Holtz Communications + Technology

I’m generally sick of the endless flood of posts proclaiming social media trends for 2010. These predictions tend to fall into two categories: blinding flashes of the obvious and SWAGs (scientific wild-ass guesses). Most prediction posts are filled with the former, anticipating the increased shift to mobile access and other no-brainers.

Forrester’s just-released predictions, on the other hand, offer some more thoughtful glimpses…

Organizations haven’t exactly warmed up to the idea of front-line employees engaging with constituents in social channels. Despite the fact that front-line employees are trusted more than executives or official spokespersons (according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer), companies simply don’t trust employees enough—and aren’t interested in training them—to avoid the kinds of problems that could arise.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration—part of Homeland Security—doesn’t appear to have the same…

My friend Steve Crescenzo’s latest post on IABC’s Communication World blog is a straightforward social media 101 treatise. Steve cautions communicators to develop a strategy before launching into social media: “Slow down,” Steve writes. “Back up. Be a communicator, not a Social Media Evangelist. Some Social Media will makes sense for your organization; many others will not.”

Like Steve, I’m an advocate of strategizing your organization’s use…

Google Wave, wikis, Basecamp, Ning, Zoho…

With all the collaboration tools the whole social media phenomonen has ushered in, you’d think the people who tout them would make better use of them. But one of the consequences of the fragmentation of communication activities is that the various departments, agencies and boutiques assigned to segments of communication operate in a near vacuum. The resulting…

An employee for one of my clients tweeted me yesterday, pointing me to “what happens when you jump into social media unprepared.” He was talking about the launch of a new Twitter account by BCS—the Bowl Championship Series—the much-maligned system that substitutes for a playoff system for college football teams.

The account, @InsideTheBCS, launched on Thursday and has, since then, accumulated nearly 700 followers. There’s…

When your CEO, CFO, and other C-Suite executives gather in the board room and talk about ROI, they’re talking about the accounting term. Return on Investment, when raised in the board room, is the amount, expressed as a percentage, that is earned on a company’s total capital, calculated by dividing the total capital into earnings before interest, taxes, or dividends are paid. ROI…