Social Media Week (#smw) is in full swing and some interesting and insightful blog posts have appeared on its site. One of these is by Dani Klein (@YeahThatsKosher) – a guest blogger who has taken snippets of information and video content from PR professionals in order to understand their role within social media, all of which is aggregated under the #SMPR tag (for those who want to follow the thread).

We all know that the opportunities for PR are wide reaching and the emergence of digital/online PR has made it even more so. It’s a very exciting time yet one quote particularly stood out for me from Keith Trivit, an AE at a NY PR agency who said “Social Media takes time, work, and effort to implement; Clients want to jump right into Social Media … important to slow things down”. I couldn’t agree more – you need to take a step back from the fast-paced nature of Social Media (initially!) and go back to the brand/campaign objectives.

The CIPR defines Social Media as ‘an evolving area of PR practice and its profile continues to grow’, which is very exciting and will mean that brands are interested in dipping their toe in Social Media – fantastic, but take it slow to start off with. It’s very much in a PR’s nature to approach things with caution, to always be one step ahead and thinking about how actions (posts, responses, tweets) can and will be perceived. This is something that’s drilled into us from day one, so although Social Media is very exciting, it’s worth getting a PR viewpoint before jumping head first into it. That way you can find out what we think is achievable, how it should be approached, and how to prepare for two-way engagement….then you can start. Need I remind you about what happened to Habitat or Neal’s Yard Remedies? I think you get the picture J.

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

Social Media Starfish. Image courtesy of DBarefoot (Robert Scoble)

Facebookers are perhaps unaware that when they upload to the site, according to new terms of service technically they transfer all rights to their content over to facebook.

Facebook made it clear that they had never claimed ownership of material that users upload and the terms were intended to protect content on other users pages should a user delete their own, e.g. in wall to wall conversations.

However this does raise a real question about the ownership of material uploaded to the internet.  Creative Commons licences only go so far in protecting the copyright of uploaders such as bloggers or facebookers and the terms of use of many social networking sites may override any efforts to protect ownership of content. 

In addition, it turns out that the whole thing can still be subject to Human Error as Sweetney found out when a ‘low level production assistant’ at Fox TV, ‘borrowed’ a photo of her dog Truman from her blog and used it in their NFL holiday broadcasts.

Even brands and businesses who chose to upload content to sites such as flickr and facebook need to be aware that they may be technically relinquishing their ownership of this content. 

More importantly, lack of understanding, misinterpretation, ignorance or blatant disregard of licensing by internet users will inevitably result in branded content turning up in entirely unexpected ways and places…

posted by gemmaT

Update, 20/02/09: 

Following a lot of fuss and upset across both online and offline media (including a facebook protest group that gained 121,000 members in just a few days), facebook have returned to their old terms of use.

So (at least for now), the company’s right to your original content expires when you delete your account.

One of the Swampies emailed me about my post on spring cleaning in social media, commenting that it had made her think about how the whole concept of privacy is actually becoming outdated.  She reasoned that if privacy is being replaced by a more open, online society happily broadcasting their lives via flickring, facebooking and twittering, the politicians of the future will be digital natives, used to both sharing and seeing outrageous content online.  Which might make the tabloid ‘splash’ a mere footnote in history in a more permissive online society.

But perhaps the tabloid press will be fondly viewed as pussycats compared with the cumulative tiger power of bloggers and citizen journalists (digital natives themselves), unhindered by the laws of libel and with cameraphone always at the ready.  With information (however true it might be) able to be disseminated across the globe in minutes via an electronic version of chinese whispers, the potential for inaccurate or sensational reporting is immense.  And unlike traditional newspapers, today’s blog post isn’t going to be out of mind by tomorrow as fish and chip wrapping.

So not just individuals but brands too are going to need someone to watch out for their digital reputation.  Someone to watch their digital back.  Someone like us.  : -)

posted by gemmaT