Holtz Communications + Technology

Trevor Cook reports that The Economist, that most venerable of news magazines, features an interview with A-list Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble in which the publication speculates about the possibility that blogs will replace traditional PR. From where I sit, this suggestion—even coming from the economist—represents a woeful lack of understanding about what PR agencies do. I imagine most people envision PR people…

A few efforts are underway to enable discussions in blogs—including both comments posted appending a post and those posted to another blog and linked via trackback—to appear as a discussion thread like those on a message board. Lee LeFever, author of the excellent CommonCraft blog, says he usually likes ideas like this. Not this time. “I believe that blogs and message boards are two…

Remember the days when a company could craft a press release and time its distribution for just the right moment to achieve maximum value? The carefully-honed statement could go out just as the markets close, just before they open, on a quiet weekend when it’ll get more play, or during a news-heavy period when nobody will notice. Timing was everything. It’s nostalgic…

Heath Row of Fast Company has done a nice job of summarizing the key points of my session at the New Communications Forum on the role of blogs in a crisis.

A mythology is growing around instances in which bloggers have jumped on a story resulting in some kind of consequence. Trent Lott stepped down. Dan Rather resigned and other CBS staffers suffered. The manufacturer of a bicycle lock had to deal with the lock’s flaws.

Now, it seems, bloggers are expected to take the lead—or at least participate with great zest—in any number of…

“If you want to control the message, buy an ad. If you want to have a rich (but risky) dialogue, consider a blog.”

That’s the advice from Mark Kingdon in an article appearing today in ClickZ.  Kingdon focuses on the potential for blogs in supporting a brand, noting that consumers are talking about brands in their own blogs, raising the possibility that “if businesses don’t…