FIR #425: Stand Up, Stand Out, or Shut Down?

The desire to stand out has declined significantly over the last 20 years, according to a new study. That has serious implications for society, business, and communicators. Meanwhile, shutting off comments on your social media channel could have worse repercussions than putting up with comments you don’t want to see. Also in this episode, The fediverse is gaining traction, which leads one commentator to wonder if it’s time for governments to set up their own instances. Corporate boards are bracing for more anti-DEI backlash, but does that mean they’re backing away from their goals? Gen Z’s enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s U.S. presidential bid is no accident, as her campaign cracks the content code, notably on TikTok.  Generative Artificial Intelligence is changing the search engine optimization (SEO) game. In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on new Threads features, Spotify and YouTube taking Apple’s podcast crown, the photo manipulation capabilities of Google’s new Pixel 9 line of phones, and one company’s stand against AI. The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 23. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Links from this episode: Fediverse for Freedom Fewer people want to stand out in public than 20 years ago Corporate boards brace for DEI backlash DEI efforts may be under attack, but companies aren’t retreating from commitments FIR #418: These Are Our Rock-Solid Beliefs – Unless You Don’t Like Them – FIR Podcast Network Research: What Happens When Influencers Turn Off Comments You’re Wrong, Joel Spolsky & Dave Winer, Blog Comments Have Incredible Value Inside the Gen-Z operation powering Harris’ online remix Content is king at the DNC Kamala Harris’ Campaign Is Launching a Twitch Channel How the Harris Campaign Beat Trump at Being Online US election: Meet the Kamala Harris influencer army Kamala Harris’ Campaign Is a Windfall for Influencers ‘Hottie’ Dems and Chappell Roan stans: meet the 200 TikTokers who scored access to the convention 57+ MILLION VIEWERS: Massive TV and Online Viewership for Night One of Democratic National Convention The Evolution of Search: 5 SEO Trends in 2024 and 2025 [+ New Data] Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn: I have said it before, but marketers need to think about how to advertise Links from Dan York’s Tech Report: Meta’s X rival Threads gains multiple drafts, audience insights and more Meta lets you cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads. Here’s how to do it. Threads confirms it is experimenting with ephemeral posts Apple Loses Its Podcasting Lead to YouTube and Spotify No one’s ready for this Procreate takes a stand against generative AI, vows to never incorporate the tech into its products Raw Transcript (from Riverside.fm) Neville Hobson: Hi everyone and welcome to episode 425 of Four Immediate Release. This is the long form monthly edition for August 2024. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz (00:18) And I’m Shel Holtz. We have six fascinating stories to discuss over the course of this episode. We’re going to be talking about some interesting activity in the Fetiverse. Whether or not people want to stand out is a fascinating research report that could have serious implications on communication. Great stories beyond that. Dan York is here with a tech report talking about some activity on threads, among other things. Before we jump into all of that though, Neville, let’s review the episodes that we’ve recorded since the last monthly episode. @nevillehobson (01:02) Yeah. Yeah, we have recorded not as many as the previous month. We recorded three episodes since the last monthly episode 420 from July. So let’s start with that one. That one was the lead topic in that episode was that company CrowdStrike and that dreadful internet outages that occurred that had significant consequences around the world. We asked how well did CrowdStrike handle its crisis? And we looked at their response and shared what some crisis experts have said and had that discussion ourselves. And we have a comment, don’t we, Shale? Shel Holtz (01:46) We do from Michelle Garrett, who goes by PR writer gal on threads, where we shared the episode on threads and asked whether CrowdStrike has handled their crisis communications well. She said, I haven’t listened yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb regarding did CrowdStrike deliver by saying no. @nevillehobson (02:08) That would, I would say, be a valid view at the time she made the view. I think they’ve actually, it’s turned out where they’ve actually done quite well in terms of crisis communication, wouldn’t you say? Shel Holtz (02:21) I think in terms of how they have handled this from a communication standpoint, yes, I think they’ve done an admirable job. They’ve made a couple of missteps, the gift cards, as the coupons as a mea culpa, I thought was a misstep, but overall they have been candid and open and accessible and honest about what happened and what they’re gonna do to fix it. @nevillehobson (02:32) coupon. So episode 421 that we published a week after that, Gen .ai is paying off individual employees. We dug into a Gartner report along with a Washington Post study that ranks how individuals are using generative AI. And we have a comment for that too, don’t we? Shel Holtz (03:08) We do. Steve Lubeckin wrote that it seems like it’s reminiscent of the early days when companies wouldn’t let you use certain software and employees figured out ways to bootleg the software they needed to get the job done. I’m even seeing this with companies that block business units from using video platforms like Riverside FM but allow vendors to use it on behalf of the employees. @nevillehobson (03:31) good comments, Steve. So 422, we recorded that one and published it a week after that, 14th. Could AI be the nail in the coffin for the billable hour model, we asked. We examined the state of consulting in the AI age. And really it was to do with killing that model. We had some slightly different views on that, think, show that we’re broadly in agreement that something is shifting, moving from time based fee structures to outcome based fee structures that are based on what the client, let’s say, as an example, estimates the value the work you’re going to do would give to his or her company and you work out a fee on that basis. I’m not seeing, you know, a stampede to change, but you this is change and people don’t like change. It might take a while, but an interesting idea. We don’t have any comments to that one. And then 423, which we published just a week ago, titled as op -eds fade into history, where does thought leadership belong? And we discussed the state of thought leadership and the channels communicators may not be considering. And we do have a comment. Shel Holtz (04:47) from Frank Strong, who said the statistics were interesting. I certainly find Wall Street Journal opinion pieces are ungated. It’s not all of them, but maybe the ones they think everyone should read. That probably helps with the visibility, which is probably true. It’s not that op -eds are going away entirely. It’s just that a number of publications are either eliminating or shuttering the opinion sections. So there are fewer of them, but the Wall Street Journal… Op -Ed space is prime real estate and I’m sure it’ll be with us for years to come. @nevillehobson (05:21) I noticed that in UK mainstream media too, opinion pieces, many, in newspapers like the Times, the Daily Telegraph sometimes, The Guardian tends to be completely open. They don’t block you, they kind of nudge you to sign up for free so you can access all the content. But the Times, the Sunday Times have started doing that. which is, think, a good move. I subscribe to US papers like the New York Times, which give you the option to gift an article. But I’ve noticed too, like you said, the Wall Street Journal recently, I don’t subscribe to the journal. And of course, you get disappointed when you go somewhere and presents you with the login or register. But recently, there’s a couple of things I’ve been looking at, which are open completely. Bloomberg’s another one. They’re the gatekeepers par excellence of Bloomberg. But recently, I’ve seen a number of opinion pieces. that are open. So maybe they are looking at the way the land is lying in this regard. Shel Holtz (06:22) Yeah, and it’s important to note that publications, media outlets that publish opinions don’t necessarily publish op -eds, which are opinions from people from outside the organization. Now, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, they’re going to publish op -eds. In fact, some very noteworthy politicians have been publishing op -eds lately as we’re in our endless presidential cycle. But that doesn’t mean that all of those publications that used to do it, which would be the prime targets for a lot of thought leaders out there. And this includes, by the way, trade publications and industry publications that just don’t have the financial resources to maintain those sections anymore. Those are drying up. So I think it’s still important for communicators that work with thought leaders or manage thought leader efforts in the organization find alternative channels for that content that produces the same kinds of results, gets the same kind of visibility. @nevillehobson (07:25) sense. So I’d also like to mention that we are restarting or kickstarting, let’s say, the FIR interviews podcast. This is a separate podcast. So if you subscribe to this podcast, you won’t get the interviews, you need to subscribe to that one separately. But we started the interviews in July 2006, long time ago. Shel Holtz (07:50) you @nevillehobson (07:52) It’s a separate podcast I mentioned to present conversations we host with newsmakers and influencers from the online technology and organizational communication worlds. That was the description we had back then. I think it’s still largely accurate now. I mentioned we’re kickstarting it anew with new episodes planned on a monthly basis. Our first was on August 12th, mid August with Pete Paschal, founder and CEO of the Media Co -Pilot. We explored the intersection of AI and media with a focus on how Generative AI Influencers, Social Media Journalism and Brand Engagement. Next month, September, we’ll publish another episode, this one with Esri Karlovaak, a UK -based consultant on international multidisciplinary projects in business innovation and stakeholder engagement with clients that include UN and EU agencies, arts and cultural institutions, non -profit organizations and a wide range of businesses. I first met Esri about 15 years ago when we were both active in IBC volunteerism. He’s also a keen advocate for science fiction as the literature of new ideas. And that’s the focus of our discussion in that interview coming up. While it doesn’t predict the future, he says, it can improve how we think about and prepare for the future. He’ll expand on that thought in our conversation. He’ll also tell us about applied SF and how a genre typically associated with entertainment can work in other ways. So don’t miss out on FI interviews. Sign up or… to subscribe to the feed, go to firpodcastnetwork .com slash fir dash interview so you won’t miss a thing. You should be able to pick it up too on wherever you get your podcasts, whatever app you’re using or platform you’re using. But it’s definitely good. We’re keen to get this going again because we’ve got a list already of some really interesting people, including ideas we have to revisit some of the folks we interviewed back at that time. from 2006, say to 2016, and a bit later, perhaps, who’ve got updated stories to tell, I’m sure. So look out for more news on that. But like I said, FIRpodcast .net, sorry, FIRpodcast. Shel Holtz (10:04) firpodcastnetwork .com slash. @nevillehobson (10:06) Yeah, that’s the one. FIRpodcastnetwork .com slash FIR dash interviews. That’s where you go. Shel Holtz (10:14) And you say that we’re going to do this monthly and that’s the plan. But if we have the opportunity to talk to somebody, it arises and it’s just too good to skip, then we may end up doing more than one a month. You never know. That wait and see. We did record an episode of Circle of Fellows in August. This is on the @nevillehobson (10:27) We may, you never know. Stay tuned. Shel Holtz (10:38) topic of raising AI, which focused on getting AI up and running and thriving in your organization. So we had a great international panel, Adrian Cropley, Sue Heumann, Mary Hills, and Robin McCasland. It was really an invigorating conversation. We had a lot of people participating in real time. So we were able to incorporate their questions and comments into the conversation. So. If you are working with your IT department or in the IT department and trying to get people to adopt AI in the organization, this is a good episode to listen to. The next one is coming up on September 19th at noon Eastern time. I am going to be away for that one. So Brad Whitworth will be the moderator and it’ll be talking about mental wellness and how communication leaders can maintain their mental wellness amidst all the stress. of the job. Participating in that one will be Amanda Hamilton Atwell, Ginger Homan, Andrea Greenhouse, and Mark Schaeffer. So that will be a good episode too, and a bit of a divergence from the topics that we usually look at on Circle of Fellows. I’m happy to see mental wellness being addressed more frequently and in more forums these days. @nevillehobson (12:00) Terrific. So I guess we dive into our conversational topics now. So I’ve got the first story, which I find this really fascinating, Shell. Last week, I wrote a post on my blog that discussed the unraveling of X, I described it, suggested by a large migration of UK users from that platform, mostly to threads and blue sky. The trigger. was the riots in the UK in early August that have made headlines globally, where social networks, X in particular, played a major role in stoking the unrest. Elon Musk’s supportive comments of the rioters stimulated disgust among many people here, which directly influenced the migration and included a number of members of parliament. The post prompted some discussion, mostly on threads, including one comment from my friend Andy Piper, a technologist, writer and podcaster. He was a developer advocate at Twitter for nine years, leaving in early 2023 after Elon Musk finalized his acquisition in 2022. Before Twitter, he spent 10 years as a technical consultant at IBM and was involved in various open source projects. Today, he supports the Mastodon open source projects with developer relations and community building tasks. Andy’s comments suggested the idea of creating a sovereign owned and operated Mastodon instance for the UK parliament. He then followed up on that with a blog post on his blog titled Fediverse for Freedom, in which he discusses in detail the importance of governments owning and operating their own social media platforms, such as a Macedon instance or any Fediverse compatible activity pub based service. He argues that relying on privately owned platforms gives corporations undue control over national communication and data. He speaks of growing interest in Fediverse platforms and technologies like Mastodon from several national governments in Europe and the EU itself. Many of these institutions are already running their own social media instances, he says, and actively encouraging their politicians to use them. He highlights how the EU has already embraced decentralization through Mastodon and emphasizes that the UK should follow suit to ensure digital sovereignty, protect democratic processes. and maintain control of a public discourse. He says, if governments are concerned about the dominance of privately owned online platforms, they have a responsibility to run and own their own. Andy acknowledges the challenges and considerations to this idea, including the financial and technical resources required to maintain these platforms and the need to ensure wide discoverability and engagement. Additionally, there are complexities in determining who should be allowed to have accounts. on these sovereign platforms. For example, while it makes sense for members of parliament to have accounts, would it be extended to political parties or other entities? He underscores that while these challenges are significant, the importance of maintaining democratic integrity and avoiding corporate chokeholds on communication channels outweighs these concerns. So what next? To take Andy Piper’s idea to the next level, a feasible course of action could be to form a coalition of UK government officials digital policymakers and technology experts to initiate a pilot project to establish a sovereign Macedon instance for parliament. This would involve securing funding, setting up the infrastructure and defining clear guidelines for participation. The goal would be to demonstrate the benefits of digital sovereignty and expand the model to other public institutions, ultimately creating a decentralized government operated social network that safeguards democratic communication and public trust. Could a call to action like this happen? As Andy notes in a comment in his own post, I’m just staking out the ground that an open standards based decentralized and not privately owned set of capabilities is better than handing over those channels to a private third party. So it seems to me that this is worthy of greater discussion if a pilot project is reaching too far at the moment. As the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Shel Holtz (16:15) think this is an outstanding idea and I fully support it. I would love to see it implemented elsewhere around the globe. think, I mean, it solves a lot of problems. And the fact that we have the Fediverse available now is what makes this feasible because not a lot of people are going to add a new social network. @nevillehobson (16:24) Yeah. Yeah. Shel Holtz (16:39) to the ones that they are already engaged with. They’re not going to say, the UK government has a social network. I think I’ll go sign up there and make sure I can check that every day in addition to Facebook and threads and whatever other networks are already following. But here, because it’s in the Fediverse, they can see it where they are and stay on top of this information. And presumably the information would include things like, please be aware of this misinformation. that’s being shared. This is the official instance of the UK government. And we’re telling you that this is not for real. This is a deep fake or this is Russian influence or whatever it might be. having that authoritative voice coming from an own service in the peso model, what they’re doing right now by being on threads or what have you is it’s shared. just like any social media, you’re sharing somebody else’s space, but suddenly you’re doing the same kind of engagement in the same kind of platform, but it’s now owned media. And I think that’s a big deal. I think there are a lot of questions that have to be addressed. Not only does the party participate, what about staff? For example, I think about the US maintaining a mastodon instance or setting up an instance of one of the other services that accommodates the Fediverse and is every Senate aide going to be able to participate? Every House committee employee, not the elected officials, but the employees who work there. So, I mean, they’re the ones doing the research. They’re the ones writing the legislation and writing the reports. So they have a lot to contribute. On the other hand, nobody elected them. So, I mean, there’s… these types of issues that I think would have to be overcome and dealt with. And it would obviously be instance by instance that those things are considered. And you also, of course, have, are you going to have states with instance and within the states, are you going to have cities with instances and counties? You could end up with an awful lot of instances, but for people who care about what that particular entity is doing legislatively, regulatory wise, I think they’d be thoroughly pleased to be able to follow them just like they used to follow on Twitter, but know that what they’re looking at is authoritative. So I love the idea. @nevillehobson (19:14) Yeah, I find it extremely appealing, I must admit. Here in the UK, of course, I’ve already anticipated what’s likely to come with this idea in some quarters. we have this big thing in the UK that people call the nanny state interference from government, know, too much interference in your daily lives and rules and regulations and stuff. So I can imagine the calls call outs on this. Yet, you’ve you’ve mentioned something I think which is Shel Holtz (19:31) Yeah, yeah. @nevillehobson (19:43) probably three levels up, i .e. this then becomes a huge entity that has got all these different people and groups on it. That may well be where it goes to. But starting out though, and the pilot idea would make it very straightforward, I think, to prove the point or not, or disprove it even, that this is worthwhile and address the critics. So you’re not rolling it out suddenly to all at once. This is, you know, everything everywhere all at once kind of approach. This is actually a pilot where you might start with a group of MPs, but your point, I think, is a valid one. This should also include the staffers, the support infrastructure for those members of parliament and others, the, you know, the people who work behind the scenes in government, particularly in central government. And that’s where it sits for a while, until you prove the value of it. I think the key thing about it, which Andy does take pains to point out, is the trust aspect to it, which is totally aligned with addressing misinformation, disinformation and fakery at large, where because it’s on the Fediverse, anyone who has an account to handle at the Fediverse location at the instance, is still able to engage and talk to anyone else out there, anywhere else on the Fediverse. And now as we see coming, and indeed, Dan York is going to talk about this in his report about the developments at threads to connect things more with the Fediverse, that we now have the opportunity, and it didn’t exist until now, as an easy means to do something like this that is private on one hand, but at the other hand is very open because it’s connected to. public feds of us, but you’ve got the safeguards there. It’s almost like a by osmosis, you got a transparent two way process to it, but you control in a way that people have belief in the authenticity and the trustworthiness of the entity that you’re representing. So you’ll have a member of parliament could be you know, I’m not saying this is a domain name, it could be parliament dot social, it could be something dot parliament, whatever, whatever the technical aspects of it. are that make it worthwhile. I’ve not seen examples, Andy mentions these in his post, of institutions in the European Union who are doing this already, decentralized social network of their own. I’d love to see examples and hear how they’re going with those. But I do believe that, you know, I say to myself, why not do a pilot? Talk about it, sure, but get something going, it can be a very small group. Why not try it out? This seems a great idea. And like you said, Shell, this is not the ideas coming out of the UK and relate specifically to the UK parliament. This could be anywhere. And I think, you know, does it could it suggest perhaps that we suddenly end up with something that would be seen by many to be it was like a parallel internet? Maybe. Is that a bad thing? I mean, the internet is arguably in a precarious precipitous position of being splintered by state actors, by governments, notably Russia, China, for instance. Would it not be a bad thing if this was somehow embraced that way? again, that’s a bigger argument, perhaps, down another route. But this does have merit. think this idea is definitely worth talking about. Shel Holtz (23:15) Yeah, I’ll be accessible over the Internet. It’s not like you’d have to find a different way to connect to a whole different network. But one of the things that I think would be vital to making these things work would be to be very clear about what the role of this network is. Otherwise, I mean, if we had a U .S. Senate instance that had Republican and Democratic senators in it, it would turn into, in short order, some @nevillehobson (23:42) Ha ha ha. Shel Holtz (23:45) pretty vitriolic back and forth on this or not. @nevillehobson (23:48) Or not, or not as the case might be. I’m optimistic here, I’m optimistic here, okay. Shel Holtz (23:54) Yes, let’s let’s be optimistic. But I mean, in any country where there are two opposing factions sharing a network, that’s not the point of this. Right. It would have to be clear this is for sharing information and soliciting feedback from our constituents. This is this is not a partisan type of. @nevillehobson (24:14) Right, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be just that because you could have private aspects to all of this because you’re behind your own firewall in a sense that so you the rules of engagement you might set out. And maybe the and I’m thinking of taking getting everyone to shift from this toxic place we call X now that is not fit for purpose and looking at some of the comments I’ve read from some of the MPs who have quit. And more significantly, some of the general folks who’ve migrated away and arrived on threats, set aside some of the rather hysterical comments about things, but some sensible comments. And even some from people saying, you know, I’ve given up 80 ,000 followers on X to come here and I’m starting over. What a sense of relief that kind of comment is repeated everywhere. And I’m thinking this could well be a way to to kickstart a change in the toxicity that we’re seeing notably on X. It’s not the only place, but X by far is way out there. Even its proprietor is part of the toxicity and maybe and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon unless his investors boot him out. mean, reading in financial press about some of his investors are not happy at all with the 44 billion that they lent him. So who knows what’s going to happen there? But I’m seeing things that, you know, he’s cancelling, he’s closing down all the operations in Brazil because of some legal rulings down there. doesn’t like it, right? We shut down. So you’re treading on as a user, particularly a business user or a political user on a platform, that treading on very thin ice, it could all suddenly cave in or suddenly restrictions will happen. It’s not a place for the future at all. So this could well give impetus to people migrating en masse to a better looking place as long as it strikes, hence a pilot to see. This is not a rushed thing. This might take a while. Shel Holtz (26:14) And I think that you’re starting to see on threads the formation informally grassroots of a lot of communities. There’s journalism threads. I’ve been posting to internal comms threads and communities are building around these and people are introducing themselves. They’re saying, hi, journalism threads. I’m a reporter with, so that’s happening on threads where I see these instances having some real value is coming out and saying, let’s say we have a US Senate. @nevillehobson (26:32) Yeah. Shel Holtz (26:42) instance on mastodon. It would be saying today, Senate Bill 47 was introduced. These are the authors. Here’s a link to where you can read the whole bill. But in essence, this is what it’s designed to do. We would like your input. Let’s have some public comment. And it wouldn’t necessarily replace other channels for public comment. But you might start getting a lot of engagement from people who haven’t participated. through the more onerous channels and the more formal channels that are available to people. So I think for listening, this could be a really powerful thing and government could stand some listening. @nevillehobson (27:09) Yep, you might. Yeah, they could everywhere. Absolutely. I think it definitely is a great idea that Andy’s taken the time to write his post. I would encourage you to visit his blog, read the post, we’ll have a link to it in the show notes and see what you make of it and add your voice to is this worth it. Shel Holtz (27:39) Well, there are certain aspects of business that depend on people wanting to stand out and be noticed when designing certain types of products. Think fashion or cars, for example, product designers appeal to the desire of customers and prospective customers to stand out from the crowd. Ditto consulting services in a lot of instances, even something as simple as a gymnasium appeals to people who want to look good. And when we market these products or services, we rely on everything from user -generated content to influencers, all people who have taken steps to distinguish themselves from the crowd. So what would happen if we suddenly learned that people are more interested in being part of the crowd than standing out? That’s a growing number of people, according to a new study that tracked over a million people’s desire to stand out or be unique. from 2000 until 2020 and found a dramatic decline. This study provides some of the first evidence -based data comparing people’s motivation to stand out in today’s hyper -digital world compared to the early 2000s. The study looked at three dimensions of uniqueness, concern about how other people are gonna react to what you say or do or share, desire to break the rules, and the willingness to defend your beliefs in public. All three facets declined, but the most dramatic were people being hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly. That fell 6 .52 percent and becoming more concerned with what people think about you, which fell 4 .28 percent. The status suggests that individuals see that expressing uniqueness might compromise their ability to fit in with others or may even lead to being ostracized. The lead author of the study is William Chopic. an associate professor in the psychology department at Michigan State University. And he says, a 6 .52 % decline is a dramatic population change in as short as 20 years. Our data confirms a lot of institutions, lot of intuitions that people have. It’s not just in their heads that we inhabit punitive spaces. Indeed, people are afraid of drawing too much attention to themselves, potentially because doing so leaves them vulnerable. or at risk of being ostracized or canceled. This study acknowledges that people have valid fears and concerns about standing out so much so that they’re willing to, they’re less willing to do so. Now the researchers say that this decline in wanting to stand out has major societal implications. According to Chalpik, it’s really important to have people willing to go against the grain, say the occasional unpopular thing, challenge groupthink, highlight the need to compromise with people different than us. and not cover up the diversity of options and opinions and people because they’re too scared to stand out. Withholding who we authentically are by trying so hard to blend in can ironically backfire and lead to guilt, anxiety, and sometimes even more animosity between people. Now, the societal implications are considerable if people aren’t willing to stand out, but communicators have their more immediate concerns. If you need to encourage people to stand out, what can you do? Well, you can create campaigns that encourage customers to showcase their unique style or creativity. People may respond to a request more than just motivate themselves to put themselves out there. You can work with your influencers to get them to encourage their followers to stick their necks out. You can share stories from stakeholders that express their uniqueness or how they stand out, even if they didn’t think that was the point of the story. Encouraging reviews and testimonials is another way. to get people to put themselves out there in a more benign way, contests or another. Neville, I know you’re not too concerned about standing out, but how would you go about getting someone else to, who maybe used to be more willing, but is now being more circumspect about it? @nevillehobson (31:42) It’s a good question. think I would start really by saying, what do we mean by standing out in public? I’ve never looked at it this way, I have to say myself even. So I don’t really think about doing something that makes me stand out. I do think about things that I’ve got a point of view, and I’m not afraid to express it, even if it might not be popular, although that’s rare, to be honest, I don’t do politics publicly in public spaces. rarely, I might comment on as I did at the UK election, talking about poll results and stuff like that. But I certainly tend not to venture opinion about this or that person or this or that policy about a company or a government agency or whatever it might be on a public place. And the last place I’d even consider that is X that’s effect. But I do tend to kind of show my true self if you will, in private groups. notably on LinkedIn and sometimes on Facebook. Facebook ones tend to be more personal stuff that really does interest me. know, automotive, software, WordPress, a lot of that. And so I don’t see it as standing out. Maybe that’s, I’ve never really looked at that way. And I truly don’t care about what people think of me at all. I don’t, I honestly don’t. I could care less. in the broad sense, not to sound too kind of arrogant or silly about it. But I don’t post myself on the basis of I hope someone’s going to like this and therefore by some by some some kind of subconscious method, they’ll like me to know that never occurs to be that kind of thinking. So to your point to your question, someone who’s not doing this, it truly would be a it depends. It certainly isn’t Hey, you need to get out there and expose yourself more to different opinions and so forth and join in conversation online. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone at all. It would depend on the like the famous it depends answer. What your goal is, what is it that you’re going to engage in conversation with what you expect to gain from it. But the survey is interesting. I have to admit when I was reading it, the talk about being canceled or being ostracized. mean, really, that to me sounds pretty extreme. I’d certainly see that as probably a good thing if it was to do with someone who did something really bad in others’ eyes or was a jerk or something. good example might be, for instance, currently a hot topping in the news in the UK, a footballer in a Premier League team, now a presenter on one of the BBC shows and the sports. presenter amongst across a wide range of media outlets. I was fired by the BBC last week. It was all a bit mysterious over complaints made about sexually oriented messaging sent to female colleagues. And he denied it and get lawyers on you. So this made the headlines for three or four days. And now today is all apologizing, say you made a mistake. It was very silly. Then I’m reading online. that this that company that company three other companies all cancel the contracts the PR agency who handled him have fired him as well and his reputation is gone. He has been canceled without any doubt. But that was because he did something that goes against the norms of accepted behavior everywhere, particularly in this current climate where again, this is the power of social networks that amplify the reaction to someone who does something really bad. So there’s that and that I see fits definitely in this, but that’s an extreme example. So from a business point of view, particularly, think, you know, I’d say to someone think twice, be careful if you’re going to go out there and put yourself out there as I’ve got an opinion about X and here it is. One reason I tend not to do that is just simply observing what happens to others who do do that on a public channel like X. that you get the trolls, everyone with a grudge, you name it, or just nasty people pile in. And I think there’s absolutely no benefit to anyone to be part of that situation at all. So I think you need to be really careful doing this. Shel Holtz (35:54) One of the things that this study didn’t get into that I could read was the cause for this decline. And I have to wonder if the heightened vitriol in social networks has something to do with it. mean, 20 years ago, 24 years ago now in 2020, when they started tracking this data, you could get out there and talk about how you feel about something, what you think about something, your opinion without @nevillehobson (36:08) Yeah, I bet. Shel Holtz (36:23) worrying too much about being trolled for it or attacked or vilified for it. On the other hand, I think back to things that were going on in 2020, go, no, that was happening back then. mean, this is not new. And then I remember I was listening to an episode of a podcast. It’s a podcast I love called 99 % Invisible. And they were talking about the paint color for cars. And the fact that these days there are really only about four or five colors available. And the most popular color, you want to guess the most popular? I think this was in the US, but I would suspect that it might be true in the UK. What’s the number one selling color of new cars? It’s white. And I remember when I was growing up, cars were all colors. It was the full spectrum of the rainbow. @nevillehobson (37:11) What? Yeah. Yeah. Shel Holtz (37:21) And now you got white, black, gray, tan, maybe a metallic blue or something, but not a lot of color. And why? It’s because, and they were explicit about this, the experts that they had on this episode, they said, because people don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to be the red car on the road. They want to look like all the other cars on the road. And when I was growing up, everybody wanted to stand out. They wanted their car to be different. @nevillehobson (37:40) Yeah. Yeah. Shel Holtz (37:51) So there’s probably something else going on here that is not necessarily to do with trends in social media. @nevillehobson (38:01) Yeah, I think it is a societal issue. think it talks about the survey, you know, the facets they talk about declining, the most dramatic people’s being hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly. And then there’s a bit about being concerned about what people think of the hesitant to defend their beliefs publicly is in my example, you don’t do that because you will not have reasonable comments challenging you. You might get lots agreeing with you, but you’re going to get an awful lot who are in false rage and outrage attacking you to the extent that it’s now common to hear people saying that, know, I’ve canceled my, I’ve shut down my account and so forth because I said this and said that and I started getting death threats or even message people say, we know where you live. mean, God, this has really got to that state. So that, right. Shel Holtz (38:56) flat out doxing you and sharing where you live. @nevillehobson (38:59) Right, and I think this is likely to be a significant reason for that decline. Shel Holtz (39:05) For communicators, again, this is a trend. It’s a 20 year trend. It’s precipitous. The numbers are significant. And if your products and services rely on this, or if your marketing relies on it, it’s just something to start thinking about. @nevillehobson (39:23) Well, in episode 418 of this podcast in mid -July, we discussed how a company called Tractor Supply caved into pressure from a politically motivated activist to abandon its values, leading some employees to quit and diverse members of the company’s customer base to speak up. We were quite critical of the company’s U -turn on DEI, that’s diversity, equity and inclusion. Titling the show notes for that episode, these are our rock solid beliefs, unless you don’t like them. Well, it’s more in a similar vein, according to a report by Axios published on the 22nd of August. The report highlights how corporate executives and boards are intensifying their communication strategies to brace for potential attacks from activists, increasingly linking business performance with DEI policies. This preparation is driven by the growing political and social backlash against DEI initiatives, which Axios says have become a contentious issue in the corporate world. Many companies are finding themselves under pressure as activists argue that DEI policies may negatively impact business outcomes, leading to more aggressive scrutiny of these programs. Some corporations in the US, such as Harley Davidson and John Deere, have already started to scale back their DEI commitments in response to the pressure. Axios says this trend suggests that the business community is increasingly concerned about the potential risks associated with maintaining robust DEI initiatives. in the current polarized environment. Axios’s report suggests that for many public companies, the question is not whether they will face attacks related to their DEI policies, but when. As a result, there is a heightened focus on how these companies communicate about their DEI efforts, both internally and externally to mitigate potential fallout and maintain stakeholder confidence. But does this reflect a complete picture, I wonder? DEI efforts may be under attack. But companies aren’t retreating from commitments, according to the results of a survey reported in USA Today in July, that you discovered, Shel. So maybe the overall picture is more complex than it appears. Shel Holtz (41:32) Yeah, I think what you get is a lot of reporting by anecdote when a company the size of a John Deere, a Harley Davidson, Microsoft is another one that has announced that they were closing up some of their DEI departments and shifting their focus. A lot of it based on their claiming that they have achieved some of those goals. I don’t know if that’s necessarily accurate. I think if you ask some of the… protected classes in the organization. they’ve achieved equity, they might push back on that. But the study from USA Today was conducted by the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals and your cause from BlackBod and shared exclusively with USA Today found that 96 % of corporate social impact professionals in 125 major companies say DEI commitments have either stayed the same, that’s 83%, or increased, that’s 13%. So across the business spectrum, it doesn’t seem that this anti -woke backlash that has led these companies to retreat is having that big an impact on that many businesses. However, Nearly a third of the executives that were surveyed say they are describing DEI work differently now. 17 % said they talk about it less with people outside the organization. So I think people recognize that this is a contentious issue and how they frame it externally in conversation. They’re being a little more cautious about it, but they are continuing to pursue. pursue those DEI goals internally. And the reason is, I am convinced this isn’t what is reflected in this report, but I have to believe it’s because it’s good business. It’s because you get better results when you do this. Your company performance is better. Your productivity is up. Your culture improves. I’ve never heard an organization say, that we got better business results. I’ll take that back. know Tractor Supply actually had their stock price go up when they did this. I’m not sure what that says about their investors. So there are outliers and anomalies in this case, but mostly what you see in the data is that diversity pays off. And that’s why I don’t see this as a woke issue or an anti -woke issue. It’s just a good business issue. @nevillehobson (43:54) You Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I was reading the USA Today story that you’re referencing, and I’m actually a bit surprised Axios didn’t didn’t didn’t take in some of the stuff in this survey that the USA Today is, is commenting on their report came out in July accidents came out just a few days ago. So it’s puzzled me a bit, because USA Today does go into detail, for instance, about john Deere, talking about what they are now doing. What What is the backlash producing? That’s quite interesting. It’s missing from Exos’s report. So maybe they just plucked that bit out, which seems to be what they’ve done, I think. But it does mention, though, that in the examples of those who are changing behavior as a result of the backlash, that they’re stepping away from being open and talking about their DEI initiatives. that were all a big deal until very recently. So they are worried about this kind of publicity, I suppose, and activism that is going on. That’s reflective, I suppose, think about what we just discussed in the topic prior to this, that it’s kind of fits into that too, about the concern about you be attacked for something. And it’s noble what you’re doing, and it’s worthy, and yet there’s a pile of people externally who will hound you because of it. and come up with all sorts of statistics and support articles to show why you’re bad. That’s new, I suspect, in the sense of it’s now completely scalable and global. Anyone with an internet connection can read all that kind of stuff. So it is a backlash. And indeed, USA Today talks about DEI policies were rushed into existence in 2020 and 2021, and they’re now increasingly out of the microscope. So maybe there’s something in there about, these rushed out too fast? The interesting thing though, I think in the USA Today report as well, I mean, it’s all very interesting, is the alarm bells that I see, as opposed to hear, I I see alarm bells in what they’re saying, is what’s going to happen if Trump wins the US presidential election. The headline in their subhead piece talks about Trump and Vance talk about dismantling DEI. And he’s promised to reverse as he calls it, the Biden administration’s woke equity programs, as Trump describes them. Every institution in America is under attack from this Marxist concept of equity. Good grief. So that’s what’s coming if this guy wins. And so I think this is possibly also a factor in organizational behavior to the activism, perhaps. don’t know. It’s probably more complex picture than that, Shell, but it certainly isn’t good. Shel Holtz (46:50) Yeah. I suspect if you ask Donald Trump to define Marxism, he wouldn’t be able to give you a coherent answer. But this is an interesting @nevillehobson (47:04) Which is worse if he wins because he’ll be in office having a clue what he’s doing, right? Shel Holtz (47:08) That’s right. But this is an interesting tightrope to walk because on the one hand, you do have these forces that have framed this as an anti -woke activity, trying to put an end to DEI. They have framed all kinds of negative outcomes from DEI that I don’t believe are accurate or even honest. @nevillehobson (47:13) Yeah. Shel Holtz (47:33) But it has led organizations to want to be more quiet about it. On the other hand, who are organizations recruiting from right now? The answer is Gen Z. What is the number one most articulated value of Gen Z, diversity and inclusivity? So it seems to me that at least for your employer brand, you want to be out there touting these things because that’s what matters to the generation. that is graduating from college and coming into the workforce in droves right now. So it seems to me that if we’re going to try to avoid being the subject of kid rock blowing up our products with high powered weapons by a lakeside on X, and on the other hand, we want to appeal to the best and the brightest coming out of universities, you’re gonna have to talk out of both sides of your mouth and it’s. @nevillehobson (48:15) Thank Shel Holtz (48:27) going to be interesting seeing how we manage to do that. My recommendation is if these are your values, stand up for them. Screw the anti -woke mob. @nevillehobson (48:40) Well, interestingly, again, in the USA Today piece, they have this interesting little paragraph here. They say last week, and this is July, so it’ll be in July, the Society of Human Resource Management said it was dropping the word equity and would use the acronym IND. Their CEO, Johnny Taylor, told USA Today in May that his organization planned to lead with inclusion going forward. So inclusion, not diversity. that could be significant that shift in perception and behavior. So factor that into what’s going on. Shel Holtz (49:12) Well, they each mean different things. the idea that D, E, and I are all synonyms is ridiculous. Otherwise, it would just be D. @nevillehobson (49:15) Right. They do. That’s part of the argument, isn’t it? mean, this isn’t helpful though, it seems to me, to the overall picture of it all. So it’s under a threat. So yeah, there we have it. Shel Holtz (49:27) No. @nevillehobson (49:42) So can say, well, before we continue, I need to go to the loo. So let me just put you on pause on the audio and I’ll be back. Shel Holtz (49:46) Go for @nevillehobson (51:19) Okeydokey. Shel Holtz (51:22) So you’re gonna pick up on Dan’s report, right? @nevillehobson (51:24) yeah, yep. Thanks, Dan. Great report. In particular, what you talked about on threads and the Fediverse. I’ve been experimenting a bit in the past week, actually, on seeing what happens to threads posts when they get spread out across the Fediverse via Macedon in particular. I’ve still got some work to do on that. It’s still very much technically focused. And so most people aren’t going to want to get involved in that. The big deal, think, is that the lack of being able to reply to anyone who comments on your threads post they see out there in mastodon somewhere. You see the fact that someone on the Fediverse has commented. That’s all it can tell you. And finding the comment and your original post is really a challenge, as I’ve discovered. So that needs to get better, and I’m sure it will. So I think when I see people criticizing all of this, just be patient because Meta are working at this. And as you pointed out, Dan, they’ve been adding a lot of functionality recently. So this is not a standstill project. There’s nowhere near finished yet. And more good things are coming. A big one to me is Fedover sharing of WordPress posts via threads that takes that will be doable from the 28th of August, so it’s in a few days time. So that means you publish a post on your WordPress blog and set up the function that does this. It’ll post it to threads. can do that now, in fact, but then it will then send it on its further journey out to the third of us from threads, which currently doesn’t happen. Now, that could be a big deal that gets your content out there automatically. You don’t have to do an awful lot. The only worry I’ve got about some of this stuff, such as being able to simultaneously post messages to, you know, multiple channels such as buffer introduced on threads, blue sky and Macedon simultaneously. Do you really want to do that? I often think about, I’ve got Fedover sharing enabled on my threads account. It’s only available in a handful of countries, if I recall correctly, UK being one, the US has always been available. And it’s a useful feature, but sometimes I wonder, is that what I want to be doing? Here’s my post on threads and there’s that same post that’s then out there on Macedon somewhere. I have a plugin for Macedon on my WordPress blogs, I end up with two, I got to switch one off, but things like that. You need to have a better choice on how to deal with that. It needs to be more easy for users to use. But it’s all coming and it’s really good hearing what you had to say about ThreadStand, so thanks. Shel Holtz (54:07) Here’s a fun fact. Disabling social media comments can negatively impact the reputations of online influencers and public figures. First off, let’s acknowledge that public figures, Oprah Winfrey, Selena Gomez, they’ve restricted access to their social media comments in response to online criticism. This decision makes sense. Those in the public eye are often highly scrutinized and disabling comments can be a first line of defense. just to protect their mental health. But the influencers you’re working with, whether they’re internal, like an executive thought leader, for instance, or external, you should think twice before agreeing to let them shut off comments because they don’t like hearing what people think. We know about the unintended consequences of disabling comments from research. It was shared in a recent Harvard Business Review article. Across seven studies, it was found that online influencers ranging from digital content creators to celebrities turned influencers are perceived as less sincere, less likable and less persuasive when they disable their social media comments. Participants in these studies who saw the posts with disabled… time codes too. Participants in these studies who saw posts with disabled comments rated the influencer on average as less sincere, likable, and persuasive compared to those who saw the same posts with enabled comments. What’s more, it was found that participants were less willing to engage with influencers’ affiliate marketing when comments had been turned off. That means they’re not going to click to buy whatever it was that that influencer was pitching. So how should influencers manage their comment sections? The article identifies three important considerations. First, understand the importance of being open to audience feedback. Consumers tend to feel like they have personal relationships with influencers, and some even come to regard them as friends. Establishing a perceived sense of intimacy with their followers allows influencers to gain their audience’s trust and increases their persuasiveness, but these benefits come with greater expectations from their viewership. Second, disabling comments is worse than leaving comments publicly visible, even if they’re horribly negative. While you may be trying justifiably to shut down the onslaught of negative feedback, especially after a personal transgression or a public humiliation, doing that just produces the opposite effect. Finally, if your influencers find themselves needing a break from the feedback they’re post produce, advise them to be transparent about that. It’s worth noting that online influencers disable social media comments not only to avoid negative feedback following a specific incident, but also just to protect their wellbeing. Fortunately, the article shows that consumers can be empathetic to those needs. In fact, two of the experiments show that the backlash against disabling comments is weakened or even eliminated when influencers are grieving a personal loss, say the death of a family pet. or transparently acknowledging the need to take a mental health break. Influencers have become targets of online negativity and how they respond to this feedback that can have important ramifications for their personal brands and the effectiveness of their endorsement of your brand, your product, your service. We need to be strategic in how we handle their wish to avoid hearing what their followers think. @nevillehobson (57:59) Yeah, it’s interesting. I read this article, I scanned it, let’s say when I saw it come out, I assumed it was talking about things like blog posts, where you turn commenting off and it’s not. Now I’m reading it again, listen to what you’re saying. This is about posts on social networks, not about stuff like blogs or websites. That would be a different thing if it were. And I agree with much of what I heard you outline here about disabling comments as well. And I think just my own experience on things that I’ve done recently, I’ve commented on or wanted to comment on what someone has been saying and it’s not possible to do it. So you’re frustrated, where are you gonna go to give you a point of view? You don’t and that might therefore would impact what I thought about that person or why they turned it off. Probably because of the trolls and the hate is what I would think possibly. So it’s… This does make it quite clear and has some credible data to back it up, I think, where it talks about the importance of being open to audience feedback. And I think that is the kind of number one. Indeed, it is the first one of the list that you read out and understand the psychology of it. I can see this. Consumers often feel they have a personal relationship with influencers and some even come to regard them as friends. And I can see that in some of the people that I follow who have large followings on places like Instagram. So turning it off, yeah, I can see this. So it’s good to see this kind of thing. I think if you need a break, be transparent, that again makes sense. But in the context of the big thing, I’m going back to the conversation we had earlier in this episode talking about, you know, being visible and standing up for your own beliefs, et cetera, and the risks of that. And I think you’ve got to take that into account as well about being transparent wholly about why you’re taking a break, for instance. I I remember as you will show back in those early days of social media, when you know, I used to do it, the tool called foursquare in particular is check in everywhere you went. And anyone, yeah, anyone who had either good or ill will against you would know your movements, everything. Shel Holtz (1:00:08) Be the mayor. @nevillehobson (1:00:17) And it became not fast realization, but shortly over time that this wasn’t a good idea to be so open and transparent because there are people out there who will bear you ill will. And that was, you know, milestone marker to the innocence and openness of social media in those early days. And now here we are 20 years later, 25 years later, even, that you wouldn’t think of doing such a thing, you would be very guarded about what you share publicly, most sensible people would. Even privately, you don’t know what someone’s going to do with that information. And so nowadays, for instance, you’ve now got screenshots and all that kind of stuff people can do. And these are tools everyone has access to. And it’s very easy. Back then, it wasn’t. You needed special tools and not everyone had them. So be transparent. I think, you know, I saw something on X the other day, by the way, I do pay attention to what goes on at X, but it’s about once a week I go in there to look at something specific or more frequently if it’s something I’m researching. I noticed something the other day from someone who’s an artist posted on X that a pet had died, a favorite pet, member of the family, very emotive post. The comments would make you sick. They truly, truly would. Evil people with disgusting comments. That’s the risk factor on a platform like that. Don’t see it on Facebook, although it does exist, but not to that extent, not like that. So you’ve got to be careful. I wonder, indeed, I guess my point is to say, I’m wondering if this is strictly true in the totality of what the Harvard Business Review’s report is saying, given that, that we talked about, about standing out, et cetera. The risks are quite high, quite significant in doing that as a matter of course. Maybe that needs to be mentioned in here as well. Shel Holtz (1:02:14) Yeah, and of course the study did point out that having the negative comments is actually not as bad as shutting everything down in terms of the perception that it creates among your followers. But I just found a post, I was remembering you were talking about shutting off the comments on blogs, which is fairly routine these days. I know Seth Godin is among the folks who has a blog that you can’t comment on, but I remember Back in 2007, Dave Weiner shut off the comments on his blog. He said, this is a place for me to share my thoughts. In fact, he said, see if I can find it here. He says, yeah, basically he said, you can say what you think without being shouted down. This makes it possible for unpopular ideas to be. @nevillehobson (1:02:55) But did he say like, I don’t care what you think, this is my place? Shel Holtz (1:03:05) expressed and if you know history the most important ideas are often the unpopular ones. That’s what’s important about blogs not that people can comment on your ideas and as long as they can start their own blog there will be no shortage of places to comment. That’s what he said if you want to comment do it on your blog. The problem is that there’s no connectivity there. Am I going to follow a link and go read the post that he’s talking about or do I want to see what people think about the post that was there? And the quote I just read you was on a post that was written July 30th, 2007 by Rand Fishkin under the headline, You’re Wrong, Joel Spolsky and Dave Weiner. Blog comments have incredible value. So this is hardly a new argument. It just seems to have shifted from blogs where publishing without comment has become fairly routine to social networking spaces where engagement with comments seems to be the whole point. @nevillehobson (1:04:00) Yeah, it’s true. And I think when I was recently, I kind of rejigged my own blog, a new design, all this stuff. And when I was preparing for all of that, I was looking through some of the earlier posts in the pre 2010 era. And almost every single one is absolutely peppered with comments, including the track backs and the ping backs. That’s a hallmark of blogs, particularly WordPress. And that functionality, by the way, still exists. And that’s where discussions took place, but they were all connected. And that was where you had polite discourse. Rarely was it, certainly nothing like you have today. So we had a shift and as you said, it’s now moved to this and now the debate is talking about this. I actually hadn’t thought about it until we’re this discussion that you could turn off comments on places like Instagram, Facebook. I’ve never done that. I didn’t know you could. I’d never thought about it even. So. Yeah, that’s changed the landscape quite a bit. think the ability to do that, the fact people are doing it, is a big shift. Shel Holtz (1:05:06) Yeah, so just something to keep in mind in your communication planning. If you’re working particularly with executives who would rather not hear it for a couple of weeks while they’re busy with something else, for example, just have this in your back pocket is data to share. You you can turn it off, but it’s going to have an impact on how people perceive you. @nevillehobson (1:05:25) Yeah, good point. OK, in the upcoming US presidential election, Democrat Kamala Harris’s campaign. Had you heard about that, Shel? OK. Shel Holtz (1:05:33) I’m sorry, there’s an election? No, I’m one of those people who doesn’t pay attention until after Labor Day. @nevillehobson (1:05:41) Yeah, we had one in the UK, by the way. Did you know that? We had one in the UK recently. Shel Holtz (1:05:44) I think I saw that on a news crawl. That’s right. John Oliver probably mentioned it. @nevillehobson (1:05:48) On the comedy show. Well, in the US. Yeah, yeah, he would have done. So in the US, Kamala Harris’s campaign is not just targeting Gen Z voters, many of whom will be voting for the first time is redefining how political engagement happens online. I found this a really interesting aspect to political campaigning and communication. What Kamala Harris’s campaign is doing both she herself and her role, but her communication team and what they have enabled. This is really quite interesting. And the Gen Z targeting is significant. The Gen Z is often called the first digitally native generation. We’ve said that quite a few times. It represents a critical voting bloc of young people born between 1997 and 2012, who grew up with smartphones and social media, making them a key demographic for shaping the election outcome. Unlike her Republican opponent Donald Trump, who traditionally tapped into the internet’s darker fringes, Harris’s team has mastered the native formats of platforms like TikTok, Gen Z’s most favored digital space, with a team of young influencers and strategists, nearly all of them under 25. The Harris campaign is leveraging memes, trends and viral content to connect authentically with younger audiences. This strategy was evident at the Democratic National Convention last week. where over 200 influencers offered an intimate behind the scenes look, further amplifying Harris’s message. Harris’s digital presence isn’t just about following trends though, it’s about creating them. For example, the Brat meme, inspired by British singer Charlie XCX’s album, embodies confidence and a bold carefree attitude with its lime green cover art and aesthetic, traits that resonate strongly with Gen Z. The Coconut Dream meme, based on a viral quote from Harris, has also been humorously embraced by her supporters. By strategically co -opting these memes, the campaign has significantly enhanced Harris’s appeal to younger internet savvy voters, driving massive engagement that far surpasses Trump’s efforts. Furthermore, the strategic use of influencers at the DNC exemplifies Harris’s innovative approach. These influencers, credentialed alongside traditional media, provided a personalized, immersive experience for their followers. bridging the gap between politics and everyday life in a way that resonates with the digital first generation. The campaign’s metrics are a testament to its success. Over 57 million viewers across TV and online platforms for the first night of the convention, with 30 million views on content created by influencers alone. This level of engagement suggests that Harris’s digital first strategy could significantly mobilize younger voters, potentially tipping the scales in the upcoming election. As we move closer to the election on November the 5th, it’s clear that the battle for the White House is being fought not only on the ground, but also across social media feeds where Harris currently holds a significant edge. This campaign is not just about winning an election. It’s about reshaping how digital strategies can be used to engage and mobilize voters in the digital age, setting a new standard for future campaigns globally. While the Harris campaign’s digital strategy is clearly leading the way, It’s important to remember that this election is far from decided. With over 70 days still to go, the race remains incredibly tight and many influential Democrats are cautioning against overconfidence. A lot can change in the final stretch, making every move in this digital battleground crucial. Shel Holtz (1:09:26) Yeah, this campaign is not going to be one with memes. In fact, I even saw a headline, I think it was in the New York Times, it was yesterday or today that said joy is not a strategy because people have been talking about how this has been a joyful campaign. But the fact is it’s a campaign where every vote is going to count, every vote is going to be needed. and getting young people out to vote. And this is a block that traditionally doesn’t vote. And they certainly were not enthused about Joe Biden, rightly or wrongly. So the fact that they are motivated to engage with some pretty interesting content that is being created by some pretty savvy digital media people is perhaps what’s going to get them out to vote and maybe even out to volunteer. Knock on doors. make phone calls, write postcards, all those things that volunteers do as part of the ground game. And you got to hand it to them for actually understanding what resonates with Gen Z. I did hear and I don’t remember where I heard it. was on a podcast or on a news program. But the Harris campaign’s media expenditure is 75 % digital. Only 25 % is TV. That is a complete reversal from what every campaign has been before this. So they get how important this is. And it doesn’t hurt that both candidates, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, come off pretty well. in these types of videos. Tim Walz has been on TikTok for a while as predates any even consideration that he might be on a national ticket. So he’s been out there at county fairs holding pigs. And, you you’ve probably seen the one with his daughter where he says, we’re going to celebrate with a hamburger. And she says, I’m vegetarian. He says, Turkey then. And she says, that’s meat. And he says, not in Minnesota. @nevillehobson (1:11:38) Very good. Shel Holtz (1:11:41) You know, and there was one from some retail shop. I think it was a pizza place. And it was the pizza place that shot the video, but it was him having this really, really natural conversation with the people in the shop. And I just saw that last night contrasted with JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, going into a donut shop and having a really kind of strained and unpleasant interaction with the staff there. So the fact that they know how to do this, they know how to come off well in these videos. There was another one that I heard went viral. was just Kamala Harrison and Tim Walz having a conversation about when she called him to inform him that he had been her choice for vice president, but he didn’t recognize the phone number. So he let her go to voicemail. The conversation was very natural and authentic. And by the way, what’s number four on the list of things that matter to Gen Z that they value authenticity and individualism. So they’re right on top of this. And I think this is going to bring a lot of people to the polls who might’ve otherwise sat it out. @nevillehobson (1:12:49) Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. Absolutely. I think that’s worth a point emphasizing that they truly get this they do much better than their opponents. From the people in her campaign team, they’re all youthful, they’re all active themselves on all the platforms that they’re using. They have a clear idea of what they want to achieve. And they have a strategy that they can execute on. One of the links you’ll find in the show notes is a report on CNN that has profiles, if you like, of people in the campaign is most interesting to read that where you’ve got you’ve got comments like one staffer talking about their role is to build the windmill and the the current Vice President Kamala Harris, her role is to blow the wind. I think, yeah, that’s a good kind of metaphor, I suppose. But it actually is true, they are building the infrastructure to communicate and the means by which you can get a message is out, and she’ll have help doing it. But the bottom line is she is the prime messenger. And she is very believable. The Guardian had a terrific analysis of interviews with some of the influences at the DNC. And I want to mention, I want to quote a couple of them here, because they had some interesting things to say. One called Alexis Williams, a TikToker with 262 ,000 followers on that network. She posts about fashion, STEM and social justice. She emphasized the challenge of bridging the gap between Gen Z and older politicians at the convention, noting that while young influencers understand the appeal of using trendy musical jokes, older politicians often don’t get it. She also highlighted their unique access, which often surpasses traditional journalists. So they were getting into places that some of the traditional journalists couldn’t get into. Corey Aversa is a 51 year old publicist and content creator from Philadelphia with 130 ,000 followers on TikTok described his content style as making viewers feel like they’re right there with him, capturing the excitement of being up close to VIPs at the convention that connected with the Gen Z followers in his network. Heather Gardner, a 36 year old TikToker. with 394 ,000 followers on that network, pointed out the distinctiveness of influencer content, which offers a more personalized and varied perspective compared to the predictable coverage of mainstream news outlets. She stressed though that good vibes alone aren’t enough. The content must also be insightful and educational, and I would add, delivers perhaps an unspoken call to action to get out there and vote. So. You look at these elements of what’s going on and you can see they truly have something that the other side don’t seem to. That said, you know, this is the picture now, 70 days out. And I would be very surprised indeed if the Trump campaign is kind of sat on their hands until November the 5th. So they’re going to come out with something, who knows? Hopefully for the Democrats, it’s just Trump ranting. If they get smart and do strategy, that could be a problem. But this is really interesting seeing how they have done this at some significant scale of mobilizing almost an army of supporters to tell Kamala Harris’s story as well as she telling it, but telling it in their words to their communities and engaging directly with them with the confidence that they, they got permission, B, they got connections and the support to do it. And they believe they can do this and they are. This is really quite phenomenal seeing this unveiled before our very eyes. Shel Holtz (1:16:40) And lest anybody think we’re just sitting here gushing about a Democratic candidate, I would first remind everybody that Neville’s in the UK and doesn’t have skin in this game. But second, this is a communication podcast. And what the Harris campaign is doing is a clinic for any marketer looking to try to appeal to Gen Z. You got to look at the authenticity of the kind of posts that they are contributing. You’ve got to look at the people that they are. bringing into their camp to post on their behalf. You’ve got to look at how fast they are moving to jump on memes that have emerged out of popular culture, like the brat thing with Charlie XCX, like the coconut tree meme. They’re capitalizing on things. And by the way, some of these are things that their opposition tried to turn into a negative, but they had already jumped on it and turned it into a positive. So There are lessons to be learned here and applied outside of the political arena. And I don’t care if you’re the most rabid Trump supporter, if you’re a marketer and you’re not paying attention to the way the Harris campaign is appealing to Gen Z, then you’re gonna be less effective on your job. @nevillehobson (1:17:39) Yeah. Shel Holtz (1:17:56) Well, what’s one thing we haven’t talked about yet in this episode? Let me think here. AI. The rise of generative AI is accelerating everything it touches in the tech industry by orders of magnitude. AI -powered search engines like Perplexity are gaining mainstream momentum. And what’s feeling the pressure as a result of all of this? The age -old industry of search engine optimization. @nevillehobson (1:18:02) you Shel Holtz (1:18:26) Now, before we dive into the trends that will drive SEO for the next year or so, let’s take a quick look at how search has changed in the last three decades. There is a search expert, he goes by Demib, that is Mikkel Demib Svensson, who recalls the switch to mobile, which was first prophesied around Y2K, shortly after the introduction of the wireless application protocol that allowed mobile devices to connect to the internet. It was another decade before Google adopted a mobile first philosophy and content publishers adopted mobile friendly user experiences. Now, DMIB sees upwards of 90 % mobile traffic in certain verticals like women’s fashion. So what trends should marketers and communicators be keeping an eye on in 2024 and 2025? Here are five things to watch. D -MIB calls AI a fundamental shift in technology that is maybe as big, maybe even bigger than the internet. He points to AI powering chatbots, search engines, Google AI overviews, and more. In a HubSpot survey of over 100 US -based SEO professionals, 73 % either strongly or somewhat agreed that AI tools, features, or solutions are becoming an important part of the company’s SEO strategy. So what are the trends communicators should be paying attention to when it comes to driving traffic to their websites or getting eyes on content? Well, first there’s zero click search. With the launch of Google’s AI overviews in May of this year, zero click search shifted from theoretical concern to waking nightmare for some people. However, DMib, he’s that search engine expert, believes that a zero click world is not likely to happen as people still want to buy products that are actually only available on certain web shops, and they want perspectives from various news outlets. Still, we’ve been living in the world of one true answer ever since Amazon unveiled the Echo line of products. We talked about this whole one true answer concept a couple of times on the show when the Echo was new. So I’d still be trying to get my company name in those AI generated results. I can’t remember where I read this. I think it was a LinkedIn post, but the author said, He was astounded when he asked a number of prospective customers who contacted him how they learned about his company. And they said it was in an AI chat bot’s response. Remember, AI scoops up web content. So the more you’re out there on the web in the right context, the more likely you are to show up in the response to a Gen. AI prompt. And that leads us to the next trend, which is ranch style SEO. Clear Scope CEO Bernard Wang made ripples in the SEO world with a blog post he called, Why Ranch Style SEO is Your Future -Proof Content Strategy? Huang says that rather than focusing on long, in -depth articles, publishers should disaggregate content into precise, digestible pieces that strategically align with the user’s search journey. This goes hand in hand with advice that we’ve seen about follow -up search intent, which is the next point. Amanda Sellers, HubSpot’s manager, of EN blog strategy emphasizes that the importance of considering follow -up searches is growing. Even with the increase in zero -click queries, some users won’t be satisfied with the initial answer and will refine their journey with follow -up searches. Anticipating follow -up search intent is key to content strategy in 2024 and 2025. And I would add that the experts out there on using ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and the other frontier large language models are all telling us, don’t type in a question and then use the answer. Have a conversation, use follow -up questions. You get additional information. It could include what your organization strove to get into those search results. Next trend is video SEO. Expect more growth in that area as consumers increasingly turn to YouTube. to research their pain points and seek human perspectives. Rory Hope is HubSpot’s head of EN growth and says that SEOs should be monitoring the search results pages for target keywords and topics to see which ones have video carousels and coordinate with media teams to create relevant video content. The through line in these trends is that AI is driving a lot of change in the search landscape, but SEO is alive and well, and the human element is still vital to search. To accommodate these new trends, our experts recommend that… Yeah, it’s not our experts. To accommodate these new trends, experts are recommending that marketers and SEOs write for their audience, embrace AI -based tools, monitor search engine results pages for target keywords and topics with video carousels, and deepen their topical coverage and sharpen their editorial angles. @nevillehobson (1:23:49) all eminently sensible suggestion shell. I was struck by one thing reading the HubSpot article right at the very beginning where they introduced the idea of how the search landscape has changed and talk about when Google search appeared in 1998, which it did. I remember when it came out, I switched immediately from, I think, AltaVista I was using could have been one of those others, but this was magical to today. But the interesting thing was a one line comment in that intro. An entire generation has grown up never knowing a time before Google. That’s our Gen Z. So it’s fascinating. The evolution is very interesting, I think. The trends, the zero click search thing, I’d never really kind of thought deeply about that, but I can see why that is important to pay attention to what’s happening in that area. I think the… Shel Holtz (1:24:25) This is true. @nevillehobson (1:24:47) Other point to me that’s that stood out. What would decrease search traffic in the next six months? This is in line with what we’ve been talking about in recent episodes of the in between episodes, a short form ones we do in the week. Decrease search traffic in the next six months, generative AI chatbots 13%. That would decrease search traffic. That’s interesting. And that I think is in alignment with what we’ve been talking about with with with what was it called, Shell, the tool that Google launched that you mentioned, Google interviews or something, or wasn’t that? Anyway, you know the one I mean. So I think also one other thing that did strike me too, what will improve search traffic? yeah, that was the thing, it was overviews, yeah. Social media search engines. And we’ve seen what’s already out there, and notably perplexity, where you can ask it, the kind of questions that we’re now seeing the others coming up with. It’s not actually it’s not strictly social media, but it’s becoming more significant. And your point you mentioned about having a conversation with your search tool. I do that. I’m sure you do as well. think I know you do even. I just don’t use Google at all. Even what’s the phone number of the dentist that I’ve forgotten. I don’t I don’t do that. Although I must admit, you then get more information than you need in the answer from perplexity if you do that. but it’s fast, I do voice a lot. I ask them audio audibly the questions. And by the way, Perplexi’s mobile app is really good. So these are all factors into all of this. And I think the numbers are definitely worth paying attention to. I’ve not read the whole report, but I will take a look through it. Shel Holtz (1:26:37) Yeah, and I think, first of all, I do use Google still. There are times where I say I’m looking for a good brunch near me and it’ll pull up Google Maps and have the markers on it and show 10 restaurants and I can. But yeah. I’ve been trying to hold that back. @nevillehobson (1:26:58) A bit of editing there. Shel Holtz (1:27:05) So let me start that again. So I do still use Google. I’ll ask for, you know, good brunch near me and it’ll give me the Google map with the markers on it and give me 10 listings and I can move through them pretty seamlessly. I don’t find the perplexity does anything even remotely like that. Also, I am on the waiting list for OpenAI’s new AI, generative AI search tool that is in alpha. And I guess some people are in there using it, but I haven’t gotten an invitation yet. I can’t wait to… Give that a try. @nevillehobson (1:27:41) I’m on the waiting list too, it’s not yet launched in the UK, so I don’t know when it will be, but they told me I’m on the waiting list. Shel Holtz (1:27:48) Right. It’d be interesting to see what approach they take, how that compares to perplexity. Perplexity has just announced, by the way, that there’s going to be advertising. They’ve struck some deals and we’re going to start to see that really soon. But I do think unlike what this expert in SEO said in the HubSpot article, that zero click is an issue. Yes, if I do a search that takes me in perplexity, @nevillehobson (1:27:51) Yeah. Yeah, two -four. Shel Holtz (1:28:16) to or in Google where I get the overview that provides me with a great answer that now I want to buy the product. Yes, I’m going to have to click through to that site. Absolutely. No, duh, as they say. But if what I’m looking for is instructions on how to factory reset my Google Pixel phone and what comes up is here’s step one through five and that will do it for you. I’m not clicking through to anything. That’s what I was looking for right there. And I think increasingly that zero click response that you’re going to get is going to satisfy most people. So that becomes an issue. I think getting your information, getting your content, even your links into these results is going to be an increasing area of focus. And there’s going to be more and more tricks to do that. @nevillehobson (1:28:55) Yeah, it will. Shel Holtz (1:29:13) and maybe even advice coming from the AI organizations on how to do that, the same way Google has always offered advice on how to get into their search results, which have always been fairly ethical. They weren’t telling you here are workarounds to get irrelevant content into somebody’s search. was being current. Keep updating your content. Make sure that the keywords are in there and not gratuitously that they are contextual. And every time they do an update to Google, they’re going to tell you, here’s what’s changed and here’s what you need to do to accommodate this. So I’d love to see the AI tools start offering that kind of guidance. @nevillehobson (1:29:55) Yeah, I agree. I think it’s inevitable though, the evolution path. You said it, you search for something on one of these tools, whether it’s perplexity or chat, or whatever it might be. And if it gives you, what are the five steps to do X, or you don’t say what are the five steps, how do I do X? gives you step one, do this, step five, boom. You’re not gonna go anywhere else from that point. And that is inevitable. There’s no point in saying, well, that shouldn’t be. That is how it is. It will improve. So on the one hand, you’ve got the the traditional search engine, if I can use that way of describing it, that need to up the game in that sense. Sounds an unfair point, but without the detail, but that’s what they need to do. But is it just that? What about the companies? I don’t know how it works, Shell, to be honest, but I remember the experience I had when I first wrote a review of perplexity back either late middle of last year or early this, I can’t remember offhand. And I had screenshots comparing this search term I did on Google, this search term is perplexity. The Google one was pretty, pretty bad. And I know it has improved a bit since from my own experience even, but the search term gave me was a car, I think it was to do with electric vehicles or hybrids or something like that. So it gave me in Google links to some car manufacturers websites and indeed some local dealers to where I am. And I clicked on a few of them, just took me to a sales page or this is the new model. And I think this does not anywhere come close to addressing my search term. Perplexion on the other hand, gave me an essay, almost a novel on the answer to my question with all the links to the various sources that I went to. thought, wow, this is the future. that’s, but I’ve yet. Your point about restaurants and things, I’m a bit peculiar because I never do that. I never say what’s a good place to eat near me. I just never ask a search engine that question. Sometimes I’ll look for something on Google Maps that’s related to that. I don’t just generally go to Google. I mean, Google Maps. It’s usually when I’m in the car, I ask that kind of question. And I get great results with Google, actually. And in fact, Google is Google Assistant, but the AI one Gemini is coming to Android Auto. And I have kind of mixed views about that from what I’ve been reading in some of the tech press. Nevertheless, this is the evolution that’s coming. And so it’s changed the landscape without any doubt. And I don’t know what the answer is going to be to those folks who are looking at their web traffic and finally it’s plummeting because no one’s coming to the website. Don’t know what the answer is. Shel Holtz (1:32:35) The answer is to find other ways to attract that traffic to your website. Stop relying on Google because that’s going to be less and less effective. And that’ll do it for this episode of for immediate release. Of course, we will be here with short midweek episodes between now and Monday, September 23rd, which is the date of our next long form monthly episode. @nevillehobson (1:32:38) Up you go. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. Shel Holtz (1:33:02) We do hope that you will comment on the episodes that we post, including this one. You can email us your comment. Just email it to fircomments at gmail .com. You can attach an audio file to about three minutes long. You can record that audio file right on the FIR website, firpodcastnetwork .com. 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