Just how social can you be if your online content is exclusionary?

I spent some time today, while at the IABC Heritage Region Conference, with Amy Salmon. Amy is a business consultant based out of Oklahoma City. She’s wife and a mom to two young children.

She’s also blind, the result of macular degeneration that struck her as a young adult. She gets around with the help of friends and family, and her guide dog, Wilbur.

Amy’s consultancy (she’s part of The Rodgers Group, a longtime communications firm run by Amy’s sister, Vicci Rodgers) works to help companies make their online content accessible to the disabled. According to the U.S. Census, more than 54 million people in the U.S. are disabled,… Read More »

Clear disclosure in 140 characters

The FTC’s freshly-minuted disclosure rules for bloggers and the companies that reach out to them may be sounding alarms among those who aren’t already disclosure-minded, but a lot of bloggers and companies have always been mindful of candor and honesty. Long before the FTC even began looking at governing a practice that PR people, marketers, advertisers and bloggers weren’t policing for themselves, some businesses (SHIFT Communications and Ogilvy PR) were promoting clear policies of disclosure.

But disclosure can be problematic, even among those with honorable intentions. How, exactly, should a blogger disclose a relationship with a… Read More »

Let’s whine like it’s 1999

There has been a flurry of activity in the PR corners of a variety of social channels today. These messages have been filled with angst and vile and anger. There has been finger-pointing, name-calling and threats.

What could motivate such an outpouring of emotion? A particularly egregious case of astroturfing? The revelation that a PR agency is behind a front organization for an unethical organization seeking to do evil? An outrageous use of a social channel by a particularly arrogant PR practitioner?

It was none of these things. It was—and I can’t believe I’m writing these words—a reply-all fiasco on an email listserv.

The original… Read More »

The ethics of publishing stolen material

IABC President Julie Freeman TechCrunch’s decision to publish internal documents stolen from Twitter, “Was it appropriate to publish stolen documents?  Even if the information obtained was accurate?  Was it ethical?  Does the public have the right to know how Twitter (or any company) plans to make its money and when?  Does how information is obtained affect whether it should be published?”

I’ve decided to post my answer here.

I was struck by one of Robert Scoble‘s remarks on FriendFeed, part of a lengthy discussion on the controversy. In response to the argument that nothing in the Twitter… Read More »

Proactive disclosure now a requirement for influencer outreach

On the heels of reports that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is set to regulate companies and the bloggers they reach out to comes a series of reports about Betty Crocker’s campaign to get bloggers talking about its new line of gluten-free food products.

What struck me was this excerpt from Tiffany Janes’ report in Examiner.com (the website of the San Francisco Examiner):

When blog posts began appearing about the new Betty Crocker gluten-free products, it was apparent that the company was sending out samples to people to test taste and review gluten-free products before they were introduced to the public. There were too many…

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Another call for a blogger code of ethics

A blogger code of ethics is another meme that seems to make the rounds every six months or so. This time, the call comes from Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, Malaysia’s home minister, who said,

Blogging is touching the lives of more and more Malaysians. With such a powerful tool, bloggers are able to influence their readers and shape their perspectives. They can unite communities and they can divide them. The dangers of distortions and inaccuracies in blogging are very real and it is capable of destroying lives. Thanks in part to the blogosphere, dangerous assumptions often travel faster than truths…The comment and talkback sections had…

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