The Buzz Bin

Our usual interview did not arrive today (boo!), but we hope to run this in the next day or two so hang in there.

In the interim, a pretty cool conversation is taking place over at Shel Israel’s blog today. Shel picked up a thread from Dave Fleet, who asked, “Where’s the line between PR pros participating in social media and PR pros exploiting it? Who draws that line?”

Shel was pretty pragmatic acknowledging that businesses are here, and they are here to make money. He had a fantastic response: “To me the number one ethical issue is that companies come to social media willing to have conversations rather than deliver messages.”

This discussion mirrors an expose over at PR Squared. Todd Defren revealed a guerilla marketing firm’s proposal demonstrating a desire to astroturf comments in social media realms. A fascinating conversation ensues in the comments section, too.

Why Social Media Principles Are Necessary

It’s time to be brutally blunt to our marketing brethren and sisters who think the old ways will work. Your efforts to make money at the expense of basic human relationship principles will fail. Picking up on my comments at Shel’s blog, two things have happened that demand these principles.

1) Over the past years, companies and, in general, media outlets have violated the public’s trust of their information. The command and control approach to marketing worked to the point that special interests corrupted media outlets. Consider that in a recent Guardian article, BBC Chairman Sir Michael Lyons had to publicly state that his company faces a “big challenge” regaining the public trust. We’re not talking about a small advertising driven trade publication here.

2) Digital culture is a very fragile one. In general, there is no body language, no tone to hear, no eye to eye communication. Even in “user-generated” video and audio, re-recordings and edits can mask inconsistencies. Authenticity and trust is based on a very generous gift of faith from the consumer, whether that’s in a C2C, B2C or a B2B environment.

So entering social media worlds, companies a) have two strikes against them because no one trusts them and b) must realize the frail nature of relationships within the media form. To succeed, marketers have to play to the form, which means fostering faith and trust through conversational communications. That requires ethical, honest and transparent touches.

To fly in the face of these principles simply invites disaster. It’s too easy to get busted out here. And when you do get busted, we’ve seen all too often that the power of Word of Mouth is a double edged sword.

Smart, progressive communicators get this. Innovators will also adopt this. In the case of more conservative organizations, competition is the great motivator. Why? Since fear drives them, ultimately fear of losing their market share will supersede fear of change.

And then there will be the unethical ones. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, they think they can get away with it. And they will be the bad apples that will continue to upset the barrel no matter what we do. But we can be firm and say, “This will not be tolerated. You have been warned.” The rest is on them.