Chris Abraham Cindy Crescenzo Steve Farnsworth on FIR with Shel Holtz

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Episode 64 of the #FIR podcast is up. Chris Abraham, Cindy Crescenzo, and Steve Farnsworth join host Shel Holtz to talk about Breitbart News’ call for a boycott of Kellogg’s after the cereal company pulled its ads, the suggestion that we should stop measuring employee engagement, PR’s ability to propel Virtual Reality into the mainstream, the need for brands and agencies to adapt to a voice-driven world (with Amazon Echo and Google Home becoming new means of searching and engaging), the latest from the fake news front, and much more.

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Chris Abraham, Cindy Crescenzo, and Steve Farnsworth join host Shel Holtz to talk about these topics:

Breitbart News called for a boycott of Kellogg’s after the cereal company pulled its ads, then started publishing articles critical of the company after calling the decision to withdraw advertising “censorship.” Is this the new reality for companies making what used to be simple business decisions?
Employee engagement surveys aren’t worth much anymore according to one expert, since people are more concerned about survey scores than addressing engagement issues. Is it time to stop measuring engagement?
Virtual Reality headset sales aren’t setting any records. Can public relations help make it go mainstream?
With the Amazon Echo and Google Home, along with Siri and Google Now, it’s fast becoming a voice-driven world. Brands and agencies will have to adapt.
A lot has happened on the fake news front since we first reported on it, including a shooting in Washington, D.C. by a North Carolina man “self-investigating” a fake news story. We’ll bring you up to date.
Brands have jumped on the emoji bandwagon, but audiences think they’re trying too hard.
Figuring out what people are talking about using Google Trends is a better way to do real-time marketing.
Dan York reports on the Internet Governance Forum this week in Mexico, a panel last week on Internet fragmentation (which communicators don’t want), and WordPress’s move toward promoting more SSL/TLS.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @ChrisAbraham, @CreativeComms, and @Stevology.

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

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

About today’s panel:

Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response. He operates his consultancy at Gerris Corp. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Cindy Crescenzo brings more than 15 years of research, measurement and planning expertise to the corporate communications world. Her passion for numbers and audience research have helped thousands of communicators all over the world transform the way they communicate, by teaching them the power of surveys, metrics, focus groups and executive interviews. She and her husband and business partner, Steve Crescenzo, founded Crescenzo Communications more than 20 years ago and together they have energized the communication industry with their proven tactics and strategies to combine research and strategy with creativity and best-practice communications.

Steve Farnsworth has over 15 years as a senior digital marketing executive, and is currently the Chief Marketing Officer for the @Steveology Group, a content marketing for demand generation agency serving high tech B2B organizations. He works with mid-sized and large companies, and funded start-ups to develop and implement multimedia content marketing programs that increase inbound leads and grows brand reputation. Steve is a Forbes top 50 social media influencer. He is a digital marketing educator and has moderated panels, spoken at, or managed industry events at Google, Intel, PayPal, Yahoo!, Cisco, Adobe, Electronic Arts, HP, SAP, Wells Fargo, TEDx, Applied Materials, Symantec, NetApp, and Stanford on brand, social, digital, and content marketing.