Marcy Weibtraub, Steve Rubel, Liana Evans are on this panel about Social Media Marketing Ethics.

Liana Evans,
Back in the day, 1995, people were doing something preceived bad wasn’t noticed much, but in 2008, it’s a different story and you have to be careful, what you say and do, or what is said, gets spread all over the world immediately.

What is ethical? Your audience decides. WOMMA’s guidelines are cited, but are charter blog ethical? (Robin’s Daily Dose).

Are Avatars ethical? Do you want to relate to your client’s content or just get traffic?

Marty Weintraub - Continuum of Black & White, a variety of opinions. Promotional value but traffic is of questionable value.

Commercial Avatars - participation for company gain. Level of transparancy,who are you, really?

Do we protect the brand? Naughty or Nice? Who owns the Avatar?

Walled Garden Forum Rat, not transparent. Interested Friend with well developed Persona.

Note; Marty doesn’t make much sense to me, could be me. I think Marty is sketching out personas of 10 people and how they use Social Media.

Do follow link building from mid level keywords.

Yeah, Marty is interesting but hard to follow. I think what he is selling is a way to take a client’s campaign and figure out which persona/roles fit.

Steve Rubel - Ethical Social Media Marketing

Intersection between search, social media and ethics. What is the global economic downturn play into this.

All media is increasingly, social. Need to consider the bloggersphere as Yellowstone park.

Gartner study- upcoming study says 50% of the campaigns will fail. That’s why many campaigns don’t work.

Win -Win

Social Responsibility, Steve has 50,000 subscribers, 5,000 pages and Pagerank of 7; if I rag on someone, might get Goodle Juice but it would be the most unethical thing I could do.

Global Economic situation- Steve Rubel is hopeful, but acknowledges we’re in an age of transparancy, and we’re all reporters. Great time for Public Relations.

Colloboration, while some of us compete, we all need to work together.

Questions:
Edelman has been in the cross hairs of some public opinion but Steve Rubel thinks when you fail you get back up and everyone fails and don’t be afraid to fail, but if you do fail, fail at the right things.

Social Media Measurement- younger generations might hang out on FaceBook but not understand the business goals and implications. Ethical Effects.

Steve Rubel thinks Social Media is not about creating BUZZ, it’s about creating actions that people talk about.

Steve mentioned Brian Solis as a person who gets it, PR person who is transparent and sociable; by the way, I do the same thing (wish I had the 50,000 subscribers and Pagerank of 7).

What about the paper trail people leave through their participation in Social Networks, what happens 5 years down the line when a future potential employer looks at it and does not hire you. Are people afraid to participate because of this.

Steve thinks the Global Economic Situation will force us all to be more transparent, due to ROI.

Summary: this was a long session than the first, on presidential politics, but it was still good, and I’m one of Steve Rubel’s 50,000 subscribers.