Holtz Communications + Technology

When I’m about to deliver a presentation at a conference or meeting, odds are I’ll be introduced as “a social media guru.” I cringe at the reference. The first thing I tell the audience is that I’m not a social media guru; I’m an organizational communicator specializing in online communication and social media has naturally evolved as a focus of my work.

My defensiveness is a…

Much has been made of Leo Laporte’s screed against social media. Most intriguing to me is the action Leo is taking in response to the circumstances that motivated the post: giving up on Google Buzz and reactivating his semi-dormant blog.

In his post, titled “Buzz Kill,” TWiT network honcho Leo (of whom I’m a big fan, by the way) chronicles his discovery that…

Copycats were expected in the wake of the Old Spice response campaign, in which the Old Spice Man responded to tweets with brief YouTube videos. After all, despite a few party poopers who didn’t like the campaign and a few misguided claims that the campaign didn’t produce results, ad agency Weiden & Kennedy has shown that the campaign, including the Twitter-YouTube effort, has…

Long before Twitter, business consultants advised to embrace customer complaints. Wise people like Don Peppers and Martha Rogers saw complaints for what they were: opportunities to identify problems companies can fix, leading to happier customers, better word of mouth and more sales.

In their 1993 book, “The One-to-One Future,” Peppers and Rogers write that “just by complaining, a customer is initiating a dialogue with a…

It should come as no surprise that, as a podcaster, I’m still bullish on podcasting. It’s not the subject of much conversation. You don’t read a lot of posts about it. But that doesn’t mean podcasting has failed as a medium. I remember a declaration that the World Wide Web was on its way out because companies were no longer talking about their websites…

Lee Aase speaks with FIR co-host Shel Holtz about the July 27 announcement that the Mayo Clinic has established a Center for Social Media “to accelerate effective application of social media tools throughout Mayo Clinic and to spur broader and deeper engagement in social media by hospitals, medical professionals and patients to improve health globally.” Aase, who manages social media for The Mayo…