Month: August 2009

By Posted on Posted in Politics, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

My friend Elsom Eldridge has a nice article about how to avoid becoming “Social Media Roadkill.” And I agree with almost everything he says.

Almost everything. With my usual focus on transparency, here’s what I disagree with (emphasis added):

Be personable but don’t give people a reason to dislike you. Mention your dog or your kids so that consumers see you in a dimensional way; skip over religion and politics where you are sure to make enemies no matter what you say.

This was my response:
On the whole, good advice–but I think it’s possible to succeed in social media without hiding your politics. As long as you don’t promote them in an offensive way. I’ve had spirited but friendly debates on political issues for years via social media. My politics are part of who I am, and it would be a blow against integrity to hide them.

I find that most people respect my stances, even when they disagree. And I am careful to challenge views while not attacking the person who holds those views, to keep the debate positive, to avoid namecalling or other forms of dumping.

Some of the people I disagree with strongly about politics have in fact sent me clients, endorsed my books, and had long, complex off-list explorations with me about our points of agreement and disagreement. I am seen as a friendly, helpful, and yes, opinionated person.

Shel Horowitz, award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Media Ethics, Politics, Transparency vs. Secrecy

What an outrage! If there is a PR equivalent of disbarment, Bonner & Associates would be a candidate.

As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman’s office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.

The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

“They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization,” said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville’s Hispanic community. “It’s this type of activity that undermines Americans’ faith in democracy.”

You can read the newspaper article here If you prefer audio. Democracy Now covered this today (briefly) as well.

I make a good part of my living as a Pr copywritier and marketing strategist, and I’m totally appalled. I also note that all the press coverage I’ve seen points out that this particular firm has a long history of “astroturfing,” which casts suspicion on the claim that this was an accident. I don’t know how you forge a letter from an imaginary person on someone else’s official letterhead—twice!—and call it an accident. I also don’t know how you can run a PR agency for decades for 25 years and not think that the Public Relations Society of America Code of Ethics has any relevance to you.

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By Posted on Posted in Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

This is something I’ve been struggling with pretty much since I joined Twitter over a year ago: how do you let people know you appreciate what they’ve done without filling up your Twitter stream with posts that are of low value to other readers?

Yes, if they’re following you, you can send a DM (Direct Message). But if they’re not, you have no choice but to post in the public stream. Because I don’t want my page to be dominated by what-should-be-private thank-yous (I hate it when I visit someone else’s page and see 70% of the Tweets are thank-yous, and I don’t choose to follow those people), and because when I’m thanking for retweets (reposting something I’ve posted, so their own network sees it) or Follow Fridays (nominations of cool people to follow) it’s generally a mixture of followers and non-followers, I’ve tended to send a group thank-you to everyone at once (which is very easy to do on TweetDeck). I don’t always know who is in each category, and it’s certainly frustrating to try to DM someone only to discover they aren’t following you.

I don’t send a thank-you for following me, because I don’t see auto-DMs as adding value very much of the time, and with over 2000 followers, it’s not practical to send real individual notes. But I do like to say thanks when someone retweets or nominates me as a cool person to follow. And yet, if my stream were filled with personal thank-yous to those not following me, the stream would become boring and people would stop nominating me.

Today, I logged on to find that someone had criticized my group thank-you practice, in both an @ reply (public) and a DM (private). He didn’t feel the group thank-you was sufficiently personal. And he’s right–I’ve never felt the solution was ideal.

So I wonder…what IS the ideal way to handle this? How do YOU balance the need to be personal with the need to deliver high value in a Twitter profile? I’m eager to hear your comment either below or on Twitter @ShelHorowitz .

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