The Ethics of Social Media

Canadian blogger Dave Fleet just asked a good group of questions on Twitter. He asks,
"Where's the line between PR pros participating in social media and PR pros exploiting it? Who draws that line?"

This just a week after SAP's Mike Prosceno, asked me to include issues of governance and ethics when we start up the SAP Global Survey in December.

This just three and two days after companies have called me asking for help starting "blog outreach campaigns," which seem to me very much like taking messages and targeting them through social media into people's foreheads.

I think it was Shaw who wrote "ethics is what you do when no one is looking." They didn't have social media back then. I think it was Scoble who first said you should use blogging to "tell don't sell."

Let's not be naive.  Businesses are stating to use social media so they can sell more products and services.  This is a good thing. Social media allows them to disintermediate a lot of crap shoveling so that those that provide the goods and services can get closer to their customers and the customers can get closer to them.

But, now those have done a lot of shoveling in the past are scrambling to get into the game.  They ar welcome to it, so long as they leave their entrenching tools behind. To me the number one ethical issue is that companies come to social media willing to have conversations rather than deliver messages.

Blogging has flourished rapidly because for the most part it is a transparent and ethical channel. It seems to me that there are increased efforts to game the channel.  ome companies are trying to look like they are trying to have a conversation when in fact they just want to deliver the same old messages through a new channel.

So far, this has proven to be a lame effort. If it starts to succeed then there is a very real danger that the new social media will become is laden with crap as the old PR channel  is today.

Shaw lived in simpler times.  Today everyone is watching corporate ethics. 

Comments

[Niall Cook]

Except, it seems, the corporates.

In McKinsey's latest Global Survey assessing the impact of societal issues, ethical standards for advertising and marketing has decreased in the last 2 years as in issue they feel is likely to gain public and political attention.

Even less believe it will have any impact on shareholder value.

[Niall Cook]

Another couple of points:

1. "blog outreach campaigns" are what companies think they need in order to have conversations in social media. The smart consultants like you should educate them otherwise.

2. Sorry to pick nits, but how can the channel be ethical. Ethics belong to the people who use it. There are, and always will be, both ethical and unethical uses of just about everything in this world.

Your post is timely though. We're in the process of giving all our employees (we're an "old PR" company) a set of social media principles. I'd be happy to send you a copy if you wish.

[Geoff Livingston]

Two things have happened that demand these ethics.

1) 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.

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, they have to play to the form, which means fostering faith and trust through authentic communications. Those are ethical, honest and transparent touches.

[Andrew Careaga]

Creating trust for some organizations is going to be tough. People's crap detectors are more finely attuned these days than many corporations realize. It also doesn't help when a brand like Apple -- a brand many people seem to trust -- decides to run an ad that perpetuates the "slick, spinmeister" stereotype of the PR craft.

Regarding the reference to Shaw, such a quote about ethics may have been attributed to him. But you might be thinking of one from Dwight Moody: Character is what you are in the dark (or "when no one's looking," as I thought I'd heard it). That one seems appropriate, too.

[Douglas Karr]

The PR channel was really put there to feed mass media, wasn't it? It was an effective means of communicating your products or services and making sure it got in front of someone who might write about it.

Blogs aren't just the recipient of PR, they are also the producers. When companies put their information out in a timely and transparent manner, the word is out. If mass media isn't paying attention to the blog (there's evidence that they are 'borrowing' from blogs here in Indianapolis), they are still depending on PR.

I'm not opposed to PR since mass media still has a good percentage of attention (I just got done reading an NYT article on swarming). However, I think the transition to blogging and transparently putting information out there for people who are interested will eventually push PR out of the spotlight.

[Kami Huyse]

I think that the problem with PR is that it has been equated with media relations rather than customer service. Some have just translated this over into social media and now the journalists are bloggers, but with the same approach.

Back to the old school...I remember when I was new in PR and called on a fellow PR pro to handle a situation that had bubbled up at the national level (my purview) and needed to be handled at the state level (her purview) and she said, "We don't deal with customers directly."

Say what?

Now that social media demands that we do deal with people directly, the goal has become "Let's fake them out?"

I am really not surprised since only a few public relations professionals see themselves as a conduit to the stakeholders or communities that care about the company and its leadership.

I always saw that, and so social media just seemed to me to finally be the tool that would make that possible.

And guess what, it has for many of my clients.

But human nature will always seek to exploit things that work. Sigh!