty and you’ve just kind of set the, set the bench on that, I think. But there, there’s a bigger picture at stake here, and I think that would.

All contribute to to to stopping you achieving your goals in advising a CEO to be proactive. So what happens if A CEO addresses a group of employees that people feel empowered to criticize him right there and then indeed insult the CEO? No respect at all. How do you. Navigate that kind of environment.

How do you prepare? So all that is now top of your agenda as opposed to not really a likelihood we need to get with a positive message. This is a tough time for this, I think, in light of stuff like this, don’t you think? Oh, it, it absolutely is. And you know, one of the fascinating dimensions of all of this is the.

Anger that we’re seeing aimed at the ultra rich. I’ve seen [00:12:00] a couple of memes. I’m, I’m just gonna point to two and I, I don’t have them in front of me, so I’m not gonna be able to cite them. Word for word. But what strikes me about these two is, is not that they exist, it’s that they are being shared repeatedly.

I mean, I’m seeing these things. Probably a hundred times on multiple platforms. One of them is a, a graphic of a very long list, and it says, where is the Elon Musk Cancer Clinic? Where is the Elon Musk? Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. And, and then the other one has a photograph of Musk. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg with goofy smiles on their faces.

And it says, how must it feel to go to bed every night knowing that you personally could solve world hunger and homelessness and wake up in the morning and still have enough money that you’ll never be able to spend it all and still not do anything? And I’ve seen that one, probably 75 or a Yeah, or a hundred times.

So this anger at. The ultra [00:13:00] rich, and I’m not going to make the case one way or another that it’s, it’s justified anger. There are people who say, if you work hard and make that kind of money, you deserve it. But that anger is real. And, and, and that’s part of the grievance. And I think it is something that organizations need to think about in terms of their governance of their pay packages.

As, as they consider how customers prospective customers are going to respond to them as this continues to spiral outta control because frankly, I see this getting worse before it gets better. Yeah, totally agree with you. She, and that example you gave is not a new thing at all. I can remember.

Going back 20 plus years a company I worked for at the time and you had company cars and all that and I picked up a a a a Saab 900 Turbo very pokey machine that was outside the realm of what people expect of someone let me in the job I was doing to be driving. They’d expect me to be driving like a Ford or something like that, or a voxel.

I show [00:14:00] up in a, in a Saab beautiful car. It was great. And I remember getting pushback on this comments, snidey comments from people, snarky remarks at the time. And that is still the case now. So you subdue this now. So I think it is a big problem. I don’t believe it will be solved without the help of government, but we don’t trust government.

So where on earth do we go from here with that? In that case? I, it’s, I don’t know , I, I always appreciate people who are able to say, I don’t know, . All I can talk about is what, what business can do and what communicators can do in, in support of that. And I think it’s helping to develop communication strategies that are two-way that engage the local communities and, and engage the communities.

With which organizations interact. But I also think that there needs to be a rethinking of, where the money goes. And I thought this was underway when the US Chamber of Commerce announced that shareholders were [00:15:00] no longer the top priority. But I’m starting to hear people talk more about stakeholder capitalism.

You know, nobody wants to go down the socialism road for obvious reasons. But this idea of stakeholder capitalism making money is good. We just need to make sure that it gets into the hands of the people who played a role in producing that capital, not just the owner of the business behind it.

So it’s, it’s something to consider if, if you. Want to stop the cycle that we see because it’s, it’s, it’s getting bad enough that pretty soon it’s gonna rear up and, and bite business in the ass. Yeah, I, I think it’s, it, it, my kind of conclusive comment on, on all of that really is something that is not new by any means.

It crops up all the time, which is listening. You gotta prioritize listening, genuinely understand the concerns of stakeholders. And I really don’t like the word stakeholders. A catchall word that people dish up a lot, but employees, your customers, your [00:16:00] investors. Families of all of those people, and these are pretty socialist ideas, but they are universal in my opinion, and we don’t do enough of that.

And this must be prioritized. All that listening and addressing them and yeah, this is important. Do you understand them? You, the communicator in, in the sense of aligning with the core values of your organization. You’ve gotta tailor it to that. And so you can present a credible picture to everyone.

So don’t broadcast. You’ve gotta foster meaningful dialogue. So that’s, that’s my conclusion. It’s not a new message at all. I think there needs to be at least two dimensions to, to listening. And now I’m talking about with external communities, not internal communications. Right. But I think surveys are fine, but what we need is face-to-face.

We need to start doing some town halls out there to understand the grievances, to ensure that voices are heard, to make sure that people. Understand that their voices are being heard and, and then we need to [00:17:00] figure out within our stakeholder groups, I’m fine with that word by the way within our stakeholder groups, which groups are affected by the issues driving this GRE grievance?

And then find ways to collaborate with them. We have to. Co-create solutions, and we have to empower these groups to feel like they’re part of a decision making process. I mean, you know, helplessness is what drives a lot of this feeling like you don’t have Yeah. Any way to do anything about it. And if business can provide an entree for people to feel like they, I.

Do have the ability to take part in the decision making process other than going to, you know, vote on election day that that could help. I mean, we’re just scratching the surface. But in, in terms of listening, I really think that listening I. It doesn’t have to be confined to face to face, but I think a lot of it needs to, because we need our people out there engaging.

They need to see who these people are, meet them, kind of get to know them, because those are the people that you end up trusting. It’s, it’s those nameless, faceless [00:18:00] people that are making decisions, you know, on the, on the 72nd floor and, and only come out with their bodyguards to get to their car.

That, that we tend not to trust. Right. Well, we got, we have work to do. I think shell, don’t you? ? Oh, plenty of it. Can’t, can’t, can’t rest on all our laurels at this point. . So I think we’ll probably be talking about this when we get together on Saturday to record our, our monthly long form episode. But until then, that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #446: Navigating Grievance — Insights from the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini dive into the topic of agencies doing subcontracted work for other agencies.

Both share their personal experiences of starting and growing their businesses through such work. They discuss the advantages, such as faster decision-making processes and the opportunity to work with big clients without direct procurement hassles.

However, they also highlight significant risks like delayed payments, the potential for relationship conflicts, and the importance of clear contractual agreements. The hosts stress the need for transparency, proper onboarding processes, and clear communication channels to mitigate these challenges. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 257: Should your small agency be subcontracting for larger agencies? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

2025 is sure to present a new set of challenges for communication professionals. Solving them will require creativity, innovation, and new thinking (which is not something AI can do!). This team of Fellows from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) explored breakthrough thinking in a January 16, 2025, live stream, sharing ideas on how the creative process works. Discover how to find sources of inspiration while setting boundaries and allowing time for breaks. They shared thoughts about tools to push your thinking in new and innovative directions without exhausting yourself. Now is the time to learn the tips and tricks to fueling creativity even in the toughest moments.

 

About the panel:

Although Zora Artis began her career outside the communications field, she has had an outsize impact on the profession since entering it more than 20 years ago to as an account director and then strategic planner with branding and integrated marcomms agencies. Since then, she has led her own brand and communications consultancy and served as CEO of a 20-person creative, digital, and strategic communication firm. In 2019, formed her current management consulting practice bringing together strategic alignment, brand, and communication expertise. She has received five Gold Quill awards. Her significant contributions to the profession and the body of knowledge include her original research with IABC colleague, Wayne Aspland, on strategic alignment, the role of communications and leadership – the first substantial research effort for the reconfigured IABC Foundation – and co-authoring a subsequent white paper, “The Road to Alignment,” supported by 27 senior communicators from five continents. Zora has also researched the correlation between strategic alignment and experiences and the impact on stakeholder value and brand. This has led her to develop her own proprietary Alignment Experience Framework. She has also examined gender equity, perceptions, and bias in organizations, and wrote a chapter on this topic for the Quadriga University e-reader, Women in PR. Since joining IABC a decade ago, she has impacted IABC as a volunteer, including roles as chair of the IABC Asia Pacific Region and IEB director; she currently serves as the chair of the 2022 World Conference Program Advisory Committee. A certified company director, as chair of the IABC Audit and Risk Committee she introduced proper risk oversight to the board’s processes. Zora has been honored with the 2021 and the 2015 IABC Chair’s Award for Leadership and was named IABC’s 2020 Regional Leader of the Year. She is also a Strategic Communication Management Professional, Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, and Certified Practicing Marketer.

Diane Gayeski is recognized as a thought leader in the practice and teaching of business communications.  She is Professor of Strategic Communications at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College and provides consulting in communications analysis and strategies through Gayeski Analytics.  Diane was recently inducted as an IABC Fellow; she’s been active in IABC for more than 30 years as a featured speaker and think-tank leader at the international conference, the author of 3 editions of the IABC-published book, Managing the Communications Function, and the advisor to Ithaca College’s student chapter.  She’s led more than 300 client engagements for clients, including the US Navy, Bank of Montreal, Fiat, Sony, Abbott Diagnostics, and Borg-Warner, focusing on assessing and building the capacities and new technologies for workplace communications and learning teams.

Andrea Greenhous’s life’s purpose is to improve the world of work. For over 30 years, she has helped organizations improve the employee experience and build workplaces where people thrive. As founder and president of Vision2Voice, an internal communications agency, Andrea and her dedicated team help organizations adopt a strategic approach to employee communications to achieve results. Andrea has led initiatives and transformation projects for Fortune 500 technology companies, large government departments, and organizations as diverse as construction, biotech, finance, and higher education. This has led to a signature approach emphasizing harnessing employee voices and amplifying their insights and ideas.

Andrea is a storyteller, a PROSCI-certified change leader, and Dare to Lead trained based on the work and research of Brené Brown. She is also a certified Fearless Organization Practitioner. She uses the tools and processes developed by Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, to build psychological safety in teams. Andrea has been named one of the top 10 influencers in internal communications and is a frequent guest blogger and speaker at industry events.

Martha Muzychka, ABC, MC, speaks, writes, listens, and helps others do the same to make change happen. Martha is a strategic, creative problem solver seeking challenging communications environments where we can make a difference. She helps her clients navigate competing priorities and embrace communication challenges. Martha offers strategic planning, facilitation, consultation services, writing and editing, qualitative research, and policy analysis. Her work has been recognized locally, nationally, and internationally with multiple awards.

The post Circle of Fellows #112: Sparking Creativity: Ideas for Breakthrough Thinking appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The media landscape is in turmoil. It may not be exactly the turmoil we hear about, though, based on research release in a new Poynter Institute report. For example, it is taken as gospel that “people don’t trust the media,” but a survey finds that’s not necessarily accurate. Local news reporters, for example, are highly trusted, mainly because they have established relationships in the community. That supports a broader notion: These days, connection matters more than credentials, for better or for worse, leading to the rise of the “newsfluencer,” who can be anybody from an experienced journalist with a Substack newsletter to a citizen journalist with no training to a provocateur who is able to build an audience.

If your job involves getting coverage for your company’s news or brand, what was once a straightforward assignment is now a complex maze full of mines. Should you get your CEO onto a podcast? Elevate a frontline employee with a strong personal brand to help get the word out? Start sharing information in small social communities? Or any of dozens of other options?

Neville and Shel delve into this one aspect of the OnPoynt Report in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

• OnPoynt Report – Poynter
• Christopher Penn on LinkedIn
• Mayra Báez on LinkedIn
• Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2025

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

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 everyone, and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 4, 4 5. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shell Holtz. And we have been reporting here over the last several episodes about the changing media landscape since communicators rely on media to get the word out. , that’s the heart of media relations, right?

It’s an important topic to address the Pointer Institute. Is one of the organizations engaged in research into the massive changes that the media are experiencing. If you haven’t heard of them, the Pointer Institute for Media Studies is a nonprofit journalism school and research organization based in St.

Petersburg, Florida. They own the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact Checking network. Where they operate PolitiFact, they just released their on point. That’s P-O-Y-N-T, of course, because that’s how you spell pointer. The on point report, which sheds light on the evolving landscape of media relations.[00:01:00]

The report offers a lot of useful insights. Into how technology and shifting public perceptions are reshaping the way organizations interact with the media. So we thought we would dive into that today, starting with a look at the changing media landscape On point highlights a significant transformation in the media environment.

Traditional news outlets are contending with declining. Circulation and viewership. While digital platforms and social media have surged as primary news sources, this includes things like substack newsletters, and of course journalists are writing these as a way to reach people, but. Other professionals are too without journalistic training, and so are activists and conspiracy theorists.

Anybody can start one. All you need is a credit card. I read a LinkedIn post by Myra Baez an audience strategist who pointed out that the Washington Post has laid off most of its PR team. They wrote that talent driven journalism is the future of media and personalities [00:02:00] and creators will lead the way.

Myra says that the post is creating a star talent unit and that Al Jazeera plus experimented with this, I guess she used to work there more than a decade ago, intertwining the organization’s brand with journalists’, personal brands for Al Jazeera plus’s, social media oriented journalism. And she said it worked.

We’ve entered the area. We’ve entered the era of news influencers and news creators. She wrote, it’s not just journalism. This trend spills over into other industries. Businesses are replacing traditional PR strategies with regular employees who bring strong personal brands. The era of faceless organizations is ending.

She wrote, and that’s a key point for business communicators, but she also notes. People aren’t differentiating between reporting and influencer content, and she says it doesn’t matter. It’s all about connection over credentials, she says. But , is it really, does the idea of a [00:03:00] professional journalist carry no weight anymore?

Do we really want a news influencer who’s only experience is on TikTok or Instagram to report a complex story? The same way somebody who studied journalism school in school and got experience working for professional editors can now maybe I’m old, but I don’t think so. But that doesn’t mean there’s no value out there with people telling stories in new.

In interesting ways in any case, this shift has led to a more fragmented media landscape where audiences access information from a multitude of channels, each with its own credibility and reach. So before we move on to the issue of trust in media, Neville any thoughts on the shift in the media landscape?

Yeah, I think it’s we quite a few actually, but I think just a couple. This is inevitable. It seems to me, given the state of things that we see all around us, the signals are, there have been for a while that this shift is coming and it’s su not sudden. It’s little by little. It’s gradually been [00:04:00] approaching.

I think it’s interesting that, the shift is it? It’s more a question, generationally based in terms of preferences of where people want to get their news and information from. If that’s not, I. Front and center of the strategies of media organizations. I think they’re gonna be in trouble because this is this is about gi giving people stuff that retains them and engages with them.

And that’s different generationally. Now, as we know you and I are in that that lovely group called the Boomers, right? And you and I actually are utterly not . Like the stereotypical boomer. I certainly am not in terms of the things that interest me, the tools that I use and how I behave online, all that kind of thing.

Yet most people are they’re true to form in that regard. And you’ll find that not just in journalism, but in politics and a ton of other things that will, we may touch on some of that. So I think. This trend is inevitable. It’s already underway. We’re seeing some interesting [00:05:00] things happening.

And indeed the point of report is rich with insights on where this is going. We need to as communicators. Be fully aware of this and not try and not understand it because you have to understand it if you wanna know who your audiences are and where they’re at and how you will reach them.

And the same with the journalists that you need to catch. I was thinking about TikTok reading about that today and what’s going on in the US about, are they gonna be banned from the America and all this kind of stuff, and yet. TikTok, those two words cropping up in news reports daily about a place where this or that is happening, and therefore, does it make sense to ban them?

That’s political drive. I get that. So though you are gonna alienate a lot of your audience if you do that in the United States. But that’s slightly separate topic. But it makes me think of these shifts that are happening and you have to be completely on top of . The developments and pay attention to them.[00:06:00]

So yeah, lot’s happening. Absolutely. And to your point with generations. Yeah, absolutely. I think that boomers are probably still reading print newspapers by and large. Yeah. There is a risk though, in assuming that I. Any cohort is a monolith. I think one of the characterizations we hear of boomers is not very tech savvy.

And yet it was boomers who invented the internet. Let’s not forget that, that people like Bennett surf boomers. And you look at somebody like. James Licklider, who was involved with darpa and the effort to create the packet switching that invented the, he preceded boomers. He was part of that greatest generation that came before, so I think there’s danger in assuming too much about any one cohort, but definitely look at those characteristics and what media they’re using.

I think it’s worth noting, just as sort an aside here to mention that those folks who we see as boomers, Vince s being one, wasn’t a boomer. Meaning he wasn’t gray hair [00:07:00] and white bearded when he did all this stuff. He was quite a young guy. Tim Burners Lee, another one. He was in his thirties when he invented the World Wide Web.

Yep, just a point. So keep in mind the, there are very tech savvy boomers. Yeah. Out there and older. Let’s talk about trust in media because that’s a pivotal focus of the report. Public confidence in media institutions has been waning influenced by factors such as perceived biases. A lot of that is politically driven misinformation and the rapid spread of fake news, which I think we’re at greater risk of because of.

This erosion of trust poses challenges for organizations striving to convey their messages effectively through any media channels. And yet, 83% of people say local news outlets are at least somewhat important to the wellbeing of their local community.

69% say local journalists in their area are mostly in touch with their community, and 71% say local journalists are reporting news accurately. Now, how does that square with the idea that . People don’t trust [00:08:00] the media. And the answer to that is the media is not a monolith. As the on point report notes, people are more likely to trust people they know journalists to news organizations are most trusted when they develop relationships with customers, donors, business partners, and sources.

And there’s a growing number of local news and topic oriented sites. On the us The On Point report says three new ones are launching every month on average. Are we targeting. These with solid content. Neville, your thoughts on trust in media. It’s shifted. The old definitions are changing. What do we mean by trust?

I think that’s a good thing as it evolves, but it’s very interesting the point you mentioned in the pointer report about the word media is too broad and as, as they say, and the word trust is too broad and inexact. And I think that’s absolutely right. Word of this phrase of distrust of media I agree with pointed that it tends to look at a [00:09:00] huge picture, not the local scene.

And you hear this anecdotally a lot, don’t you? And you’ve referenced it even that people may not trust that particular organization, but hey, where I live and how I relate to them, they’re wonderful. And that’s a, that’s. It sums it up really, doesn’t it? So it’s good to see this is, I believe something important to pay attention to and be part of that shift and understand it so that you are able to engage with people as this whole thing shifts.

In terms of trust, yeah I really was taken by this focus on local journalism. I have been, as I don’t know if everybody listening knows that my degree is in journalism way back when print was print, newspapers and radio were the only options available to you. But I have been very concerned about the closing of so many.

Local community newspapers because you need somebody to sit in the school board meeting and report on [00:10:00] that in the zoning commission meeting to report on that. If there’s no public oversight of these institutions, then they can just do whatever they want behind closed doors. So I’m heartened to see these local news sites opening.

I don’t know how rigorous their journalism is, but there’s an opportunity there. There’s that old expression that all politics is local. Maybe all media relations is local too. So I think we need to look at these as opportunities for getting our word out through journalists who are trusted.

By the local community and find the local angles to our stories. And by the way, AI should be able to help with that. If we need to crank out, our, pitches for 50 different geographic regions, that could take a lot of time if you’re trying to do that manually. Yeah I think I would add to that, maybe this is just in the uk, but I suspect not in that the media, local media and this is a very broad observation and [00:11:00] it is just that an opinion observation.

That, what I certainly note is that the online versions of newspapers here tend to be dominated by a handful of very big companies, won a lot of titles, and they are driven by . Ads popups it’s hard to see news stories. And when you go to a website that’s your local newspaper website, you are just overwhelmed with the advertising and the promotional stuff to actually see the story.

So you tend not to go. So I often wonder, when I do go and encounter all this stuff, how can they keep in business for God’s sake? Because surely circulation the really, the, what do you call it, the visitors must be declining, but I guess not. Print the actual print. It’s hard to find newspapers outside of the old traditional news agents.

In the supermarkets. Local ones tend to be free giveaways now, so I don’t think they have the credibility anymore. That’s my own perception. That said where I live in Somerset, in England, the local papers here are actually quite [00:12:00] enjoy, but they’re very good at reporting local news. The only trouble is, so the journalism’s good.

The only trouble is it’s in, is the medium in which that journalism is published with all the ads and the, and it’s not an, not a pleasant user experience, I find. Yeah. I took a look in the on point study. They listed a bunch of these. Relatively new local news sites. Yeah. And it was heartening to see that they weren’t riddled with ads.

These are I’m gathering efforts by people who are passionate Yeah. About getting local news out there and not looking, they’re not media moguls looking to sell a lot of advertising, probably just looking to cover their costs. And, there’s probably a lot of volunteer. Citizen journalists who are saying, yeah, I’ll go to that zoning commission meeting and sit in and write a report.

Again I worry about the quality of journalism people knowing what sources to reach out to how to do an investigation. [00:13:00] I remember when I was working for a daily newspaper I led an investigation. It was into, corruption, the county level. But I had to know how to go to the county office and get the right records and sit there with a ruler and go down every line and take the right notes and document all of this, which is something I learned in journalism school.

You wonder if somebody who says, yeah, I’ll go to the zoning commission meeting, even thinks to do something like that as opposed to just taking the notes and reporting what they heard. But something is better than nothing and it could evolve into something more I suppose. Let’s talk about the implications of all of this for media relations.

That’s the connection to the theme of this podcast. The report underscores a number of implications for media relations professionals. One you already referenced, Neville Diversified outreach. Relying solely on traditional media is no longer adequate. Organizations need to engage with a variety of platforms including digital outlets, blogs, podcasts.

Did I mention [00:14:00] podcasts? . And social media influencers and news influencers. In an. In order to reach their target audiences effectively. And I wonder how many PR agencies, not to mention in-house PR teams are thinking about the need to undergo this transformation. Then there’s authenticity and transparency in an era of skepticism.

Being genuine and transparent is crucial. Audiences are more likely to trust organizations that communicate openly and honestly, acknowledging both successes and challenges. And here again, is an opportunity . Employees who have strong personal brands representing the organization.

Rather than being a faceless organization, we need to build direct relationships. With the rise of social media organizations have the opportunity to establish direct connections with our audiences. This direct engagement can help build trust and foster a sense of. Community and of course embracing technology.

Leveraging technological tools such as data analytics and AI [00:15:00] can enhance the effectiveness of media relations strategies. They can help in understanding audience preferences, predicting trends, and crafting personalized messages. So in terms of media relations, devil thoughts. You’ve nailed it. I think she

I think pointer talks about a pointer which makes sense to me. Media organizations that can adeptly blend compelling narratives with captivating audio and visual elements will emerge as industry leaders shaping news consumption, generating new revenue, and refining the boundaries of journalism.

So they gotta expand their skill sets of their journalists to get there. So it’s not a single thing that needs to happen. There’s quite a bit that needs to happen there. And for communicators to understand this from a media relations point of view, there are changes there too, to be in step with what is happening as pointer mentions.

So it is quite interesting you mentioned podcasts earlier, and one of the trends they talk about is that what. [00:16:00] News publishers are planning to produce more of 47% of them more podcasts. Okay. That’s beaten by newsletters. It’s 52% and video by 64%. But guess what? They’re not planning to produce more of articles, traditional articles.

Yeah. 0%, 0% produce more articles. Yeah. Now, equally interesting just to me to mention this, that pointer sites the data for that, those metrics. It’s global. They talk to media leaders. They say 56 countries. This is for Reuters Institute of Journalism Report last year. The journalism media and technology trends and productions.

1. The 2025 version has just come out literally the other day. I was glancing through it the other day. It’s fascinating some of the stuff, so I need to read it properly. That’s probably gonna be a top one of my topics on a monthly episode, by the way. It’s interesting it’s mentioned here in that way, and I think that like all the things that they’re talking about here that you and I are discussing each of us as [00:17:00] communicators need to be paying very close attention to these shifts that are happening.

Even the ones that are just trends that might happen in six months or whatever it might be. This is a part of the evolution, if you will, of of what’s happening in the overall media landscape. I think there’s so much to. Grapple with this that you need to decide what you’re gonna pay attention on and you need some help with that probably.

So Pointers report is a good place to start I think. Yeah, it is. And in terms of podcasts, I think being able to pitch a media outlet for its podcast is something we’re going to need to start doing, but I. Certainly wouldn’t limit myself to media podcasts. I would look at the podcasts the media are quoting.

This is something we talked about last week, is you’re seeing people quoted from, Zuckerberg was quoted just the other day from his interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Yeah. There are podcasts that have large followings that. [00:18:00] People are appearing on and then being quoted by the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

So podcasting like TikTok is now becoming a source of news. Used to be Twitter at one point a little less these days and more the podcasts and TikTok. Yeah. And in fact the the 2025 version of that Reuters report that I mentioned talks about that in the context of growth of social media platforms that are gonna get media attention, Twitter or XI should say, is at the bottom, literally blue sky.

TikTok forgotten the other one, the three one. That ones that caught my attention. But Blues scum in particular thread are right up there. No threads. Threads are off. The chart almost is down there with X. Not, they don’t see threads. They don’t see threads as I, I suspect I, my interpretation, they don’t see threads as mattering much in the future.

I was actually grappling to try and find the chart that I referenced, but I can’t lay [00:19:00] my hands on it in a second. But it’s interesting. We are seeing that. Prediction happening, and indeed you can get some indicator of that. The x the media attention on XI saw a story that two days ago that academia generally speaking broadly, 60 academic institutions across Germany and Austria are quit.

Twitter gone. They’re out. Yep. They’re talking about government agencies in Germany leaving XX, not Twitter x. And some media organizations are stepping up their moves elsewhere. So Blue Sky is not the only destination people are going to. We are seeing this. Gaining momentum, I think it seems to me and the influence to a lot of it, of course, is what’s happening in the United States, in the political landscape.

We have a new president taking office formally in a week’s time as we’re recording this on 20th January. So all of that, it’d actually be interesting she to see as a kind of a related side. What media did to pay attention to on the 20th of January. The u the usual suspects, [00:20:00] of course, ’cause they’re not going away the mainstream broadcast media, but you’re gonna see live broadcast coverage coming from all sorts of places that you might not even have thought of.

So you, you will be able to encounter that kinda thing wherever you are online. I’m pretty certain of that. That’s not much different to what’s already been happening, but maybe it’s intensifying. And it could be that . You’ll find influencers and people described that way in the United States certainly will be reposting, stuff like that.

And so you’ll have discussions going on and opinions being shaped and formed and published and quoted upon. So it’s gonna be pretty much a wild west landscape, I would say. It is, and everybody’s going to walk away with a different perception based on confused on what media they’ve consumed. Unlike the old days when everybody watched Walter Cronkite and got the same information.

Yeah. Which leads us to some strategic recommendations and, we’re talking about social media. One of these strategic recommendations is to prepare for the end of public. [00:21:00] Social media, it’s a caveat. This is not something that’s going to happen tomorrow, but Chris Penn mused on LinkedIn that AI slop and bots might take down public social media because as he wrote, the only ones left will be bots talking to each other.

He suggested that you make your plans now for a future where your social networking is out of the public eye in private places where people in your circle. Of trust, provide the support and connection you crave. And if you’re a marketer, prepare for a future where public social media is no longer a driver of any kind of business.

Interesting post from Chris and I don’t disagree with it, but again, I don’t think this is something that’s gonna happen imminently. This is going to happen gradually as those AI bots start yeah. Taking over. But I. A couple of other strategic recommendations. Invest in media literacy educating both internal teams and the public about media literacy can help in discerning credible information from misinformation, thereby fostering a more [00:22:00] informed audience.

1. Cultivate media relationships, right? Building and maintaining strong relationships with journalists and media outlets and news influencers is essential. Understanding their needs and providing valuable newsworthy content can enhance your media coverage. And then there’s crisis preparedness in this particular information environment.

Having a robust. Crisis plan is not an option. You have to be prepared to respond quickly and effectively to negative publicity that can come from just about anywhere now. That can, mitigate potential damage. There’s a ton of information and data in this report. There’s a whole section on AI that we didn’t even touch on.

Yeah. But Neville, any concluding thoughts? I was thinking you mentioned about building relationships with journalists. And one thing I started doing is paying attention to media organizations who are publishing a list of journalists active on Blue Sky as part of these new startup packs that Blue Sky enabled.

I’ve seen probably a dozen different media organizations across Europe. Started doing [00:23:00] this and some specialist trade publications, particularly in in the pharma, in healthcare those are available sources. You don’t have to go digging for this kind of stuff, listing all those folks. Now, it’s not to say that you get them and you start spamming them with messages on the social network.

You’ll soon know that’s absolutely not the way to do this. Some probably will though. But there’s a great. Place to gain that. And of course, no one else is doing this in other platforms. So that’s gonna give Bluesky advantage as people start building out their approach to connecting with with journalists and others of interest.

So it’s a useful tool, by the way, and there’s some other tools where you can convert them into actual lists even more valuable. So those are the things you need to take advantage of because it will give you an advantage in doing things that way. Absolutely. The link to the report and to the LinkedIn posts that I referenced, the one from Maya Baez and from Chris Penn are gonna be in the show notes and that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #445: Media Relations in a Turbulent Media Landscape appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the challenges of staffing, particularly in response to landing a large contract.

They discuss a Reddit user’s question about managing a $2 million account and emphasize the importance of involving key team members throughout the business development process, rather than afterward.

The hosts advocate for a tiered approach to staffing, employing a mix of high, medium, and low experience levels, and leveraging contractors to manage workload peaks. They also highlight the risks of rapid, large-scale hiring and suggest regular networking and preemptive interviewing to maintain a robust pipeline of candidates. [read the transcript]

The post ALP 256: Mastering Client Staffing for Small Agency Success appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Media outlets around the world — and in particular in the U.S. — are strategizing how to cover the incoming Trump Administration. Some are even planning to shift their focus to more soft news in order to retain readers and avoid drawing the president’s ire. We look at the implications for the media relations industry in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

• How publishers are strategizing for a second Trump administration: softer news and more social media
• The Trump to-do list: How communicators are getting ready for the MAGA takeover
• Communicating Successfully Amid Political and Social Dissent

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

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 444 4 4 4 of four immediate release. I’m Shell Holtz. And I’m Neville Hobson As we record this episode on the 8th of January. It’s just under two weeks until Donald Trump prepare assumes the US presidency. That’s 20th of January is the inauguration day.
That’ll be a second term for him. We’ve got a story about news publishers that face the challenges of unpredictability and polarization. These realities necessitate strategic shifts to adapt to a fast-paced, erratic political environment for US-based news publishers. The challenges of covering Trump’s second term are particularly acute.
The fast-paced, unpredictable nature of his administration will require editorial agility as well as innovative strategies to sustain engagement in a politically charged environment. However, the implications of a second Trump [00:01:00] administration extend far beyond US borders capturing the attention of publishers and communicators worldwide.
We’ll explore this topic right after this message.
From Europe to Asia, global audiences are deeply invested in the ripple effects of American policies and political rhetoric on international markets, diplomacy and cultural trends. International publishers such as the BBC and the Independent, are recalibrating their strategies to engage North American audiences.
While communicators and multinational corporations are preparing for how Trump’s leadership might shape global narratives. Requiring alignment across diverse regions and stakeholders for publishers. According to a report by Digiday this week, the focus is twofold, balancing hard news coverage with softer lifestyle oriented content and engaging audiences more deeply through social media and interactive platforms.
Publishers like Newsweek and the Independent are prioritizing lifestyle content, not [00:02:00] only to attract diverse audiences, but also to create safer advertising spaces amidst a politically charged landscape. Enhanced social media monitoring and staffing changes reflect the need to keep pace with Trump’s activity patterns, particularly on platforms like Truth, social, and X tools like polls.
Ask me anything. Sessions and comment management are being deployed to foster community interaction while gathering valuable first party data. At the same time, publishers are grappling with the toll of covering a Trump led news cycle. The relentless nature of his previous term was described as a gushing river of news prompting concerns about staff burnout and long-term sustainability.
Despite these challenges, the potential for increased readership and revenue from a busy news cycle remains a motivating factor with publishers seeing opportunities in the heightened public attention that Trump presidency typically generates. On the other side of the communications fence, the emphasis for corporate communicators lies in preparing for Trump’s hallmark [00:03:00] unpredictability now amplified by the controversial team he’s assembling.
Notably, Elon Musk’s significant influence within this new administration has already introduced an unprecedented dynamic. Musk is known for his polarizing public persona and unfiltered approach to communication and his involvement as a layer of complexity that communicators have never faced in a government context.
This combination of leadership styles demands rapid response capabilities, and scenario planning At an unparalleled level, teams must ensure messaging, clarity, and internet. Sorry. An internal alignment to navigate sudden shifts in public discourse with misinformation, polarizing policies and unconventional decision making, likely to dominate the agenda, proactive communication strategies and robust risk mitigation plans.
Are essential to maintain credibility and public trust in this uncharted environment. The shared challenges of unpredictability and audience polarization highlight the importance of adaptability [00:04:00] across both sectors. For publishers, this means finding a balance between hard news and softer content to attract readers and advertisers alike.
For communicators, it involves crafting agile strategies that enable swift. Pivots while maintaining coherence and transparency. Both sectors must also address the human cost of this rapid pace, safeguarding the wellbeing of staff as they navigate the demands of a divisive and volatile political landscape.
To restate what I said earlier, this is the global picture. In essence, the coming months will test the resilience and creativity of publishers and communicators alike. Success will depend on their ability to stay nimble, engage their audiences meaningfully, and weather the unique pressures of covering and responding to a Trump presidency.
And let’s also mention the news this week about meta and its fact-checking overhaul on its social networks to replace content moderators with community notes similar to X. None of this is a stroll in the park shell for anybody. Absolutely not. And I think the move by [00:05:00] and Mark Zuckerberg is emblematic of what we’re seeing.
From a number of different types of media that are, let’s face it, running scared. On the newspaper side, you have the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post refusing to make presidential endorsements. Their editorial teams wanted to, the publishers, the owners, and that includes Jeff Bezos Amazon’s founder.
Chairman of the board, who’s the owner of the Washington Post said, we’re not going to make a presidential endorsement because clearly they were gonna invoice endorse Kamala Harris. And you also had the Washington Post recently experienced the departure of a very popular political cartoonist. When the editor in chief declined to run one of her cartoons, for the first time ever, the cartoon showed Jeff Bezos kneeling at the feet of.
Donald Trump and she said that kind of, I don’t remember her exact words, but the [00:06:00] spirit of it was that the cowardice displayed here is something she didn’t wanna be part of. Now the editor said, no, it wasn’t about that. It was the fact that we’ve done two reports on this and another one coming up and we just didn’t wanna overdo it.
But that’s suspicious. To me. So I think you have a lot of media that are proactively capitulating and abdicating their responsibility to report accurately or as they would with any other president in office. The other side of this is that you have Trump suing media. And this is a way to get around the First Amendment if somebody says something you don’t like.
The first real experience we had with that wasn’t Trump, it was Peter Thiel suing Gawker out of existence over, I remember that, their publication. But now you have Trump just got a $15 million settlement from A, B, CA, B. C can afford it. But now he has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register [00:07:00] over the.
Poll that they ran. This is a highly lauded poll. In fact, when they talk about this particular presidential poll, they say it is one of the most highly regarded in the entire country. It was wrong. Most of the polls were wrong. Most of the polls were wrong four years ago. There are reasons that the polls are not as accurate as they used to be, that we could get into another time if we ever do an episode about polling and research.
But he’s suing over the fact that it. Reported that Harris was going to win in Iowa. She did not. So you have this ability to sue media out of existence and put an end to that kind of reporting. Now you consider the fact that what you’re seeing out of Trump and his followers in the Republican party.
Is an effort to rewrite history, and this gets to be very dangerous. When I talk about rewriting history, the most obvious example is recasting. What happened on January 6th, [00:08:00] 2020 as a Day of love, and. Shoving to the side and trying to eliminate from the public consciousness the fact that 20 police officers were, I think that number may be wrong, but a lot of the Capitol police were injured, five died.
Yeah. This was a violent assault that a lot of those people were carrying weapons and they’re rewriting that history. And if we don’t have the newspapers to report the facts and the other media. There’s going to be some serious issues that will follow. Yeah I think therein lies one of the big issues, frankly, which is the facts according to who.
The, you know the phrase, there’s never a single version of the truth. Whose version of the truth are you gonna listen to? There are now in light of these changes with this president coming in the social network he owns plus the one that Musk owns really causing interference with that.
But there’s some interesting aspects to this. According to Dig Day’s report in terms of how some of the mainstream [00:09:00] media are planning to report the news and engage with their audiences. And this I found most interesting. For instance, they give an analysis here from one of the publications that talks about.
The tension they give to Trump on social networks, they’re noting he’s typically active when the journalists are not. Night journalists are not there. The people who are monitoring according to Digiday tend to be the more junior, less experienced people. So they need to shift that around to, to be able to respond or plan for how to respond to Trump when he is up at 2:00 AM.
Ranting that is part of the landscape. The guy, this is what the guy does. And I would imagine others will be doing similar. Newsweek is quoted as saying that what they’re planning to do with Trump being elected is I. Have more interactivity with their readership on social networks and in the comments to their site.
They’ve been building that up a bit. They talk that they say they’ve expanded their social team. They hired a community manager in October to oversee onsite [00:10:00] engagement, to manage comments and to conduct reader polls. So that kind of thing is being ramped up quite significantly. They say Newsweek receives an average of eight to 10,000 comments.
Every single day across all its content. So they’re gonna leverage the engagement with those commenters more than they have done in the past. So that’s I guess to me that means that’s one way of building better connections with your audience and maybe they’ll listen to you more and repeat your side of the story rather than what the other guys are gonna be doing all the time.
So that’s interesting. I think also. Newsweek, the independent, the uk newspaper that has a strong focus on North America and the Huffington Post as well, told Digiday they’re gonna focus on softer, more lifestyle focused news content in 2025. And they say that this strategy can help boost traffic.
So many days. The discovery, the majority of their audience comes from Google Discover according to Newsweek. And that platform favors increasingly softer [00:11:00] lifestyle and consumer focused content. And Digiday notes. He’s not the only one coming to that conclusion. So rather than simply hard news reporting, they’re going to focus on stuff that I guess adds comfort to the readers in the face of all the disruption that’s likely to be the case.
That’s a really interesting approach. I wonder what. Communicators are gonna think of that in terms of what they’re planning in using the mainstream media and their engagement with journalists, et cetera. What do you think about that, Sean? Think that we as communicators need to seriously think about what’s going on.
In the media. Media in terms of our relationships with them, if they’re doing softer news in order to gin up subscriptions and make money as opposed to fulfill their obligations as journalists. And let’s say you are a PR person working representing an organization that. Attacked and the attack against you [00:12:00] a political one may not be justified.
It may not be based in fact it’s hard to. Disprove a negative though, right? Or to prove a negative that we didn’t do this, we’re not this and the relationships that we have built up with the media in the past I don’t know how well those serve us if these publications are shifting their emphasis away from this kind of reporting to fluff as I would call it.
So yeah, I, I think as we’re. Proactively and I’m hopeful that organizations are proactively developing their crisis plans for this. Even if you have differentiated. Clearly those things that you will engage in publicly and those things where you are going to remain silent. You should be considering your vulner vulnerabilities.
Where might we be attacked by somebody from the other side of the political spectrum and what crisis plans can we put in place in order to [00:13:00] address those? If the media is shifting its emphasis away from this kind of coverage. We need to find other ways to get those messages out, whether it’s getting onto podcasts or doing TikTok.
Clips or, flooding blue sky and threads and the like. I don’t know. This is something I’m going to be thinking seriously about. I don’t suspect the organization I work for is gonna be subject to much of this. It’s just not the nature of the organization. But on the other hand, I don’t wanna be blindsided either.
Yeah. So I am gonna put together a group from our legal and HR team to start thinking about these things and be ready if any of it, rolls down our way. Yeah I think there is a a clear and present risk of the environment changing so radically that it’s hard to plan for it when you’re not sure how it’s gonna change.
All you know is there are forces at play that will become official on the 20th of January, and my feeling [00:14:00] based on simply what I’m just observing others saying in the mainstream media in particular. It will be like a you know, a gushing river again. There’s a quote in Digiday piece about a large news publication not named the head of social there saying that the news cycle during the Biden administration compared to Trump’s administration in his first term was like a slow stream versus a gushing river.
So the tap is on. There’s this constant stream of stuff coming your way. How do you navigate that? And that’s where they then lead into. Another issue they need to be highly cognizant of is the risk of burnout by the journalists and other people who work for these publications. So you gotta take that into account as well.
I think it’s good for the business side of news according to this unnamed publication, but the people side, we are gonna have to watch that. They said, I think we’re all gonna have to take care of each other as journalists in this environment. And that’s actually a good, I think a good thing to recognize the reality of this is what’s coming.
Yeah. I was having this [00:15:00] conversation with somebody yesterday and I’ll, reveal if it’s not already clear. My, my personal political leanings here, which I try not to do, we, you wanna appeal to all communicators with FIR, not just those who agree with us politically. I. But I have been reading reports about people on the left who are checking out.
They are, they’re burned out, they’re distressed, and they’re not paying attention to the news and they’re not engaging politically. And it was Edmund Burke who said that all it takes for evil to succeed is for. Goodman to do nothing. And that’s what worries me. It worries me about burned out journalists.
It worries me about people who were politically active, who are throwing up their hands and giving up. So yeah, this is a source of concern for me. I was reading something interesting. This was in an article by Matt Purdue strategist at Magnitude Inc. This was in PR daily.
The Reagan [00:16:00] publication and he was writing about what corporations can do to prepare for this. This is something that we discussed briefly in our December monthly episode. Yeah. But he had some data here that I thought was really interesting. ’cause one of his first points was to lean on your employee resource groups.
These are groups representing, people within your organization who share commonalities. You could have a black employee resource group. You could have a queer employee resource group, a Hispanic, whatever it may be. He said 73% of companies use their ERGs to communicate internally on societal issues, but only 41% hold regular meetings between ERGs and leadership to talk about these issues.
And only 11% have ERG representation. On leadership groups that make decisions about these issues. These are not clubs for these folks to get together. They are called resource groups because they are supposed to be resources to the organization. And I absolutely think that the communicators [00:17:00] and organizations can help facilitate that.
And during these turbulent four years. That we’re looking at. I think we should be leaning on those ERGs and at least calling them in for consultation when issues arise that are related to what binds them. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think what all of this says to me certainly is whatever your role in an organization as a communicator or whatever, your role in a mainstream media company as a communicator you need to be utterly aware of the wave that’s coming.
Way collectively in terms of what we communicate, how we communicate indeed be being clear on who our audiences are and where they are now. It’s hard to define that better than that. All I know is simply is a wave of. Change coming and much of it depending on your outlook. I think for mine, certainly [00:18:00] it’s not good what I see developing and that’s coming our way and you need to be on the case particularly, but not, certainly not exclusively if you work in an organization or you’re in an industry sector or something.
That attracts controversy or is involved in an industry that doesn’t have great public support and is a target for people like Trump, for instance. So if you are in the I dunno, in the fossil fuel in, actually fossil fuels, they probably support that. But if you are in, wind farms or whatever it might be you better be ready for the kind of bad guys to be very active and using.
Methods of communication that are certainly beyond the norm that we’ve been used to. You can already see the trajectory of insults and bad language and just general reactions to people in a negative way that are commonplace across some social networks. Now, how long will it be before it’s.
Everywhere, particularly on Meta’s properties collectively, which a stat I read this morning said there are 3 billion [00:19:00] people in the world use meta social media properties every single day. So what happens if the the discourse on those just turns just awful, just like x Then everything is shifting and it seems that we might be headed down that road according to events here.
Unknown yet. So keep an eye on what’s going on. That’s what I see. Yeah. Without question. It’s important to monitor how the, this is all affecting the media that we rely on to communicate as well as to gather information. I’m gonna have to make a time code because I had something I wanted to Oh, I remember.
Okay. So where am I? 20, right around 20 minutes. Yep. We recorded our 20th anniversary show recently. We’ve been doing this for 20 years. 20 years. And I, one of these days there will be an AI tool where we can point it at FIR and it will say how many times in an episode we said we don’t talk politics here.
And [00:20:00] it’s, I think, telling how significant this challenge is that it has led us to talk exclusively in an episode about. Politics that this could have a significant impact on our businesses and our ability to engage with our stakeholders especially as our stakeholders. Reflecting society in the US in particular grow more po, more polarized?
No, it’s not a good forecast. She, but it’s it, looking at it PAs dispassionately. If I, if it’s possible to do that. This is probably one of the most interesting. Times we could be in as communicators. Set aside, this is about a curse. May you live an interesting times. Yeah, we got the curse of it, no question.
But we’re in it and we can help navigate it for others and be prepared. The boy counts. Be prepared. We need to be on the case. Absolutely. And before we go just a note to listeners on a completely different topic, Neville, you today posted our [00:21:00] interview with Martin Waxman. Yes. We spoke with Martin in just before Christmas, the week before Christmas.
Martin’s a digital communication strategist. He’s a teacher. He has LinkedIn training courses. He’s a speaker based in Toronto. And he was, as we mentioned in that conversation, a part of inside PR and, lots of stuff here on podcast with others, Joe Thornley, Jenny Dietrich, and David Jones.
We had a chance to talk to him about AI and public relations and there were revelations of that conversation, shall I thought. Martin, very articulate speaker. He certainly knows a lot and he’s able to talk through many of the topics related to public relations in a way that are very credible and really good to listen to.
So that was published today, as you noted. And it’s up there. If you’re not subscribed to the FIR interviews feed, it’s not on the FIR main feed, it’s the FIR interviews feed. We’ll do so you can easily find that on your favorite podcast app or on the [00:22:00] website. Yeah. Also, if you are listening to us on the Marketing Podcast Network, the FIR.
I interview Feed is not part of MPN, so you’ll have to head over to FIR podcast network.com or find FIR interviews on your podcast app and that will be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release.

The post FIR #444: Preparing for Trump 2.0 appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this FIR Interview, recorded on 19 December 2024, Shel and Neville chat with Martin Waxman about the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on public relations. From relational AI and synthetic personas to crisis management and ethics, the discussion highlights opportunities and challenges for PR professionals. Martin shares insights from his academic research and LinkedIn Learning courses, offering practical advice for integrating AI into communication strategies while maintaining trust and human relationships.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Relational AI and AI Agents: How they are reshaping communication and trust in PR.
• AI applications beyond content generation: Synthetic personas, focus groups, message testing, and predictive analytics.
• Ethical considerations: Transparency, bias, and data privacy in AI-driven workflows.
• AI in crisis management: Combining AI’s monitoring capabilities with human empathy and judgment.
• Upskilling for the future: The importance of AI literacy and experimenting with AI tools in PR.
• Educational resources: Martin’s LinkedIn Learning course on generative AI for PR professionals.

About our Conversation Partner

Martin Waxman, MCM, APR, writes a popular ‘Digital Marketing Trends’ newsletter, conducts AI research and leads digital and AI training workshops. He’s a LinkedIn Learning instructor, adjunct professor at the York Schulich School of Business and associate director of the Future of Marketing Institute. Martin is also president of a consultancy, an instructor in the McMaster Master of Communications Management program and a member of the Institute for Public Relations Digital Media Research Center. He regularly speaks at events across North America.

Martin received the Institute for Public Relations Best Master’s Thesis Award in 2019, for his paper, “My BFF is a Chatbot” and the 2024 Thought Leader award from the Canadian Public Relations Society. He has a Master of Communications Management from McMaster-Syracuse Universities.

Follow Martin on LinkedIn
Follow Martin on Bluesky

Links from this Interview:

• Martin’s LinkedIn Learning course on ‘Generative AI for PR Professionals‘
• Martin’s courses on LinkedIn
• Digital Marketing Trends newsletter

The post Exploring AI’s Future in PR with Martin Waxman appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

2025 is sure to present a new set of challenges for communication professionals. Solving them will require creativity, innovation, and new thinking (which is not something AI can do!). This team of Fellows from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) will delve into breakthrough thinking, sharing ideas on how the creative process works. Discover how to find sources of inspiration while setting boundaries and allowing time for breaks. They will share thoughts about tools to push your thinking in new and innovative directions without exhausting yourself. Now is the time to learn the tips and tricks to fueling creativity even in the toughest moments.

The livestream, moderated by Shel Holtz, SCMP, is scheduled for 4 p.m. EDT on Thursday, January 16. Participants are encouraged to share questions, observations, and comments during the session, using YouTube’s comment feature. If you are unable to join us for the livestream, watch the video replay or listen to the audio podcast, both of which will be available shortly after the livestream ends.

About the panel:

Although Zora Artis began her career outside the communications field, she has had an outsize impact on the profession since entering it more than 20 years ago to as an account director and then strategic planner with branding and integrated marcomms agencies. Since then, she has led her own brand and communications consultancy and served as CEO of a 20-person creative, digital, and strategic communication firm. In 2019, formed her current management consulting practice bringing together strategic alignment, brand, and communication expertise. She has received five Gold Quill awards. Her significant contributions to the profession and the body of knowledge include her original research with IABC colleague, Wayne Aspland, on strategic alignment, the role of communications and leadership – the first substantial research effort for the reconfigured IABC Foundation – and co-authoring a subsequent white paper, “The Road to Alignment,” supported by 27 senior communicators from five continents. Zora has also researched the correlation between strategic alignment and experiences and the impact on stakeholder value and brand. This has led her to develop her own proprietary Alignment Experience Framework. She has also examined gender equity, perceptions, and bias in organizations, and wrote a chapter on this topic for the Quadriga University e-reader, Women in PR. Since joining IABC a decade ago, she has impacted IABC as a volunteer, including roles as chair of the IABC Asia Pacific Region and IEB director; she currently serves as the chair of the 2022 World Conference Program Advisory Committee. A certified company director, as chair of the IABC Audit and Risk Committee she introduced proper risk oversight to the board’s processes. Zora has been honored with the 2021 and the 2015 IABC Chair’s Award for Leadership and was named IABC’s 2020 Regional Leader of the Year. She is also a Strategic Communication Management Professional, Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, and Certified Practicing Marketer.

Diane Gayeski is recognized as a thought leader in the practice and teaching of business communications.  She is Professor of Strategic Communications at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College and provides consulting in communications analysis and strategies through Gayeski Analytics.  Diane was recently inducted as an IABC Fellow; she’s been active in IABC for more than 30 years as a featured speaker and think-tank leader at the international conference, the author of 3 editions of the IABC-published book, Managing the Communications Function, and the advisor to Ithaca College’s student chapter.  She’s led more than 300 client engagements for clients, including the US Navy, Bank of Montreal, Fiat, Sony, Abbott Diagnostics, and Borg-Warner, focusing on assessing and building the capacities and new technologies for workplace communications and learning teams.

Andrea Greenhous’s life’s purpose is to improve the world of work. For over 30 years, she has helped organizations improve the employee experience and build workplaces where people thrive. As founder and president of Vision2Voice, an internal communications agency, Andrea and her dedicated team help organizations adopt a strategic approach to employee communications to achieve results. Andrea has led initiatives and transformation projects for Fortune 500 technology companies, large government departments, and organizations as diverse as construction, biotech, finance, and higher education. This has led to a signature approach emphasizing harnessing employee voices and amplifying their insights and ideas.

Andrea is a storyteller, a PROSCI-certified change leader, and Dare to Lead trained based on the work and research of Brené Brown. She is also a certified Fearless Organization Practitioner. She uses the tools and processes developed by Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, to build psychological safety in teams. Andrea has been named one of the top 10 influencers in internal communications and is a frequent guest blogger and speaker at industry events.

Martha Muzychka, ABC, MC, speaks, writes, listens, and helps others do the same to make change happen. Martha is a strategic, creative problem solver seeking challenging communications environments where we can make a difference. She helps her clients navigate competing priorities and embrace communication challenges. Martha offers strategic planning, facilitation, consultation services, writing and editing, qualitative research, and policy analysis. Her work has been recognized locally, nationally, and internationally with multiple awards.

The post Sparking Creativity: IABC Fellows to Share Ideas for Breakthrough Thinking appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

For Immediate Release launched on January 3, 2005. Episode #1 explained what podcasting is, then looked at the role blogs played in the tsunami tragedy in Asia. On our 20th anniversary, Neville and Shel recall FIR’s origins and the many changes the show has undergone in two decades, some significant milestones, memorable moments, some of the challenges we have faced over the years, and other recollections. We will return to our normal programming next week.

Links from this episode:

• FIR Episode #1
• First mention of podcasting for business (Rex Hammock) in September 2024
• FIR Interview: Michael Whiley at GM on the GM Blog (February 22, 2005)
• FIR Interview with Steve Rubel (March 26, 2005)
• FIR #100 (January 5, 2006)
• FIR #191: Two Decades in 2.5 Hours (January 20, 2020)
• Pivoting the FIR Podcast (January 10, 2022)
• FIR at 19: A Milestone in Podcasting
• FIR #377: Two Decades of Podcasting (January 5, 2024)
• Podcast Statistics and Data, Buzzsprout
• The Future of Podcasting: 9 Trends for Creators & Companies”, Riverside
• “The Power of Podcasts: Why Every Business Needs a Voice in 2025”, One Zero Creative

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, January 27.

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 everyone, and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 4, 4 3. I’m Neville Hobson in the uk. And I’m she Holtz in the us. And if you didn’t recognize the opening the usual opening was not played today to introduce FIR. That’s the opening that we used when we were brand new. And today the day we are dropping this episode, January 3rd, 2025 is the 20th anniversary.

FIR. We launched this podcast on January 3rd, 2005. Neville. At the beginning you mentioned that this is episode 442, and that’s correct. In terms of the renumbering that I started some time ago we did 824 episodes behind before that. So this is actually episode number 1000. [00:01:00] 266, and that does not take into account the FIR interviews, the FIR book reviews, the FIR lives, and some of the other things that we have done, were probably up around I would say 1400 episodes of podcasting altogether in the 20 years.

We’ve been at this, and today what we’re gonna do is take a look back. We wanna just have a chat about what it’s been like these last 20 years and tell you how all of this came about where we’re at and where we’re headed. This all started with a conversation. In November of 2004 you had heard of podcasting Neville.

I had heard of podcasting. And both of us had started blogs because we had heard of them. Assumed that this was going to be something that, would be important in the world of communications and that the best way to learn about it and be responsive to [00:02:00] our clients about it. We were both I was consulting at the time and you were working for an organization out of the Netherlands.

We thought the best way to learn about it would be to do it. And having listened to a lot of podcasts, we thought that we would break the mold and have. Co-hosts rather than one person just going on and on into a microphone. There was one co-hosted podcast at the time. It was the Dawn and Drew show, I think.

I believe they were a husband and wife, and it was meant to be humorous and rude. And we wanted to give something back to the communications industry. So we decided to start. This we posted an MP three test file to make sure the technology would work more on that coming up in December of 2004, and then launched our first episode, which listening to now just makes me cringe on the 3rd of January.

It was cringeworthy 2005. Yeah, it was cringeworthy the audio quality, not too brilliant as we hear it today, but [00:03:00] at the time, not too bad. Yeah. Among other things, I remember the audio artifacts that you would get over Skype, but we’ll talk more about the technology in a bit. Yeah. Over the years, we have changed the frequency.

This is, this has been a very inconsistent podcast as you’ll hear we started off weekly and the more we went along, the longer the episodes got because of the. The number of things there were to talk about and how much there was going on in the world of communication and technology. So then we went bi-weekly and at some point we went back to weekly.

Then when we reinvigorated this podcast not too long ago, we decided that it would be. Monthly. And then we started doing these midweek episodes because there were things we wanted to talk about and not wait for the monthly episode. So this, that’s one of the changes we went through.

There, there were a lot as you noted. I [00:04:00] agree. I think the frequency thing was something we, as you say too, and froze with a lot. We, but we were back in those days and hasn’t really changed a lot I think. Bursting at the seams to talk about topics that interested us quite a bit.

And as you said, when we started I was actually transitioning out of the company I worked for, I was based in Amsterdam at the time that had been acquired by someone else, and my job had gone, so I was looking for. Things to do. I’d picked up some interesting consulting work on blogs at that time, and I was thinking about podcasting quite a bit, but like you said I certainly wasn’t keen in doing a solo thing, much more interest to have someone to talk to.

And then lo and behold, you and I talked. The rest is history, as they say. That was good. That’s right. And I should point out that we knew each other through I-A-E-B-C and had collaborated before on at an IABC conference when online communication was taking place through CompuServe in the PR and marketing forum in the [00:05:00] IEBC hyperspace section of the PR sig.

We. Coordinated a and an effort among all of the IABC members in that space who were at the conference to essentially live log that conference that was a conference in Boston at that time. So that was, that’s right. That was quite, that was a precursor to what was to come that we now know is FIR.

But I think the yeah, that was the first instance I can remember of anybody live talking. Yeah. Yeah, the thinking about the word podcasting, there’s a lot of talk about this. Oh it was invented by so and so back in 1990, whatever. And the first person to use it was X and all that kind of stuff.

What resonated with me, the first reference to business podcasting was by a guy called Rex Hammock, who was a very prominent blogger at the time, A CEO blogger. As it happened, ran his own company. I remember in September of 20 of 2004, he wrote a blog post, and I’ll read the section that he mentioned.

He said talking a bit about executive communication using [00:06:00] social media or blogs. No one had the term social media at that time. He said, I can see a much quicker adoption timeline for CEO podcasting than CEO blogging. Stick a microphone in front of a CEO and say, what would you like to tell your employees today?

You get a much quicker buy-in than sitting a keyboard in front of ’em and saying, blog A messages for the world to read. A word of warning to corporate communicator, type says Rex. Don’t script it for the CEO With podcasting voices, not a metaphor for writing in a conversational, believable fashion, voice is actually voice.

That’s 20 years ago. I think that still resonates today, shall don’t it. It does, although it turns out to only be semi prescient because podcasting certainly has taken off to the point that it’s influential in presidential elections now. But I would say the number of companies doing internal podcasting is still relatively low.

There’s not a lot of CEOs talking into microphones to record a podcast and sharing with their employees what they wanna share that day. [00:07:00] A couple of other changes in format that we went through. One when we started, we were doing interviews within our episodes, and as they got longer and longer, one of our first thoughts was if we started an interview podcast, then our show could just be us and.

The interviews can be in the interview feed. So we split that out and as I mentioned before, that led to book reviews and a feed we used to call speakers and speeches when we were able to record our talks or get permission to share other people’s talks that we thought were relevant to our audience. We also changed the format.

We started off calling it four immediate release but as we started these other shows and calling them FIR book reviews. FIR this and FIR that we decided to change the name of this show to the Hobson and Holtz report which continued up through episode 8 24. But that’s when you took a hiatus.

Work got very busy and I changed the format of the show where I was putting together a panel of communicators. Yeah, every week which [00:08:00] was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. And then you joined me on a couple of those panels and then had a hankering to return to the show. Yeah, we, the hiatus started in 2015 where as you said it was a pretty a pretty busy, extremely challenging time.

And that was not long before I, I packed it all in and joined IBM which is was in the kind of wings as it were. And, but I had a, I did have a hankering, I was a guest on a couple of episodes in early 2017, and then we decided to get back together again. That was a, 2017 was a year I took off my dad had died and there was a lot of stuff going on.

So the timing from this contextual point of view was just right. And so we did that. And here we are. Here we are eight years on, still doing it. Oh one. One other thing to mention before we move on to a another related topic is that we have had a number of correspondence over the year. We. We don’t do that anymore.

But this began because we were getting audio comments from Lee Hopkins out of [00:09:00] Australia. And one day I said, if he keeps sending in these audio comments, we might as well just make him a correspondent. And then we, the next comment we got from him was, this is Lee Hopkins, your correspondent from started doing what was called the Asia report. And then when he wasn’t able to continue doing that, Michael Nestley stepped in and did, yeah. The Asia report. We also had regular reports from folks like Mark Story and David Phillips and Eric Schwartzman. Yeah. From Hollywood. Yeah, Michael Nesty was based in Singapore.

Lee was in, in Adelaide, in, in Australia. David Phillips is based here in the uk. Eric Schwar, as you said. In Hollywood. Mark, I think, was in Washington at that time. He was Eric’s now I believe in New York. I forget to not forget to mention Dan York, who’s the longest. Correspondent in this context, and he’s still with us filing his tech report every month.

He’s in the US East Coast, I think Vermont at the moment. So yeah, pretty global reach with all these guys. And thinking about Lee funnily enough, I remember [00:10:00] the I ident we created for him and you found a guy on one of those services that would create. Jingles and intros and all that kind of stuff to introduce.

Yeah. Today I would just use Suno. Yeah, the one he one, the one this for Lee, that was well done by the guy who recorded it was, put another shrimp on the Barbie. It was so characteristically stereotypically Australian was the point we were trying to get across. And Lee was a really good sport.

He really played to that well. So that was a, that was an interesting branding perspective. It was fun while it lasted. Yep. We’re gonna talk about some of the milestones that we recall from over the years. And Neville, you’re gonna take the lead on that. There are just two I wanted to mention before you do.

One is our interview with Richard Edelman. He agreed to, to speak with us. I believe he was at the gym. And, my, my guess is he was using a payphone at that point and dialing in somewhere. But it was a great interview. It was almost an hour. We covered a lot of ground. And then when was that?

Do you have the [00:11:00] end, the date? I don’t, I can find that out. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, but it was in, and I don’t have a date on, it was in the, it was in the early days. So roughly would’ve been around what, 2006, 2007. That kind of time. Probably, maybe a little later. Okay. I’ll look it up while you’re covering some of the highlights and see if I can put a date on that.

Okay. As well as the other one. And this is one that I continue to reference today. In conversations with people, various contexts, and this was an interview we did with two gentlemen. One of them, I can’t recall his name but he had been an attorney in the trucking industry in the US and now was.

Crossing the United States meeting with hospitals to try to teach them that. Listening to your lawyers and sending doctors who have made a mistake during surgery into their rooms to hide and call their lawyers led to less favorable outcomes [00:12:00] than simply admitting to the family or the patient what had happened, why and how you’re gonna make it right.

The other was Helio Fred Garcia. From the Logos Institute, and I believe he’s at Columbia University. I’ve seen Fred speak oh, four or five times. We’ve had several conversations. I’ve read a couple of his books and that was a, just a spectacular conversation, just a real revelation in terms of the insights that are provided.

Into crisis communication despite everything we, we read and see and study and all the sessions we go to at conferences. You think you’ve heard it all, but this was just loaded with Revelations. It was a great interview. There’s a lot we could have picked to include in this episode to talk about milestones.

But if we’d done ’em all, we’ve been here to rival the two and a half hours episode that we did in 2020. So we haven’t done that. Good ones to mention. It was not easy. But there are quite a few that struck me [00:13:00] as memorable. Back in those very early days. In particular one that come, came to mind was the interview we did with Michael Wiley, who was the, his title at the time, director of New Media at general Motors, GM Communications.

And that was a milestone because General Motors was very active with a blog. Where the chief Blogger was a man called Bob Lutz, who’s big. Figure in the US auto industry. He was blogging about small block engines, the cars, the works, and the bog was called the GM Fast Lane Blog. And they were also experimenting with podcasting.

And so they were very early business adopters of. Blogs and podcasts long time long before we called it social media and indeed Michael’s, Michael Bo title directed New Media. That was a phrase that was in common use at the time. So we had a only a 20 minute conversation with Michael, but it was a kind of a scoop for us to get the huge interest at that [00:14:00] time in what a big corporation like General Motors is doing with new media.

So we had a conversation with Michael. That was a great chat and he told us what the primary goal’s worth for the Fast Lane blog, and that was a kind of a scoop to be able to share that fact publicly. Now, of course, looking back 20 years it was it doesn’t seem such a bigger deal. And indeed, I would say most people have gone through all that since then in, in what they’re trying to do from business point of view.

But he said, just to quote him. To get beyond our old ways of communication with a new direct line of communication to all stakeholders. That’s the primary objective. So unfiltered communication, that was a phrase Bob Lutz used quite a bit direct to the audience, bypassing the middleman, which is the PR firms, the ad agencies, the mainstream media, all that revolutionary notions at the time, not.

Unpopular, but contentious to many typical communications issuing press releases. Said [00:15:00] Michael, talking to the media who repurposed your messages for you, and there’s no way for customers to get their thoughts back to you. We’ve been wanting to create this direct line of communication so that our various stakeholders aren’t going to message boards to talk about us.

They have an opportunity to come and talk directly to us. We’re big into getting feedback from our customers, employees, and others. Taking their comments to become a better company and develop better products. We’re really getting some excellent feedback just about every discussion we have on the Fast Lean blog.

We’ve had an excellent dialogue. That may not sound a big deal, Dave. That was a huge deal back then. A big company like that. A public listed company talking about direct communication with customers and soliciting direct feedback, bypassing all the usual channels. That was revolutionary. So that was really great getting that opportunity to hear all those things.

And Michael told us at length other things too about how they were looking to expand that with other bloggers. But Bob Lutz was the star blogger without any question. He also told us a little bit [00:16:00] about their plans for podcasting. But it was the blog that was the big deal. And we had other things quite a bit too, actually.

We talked a bit about. How communicate, or rather this followed on a couple days later, actually, other communicators who listened to that interview went away and wrote up their opinions about it on their own blocks. Nowadays it’s just social medias. You gotta social networks and do all that kind of thing.

But they gave top marks to, to Michael and to our conversation. So a couple of quotes here. From people who are still around today. Lela Fever, common crafts, he said, I think it’s safe to say that GM is getting it Cluetrain style. This was great to hear from someone at gm. You should really check out the interview and for those listeners of you in the Gen Z arena, you might not have heard of C Cluetrain.

You should pay attention to what that was at the turn of the century. That was huge. The Clue Train Manifesto. Kevin O’Keefe at Lex Blob, he is definitely still around as Kevin, like large law firms. General Motors is learning from its first [00:17:00] blog. He said legal marketing professionals can learn much from GM and their PR blogging efforts.

Philippe Boreman, our friend Philippe in in Belgium and points further south in Northern Africa. He said GM has started to podcast and suddenly you see the topic being discussed everywhere. And Alan Moore Brett here in the uk. I haven’t seen Alan for quite a long time now, but he was pretty prominently active in those days.

He said Gmma being far more expansive in utilizing digital channels to build far more effective communications. With its stakeholders than just a blogging vice chairman. So you’ve got the sign of what others saw and how they felt. This was so important at the time, and I agree. It was pretty important.

So there was that one other one that I wanted to mention, even though it’s in passing, I think because we might have some updates on this, is we were really fortunate to secure, and this was quite a scoop, an interview with Steve Ruble when he was working at. Cooper Katz, a PR firm in New [00:18:00] York.

The prior, before his accelerated rise at Edelman, before he went there and he had a great blog, it was very influential called Microper Persuasion. And longtime listeners will remember that I’m sure I said in the blog posts at the time. These arguably Steve is arguably the most.

Prominent and influential blogger in the PR profession, either side of the Atlantic, and I think he really was Shell, so we had a great chat with him. You asked him and. No, that followed later. This was in March, 2005. The business week article was later than that. You asked him a question about how things are going with the blog and what developments are gonna be with that.

And he said, I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing blogging like a madman. And what I’m trying to do is really, I wanna shake the tree. I think that PR professionals need to really, get what’s going on here and jump on board. And I think that the three of us and the other 97 of us who currently blog in the PR industry, we need to do a better job of talking to the everyday PR man or [00:19:00] woman and what it means to them.

I. ’cause I think a little bit of what we’re doing now is talking amongst ourselves and talking amongst the people who do get it in social media land, actually in mainstream media land as well as, with the different opportunities we get to talk the press. But I think we need to get everyone on board.

I think we’re still having that conversation, Cheryl, don’t you? Although it’s probably 9,700 PR bloggers now. A thousand even. Yeah, exactly. And there’s a lot more ways in which you can communicate. Now I noticed, by the way, just reminding myself he called it, he mentioned social media in that interview.

That was the first reference I remember hearing about what we now commonly call social media. It’s also worth remembering that Steve Ruble and Joe Jaffe started their podcast was it across the pond? Was that what it was called? Across the Sound? Across the sound shortly after we started ours.

And so did oh, it was Terry F and David Jones started inside PR after listening to FIR. Yep, it’s true. [00:20:00] And another milestone episode I felt was episode 100, a hundredth episode that suggested that we might have longevity with this thing that we started in 2005. The hundredth episode was actually on January the fifth, 2006.

So one year on from our first episode, we published a 100th episode. That’s an average. That works out about just under two a week. That’s about right, isn’t it? Yeah. ’cause we started, it wasn’t long before we went biweekly. You are right. And we, in that episode, we talked about a range of topics.

You using a CV as an RSS fees and a podcast. The World Economic Forum was podcasting and blogging, or had planned to at their upcoming event. What are the CEO’s biggest fears about these new media? Dan York’s report was in there and we had listeners, comments, discussion, upcoming interview with the music and all that.

But the comments. Lots of them. I think we’re gonna talk a bit more about comments in a while, aren’t we? That was the 100th episode. So we, we were quite well established then. We looking at the the show notes we [00:21:00] had a section we called from our US northeast correspondent.

That would be Dan, I would say. We had news briefs as we called them at the time, the snippets of information listener comments, discussion where people sent in audio or wrote text comments in the blog, and we discuss those comments and have a conversation about those comments that took up a big chunk of each episode in the show.

We don’t do that anymore. Things have evolved. Commenting is not a big thing, but we’ll talk about comments later on, I think. So that was the 100th episodes. A huge milestone for us in 2007 was the publication of the podcasting book that we collaborated on. And that was something that emerged from a conversation I had back in 2005.

So two years prior with Yvonne Devita, who was how would you describe Yvonne? A book agent doesn’t quite do it. She was more like an editorial publishing guide, had all the contacts in the publishing industry. [00:22:00] Yeah. She worked with people who were self-publishing and helped them get their book into shape.

We put together we planned this book. You and I had a conversation about it. You, at that time were already a well published author. I think you’d done four books at that time, and this is something you were quite well accustomed to. I wasn’t. I had the junior role in here as the, as.

It wasn’t a 50 50 venture. You did most of the writing, but the book was out. It was the second book. Of worth that focused on podcasting from a business perspective. The first was Todd Cochran’s book that he published in late 2005. I think I’m right. I bought it. I remember when it came out. But our book was modestly called How to Do Everything with Podcasting.

The bus, the focus was very much on business and it came out in June, 2007. That was when it was available in the us from Amazon and other online sellers, as well as normal books sellers, and it was made available on Amazon in the UK and July the first of that year. We had great reaction to it.

Shell, didn’t [00:23:00] we had warm reviews everywhere you looked. It was really heartening to see all of that. At least my point of view as the kind of junior author, if you will. Yeah, we got some good feedback on it. Not everybody agreed with everything that was in it. If you read the reviews on Amazon, there’s one person who thought it should have been better Fax checked.

But I couldn’t find any specifics that he was arguing about. No, I would urge you not to read it now. It is woefully out of date, especially in terms of most of the technology. I think the things that are still accurate have to do with types of microphones and the like, everything else. Yeah. Has changed.

Yeah. I think, I guess only thing I would add is about how to do a business podcast is still valid though. Yeah. A bit like Todd’s book, it’s outta date when you talk about the equipment. Yeah. And even the reasons why you’d want to podcast. And the tools available to you. The services are available to you and how you go about it.

Totally changed. I agree. So that is worth bearing in mind. I would say to anyone, yes, go and read it. If you wanna look back at what things were like back in [00:24:00] those days. I would argue though that nevertheless, in the business sector, there are still some valid insights. That still apply today?

Trouble is how do you separate it out from the stuff that doesn’t apply today? That’s the trick. Don’t rely on this, but it was a milestone for us in 2007, two years later, after that first conversation, we published a book. I think we got some more things to talk about that are a little bit later.

But let’s stay with with that period from 2007 up to about 2015. So seven, seven years or so. And some of the things that we were doing during that time, for instance we used to not. I wouldn’t say regularly, as in every year, two or three times. We did quite comprehensive listener surveys.

And remember at that time we had sponsors Reagan report Reagan Communications with the Prime sponsor. You’ll probably remember the others. Chip Griffin, I think, was was the one who started sponsor. Custom scoop chip, and they would do the media monitoring minute, which I think Jen zing pre what a lot of other podcasts ended up doing, which was having [00:25:00] substantive content from their sponsors rather than a pitch.

And Jen Zing enzyme ended up coming in and doing some of those too. She at the time was, she was great of chips. Yeah. We also had Igloo software and there were some others in there that I. I can’t remember that we had as sponsors, right? So that was the kind of the golden age of sponsors paying money to be associated with our podcast.

Not enough to retire on or even take that cruise we talked about back in those days. Shell, but it was nice and it signified. People had a belief that. This was worth supporting and they’re willing to put some money into it. Oh. Yeah. So of course that was another one. It’s worth before. It’s worth mentioning, again, a thanks to all the sponsors at that time because that was the pinnacle from that point of view.

It was good. And we were able to do some of the things that we were, we planned to do with knowing that we had people like Reagan and others who were supporting us in that regard. It’s probably worth now talking about the [00:26:00] technical challenges you mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

How and how we started and I’ll mention just briefly ’cause I know this is gonna come into Mix Miners, but that was a bit later on. But Skype was instrumental. It wasn’t a challenge. Skype was an enabler for us, wasn’t it? Skype was an enabler and a challenge. We would not have been able to do this if Skype had not been around in the early days.

No, because the cost of an international call and the technical requirements for recording to record and international call at the quality levels that were required even in the earliest days for podcasting. Even on the Daily Source code the first podcast, Adam Curry. That Adam Curry, yeah.

Started as he was developing the podcast catcher, which is more that we’ll talk about in terms of the technology was saying that if it’s not listenable, it doesn’t matter how good your content is, people won’t listen. So we knew that the audio quality had to be, it couldn’t be a phone call and Skype, no was the answer.

The problem was that [00:27:00] you couldn’t record both ends of a Skype call and the idea of a double. Which is where we each record locally. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to us, but it hadn’t. But so we came up with this thing involving virtual cables, which was a piece of software that you would install that would allow you to run two instances of Skype simultaneously.

So I would have one running and have that output going to one recording device and the other one running and going to another. Recording device. Initially we were recording on the computer, but that was unreliable at the time. Keep in mind, there was no cloud yet at this point. So we did that for a while and then I would mix them together in, audacity, which was the free audio editing tool that most podcasters were using at the time because nobody wanted to invest in the professional editing software. Podcasting [00:28:00] hadn’t gotten beyond the hobby level at that point. The research I did led me to the mix minus, which allowed me to do this through a single soundboard out to separate recording devices, which worked really well because that way I could use the same audio settings on everything and create a more consistent sounding show.

And now of course, we’re recording on Riverside. There were also times that we were using some other tools that were available out there for some of the stuff that we were doing FIR Live. And I promised I would let you know when the Edelman interview and. The Fred Garcia interview happened, and they both happened on FIR live, not FIR interviews FIR live number 11 15 years ago, 2009 was the one with Richard Edelman.

And the, the one with Helio, Fred Garcia and Jim Golden was the name of that [00:29:00] attorney was number 14 of FIR live on May 26th. And we used a tool for those that was called Blog Talk Radio. And what blog Talk Radio let you do was dial everybody dialed in and had a conversation, like it was a talk radio show.

And that, so they dialed in on, not via Skype or anything, but it was an interface on the web, could use their phone. There was a, an 800 number phone you could give them. I couldn’t remember. That’s cool. And it would show them as waiting and it gave you all the controls that you would have if you were a radio show host.

It was really revolutionary at the time. It’s interesting hearing that, it’s like the hybrid stage from the transition from the analog days of radio. To being digital and indeed now, of course is nothing, is way more advanced now than it ever was back then.

That was that bridge period Skype, as you mentioned. Absolutely. Was. A hu huge disruptor of telecommunications industry globally. I remember when Skype first came out of [00:30:00] 2003, I signed up for it straight away and was using the Skype out feature, which you paid for. It was about the 10th of the cost of doing normal phone calls, so the audio quality wasn’t.

Too bad, but for our point of view, it wasn’t brilliant, but it was better than the phone lines and it was easy. So that was another signal of of where, change was coming from a technological point of view. The challenges that it brought, and I wanna just mention briefly in this. At around that early period was something else that happened that was truly revolutionary, which was apple supporting podcasts in iTunes when they released iTunes 4.9 in June, 2005.

Not long after we started that drove. Immediate interest and awareness in podcasting. And I’m pretty sure we had a ben benefit from that in a very small way because that was aimed mainly at lit by differentiator, let’s call ’em consumer type podcasts that Dawn and Drew show you mentioned. And by the way, I always found them rude.

Not [00:31:00] funny, but that’s ’cause I’m a Brit, not American, I suspect. But I think the the the gates were opened with that, even though now. No, now it’s 15 years on, 20 years on, and it’s 20 years on. It’s taken the market in whole new areas where we hear stories about, the hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes created every week and the millions of podcasts that are out there.

The mind boggles with the numbers. The quality’s improved though, but getting back now to that it’s hard to imagine then what we’re able to do now. The cloud solved a lot of problems. We used Zencaster for a while, although I could never resolve the issue of drift. So our, yeah, two feeds didn’t align and I was having to do a lot of slicing and dicing of Yeah.

A nightmare audio feeds to make them align. And we. Then went to a double lender where we would record locally and you would use a service to send me your file. And that was pretty easy to sync up. I’ve been using Adobe audition for a long time now as opposed to the free audacity. And now we’re on [00:32:00] Riverside fm.

The number of podcast tools that have become available as the size of the podcasting space has grown is. Really impressive. This is everything from hardware, all in one podcasting, hardware tools to software like Riverside. It’s not the only option out there. There are several out there that are available that allow you to do this and factory in the video component.

Since we know that a lot of people listen to their podcast now on YouTube, it’s important to have that video component and we’re able to add that. Now, if you go to the FIR. Channel on YouTube you can watch. Not that there’s anything to see, it’s just two talking heads. But I suspect that most people who find it and listen on YouTube aren’t really watching.

It’s just in the background. Yeah. While they’re doing something else. But yeah, it is important to be there and Riverside is one of the tools that makes that possible. Yeah. Yeah. It is it’s taken the technological development in audio recording in the way we are doing [00:33:00] it right up into the realm of professional radio studios and so forth that do have done this kind of thing for a long time.

It, it had a big impact, I think, on people’s. Willingness to listen to podcasts, where now the expectation is they want the same listening experiences they get when they tune into to DAB radio, for instance, a pristine quality audio. It’s.

They’re accustomed to more and more professional podcasts. Precisely. You look at things like precisely serial, and that’s what they hear. So when they hear something like ours, if it doesn’t measure up in terms of the quality of the audio, yeah, but I’m talking mostly from the listen experience point of view more than anything where back then I.

It was outside the realm, even with kind of, okay, we’ve got tons of money, we could do this, which was never the case. It’s outside the realm of that. Back then, professional quality microphones, the kind of stuff in radio studios. They cost a lot of money. Now I. That cost barrier is gone and both you and I have got equipment and we have purchased equipment over that of recent [00:34:00] years in particular that we couldn’t have probably dreamed of doing back in 2005 or so.

So we’ve got the ability, so I’m in my new garden studio in Somerset, in England. That’s where we moved to in October and built this place. It’s soundproofed. I’ve noticed in recordings I’ve done recently, the quality is. Completely, a hundred percent better than it ever was before with the soundproofing panels.

So decent microphone. The pop filter you can probably see on the video. And other things, the software, Adobe addition that I use as you do. There’s a few other tools I use occasionally, but I always come back to Adobe because it’s so good. And we’re doing this on Riverside, as you say, and that uses a mix of.

Storing the recordings on your hard drive and uploading it in packets as we are going along. So it’s good to have a good internet connection. Most of the times people do have great internet connection, gigabit internet. I had that before we moved. That’s a work in progress still to get it like that in the new place.

It will maybe a [00:35:00] month or so away yet. All those things combine to to provide. A means by which we could pro produce and share content where the quality of the listing experience was really good. And if the content is good, then we’re onto a winner. Now, we don’t hear much from people these days on this.

Maybe we need to ask people directly, so perhaps the time comes into the survey to do. But I think. We are at a point where two decades in, we’ve done we’ve our own experience has been great. The journey’s been fantastic. The challenges and hurdles are all part of the excitements and experience of doing this.

It’s challenging, getting dates in and all that stuff. Sometimes given our time zone difference, which has always been the case. You are in California, I’m in the uk, which is eight hours ahead of you. It was worse when exam.

Yeah twice a year. We’re an hour closer. But but we’ve managed it and it’s, it works out. Okay. I’m just thinking back just a few years. In fact it’s to 20 I. 20. [00:36:00] So the, actually the beginning of 2020 in January, that was the formal start of the COVID-19 pandemic where we did an episode that you put this together.

She and we called it, or I did in my post describing it, maybe the longest single episode of a podcast ever. Two and a half hours this episode. To now that’s a typical episode of. Of this week in Google. And I did just listen to a five and a half hour episode of a podcast. No, that’s, that, that’s a whole different ballgame.

But this week in tech with God, what’s his name? The the John Devore, right? Neil Port. Leo LaPorte, right? This we Tech, yeah. Leo Laport. That’s right. The network. That was the benchmark for long form content. But this one you gathered 17, as we described it, the smartest communicational professionals in the business.

I. For their take on FIR effectively. And let me run off the names here. Christopher Barger contributed. Jeannie Dietrich, chip Griffin, Lee Hopkins. Marshall Kirkpatrick. Sharon McIntosh. Rachel [00:37:00] Miller. Scott Monty Christopher s Penn, Jen Phillips, Eric Schwartzman. Bill Spaniel, David Spark, mark Story, Andrea VAs, Brad Whitworth, and Dan York.

They were all in there. We had Donna Papa Costa, who was a podcaster back in those early days, created our identity, our voice identity, the podcast for communicators in her unique voice, and that was a terrific labeling for us. This is episode under the new naming episode one 1 91 that was published on the 21st of January.

It’s worth a listen to what all these guys have to say. That’s only I. Not long ago, five years ago. And it’s only got better since then, shall I would argue. ’cause we then talked about the we had another kind of note of where we were at back in January of this year. We talked about, two decades of podcasting that was a bit premature. It was in 19 years, but we had something similar. And so we’ve gone that route. That’s [00:38:00] why, one reason why we don’t have any of those testimonials in this episode. ’cause what more is there to say that these guys haven’t that episode though?

January, 2020 is really worth a listen. There’s some very smart comments from all those folks I’ve mentioned, so that was great. So that takes us to today. There’s other things we could talk about too, but there’s so much there. I think, one other thing to mention is we have done, when we have been able to is live recordings together.

When we’ve been at events typically, or. I’ve been over in California, or you’ve been over in the uk The last time we did this, actually face to face shell was when you and Michelle came over and stayed with us in 2022. And we did a, we did an episode in my dining room where we had some difficulties with microphones, but we actually managed it in the ed.

And there’s other examples. There’s a, an infamous one actually of a, when we were at a conference, I think it was in 2006. In in California and there’s some great photos, you and I sitting at a [00:39:00] table and people talking to us in the venue. And it was, we were with headphones on laptops, mixers as well.

The works was there too. You’ve done a couple at conferences and we’ve managed that. We’ve we’ve always been on the leading edge of doing this stuff, haven’t we? We did one where I was speaking, I can’t remember where it was or to whom, but I think it was in or near Boston. And I got everything set up at the conference and brought you in.

And we did an episode in front of everybody. Yeah. And one of the segments was them asking questions and being able to hear you in addition to me. And then that was published as an episode. I’d have to do a little digging to find. That particular episode, but that was that was a technical challenge in those days.

Yeah. And a lot of fun. We’ve also, over the years, had themes that have seeped into many episodes during a. 10, 12 month period. Second, [00:40:00] life was a big one of those. Certainly AI finds its way into every episode now. And by the way, speaking of the technology it should be no surprise to anybody that Riverside fm, that tool that we use for recording has added.

Many AI features that we take advantage of in editing. One of those that I just love is its ability to remove filler words, which is also, by the way, a feature of d script tool that I also use in producing this show. It can also fix the sound. It wasn’t that long ago. I. Neglected to confirm that my good microphone was the one being used to record.

It ended up being the webcam microphone and I, it sounded like I was in a tin can or on a. Landline telephone. And I ran it through magic Sound on Riverside fm and it sounded like I was in a studio talking into an expensive microphone. These technologies are remarkable. Yeah. And they are.

We’ll continue talking about ’em well into the future, I’m [00:41:00] sure. Yeah I agree. I’m sure. It’s funny you mentioned Second Life. That’s a, I’m glad you mentioned that because that was an experiment we did. That was a milestone where we established a presence in Second Life, and we experimented with things that were new at that time, such as being able to.

Pass audio to and fro second life, to outside the virtual world, into the real world. We did a number of episodes in Second Life. We even had a storefront in Second Life, like a place where you could hang out with your virtual avatar and build a community in Second Life. We tried that a bit.

That was a great experiment that we did. I think on that point about. Riverside fm. Yeah, you’re right. These tools are fantastic, what you can now do, and it is something that we’re gonna see a lot more of. So I’m thinking maybe I. Think of the time we’ve got left for this episode. It’s a quick tour over 20 years, and we are linking out to other stuff you might wanna listen to, like that episode with 17 smart professionals in there talking.

Might be worth saying. What’s [00:42:00] next? What’s coming up? Not so much for us, although we might touch on that, is in the industry as a whole everyone’s doing analytics. We’re seeing lots of very interesting. Data being produced and the interpretation of that data to suggest that podcasting, and I’ve been hearing this for years, shell, we have been hearing this for years, that it’s poised to take off.

It’s poised to break into the mainstream in the workplace. I arguably, it’s there, but it’s not mass, but that. That’s okay, because this is not about just getting big numbers. We hear enough about big numbers. We hear there are hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes produced every week. There are millions of podcasts.

Arguably the these are selective choices by people who with content that appeals to niche audiences. That’s one of the beauties. Nevertheless, you also then hear about. Some podcasts that are literally in the realm of broadcast radio in terms of audience reach, the likes of Joe Rogan in America, who’s in the Millions.

There are people making serious money outta [00:43:00] this. Spotify, notably, we’re a niche podcast. We set out the outset to reach professionals in organizational communication around the world with insights on tech developments in communication particularly, and that’s how we’ve continued doing this. Now we do this.

It’s for love, not for money. We don’t have sponsors right now, and we haven’t sought any really. EE even when we did have sponsors we weren’t getting rich. It was covering our costs. Oh, no absolutely. That, that, that was why we weren’t doing it for the kind of enrichment point of view.

It was the joy of doing it and being able to articulate things and engage with like-minded others, but in terms of what’s coming. But our sponsors all came to us too. We never, they did, went out and said, would you like to sponsor our show? You’re absolutely right. They, we’ll have links in the show notes of some of the reports about what’s next for podcasting.

And you can read yourself, there’s a lot of of opinion out there. Some of it is very informed and highly credible. One of my, [00:44:00] what I think is one of the best looks at the future of podcasting is from Riverside itself, Riverside fm, where they talk about nine trends. Coming up in in during this year and well into next year they talk about podcast growth and they segregate or they segment their research into what’s the future look like for individual creators?

What’s it look like for businesses and companies FAQs on the future of podcasting? And I think it is something that our constants I would argue that people talk about. On what is coming next the change that’s coming, they talk about, you mentioned that AI is gonna have a big role. There’s a lot of it already in place and in our experience on Riverside, for instance making podcasts as lives easier, I.

By taking a lot of the heavy lifting out of the of the audio manipulation process. I don’t mean the editing so much, although you could do it for that too. But like you said, taking out the ums and the ahs, for instance optimizing the audio quality, things like that they could speed up [00:45:00] podcasting workflows and applies to.

Every industry. So things like that’s more accessible. Upping expectations through the quality that is good. We use a tool, I discovered this about a year ago, called Crumple Pop. It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? Based in Florida. They produce a suite of tools that do magical things to audio. For instance, you are talking in a room that’s got a lot of echo ’cause there’s no soundproofing or anything.

This tool will eliminate that. No one would. Ever know that you had done this in anything other than the studio. If you are out in the street and there’s a heavy wind blowing and you don’t have a pop filter, or even if you do a wind filter it’ll eliminate all of that and general other things that it could do, some of which are quite technical.

Adobe Audition has tools now in the latest versions that are AI driven. That do things like normalize different audio tracks with literally a couple of clicks before you had to drag little things on the audio waveform and do all that kind of stuff. It’s a lot easier now. And as I said, you are finding that AI is behind much of this.[00:46:00]

Other things that in in Riverside’s predictions they’re talking about content repurposing where AI takes audio and converts it into other formats, such as short form video. And that’s something that we are seeing more and more podcasters doing. We’ve, we are doing it, as you mentioned earlier, she two talking heads and audio as a pod, as a MP four file on YouTube.

Some people like the format. That way it’s not a too heavy lift to do that, to meet that desire. It does mean though that there is further change coming from a technical point of view. We’ve gotta keep on top of that, which we do video. So video’s a big deal for podcasting. I still. Talk about podcasting, meaning audio, although I don’t say audio, podcast.

I say podcasting. And then there’s video podcasting, but that’s just me. They’ll always just podcasting at some point. Voice search optimization is where voice controlled AI assistance, like I. Google, Alexa and Siri that we traditionally used [00:47:00] to will help put your podcast rank highly when a listener searches for yours via their AI assistant.

And we’re already seeing some of the signs of that. And of course the big disruptor in that area is tools like Perplexity, AI and chat, GPT and others who are also jockeying for position to be the preferred search tool. So there’s stuff like this there’s a lot more, and we’ll share the link to their predictions so you can read it.

Private podcasting meaning it’s offering loyal community paying subscribers. We don’t do paying, but I can see that being a big deal. For many short form content. We do some of that. We always struggle on keeping the episodes short and people still talk about, Hey, can’t you cut your 90 minutes down is too long, and you get a bit tired of saying, hit the pause button and listen to the other bit tomorrow, you.

Some people like the long form. I certainly do. So it’s great. So there’s lots of interesting things tips to stay ahead. They point these out, stay on top of the latest, pay [00:48:00] attention to what’s going on record high quality content. We aim to do that, and I think we deliver on that because our quality is quite good.

There’s a lot more to look at and I wonder. Here we are in the beginning of 20, 25, 20 years since our first episode, what the next five years will look like. And I’m not looking 10 years because I think it’s gonna be entirely different. Two indicators of where we’re headed with this, I think first of all, is that you’re now seeing news reports that quote people who said something in a podcast.

Yeah. This could be anything from a report in People magazine about a celebrity trashing a colleague to a. Politician making some revelation that gets reported because they were talking no names mentioned, right in the friendly confines of a podcast that was hosted by somebody who was on the same side of the political fence as them.

So podcasting is now where news is broken. Used to be Twitter now it seems to be podcasts. The other thing. [00:49:00] That I think it’s important to recognize, and I referenced it earlier, is that while in the 2024 presidential campaign here in the us Kamala Harris’ campaign spent over a billion dollars on traditional media.

They spent far less in the Trump campaign, but he appeared on podcasts that appealed to the bro community, Uhhuh, and they turned out. For him. So I think in the post-election analysis, a lot of people had said podcasting is one of those places where politicians are going to have to. Invest time and perhaps even some money down the road because that’s where influence is wielded.

So it’s taken a long time for podcasting to get there. It was a lot of years that people said this is always going to be a hobbyist thing. It’s never gonna go mainstream. And that’s gone mainstream. And partly that’s because of the shift. Technologically from needing pod catching software which Adam Curry developed.

And he had to be fairly [00:50:00] technical savvy to use these things to now just using an app on your phone to get the podcast you want, and listening in your car when it’s. Connected to your car’s entertainment system. Discoverability has changed. It used to be a nightmare. Apple changed some of that.

And now the podcast apps have discoverability features and even algorithms that recommend podcasts to you based on your current listening habits. I think this is all going to continue to accelerate. The momentum continues to build and I think the influence available in podcasting is going to continue to increase.

I also think it’s going to be a space that makes room for everybody. You could be the Joe Rogan with. 40 million listeners, you could be us with, a thousand or so reaching out to the PR community that’s actually interested in staying up on the intersection of communication and technology.

But I don’t [00:51:00] see an end in sight for podcasting. I just see more growth and expansion. Yeah. And influence. I’m with you on that. Indeed. I’m with you on that. Indeed, much of what I’m seeing, people reporting on what they think is coming next is aligned with that sentiment. So exciting times ahead if you’re a podcaster.

If you are not yet a podcaster, think about it. Exciting times ahead await you if you decide to go this route, but like you said, she. We started in the days where you needed a computer and that’s really the only way you could do this. If you are in a generation, a lot younger than we are, you are accustomed li most likely to a mobile device.

Talk, tap, publish. That’s it. No fancy time spent on, on editing and audio and all that kind of business. It’s all, instant. That said I see I listen to a number of podcasts on in the car that are produced that way, that are long form content, 45 minutes plus. And I listen with one ear on what am I hearing quality wise.

I’m wondering how they produce this. [00:52:00] It’s all really remarkable where things have come since those early days. For us, though, we’re available on any device no matter what. And hopefully your listening experience will be great. However you get your f. It has been a lot of fun looking back over the last 20 years.

The next episode will launch our next 20 years. No idea what we’ll be talking about, but it will undoubtedly be next week, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four immediate release. Happy anniversary, Neville. Thank you. She likewise.

 

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