For Immediate Release (FIR Live) Panel on Influencer Marketing

Editor's note: This post was originally published on Expion's blog.

The first Google+ Hangout on Air (HOA) for Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson's For Immediate Release was Saturday, June 11, 2012. The topic was Influencer Marketing and the "feisty and fun" panel from left to right below were:

• Andrew Grill CEO at influencer platform Kred 
• David Armano EVP, Global Innovation & Integration at Edelman Digital
• Shel Holtz - For Immediate Release Host 
• Gini Dietrich CEO at PR firm Arment Dietrich 
• Neville Hobson - For Immediate Release Host 
• and me - Zena Weist VP, Strategy at social software company Expion

For those of you unfamiliar with Shel and Neville's FIR Live weekly discussions, it's 60 minutes of unscripted, robust Q&A on a trending industry topic with audience participation via Twitter (hashtag #FIRLive) and group chat. Influencer Marketing Review highlights a few quotes from the FIR panel to whet your appetite:
  The panel all agreed that when creating advocate lists, the influencer scoring systems can be "one of many" identifiers. The key being not to use an influencer candidate's score such as Klout, Peer Index and Kred as the only qualifier. Another point that resonated throughout the discussion was the industry's responsibility to educate organizations on the pros and cons of utilizing influencer scoring systems. Really enjoyed the G+ HOA format.

I'm looking forward to taking in more FIR Live webcasts on the HOA platform. Thanks again for asking me to participate Shel and Neville! In my next influencer marketing post, I'll share a few resources that I've found extremely helpful, so stay tuned.