Holtz Communications + Technology

Big news has flown fast and furious this week, led by the FCC’s decision to turn its back on Net neutrality and support a “fast lane” for companies willing to pay for it. With all that, it’s even easier to miss some posts, stories and studies that could be useful. That’s why I produce the Friday Wrap, a summary of items of interest to communicators…

Back in December, when UPS’s Facebook page was the target of blistering comments from customers who didn’t get their deliveries by Christmas, many employees dove into the conversation, leaping to their employer’s defense. “I’m a driver,” wrote Larry Ledet, “Got off at 10:10 last night, 60hr weeks, I’m tired, Mother Nature, a booming economy and no one visiting malls any more cause this…no reason 4 anyone to be mad…Merry…

Jill Rowley says Oracle fired her for violating the company’s social media participation policy after she gave an interview to Advertising Age. The AdAge article from early last month offers a concise look at Rowley’s work as head of the company’s social selling effort, where she was helping Oracle’s sales staff learn how to use social networks as part of their jobs. According to…

I am officially sick of the silo metaphor and wish it would die.

Everywhere you turn, people talk about tearing down silos, busting silos and smashing silos. Ask a farmer about that, and he’ll doubtless tell you that if you smash his silos, all the grain will fall out.

The idea of silos in organizations is meant to conjure an image of employees…

Anything that takes root on the Web eventually finds its way into the enterprise. Social visual communication has exploded in the last few years with the success of Instagram, Pinterest and other tools, along with the surge in photo sharing via Facebook and other social networks. Creative internal communicators found ways to take advantage of these external resources for internal…

If the question sounds absurd, consider that once, companies exercised tremendous discretion in providing employees with access to phones. In the early days of phones in business, concerns ranged from employees wasting time on calls to the inadvertent sharing of confidential information made too easy by casual conversation, from rising telephone costs incurred by employees who didn’t really need one to…