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I can’t keep it in any longer!! Speaking at a conference fairly recently, I was asked a question from the floor that near left me speechless…in a room full of PR professionals, someone basically challenged the validity of my assertion that Social Media would become/is becoming increasingly influential in issues and crisis management campaigns. The person said (and I precis) “How is a blog different from a website and why would anyone in business or an organisation bother with one?” I think I bristled and sounded irked when responding. But how can modern comms practitioners not know the whats, whys and hows of the blogosphere????

I welcome any other pearls of wisdom you blogtypes may have heard of late…?

 

Employees undermining the corporate brands (via Facebook) of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic; that’s the subject of the above article from The Economist. http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12566818

As the publication reports: “On October 31st Virgin fired 13 of its cabin crew who had posted derogatory comments about safety standards and passengers on Facebook. On November 3rd, BA began investigating the behaviour of several employees who had described some passengers as “smelly” and “annoying” in Facebook postings. From a Reputation Management viewpoint (a topic I discussed at a Crisis Summit in Sydney this week), it raises three important issues: 1) Today’s corporations need a rigorous Social Media engagement policy. 2) All organisations must regularly educate staff about acceptable use of the internet. 3) Effective online monitoring systems must be engaged to alert orgs as to the conversations taking place about them, in the online space.

 

 

http://www.frocomm.com.au/cc2008/program.php

Wednesday next week, I’m delighted to be giving the opening keynote address at an Issues and Crisis Summit in Sydney. I’ve also be invited as a panelist for a highly-interactive Q&A session. The focus of my keynote will be the new rules of reputation management and exploring the impact of Web2.0 and Social Media on issues and crisis management. Glen Frost has put together another sterling program, and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing some of you up in Sydney.

While I’ve been Interstate, web designer pal David McDonald sent me this case of suspicious Social Media marketing. Surely NAB (no strangers to social media flak) couldn’t have buggered up a fresh attempt to ‘engage’ online stakeholders? Maybe it was their expert social media agents, Loaded?  I’ll investigate this in more detail later. hat tip, David. Go Cheryl Gledhill, savvy IP-sleuth-ess (read her comments!). If its a shill, this is further proof why Social Media ‘Marketing’ is a somewhat flawed premise even in spirit. http://www.moltn.com/blog/2008/10/09/nab-tries-to-pull-a-swifty/

Writing in The Guardian, Malik Fareed claims that the Chinese government is payrolling opinion shapers and influencers 50 Chinese cents or five mao per blog post, to refute and replace negative online coverage about China and related issues (better rates than blogging for Fairfax then?)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/22/chinathemedia.marketingandpr
While astroturfing is seen by some as ethically dubious, it is still growing in popularity, thanks, in part, to the ease with which web 2.0 technologies - the likes of Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube all feature heavily - can be employed to sway public opinion using the elusive power of word-of-mouth marketing.

We’re seeing the (editorial) launch of what’s inaccurately billed as Australia’s ‘first pure Social Media Marketing agency’ ( Julian Cole has scored a gig at the ‘The Population’). Tad embarrassing for noo agency and journos, no-one researched the ‘first’ Social Media agency claim (yet Smart Company used the erroneous PR soundbite). Photon shareholders will be encouraged by the headline clips, though.

Other Soc Med Marketing agencies in Oz might include Zest, Shifted Pixels and Sticky. And several PR firms like Edelman, Text 100 and Howarth are certainly active in the Soc Media area from a PR/marcomms stance.

Population MD says their “…first goal is to simply educate the market about developing new ways of using social networking as a marketing tool, and merging the use of technology and branding.” So, pretty much treading turf similar to that taken by Ozzies like Lee Hopkins, Gavin Heaton, Trevor Cook, Laurel Papworth, and myself (and others like Paull Youngie in the US) over the last 2-3 years or so?

I welcome The Population, hoping their intellectual input will enrich the sector’s knowledge base and their Photon parentage will add weight to the validity of Web2.0 as a two-way Comms conduit, not just a marketing channel.

Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan join the esteemed cohort of media ‘professionals’ caught in off-mike moments, saying things they wished they hadn’t and should’ve known better about doing so (esp in a TV studio environment). This time, gun-totin’, moose-dressin’, soon-to-be-glamorous grannie, wannabe-VP of the USA Sarah Palin gets it in the neck.

http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?p=1224

From Simon Bronson and ‘You Thought We Wouldnt Notice’ site, it’s bad PR time for ad agency DDB (in Sweden) and its client McDonalds. They stand accused of ripping off and refusing to acknowledge or pay, the guy (Cyriak) http://www.cyriak.co.uk/beard-comparison.html  who originally conceived an Ad concept. The theft looks so blatant, there can be little room for anything less than an agency apology and recompense, surely? If DDB was under any illusion as to the strength of stakeholder feeling, they should read the social media comments on Cyriak’s site, and also on YouTube. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Itl08AFJOZI

Ta to Brons and YTWWN.

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