Whether you work in the mailroom or sit in the C-suite in a big company, you most certainly have heard about the media revolution now underway. Social media is here to stay, and knowing what’s happening in the vanguard is important for everyone in the media business today.

How does the social media revolution affect the spokesperson role in your company? Should social media voices be controlled? How should they be trained and in what messages?

These are the kinds of issues keeping PR professionals up at night. To address them, Ann Handley at Marketing Profs helped me bring in a couple of experts – Doug Haslam and Shel Holtz. They offer some sage advice on social media, along with a “state of the union” view of PR today. We hope you enjoy the discussion and will join in.

The Role of PR in Social Media – a podcast with Doug Haslam and Shel Holtz

About Doug

Doug is a media and public relations professional with a career dating back to 1989. Starting as a jazz DJ, then cutting tape and pointing fingers (in a non-accusatory, rather more of a “cue-speak now!” manner) at public radio’s best, he embarked on a technology public relations career just in time to ride the Internet bubble. Now engaged wholeheartedly in social media, he has been plying the PR trade, as well as blogging and podcasting, with Topaz Partners since 2005. While also engaged in local blogging and Second Life, he is trying to maintain Gischeleman’s blog to catch all the other thoughts he feels like throwing out there.

About Shel

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. His clients have included Intel, Sears, PepsiCo, Petrobras, Aetna, John Deere, Manulife Financial, Hewitt Associates, General Mills, USAA, Applied Materials, Symantec, Raytheon, The World Bank, Amdocs, Disney, FedEx, Freescale Semiconductor, The International Monetary Fund, National Geographic, The American Red Cross, and Monsanto.

Before forming Holtz Communication + Technology in February 1996, Shel was senior communications consultant and the communications practice leader for Alexander & Alexander Consulting Group in San Francisco, California. (A&ACG has since been acquired by Aon Consulting.)

Shel has more than 30 years of organizational communications experience in both corporate and consulting environments. He is experienced in employee communications, compensation and benefits communications, corporate public relations, media relations, financial communications, investor relations, and marketing communications. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, communicating business initiatives, and communications research.

Please visit Shel at his blog, http://blog.holtz.com, and his podcast feed, “For Immediate Release,” at http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz.

Do you do traditional customer research?

Do you find that the loudest person in the room tends to skew the results?

What if you had a research network you could tap into at any point in time to get feedback? Well, you can, and communities that are built online can help you do it.

I spoke with Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights and an advocate of customer-driven market research. I got a chance to ask him how customer-driven research works and how the best companies are taking themselves out of the center of research efforts and putting their best customers there. He also gives us some sage advice for this year.

Build your customer research network before you need it!

About Dan

Dan Neely serves as Networked Insights’ Chief Executive Officer. Dan brings to Networked Insights more than 10 years of management, operational and entrepreneurial experience with technology, manufacturing and services companies. He is an expert in customer intelligence and has hands on experience with the challenges companies face in gathering relevant, real-time insights about their customers.

Prior to starting Networked Insights, Dan co-founded Market Performance Partners, which guided companies in market ownership through customer intelligence. Previously, he served as Director of Strategy for Scient. Scient was the fastest growing services company in history, had a successful IPO, grew to more than 2,000 colleagues and launched more than 40 ebusinesses. Before Scient, Dan worked at Deloitte and was part of a team that launched esurance, the first online insurance company.

Dan holds a BBA from the University of Georgia.

You can’t hop into a cab, step into an elevator or walk down the street without passing someone using a Blackberry, iPhone or other type of mobile device. Business professionals, students, police and even your kids are connected every second of the day. As a result, more and more carriers are recognizing the inherent value of mobile technologies as a productivity tool and have embraced them.

But what does this mean for the marketer?

I decided to dig a bit deeper with two experts in the field, Jeff Sass, VP of Business Development at Myxer, and Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Officer at crayon. I asked them to help us understand the state of mobile marketing and what we should be experimenting with in 2008.

Enjoy …

Mobile Marketing: What you need to be doing in 2008

About Jeff

Jeff Sass is Vice President of Business Development at Myxer, the leader in mobile content downloads. Jeff has more than 25 years’ experience in the technology and entertainment industries, with a major focus in the last 10 years in the Internet and mobile space. Jeff has also been the successful president/CEO of two Internet startups in South Florida and was a co-founder and CEO of mobile commerce pioneer BarPoint.com. He has also written and produced for film and television and has a deep understanding of the content business that is unique for a technology executive. He is a graduate of Cornell University.

You can text “Jeff” to “69937” (MYXER) for more info. Jeff has two personal blogs, his Sassholes blog at and the parody blog.

About Greg

Greg Verdino is Chief Strategy Officer at crayon, a marketing consultancy that helps marketers join the conversation by leveraging the power of community, dialogue and partnership with consumers. Greg writes a widely read marketing blog, was a contributing author of The Age of Conversation (one of Advertising Age’s ‘Books You Should Have Read’ for 2007), speaks frequently at industry conferences and has been quoted in many publications including BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, AdWeek, Ad Age and more. Prior to joining crayon, he led the emerging channels practice at Digitas and toiled for more than 15 years in advertising, direct marketing, technology and media.