• 

• Categories

  • Blogs (67)
  • Business (223)
    • Marketing Public Relations (28)
    • Public Relations practice (89)
  • Celebrity (47)
  • Corporates (78)
  • Government (50)
  • Media (80)
  • Online (121)
    • Internet Public Relations (81)
  • Politics (34)
  • PR Disasters (182)
    • Botched PR jobs (40)
    • Naughty Public Relations agencies (31)
  • Public Relations (198)
    • Campaigns (21)
    • Firms (45)
    • Services (34)
  • Public Speaking (49)
  • Site News (1)
  • Sport (18)
  • Technology (93)
  • Top Spins (3)

• Buy Talespin

  • Buy Talespin from Amazon UK
  • Buy Talespin from Amazon US
  • Buy Talespin from Dymocks AU

• More blogs to read

  • Andy Lark
  • Constantin Basturea
  • James Horton
  • Kevin Dugan
  • Lee Hopkins
  • Mark Borkowski
  • Media Orchard
  • Paull Young
  • Peter Himler
  • Philip Young
  • Richard Edelman
  • Shel Holtz
  • The Friendly Ghost
  • The Media Hunter
  • Todd Defren
  • Tom Murphy
  • Trevor Cook

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.

 

 

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.

The resource-full Ross Monaghan has sent the following example of how staff power can be utilised online to accelerate the demise of a Senior Exec. Geoff Dixon et al; are you paying attention?

One major, glaring omission by the CEO was that the pilot collective managed to secure Glenn Tilton’s name as the site URL (I teach this as part of my blog 101 fundamentals). This is what the pilots’ site says about the name:

Why is this site named GlennTilton.com?
This website was developed by the Air Line Pilots Association, United Airlines Master Executive Council. As professional pilots, we believe in accountability. Glenn Tilton, Chairman, CEO, and President of United Airlines, has failed all of us… costing shareholders, employees, and the travelling public billions of dollars. This website bears the name GlennTilton.com as a daily reminder to everyone invested in a positive future for United Airlines exactly where the source of our problems lies. This website is not owned, endorsed, or in any way sponsored by United Airlines or Glenn Tilton. For all of us, Glenn Tilton must go.

So CEOs…who owns your name in cyberspace?

Yahoo News reports that “A British businessman (Mathew Firsht) has won about AU$40k damages against an old friend (Grant Raphael) who put libellous and unauthorised information about him on Facebook . The pages incorrectly described Firsht’s sexuality and political views and alleged that Firsht owed large sums of money. The information stayed on the site for 16 days until spotted. Firsht alerted Facebook staff who deleted the pages and told his lawyers they had been posted on the site from a computer at Raphael’s home. So all you guys posting and creating in Socialmedialand…”you be careful out there!”

A man very much on my humour wavelength, Simon Bronson, sends me word of a site - Photoshop Disasters - that scrutinises photoshop artwork, pointing out the flaws and oddities. Becos my WordPress backend is still jiggered, you’ll need to cut n paste the following link to see my favourite; the paella pan-headed, one-nippled lingerie model. Enjoy, and ta Simon.

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/2008/07/intymnie-sorry-i-have-huge-headache.html

English pro football side Crystal Palace has released 18-year old Ashley Paul Robinson after he announced on his Facebook page that he would imminently be having a trial with another London side, Fulham. Neil Warnock - Palace Manager - was not amused when someone reported the Facebook post/boast and Warnock simply said: “…it’s probably better that he (sic Ashley) looks elsewhere to further his career.”

From Reuters and Yahoo News reports.

Next Page →