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Marketing Roadmaps

Ethics

The Bad Blogger Relations Game

May 18, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Regular readers of this blog will recall my April 24 post in which I promised to start "outing" bad blogger relations practitioners using a simple metric.

After May 1st, once I have been spammed three times by the same PR spammer, I will share information about it on this blog. My own small version of the Bad Pitch Blog.

The good news: So far nobody has qualified for this dubious honor.

The bad news: Two firms that have spammed me many times in the life of this blog have indeed sent one spam each since May 1. And I’ve received a few more from new folks.

So stay tuned. At this rate we should be naming names by the end of June….

Tags: blogger relations, ethics

Filed Under: Blogger relations, Ethics

Badges, get your badges

April 11, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Thanks to the WonderChicken, via Jeneane Sessum, I now have my very own badge.

Be sure to get yours today.

Tags: badges, stinking badges, code of conduct, blogger ethics, ethics

Filed Under: Ethics

On badges for blogs

April 9, 2007 by Susan Getgood

I was going to write this post last week, but ran out of time before the holiday weekend. And today, thanks to today’s page one NY Times story, A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs, it is even more relevant.

Synopsis of the situation, and do read the article: following the Kathy Sierra/meankids situation, Tim O’Reilly called for a code of blogger conduct. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales also stepped in. Currently on the "table" is a loose proposal for a universal but voluntary blogger code of conduct with various levels and badges that folks can place on their sites to indicate what sort of policies their blog/site allows. The proposed code is based on the code of ethics established by the BlogHer network, and there is a great picture of BlogHer founders Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort in the article.

From the NYT article:

"Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself."

Lots of commentary in the blogosphere, pro and con, last week, and given this article bound to be even more this week. One of the best comments I read last week was by Ronni Bennett, who wrote:

"Most are common-sense items about removing abusive comments, not baiting the trolls, not publishing anything you wouldn’t say in person, etc. leaving the level of tolerance to individual bloggers. But one suggestion is disturbing: creating some “easily deployed badges pointing to a common set of guidelines.”

She goes on to describe the slippery slope of censorship that such a system of badges might provoke, and while agreeing with the concept of guidelines, she flat out rejects the idea of the badges.

I agree. A Code of Ethics on a blog is a great idea. And this is certainly not the first time that the topic has been raised in the blogosphere. I wrote mine in September 2005.

A community like BlogHer is well advised to have guidelines that match its ethos. It is what the members expect.

But…  badges are a bad idea. The Internet is not a single community.

I don’t know how you can come up with a set of badges, or labels, that really works. You either have to operate at a gross, overly broad level or get so specific that the thing gets big and complicated. Unusable either way.

Who is in charge? The idea of the collective exercising its power to create a democratic labeling system that can guide our blog reading choices to those that share our values sounds good. Doesn’t work.  Human nature suggests that some groups, some ratings, some badges become somehow "better" than others.

And the most damaging potential consequence.  The label, or its absence, becomes more important than the content itself.

Sure, it will have been our choice, but we are just as likely to end up on Animal Farm as in the utopia we imagined.

So, post your code of ethics.  Commit to a more civil level of discourse. Use a little more deliberation in response. Stop blogwars and flamewars by thinking first, writing second, and taking it offline if necessary. It’s as simple as when you see the tinder crackling, don’t throw another match on the fire. Don’t be a bully.

But  "Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!"

UPDATE 4/10: Apparently folks have gotten confused about BlogHer’s role in this push for a blogger’s code of conduct. No doubt because the NYT story was about Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales, but featured a photo of the BlogHer founders. The short answer is: it doesn’t have one. The BlogHer guidelines were used as a model by O’Reilly and Wales, but BlogHer is not involved in the effort at all. Read more at Elisa Camahort’s Worker Bees blog.

Tags: blogger code of ethics, ethics, blogging ethics, code of blogger conduct, Tim O’Reilly, BlogHer

Filed Under: Blogging, Ethics

Pay Per Post now requires disclosure

December 18, 2006 by Susan Getgood

BIG NEWS <snark> from Pay Per Post today. It now requires disclosure by participants that the postings are sponsored postings.

Umm, that’s great, but how come that wasn’t in place from the beginning?

I still do not think this is a good alternative to an ongoing blogger relations program. It might be a useful supplement, but it cannot replace something that comes from the heart or the mind, not the pocketbook. 

Disclosure notice: This post is sponsored by nobody.

Tags: Pay per post, ethics, blogger relations

Filed Under: Blogging, Ethics

The Ethics Lesson from the Wal-Mart/Edelman flog fiasco

November 2, 2006 by Susan Getgood

You know, we all learned pretty much everything we need to know to avoid a similar ethical foul up by the time we reached first grade.

It’s simple.

Tell the truth.

And here’s the truth. The failure in the Wal-Mart Edelman fiasco wasn’t simply a lack of understanding of how blogs and social media worked. That may have been part of it, but it wasn’t the root problem.

It was an ethical failure, full stop.

Here’s the lesson, and let’s be crystal clear. It is not okay to cloak your interests or advocate without honesty. Sure, people do it all the time. We call them liars. It doesn’t matter whether it is explicit or by omission. It is still a lie.

And here’s the other part of today’s lesson: this mess does not mean that companies shouldn’t blog, or sponsor blogs, or reach out to bloggers. The Wal-Gate mess was a lapse of ethics, not an indictment of social media.  Social media can be excellent vehicles for reaching out to and talking with customers, but we have to do it honestly. Your customer knows you have an agenda. EVERYONE has an agenda of some sort. Be honest about your goals, disclose your interests, tell the truth,

It may not set you free, but when you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you told the last person.

Words to live by.

——

Bye the bye, the latest word from Edelman on this — 

He recently gave an interview to IT World (Japan). When asked what happened, he says: "We were insufficiently transparent about the identity of one of the two bloggers who went on that RV tour. And in a certain way, it’s not a failure of new media; it was a failure in all media. Which is to say, if they were talking to you in your IDG mainstream media hat, you would want to know the name of the spokesperson and what his background was and what his credentials were and we failed that basic test." He goes on to once again accept full responsibility as the boss and reiterate what they intend to do to prevent future occurences. I wish them luck.  Thanks to Shel Holtz for the link.

UPDATE 11/3/06: Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) puts Edelman membership under 90-day review. See also WOMMA’s 20 Ethics Questions and discussion draft of guidelines for contacting bloggers.

Tags: Wal-Mart, Edelman, social media, ethics, fake blog, fake blogs, PR, public relations

      

Filed Under: Blogging, Ethics, PR

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