Fine Print

Did you know that Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler filed suit against anonymous Blogspot bloggers who allegedy impersonated him and girlfriend Erin Brady? Me neither. But thanks to John Cass, I now have a fascinating resource of lawsuits involving blogs, a situation that will surely become a lucrative niche practice area as social media becomes more mainstream. There is also a database of cases related to social media.

I’m not interested in matters of law, per se, but am interested in seeing what people think they can get away with online, using social media and other tools, so this looks like an interesting reference point to get an overview of the legal aspect of all the 24/7 interactions swirling around us.

Cybersquatting (registering a domain name — usually linked to a company name — in the hopes of selling it at a profit) has been the subject of some contentious court battles in past years. How does that translate to Twitter and other social networks? I grabbed johncarson early, but now that more companies are embracing social media and setting up brand profiles, what’s to stop someone grabbing Coke, Pepsi and so on? (Haven’t checked, sure they’re already taken by legitimate company representatives.)

I could grab johnatcoke or johnatpepsi and pretend to tweet on behalf of that company. Social media “veterans” (of the last 12 months or so) would spot that in a heartbeat and set off the scam radar, but others might be duped. How many variations of misrepresentation are happening, or just around the corner? How far can we trust these identities?

This is a comment on a blog post this morning that puts some stuff in perspective: “Here in India many companies, let alone senior employees, have yet to establish an Internet presence. For small companies it’s understandable, but these are big multi-store organizations with no online presence at all (not even a page with phone numbers) so if you want info then you have to actually go to the store.” Source.

So, once all those organizations start to get online and establish their websites, blogs and Twitter accounts for branding purposes, there might be slim pickings. I remember someone tried (and then changed their mind) selling their Twitter account and all its followers a while back, citing it as a mini-business ready for the highest bidder. I think Twitter is too personal to be commoditized in this way.

Someone is holding socialmedialawyer.com at the moment; could be a good investment …

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada (Twitter: johncarson)

This past weekend Motrin released a controversial commercial that a lot of mom bloggers found offensive — an issue they naturally took to Twitter. Suffice to say, it’s not been a good Monday for Motrin’s PR department.

People are commenting on how the company has screwed up by not doing its market research more thoroughly in the first place to anticipate such a huge — and possibly — long-lasting negative reaction to its product alignment with new moms. The bigger issue is why a lot of people didn’t realize this groundswell of protest was building at the weekend until it was too late to engage those bloggers? It seems that Motrin wasn’t monitoring them properly.

Companies will always make mistakes online (human beings run them after all) but it’s how they recover that will be the real social media trial by fire.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada (Twitter: johncarson)

“I have arranged for you to get a priority account.”

That opening line always piques my interest. Like Mark Evans, I too got a SocialMinder invite from a trusted contact. But, the minute it asked me for my LinkedIn password … I clicked off and moved on. No way I’m plugging that into a third-party site.

Anyway, glad I didn’t. Evans wasn’t so lucky, as he explains here. B.L. Ochman is not a happy camper either.

For the record, one of my Twitter contacts posted this, so make up your own mind on whether to try it out or not: “The invite-a-friend page is VERY explicit that emails will be sent 2 the friends that U choose. U don’t have to send them.”

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

I’ve got to know Christie Adams pretty well since she was an attendee at Interactive Ontario’s last lunch event. She writes regular blog posts for PR in Canada, a lot of them about social media. Her latest one brings up the issue of how to represent a brand on Twitter, a question I coincidentally posed a short while before. People are dabbling, but as far as I can tell, there’s no general consensus either way.

There’s two ways of looking at this tricky subject:

(1) Use your personal Twitter account, but stress in each tweet that you are representing the brand. Also put some info in your bio about that aspect too. Pros: You have a group of people already following you who may be able to help you with the branding, if they feel inclined to do so. You won’t have to start from scratch building up that network. Cons: Your followers may feel used, or get confused as to whether there’s a hidden agenda behind your tweets.

(2) Set up a new averagejoeATcompany Twitter account solely for that purpose. Pros: You are blatantly and transparently stating that you work for/represent that brand, so can feel free to keep the tweets very focused on achieving that aim, without worrying that your followers will misrepresent your tweets. Also, if people pay attention to your Twitter name before following you, then it should be obvious who you tweet on behalf of, so followers — although there may be fewer — will be advocates, fans, clients, customers who love you and customers who hate you who want to vent. Cons: It takes time to build up a good, solid network to get some branding love, so if the client wants immediate results … then they should possibly not be looking at social media as an option. [Which is actually a pro, as those kinds of clients then won’t muddle it for people who do get it.]

So, which side of the fence am I on? Still deciding, but leaning towards the “keep your own account and be transparent” option. Who knows? Tomorrow is another day. This kind of debate changes all the time.

As an aside, I did get an interesting response by e-mail from someone who I greatly respect, but will keep anon: “Tricky one. Hmmm. I guess it depends who you are. If you’ve already got 5,000 followers, probably stay you. Remember, your ID in Twitter is how people find you, so if you built up JohnATBrand and then quit, you’re JohnATstartingoverkindascrewed. : )”

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Not PR, not social media — just a great story about getting the message out there, accidentally. When was the last time you checked your out of office reply?

E-mail error ends up on road sign.

Hat tip: The Next Web.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Ran across this post by Jason Baer (hat tip: Larissa Fair). Apart from the always-useful “scowling Pulp Fiction-style monkey with a gun” photo, Baer dissects some misconceptions that people have about social media, how to do it and what can be achieved.

To save space, I’ll just list his top six picks (all FALSE in Baer’s opinion) and answer on my own.

1. Social Media is Inexpensive — FALSE
2. Social Media is Fast — TRUE
3. Social Media is “Viral Marketing” — FALSE
4. Social Media results can’t be measured — TRUE
5. Social Media is Optional — FALSE
6. Social media is Hard — FALSE

For (2) I would argue that, depending on how niche the community is that you’re trying to engage, good results can be achieved in days, if not hours. For (4) I would argue that (not from a technical, software-monitoring option) social media results can’t really be measured. Baer does concede that to a point: “Can those results be tied back directly to sales, and therefore ROI? Probably not yet …” [I still prefer the term ROE — Return On Engagement.]

I think that the dangerous part of social media is that it is becoming a catch-all phrase; something that people who don’t really understand it think that it can guarantee results, cheaply, without much effort and because … well … “everyone else is doing it, right?”

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Chris Woodley has somehow managed to include a police mug shot of Frank Sinatra in a blog post about social media, and it is relevant, actually. (You’ll see the connection if you read it.)

He writes at Social Media Trader on the subject of social proof [from Wikipedia: Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed].

In other words, if you see a lot of people subscribing to a blogger, you probably will too, or follow them on Twitter. Is there value in that, or does blindly joining the sheeple give one a sense that they are not missing out on something important?

It can work both ways. I have personally added a ton of social media influencers to my RSS reader and will publicly admit to being excited when one of their names goes bold to indicate that they’ve updated their blog = means I will learn something. I’d say around 60% of those have been recommended to me, or I’ve checked out a “Top 20 Most Popular Social Media Bloggers” list or something similar.

The other 40% are people that I’ve found myself; niche specialists that concentrate on one area of social media, say, good causes, toy safety or cat lovers. (Client work.) They all have their own ways of doing things, some mainstream, some extremely inventive … and the great ones write about tangible results of what worked and what didn’t. It’s a gold mine of trends showing where social media is heading.

Woodley mentions the art of faking social proof — artificially inflating the amount of “fans” that bloggers have, and relates it to Frank Sinatra’s manager paying girls to scream for him at concerts. [I knew I’d get there in the end, thanks for sticking with it.]

Sinatra was the influencer of his day; things were simpler then, and it’s interesting to consider whether he’d be successful as a social media influencer today using the same tactics.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Todd Defren posts about a practice that is just plain wrong: commenting on people’s blogs under a false name, with the intention of driving “traffic” back to a client’s own blog or website. I put the word traffic in “” because it can’t really be called that. It can be called a stream of pi**ed off people being deceived into visiting a brand, the reputation of which they will associate with these sleazy, cheap tactics.

Not smart.

So, the “SEO” guys get called out, and lo and behold, come back with this recommendation: “Instead of the blog spam, we could have our employees post anonymously on blogs about needing a service similar to your offering … and then return a day later, posing as a customer who’s been happy with your services.”

Shudder.

Three words that a social media campaign does not make: spam, anonymously and posing.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Matt Hartley’s recent series regarding the perils of social networking had me thinking. If you read his article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, he had several examples of the scary amount of personal information he was able to acquire based solely on posts he’d found on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace — information that members were willingly putting on their sites with seemingly no thought to who could see it.

We’re talking cellphone numbers, addresses, dates and times of parties. It was frightening, and another reason why I was hesitant to join Facebook in the first place. Mind you, I’m fairly certain I’m more cautious than high school kids when it comes to putting my personal information online.

Still, I’m always surprised when strangers post comments on my personal blog, and how quickly. I recently mentioned Marilyn Churley on my blog (as she’s running for election in my riding) and found a comment a few hours later from an individual working on Marilyn’s campaign.

On Saturday night I had dinner with a couple who have a young daughter, and the thought of online predators makes them shudder. The things parents have to worry about today in comparison to when I was young blows my mind! And although the couple said they would easily lay down the law with their children about Internet use, they also know that by the time their daughter is old enough to be using social networking sites, technology will have advanced to the point where they’ll be as ignorant as parents today when it comes to protecting her.

~ Stephanie Sayer, Account Coordinator, GCI Canada

The guys at Bad Pitch Blog waxed lyrical yesterday on whether old journalism (read: traditional media) is dead. I touched on that in a roundabout way in this post a couple of weeks ago. [Disclaimer, I have worked as a journalist in the U.K. and Canada, so it’s a subject close to my heart.]

The author of the post, Richard Laermer, lists a slew of venerable publications that have laid off staff or cut costs by closing office space. My colleagues and I were discussing the art of pitching recently and the fact that the beat reporter is a dying breed, so it pays to keep up-to-date contact lists.

I disagree with Laermer on this point: “You need to look for every other place but the print media to pitch, because ink-stained pages are only picked up if you step on them after they are dropped in public places.” There’s still value in seeing a client’s name in print; it’s what they expect, and we’re not doing our jobs if we don’t strive for that.

I agree with Laermer on this point: “PR practitioners have to go for newfangled online sources. If you’re (still?!?) spending all day pitching old media, you are soon going to be stuck with very little to do.” Blogs, online outlets, microblogging platforms, social networks, forums — these are all just as important in a PR pro’s arsenal of getting coverage, boosting a brand and maintaining a client’s good reputation. The work actually takes up most of my day, so it’s a very valid strategy, and it works. The ROI is not immediate, but once people get it, the effects can be clearly seen.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

BusinessWeek had a story last Saturday about how companies are using Twitter to monitor themselves online, find out who is tweeting about them, and then jumping into the conversation to address those (usually negative) issues. “Is this a creepy trend?” asks the article.

No! Is my resounding answer. It’s about time companies started listening to their customers for a change instead of selling to them. The ROI will come in time; people like to be respected.

The story mentions Jonathan Fields’ experience of spotting William Shatner waiting to board a JetBlue flight. Fields wrote about it on Twitter, and within 10 seconds (I find that part hard to believe, it’s an ultra-fast response!) was being “followed” by JetBlue.

[cut] “It totally startled me,” says the 42-year-old author, who initially worried that JetBlue might be monitoring his use of the Wi-Fi connection. JetBlue employee Morgan Johnston quickly explained that wasn’t the case. JetBlue keeps tabs on what Twitter users say about it, using a scanning tool, to find customers who might need information, say, on flight delays or cancellations, Johnston said. [paste]

If users of these microblogging services realise that anything they put out there is in the public domain, searchable and fair game for comment, then the element of being surprised — if a company or person chooses to pick it up and run with it, or follow them, or link to them, or lambast them, or refer them to others — … on and on … — is totally gone.

In fact, these days, if someone doesn’t react to what you’ve said, then, that is surprising. It’s turning 180 and customers better get used to it and get excited by it.

[Hat tip for the lead to Laura Fitton.]

So, if you’re now prepared and comfortable with being “followed,” you better learn about personal branding. This could be the best 15 pages you’ll read today on that front.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

For those of us working in the sideshow attraction of social media, news today of an abrupt change of heart in the acquisition of Livingston Communications by the Social Media Group. After the realization that their management styles wouldn’t really gel, it’s nice to see full and open disclosure of why it’s not taking place. Better to find out sooner rather than later.

Heard here, watched here, read here.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Here’s a good example of why you should reserve your own domain name before someone else does.

Hat tip: Ragan Communications.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

A bit tied up on new biz pitches today, which is probably for the best, as I was going to write some very contentious content. Then I saw this.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Here’s an example of why you should check how your network is using your personal part of the Internet to talk about confidential stuff.

Facebook Has The Power To Ruin Lives

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

For my own professional knowledge, and because I’m a Brit, I keep a close eye on the social media scene in the U.K. I want to know how their perception of marketing and networking differs to North America. From my own personal experience, I know that they tend to play catch-up — and lack of connectivity doesn’t help things at all.

A post on dot.life quotes a small business owner who lives in Herefordshire. That is not rural at all, but because he can’t get broadband by the normal ADSL route, he has to pay for satellite broadband. That costs him 70 UK pounds (around $140) a month, and only for a 512Kbps connection speed! So why would that guy spend hours of his valuable connection watching videos, live-streaming webinars, uploading photos to social networks and the whole shebang of social media engagement, when he really needs to run his business instead and make a living?

And, from further afield, I’ve been communicating with a “Chief Buzz Officer” (his words) in Australia who helps corporate and small business owners develop their personal brands.

From what I can gather, the small business market there is totally oblivious to social media and the benefits. I won’t quote any more, as I now plan to move to Sydney and set up my own social media consultancy, but having been to Australia for a while I think it’s because they are sociable in a face-to-face way, rather than online. There’s a lot of beach/BBQ/bar activities there, and maybe that’s where a lot of the interaction takes place? I dunno. I’m not an expert, but it’s very useful to connect with people from other countries who work in the same industry I do and pick their brains.

Talking of brains, JO has a pretty active one, so I highly recommend you read his insights on mommy bloggers and how brands can approach them. Having researched that demographic a month ago, this is a great “with hindsight” read that is bookmarked.

So, in a totally related segue to brands, my colleague Larissa Marks sent me this story in today’s Toronto Star about how bad customer service can get even worse once you piss off a customer.

And if that customer is influencer Jeff Jarvis, then you are really — drumroll please! — screwing the chihuahua.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

Lots of rumours and speculation about the latest Rogers/Apple spat today.

From TechCrunch: “Now it looks like Apple won’t sell the iPhone 3G at its Canadian retail stores, leaving Rogers (and Fido, its partner is crime) flapping in the wind.”

From iPhone Atlas: “Speculation regarding a conflict between Apple and Canadian iPhone 3G carrier Rogers appear to be overblown, if such a quarrel exists at all. … However, Apple never planned to sell the iPhone 3G at its retail locations in Canada.”

Whatever the final outcome of all this, it’s still a PR nightmare for Ted.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

The world of Web 2.0 and the explosion of social media have meant serious changes, not only to the speed and depth of communication, but in the way that companies are being forced to relate to their customers. Social media has made it possible for consumers to have a real affect, whether positive or negative, on the reputation of a brand or organization. In fact, even one person can cause a ripple effect using word of mouth that can trigger alarms in the most powerful of companies.

In the past, consumers were often marketed to in a one-way stream, leaving them with very few options to respond. Discontent about a product or service could be ignored by organizations at their leisure because it was difficult and time-consuming for consumers to mobilize themselves. Not anymore.

A great example of this is the wave of discontent or “indignation” being felt by potential iPhone users in Canada. An article today in the Globe and Mail reports on a new site called www.ruinediphone.com that is protesting the pricing Rogers Wireless will be offering customers when the iPhone comes to town July 11.

The site, which contains a petition, has gained over 18,000 signatures since Friday and has received over 2,300 “diggs.”  This is a fantastic example of grass-roots consumer power mobilizing itself quickly and effectively against a massive company. I find it surprising that Rogers didn’t think this one through a bit more – i-fans are a pretty rabid bunch who are young, tech savvy and Apple loyal.

Does anyone else have any opinions? I think the escalating power of the consumer activist is a great thing, but I’m sure there are those who disagree. Please, feel free to share your thoughts!

~ Stephanie Sayer, Account Coordinator, GCI Canada