Holtz Communications + Technology

As organizational communicators are occupied increasingly with helping their organizations become media companies—producing streams of different types of content that satisfy audience interests, support business and brand goals, and encourage sharing and conversation—it can be instructive to look at what actual media companies are doing to engage audiences.

Mainstream media organizations have struggled mightily in the digital era, but there are those that are…

This morning I learned that Vocus, the public relations services company, has acquired email marketer iContact.

That Vocus would add email marketing to its portfolio is interesting enough, but for now, let’s focus on how I found out about the acquisition.

Not too long ago, I would have read about it in the business section of my daily newspaper, in my weekly edition of

There’s plenty of evidence that business is adopting content curation, but the practice hasn’t been around long enough for organizations to innovate more targeted, results-focused uses.

Business takes many of its lessons from how everyone else makes use of social tools. To start applying content curation, communicators need to pay attention to how others are using the crop of curation tools that have found…

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Shel Holtz delivered a presentation at the Ragan Communications conference titled, “Communicating Your Company Story—Inside and Out,” held October 3-5, 2011 at Southwest Airlines headquarters in…

During a recent talk on content curation, I showed a page from American Electric Power’s intranet that included news about the company from external sources. Several in the audience wondered how the communicators at AEP curated that content, so I asked Internal Communications Director William Amurgis for a quick rundown. Instead, he replied with an email that was good enough to be a…

Media, social and mainstream alike, are abuzz with Google’s acquisition of ZAGAT, which was a curator of diners’ reviews of restaurants (along with hotels, theatears, golf courses andmore) before the World Wide Web existed. According to Local, Maps and Location Services VP marissa Mayer, writing on the official Google blog:

Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive…