Nov 3, 2007

Who am I listening to? Part 2: Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson: For Immediate Release

For Immediate Release is a podcast presented by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson and is described as being at the intersection of PR / communications and the online world. I sometimes find this description a bit limiting as there is certainly a lot more discussion than online PR and communications as they delve into all sorts of (relative) topics and especially things within this environment that I may not have thought of before. I usually get turned off by PR blogs / casts as it’s not really my field of interest as but this is one of my favourite podcasts, it can’t be ‘too Pr’ can it?

I would also say that FIR (as it is commonly referred to) is a leader in podcasting in terms of listeners and innovation. It sounds to me like they have the largest listenership in the We 2.0 / marketing-esque podcast environment but what really sets them apart is how they involve their audience. It’s the only podcast I listen to where the listeners are able to leave voice comments about a topic which are subsequently played during the following episodes.

They also have a very ingenious (possibly lazy) system by which the readers can use a Wiki to write up the show notes for each podcast themselves. Lazy or not, this kind of interactivity around their podcasts certainly answers some of those critics with too much time on their hands that question whether a podcast is a true Web 2.0 application because of it’s supposed lack of opportunities to interact with the audience.

If like me, you listen to marketing podcasts to stay up with the latest trends, FIR is definitely one to add to the ol’ subscription list.

As a side note, I have also bought Shel Holtz’s book ‘Corporate Conversations’ which I am looking forward to reading but I unfortunately picked up my copy of Spud (a South African comedy) first and now cannot put it down! I’ll definitely get around to reading it though Shel!

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