Holtz Communications + Technology

In the beginning, there was CREWE.

Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement is a closed Facebook group dedicated to a thoughtful, high-level discussion among organizational communicators and Wikipedia editors—known as Wikipedians. The goal is to find common ground between these often-adversarial groups’ efforts to ensure accuracyin Wikipedia business entries. The robust discussion has produced several documents, including a flow chart clarifying the process…

Brendan Hodgson, Hill & Knowlton’s national practice leader (Canada) and reputation management authority, and UK-based H&K digital authority Niall Cook put together a video showing the 176 edits to Wikipedia’s page on US Airways Flight 1549 that took place over a mere 90 minutes. A fascinating glimpse into the way the community collaborates to provide a record of events, along with the negotiations…

The value of enabling social media for employees, both inside and outside the firewall, keeps getting reinforced by study after study, yet organizations continue to block access to external sources while resisting internal implementation citing excuses ranging from bandwidth and storage limitations to fears of diminished worker productivity.

Aberdeen Group has produced another study the naysayers can ignore. Focused on…

I’m on a real “new media doesn’t kill old media” kick this week.

There has been a lot of interesting commentary in the wake of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s announcement last week. (Disclosure: Britannica has been a client.) In case you missed it, Britannica is broadening its collaborative features, allowing both experts and readers to contribute content without diminishing the authoritative, edited content at the core of its…

I’m in the process of preparing a press release (both conventional and social media versions) that needs input from a few organizations as well as some individuals who aren’t affiliated with these organizations. Rather than attach a Word document to an email, I set up a secure one-page wiki at PBwiki, where each of the players is able to jump in and revise…

There is no limit to the uses to which companies can put social media, but companies have to be willing to experiment in order to discover those uses. A lot of companies are reluctant, for one reason or another, to undertake such experimentation. (See my post on why companies resist social media for elaboration.) General Motors is not one of them.