 I've been invited to participate in a webinar about Ethics in Blogging, sponsored by SocialMediaToday.com and The Social Media Group. The event will occur Thursday, September 24th at 1 pm ET/10 am PT. You can register to listen and participate for free, and the event is a steal at that price!
If you're webinared out, perhaps this will entice you to listen in: I don't care that much about ethics in blogging.
Don't get me wrong, I believe ethics are vital on a personal and professional level, but a dialog about ethics interests me far less than a discussion about how brands and blogs combine to impact (either positively or negatively) brand perception and consumer actions. Ethics are merely the table stakes--just like in traditional media, ethics are essential but the real magic in delivering results via blogs depends far more on blogger reputation, consumer attitudes toward the brand and category, the offer, demographics, and psychographics.
The operative issue for brands isn't that a blog is run ethically but that the blog, the blogger, the content, the context, the form of compensation, the value of compensation, and the type of disclosure work in concert to enhance the brand ... read more >>
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 Over the past few weeks, we've been working on a "top secret" project with Rand Han, a Chinese-American entrepreneur whose Shanghai-based marketing, advertising and communications support firm, BA360, has attracted a blue-chip roster of international and local customers over the past couple of years. In the best social media tradition, we connected with Rand online after he added his Little Red Book blog to Social Media Today a few months back.
We're pleased to share our little secret with you this morning. SMTodayChina is our new Mandarin-language version of the Social Media Today web community.
SMTodayChina brings together in one site content from the leading Mandarin-speaking bloggers and thinkers on social media. It will be updated daily by local content managers at BA360 in Shanghai. It is our second foreign language site; Social Media Actualities, our French language site, has been operating for more than a year and has built up a large and loyal following.
This is obviously a project we couldn't have undertaken without a solid local partner and that's where Rand Han comes in. Born in Orange County, California and educated in Singapore, ... read more >>
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 March, which is almost over, is Women's History Month. If this seems like a belated acknowledgment, it isn't. I celebrate women's history every day - and this blog aims to reach women - REAL women - the world over to help them understand the how to traverse the business of being in business, online. Hence, women's history is an on-going event, to us.
To better understand the concept of Women's History Month, I turned to Diversity Inc. As with the Center for Women's Business Research, Diversity Inc offers a wealth of information on women - and on our struggles to gain equality in life and in our careers. Here are a few stats that you might not know from the vault of Diversity Inc (paid sub articles): -
"As of 2008, there were 2.3 million firms [that were] 50 percent or more owned by women of color." -
"Asian-American women's companies outpaced all others in growth in numbers, employment and receipts." -
"Women are on the move... Fresh data from The 2009 Diversity Inc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® shows that women represent half the work force, slightly edging out national figures..." But, even more important than statistics that show our power, is t... read more >>
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 Pick up your pencils, kids. Social Media Today has a new sub-community called Social Media School which features all the great how-to content we're getting daily from our growing army of SMT bloggers. From blogging to YouTube, basics to video tutorials, SMS is intended to be a resource to help newcomers learn, and veterans to stay current, about the latest social media tools and techniques. It is less about strategy and more about practical, how to guidance that corporate marketing and communications people can use to launch their own social media initiatives (and maybe hire you to help them). All of the content on Social Media School will be original which means you won't see it here on the frontpage. One of the neat features of SMS...
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 Below is some of my personal theory on the semantic web and feed aggregation. Please excuse the rambling :).
As companies race to effectively aggregate our content an interesting thing is taking place: suddenly an aggregation of all our web-based activities are available via multiple sites on the web. Personally, I have information aggregated at MyBloglog, FriendFeed, Facebook, and many of my activities also show up on Twitter. So with this information everywhere where’s the value add?
At one point, aggregation services that found you news or information related to your friends provided a valuable service, incentivizing you to return to the site in order to get the latest information about what’s going on in your world. Unfortunately, much of that information in now aggregated all over the web and the aggregation service is no longer the core value.
Instead the core value is the automated filtering of that information. If you have the best filter, then users will come back to you. Take Techmeme for example. The site aggregates the latest technology news that it believes is most relevant to the readers and most important for the readers to know. It’s partially automatic and par... read more >>
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 The current issue of IDD magazine online explores the public relations quagmire currently confronting the investment banking industry. In a piece titled "Occupational Hazard," some of our industry's bold-faced names share their advice on just how to rebuild IB's sullied reputation. (President Obama's quip on Leno last night suggesting that our best & brightest forgo careers in investment banking probably didn't help much.) Here's a smattering of the notables' quotables: Peter Verrengia, president and senior partner at Fleishman-Hillard's Communications Consulting Worldwide: "At the heart of this is the fact that the public doesn't understand the role of the investment banker, how capital formation happens, or how it relates to their own economic progress. This has been fine in the past. Periodically, when the market blew up, bankers would come in for some finger-pointing, but the public, having little understanding of what they really do, tended to move on to other targets that they understood a little bit better, like brokers or individual companies that have failed to perform."Paul Argenti, a co-founder of Communications Consulting Worldwide (with Verrengia) and now a corpora ... read more >>
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It’s about the size of a small textbook. It has built-in wireless and a unique screen that is readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outdoors. It’s extremely durable, brilliantly functional, energy-efficient, and fun.
That’s the description, on the One Laptop Per Child site, of the XO, an amazing, highly portable, highly durable, small laptop computer specially designed and made for children in developing countries. Yesterday I had the privilege of seeing one of these amazing devices close-up and hearing about them from local Gold Coast business owner and software developer Steve Dalton. If you would like to learn more about this wonderful project, One Laptop Per Child and maybe join with those who are helping with development and distribution, here are some links: One Laptop Per Child - http://laptop.org Friends site - community site and blog - http://olpcfriends.org Gold Coast, Australia, group - http://groups.google.com/group/osdgc
Photo credit: Cameroon 1 - One Laptop Per Child - Creative Commons Link to original post... read more >>
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Just wanted to post some of the recaps and Peter Kim’s post has some good links. You can see the real time questions we got by searching for the #swl on twitter. Thanks to everyone who came and feel free to contact me with more questions. Peter also talked to KXAN (local NBC) about SXSW before [...] read more >>
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 It came up just the other day - someone emailed me a video that had an obvious political slant. I thought it was interesting and entertaining, so of course, my first reaction was to post it on my Facebook Page. I was just about to click on the “post” button when I a thought entered my head: Maybe not.
My Facebook Friends include friends, family, acquaintances, a few people I don’t know all that well, colleagues and clients. Its not that I’m ashamed of my political views, quite the opposite actually. And I would have loved to share this video with the majority of my “friends”, but I began to think about the clients that are in my “friends”. Now don’t get the wrong idea - there was nothing obscene or truly bad about this video, but it definitely leans to one side. Its not that I don’t want or even care, frankly, if anyone knows my political views. But I do understand that many topics, politics especially, can be very emotionally -more so I think, lately. I wouldn’t want to offend anyone or have them think I am some sort of radical…do you see where I’m going with this? Its not that I would offend anyone, but the possibility - remote as it was - stopped me from posting the video. S... read more >>
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If you want your customers to engage in your social media content, don’t play charades. Deliver the high quality experience and passion you have behind what you have to say. This is an issue that really hits a nerve with me. Companies and people that put up PowerPoint decks on SlideShare, LinkedIn, even their own websites, for me to simply flip through their slides and don’t record their commentary drives me crazy. It points to laziness. A presentation that went well with a speaker in front of an audience does not translate well when you share it without the commentary. Talk to me! I want to know the details. I want to hear your...
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