Ethical blogging

In light of the Wal-mart flogs (yeah, two posts about this in one day), Web Ink Now posted on blogging ethics.

I’m just copying and pasting here. I don’t think I’ve been blogging long enough (at least not on a platform other than OpenDiary, Xanga, or LiveJournal) to give really good examples.

Transparency—You should never pretend to be someone you are not. For example, don’t use another name to submit a comment on any blog (your own or somebody else’s), and don’t create a blog that talks about your company without disclosing that someone from your company is behind it.

Privacy—Unless you’ve been given permission, don’t blog about something that was disclosed to you. For example, don’t post material from an e-mail someone sent you unless you have permission.

Disclosure—It is important to disclose anything that people might consider a conflict of interest in a blog post. For example, if I write in my blog about a product from a company that is one of my consulting clients, I put a sentence at the end disclosing my relationship with the company.

Truthfulness—Don’t lie. For example, never make up a customer story just because it makes good blog content.

Credit—You should give credit to bloggers (and other sources) whose material you have used in your blog. For example, don’t read a great post on someone else’s blog, take the idea, change a few words, and make it your own. Besides being good ethical practice, links to other bloggers whose ideas you have used helps to introduce them to your blog and they may link to you.

WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) has compiled a more comprehensive list. Which makes sense, as they’ve put Edelman on probation for that unethical blogging strategy.

I try to follow these with every post I make.

PR firms need to embrace social media.

Funny how this is coming from the CEO of Edelman.

Why? Who here remembers the Wal-mart blog fiasco (Feb 2006)? It’s already being called the Wal-mart flog (Nov 2006). (Ouch)

I do. Sure, it was 8 months ago (on the front page of the NY Times business section, no less!). But it proved that traditional PR firms know little about the power or even the influence of blogs. See my last entry (forget that these were students he was talking to — but students who wanted in on the PR industry).

Seems like Edelman has gotten itself into some trouble with WOMMA. Their membership with the association is in jeopardy. I suppose they really need to re-evaluate their knowledge of blogs, and how to use them without coming off as an unethical PR agency (which I know is something that PR firms come under constant fire for).

Wanna Wii?

According to one of the radio stations I listen to on my way to work, this past Monday was unofficially ‘Cyber-Monday‘. (edit: that actually has a wiki? Whoa.) That is, the unofficial start of the online holiday shopping spree. As everyone knows, the day after Thanksgiving is the official start of the physical holiday shopping spree — Black Friday.

I do most of my finances online. You know, online bill pay — I’m a huge fan of that. I’d rather use email, rather than snail mail to conduct things like job searches (not as of late — I’m currently happily employed). I’m not a phone person, I like IM much better. Skype, while it’s still a phone-type service, I’m much happier using than the usual touch tone, cell-phone (I still adore my Treo, though). I don’t really do the whole online shopping thing. The closest I get to online shopping is making my annual Christmas wishlist on Amazon.

Enter: Wii vs PS3

Two brand new game systems hitting the market… massive buzz and hype right around the craziest shopping time of the year. The big question over the next couple of months (for me, anyway) is which system to get?

I’ve heard some great arguments for both of them. PS2 has the larger game library, nearly everyone has one, there’s something for everyone. Wii is new, it’s Nintendo, it’s easy, there are cool (and rather groundbreaking) controllers.

I suppose my stance is this: my last game system was a Gameboy Color. I still have my original NES. Super NES was about as complicated as I got — and to be honest, my only way around the SMB with Yoshi (I can’t remember the name of the game) was to push all the other buttons (besides the directional keypad) — and pray and hope that SOMETHING happened. I knew how to  jump. And I knew how to make Yoshi’s tongue stick out. But that’s it. I’m all about simplicity. The only game I play on the Gameboy (and this is when I still used to commute to work via the train) is Tetris. And let me tell you, I’m damn good at it (high score: more than 4 million). The PS2 has a lot of buttons. And it’s not as simple as up, down, left, right, A and B. Sure, I love the huge selection of games — but if I’ve been simply happy with just Tetris (I have that for the original NES as well)… then what use is the huge selection to me?

When I got the original NES system, I was in 1st grade… my parents and grandmother played the NES more than I did. And one thing was constant. Every time they wanted the car to jump, or Mario to swim faster — they moved their body along with the controller.

Enter Wii.

Richard Edelman speaks to Future Leaders of PR

…and finds out they’re still into print media.

The horror. Really.

7) Media Choices – Over dinner, I was amazed to learn that 14 of the 15 students read print versions of newspapers. Relatively few of them read blogs – in fact they wanted my advice on which blogs to read. The consumer facing magazines were very popular, as were shows like America’s Top Model or Project Runway. Only a couple of them were YouTube fans. They preferred Facebook as their social media.

I know that traditional PR revolves around traditional media channels such as print media,TV, and radio. Most PR firms still revolve around this model. However, the power of the internet is undeniable. Commercials and advertisements are now adorned with ‘www.followtheseletters.com’ at the bottom, in the background, in your face. URLs are now hastily stuffed into a 2 second soundbite at the end of radio ads.

PR firms now have interactive departments. There are interactive agencies all over the place. Internet marketing firms. Internet PR boutique agencies. 90% of my life revolves around the internet.

I shouldn’t be that surprised that Facebook is the preferred social media, probably after MySpace — and far ahead of the now annoying Friendster.

I’m rambling. It’s post-Thanksgiving and I think I overdid it.

I’m not saying that print media is bad, I’m just saying that with the recent influx of all things internet in society today, I’m surprised that these young people know Facebook but not know anything about blogs.

I was there not too long ago, but still!!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Even though it’s important to give thanks for anything and everything every day.

How to write a blog post

From the master of short posting, Seth Godin:

An appropriate illustration,
A useful topic, easily broadened to be useful to a large number of readers,
Simple language with no useless jargon,
Not too long,
Focusing on something that people have previously taken for granted,
That initially creates emotional resistance,
Then causes a light bulb go go off
and finally,
Causes the reader to look at the world differently all day long.

I’m learning. I need more other media. I need pictures. I need to figure out how to post audio. More importantly, I need my video camera back.

Update on Tasered UCLA Student

I’ve gotten so many hits on that past post, I have to post an update.

Source

Mostafa Tabatabainejad, the 23 yr old senior, has hired a high-profile civil rights lawyer (Stephen Yagman) to file a brutality lawsuit as well as false arrest.

The video, which has made its rounds through YouTube (over 400,000 views from the video I linked to) and passed by WOM to countless others, is a testament to the unnecessary UCPD police brutality used against a UCLA student. I haven’t viewed the video since I originally posted it, but I can still hear his cries of pain and protest in my head. The video is more than 5 minutes long, but you only need to hear and see 1 minute of it to know what I’m talking about.

My past post is one of my most popular posts thus far since the inception of web.impact and I hope many others will be enlightened to this horrific case of police brutality.

I hope he wins his lawsuit.

Corporate Blogging

So, in a past post, I had discussed blogging as a personal marketing tool.

Now it’s time to look at how blogging can help the Big Corporate. Most of this information is taken from a ClickZ newsletter I subscribe to, unfortunately, I just have the email text, and none of the URLs. The article is by Mark Kingdon.

The Main Points:

1. Designate an editor: Unless you’re dooce (who isn’t really a corporate blogger anyway, but that’s besides my point), entries that are all over the place won’t be interesting to readers who come to get more information on the company. Which leads me into point #2.
   
2. Have a clearly defined purpose: If your company is all about online gaming, make sure your content reflects that. Make sure you have an opinion, a valid and valuable point of view about services or product other than your own.
3. Content is king: Update, update, update! And have a point of view. Readers don’t like coming back to blogs that don’t have new content all the time. Readers also like to get into a conversation about posts. If you don’t have the time or a point of view, or if you’re not a real person, don’t bother creating a blog.
4. Develop a content engine: I realize that blogging is a time commitment few people realize or understand. So to aid your adventure in constantly coming up with new and interesting content, turn the ‘CEO’ blog into a ‘company’ blog. Get enough people involved with the creation and maintenance of it. Readers will be able to see that your company is more than just a service or a product — they will be able to get a feel for the people behind the name/logo.
5. Experiment, learn, and evolve: Everyone makes mistakes. It’s impossible to KNOW everything blogging the first time around.
6. Make it a core part of your marketing strategy: As said above, blogs can be used for personal marketing purposes. I’ve already been there. It definitely works. Now make it work for your company.
7. Patience!: Evolution requires patience. Build it, and they will come.

Build it and they will come.

So, there’s this thing called Second Life. I’m not going to invalidate myself by saying I know all about it — but I have heard of it. It’s a pretty cool concept, I remember hearing about similar things, back in the day when the Internet was still a ‘waste of time’ and a place to get free porn (well — it still is, but it’s known less for that now), not that I can remember their names now. Oh! I used to do Neopets, my account must be about 6 years old now. I still go there to ‘waste my time’. Second Life is a similar concept, just less fanciful… Meaning you have no creatures such as Korbats, Meercas, and Usuls.

The strange thing about Neopets, for me, is that after a while, it became less of a fanciful world and more of a place where kid-minded advertisers could get their claws into a veritable cornucopia of potential consumers. And claw they did. Now, I can barely get into the site (yes, I do still visit) without seeing an ad for McDonalds or a sponsored game for the latest cool movie. I remember they did one for Spy Kids… oh wait, I’m beginning to date myself here. Who am I kidding? I’m still a newbie compared to guys like Robert Scoble and John Bell. Sorry, Mr. Bell. And sorry, Mr. Scoble.

Anyway, back to Second Life. This little virtual world now has advertisers. Smart people, those advertisers. Specifically, Electric Sheep Company (what a name! Love it!). Have large community of potential consumers — let’s advertise there! And if that community has their own economy, it wouldn’t really be real if they didn’t have advertisers to help that economy along. Let’s give those advertisers a standing ovation! (I don’t mean to sound sarcastic, that’s just how I sound at 845a)

Source

Rohit on Marketing Yourself with Your Blog

Rohit Bhargava had posted an interesting post on ‘Using Blogs as Personal Marketing’. Which is exactly my intent on creating my WordPress blogs.

It is no secret to my current employer that I maintain a blog. In fact, I had made sure to point it out on my resume during my interview.

Blogs are an effective platform for showcasing one’s knowledge and expertise on a certain area. They also show personality, something that, more often than not, can be disguised during a nerve-wracking interview. Not to mention, resumes and cover letters are drawn up with so much professionalism and business-lingo that personality is so often thrown on the wayside.

Under the cut is Rohit’s summation of some basic points to keep in mind while blogging.