Social Media Ethics - few interesting points

Just wanted to share with you few interesting points made by Andy Sernovitz on social media ethics. You can download the whole document here, but first watch this:


Andy Sernovitz: Social Media Ethics Briefing: Staying Out of Trouble; presented by GasPedal and the SMBC from GasPedal on Vimeo.

I think the ideas mentioned here are valid for any social media activity, if not for business in general. It's always worth to start with doing things right (with ethics of your business) and train your employees to understand the difference between their professional and private opinions. As social media presences become increasingly important for brands in many sectors, re-thinking your ethics (if you still do not have it written down) becomes crucial!

Media Camp London 3 - write up

This one is rather a late one, as I have already seen @BenjaminEllis, @Yvonne_PLM and @pcmcreative posting materials from it, whereas I spent my days on sleeping for 14 hrs (not done since Dawid was born:P) and recovering after two weeks of commuting to London:( So here is a quick write up of last Thursday's event.

Media Camp London 3 was my second event organised by @audio/ Social Media Mafia and once again I spent the day with very inspiring people.

After morning coffee with @Rubyxxcube (so happy we finally met) and warm up session on networking with @jobucks during which I met two Polish boys from Imre (very switched on when it comes to SEO - promised support on that:)), I listened to Jamie Riddell presenting his session on “Setting up a Business with No Investment and Succeeding”. As I am very interested in the process of setting up new businesses - not for me, but in the processes related to it - I was fortunate to see few issues a new company might face and might have to be prepared for. I think I agree with most points, although I did make it clear that in my opinion there will always be place for many social media agencies - no need to panic, let's just let them all do the good job:)

Benjamin Ellis, whom I was very happy to see again, once again spoke very inspiring thoughts - this time on management of creative people. You can see exact analysis of his ideas in his blog post and the slides below:

[slideshare id=2737158&doc=benjaminellismcl3-091217090317-phpapp02]

After lunch portion of Oxford gossip with @oxcom (thank you for sponsoring:)) and @ianwilliams, I presented my bit of social media ethics focussing on:

1. pointing out how much of our daily decision making is related to ethical questions;

2. encouraging event attendees to join the discussion, as I believe the abstract idea of social media ethics can only be grasped by questioning our values, freedoms and behaviours.

I am very happy to see that 40 min I left for discussion seemed not to be enough, and I hope at least one person went home with this concept! For the life streaming recording made by @pcmcreative (which I am extremely grateful for!!!) I will send you to her Qik account here, but here are the slides:

[slideshare id=2736105&doc=socialmediaethicsmcl3-091217055804-phpapp02]

After this one, I joined @pcmcreative's session on Amb:IT:ion project. I must say I am very impressed with the project and I really hope I can get involved in it more - at least on the networking level! If you are social media savy and would like to support art communities, joining their network is a must, so do it now!:) (and me in the meantime I will try to get hold of the slides;)

This filled me up with ideas enough to have a chat with @oxcom on the way back to Oxford.

Here are the photos for the event!

Thank you very much to Chris Hambly for organising and to all the sponsors for making it possible!:)

I really hope to see another one, and all of you there:) Come over and share your ideas!

The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg

Tamar Weinberg is best known from her contributions to Mashable and her post 'The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook', but recently her book 'The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web' becomes equally popular.It is basically a student book for everyone interested in how social media works for marketing purposes and personally I think it should be a mandatory course tought at every single marketing school. From the introduction to social media and settign up goals and strategy, she is guiding us through major types of media - blogs, microblogs, social networks, social bookmarking, news sites, touches upon types of content (photo, video, audio) to finalise the process of understanding on-line marketing with coherent approach and ethics of it. Perfectly structured book full of practical advice and interesting additional reading coming from the best source! I strongly advice everyone already working in social media marketing or intending to do so to read it and keep it on their shelf! It's one of those books you read once and come back to it many, many times!

I am so happy Tamar decided to put it all on paper and share with us! Thank you!:)

Media Camp #2

Before I post about Saturday's Media Camp #2 I wanted to wait a bit and think it over, because due to the shity weather I was so upset that I felt like spending few days away from social media altogether - but that's unfair, and since Documentally mentioned need for a place to share thoughts about venues and places on-line when commenting on my Twinterval post, I thought I add short info about Media Camp #2 as well.

Media Camp on Saturday was already second edition from this series and as far as I can see on Social Media Maffia's blog there is more to come (quite soon one in Oxford, which is even more exiting!). It is aimed to provide forum for discussion around social media in several topics - this time it was those 4:

1. Digital.Creative::games / web development / animation
2. Be seen.Get heard::Social Media / Communication / PR / Advertising / Business
3. Techno.Teaching::Educational Technology / teachers
4. Over2U::The room to use when you just don't fit the boxes but have something to share!

Lolly and I managed to get there (I would never ever get there without her!) by 10.30 due to the fact my train was late from the shire (country flooded after one night of rain?:/), but we still had time to check mails before the discussion 'Will PR inherit the social media earth?' kicked off. It was great to see input from people who do work in social media, from people who have nothing to do with it, and from us - guys working in Word of Mouth. Similar exchange of experiences continued during next session 'A DIY approach to online monitoring'.

After lunch (and Colin laptop's lunch...) I joined guys talking about brand engagement, transparency and non-profit projects - all of which interest me a lot, even though only few relate to my curent work.

I heard and myself had a few comments about the venue - because rooms were quite separated and only socialising area was one floor lower - which made it difficult to find everyone in the same place. But today I see it differently - if you wanted, you could go to the bar or simply chat to people wherever they are. The main focuss was supposed to be working in groups and that is what actually happened.

I am glad to see this initiative and hope it continues. Personally I think it needs more input from my industry, but that can be easily sorted next time, I hope.

Photos on Flickr here, but do check the Twitter updates from all attendees (special thanks to anniemole and alex4d for posting notes on each session) to see what we have talked about it. Great notes!

Green Awards night tonight

Tonight is the night of the Green Awards Ceremony in London. If you haven't heard about it, let me just quickly introduce the main goals: raising the awareness of CSR, sustainability and best ethical practice in any sector, any industry. Judging from tonight's speakers list and the about site I think the Awards are focussing on marketing too - 'As an innovative and progressive practice, marketing has the potential to inspire hope. In fact, we believe it has the power to change the face of business for good.' The wide range of categories proves those points too. I personally cheer for Ethical Superstore simply because I like the fact one can buy based on ethical believes (brands, producers, production method, country etc). Good luck!:)