Mutually Inclusive PR

Second Life Backlash Continues

The virtual natives are restless.  I'm waiting to see if this is an uprising of citizens for better corporate behaviour, or an effort to squash expression of opinions that don't please some Second Life pioneers.

Residents of a portion of Second Life have voted to ban companies and agencies from their portion of the virtual world who make unwarranted claims of accomplishments.

"The resolution: Some PR agencies and RL companies have abused SL and made claims in RL media of being first to do things many SL residents have done long before them ('1st radio station in SL', '1st fashion brand', '1st tabloid').

"SHOULD WE BAN THEM FROM DREAMLAND?
Group Dreamland Citizens  Proposal PASSED!"

Complaining that companies jumping on the Second Life bandwagon are unethically claiming credit for the work pioneered by others, "real" estate developer Anshe Chung issued a statement that the ban (see below) can take place if a company or avatar is judged to have falsely claimed credit for a Second Life innovation and hasn't apologized for the offence. (whatever that means) will take place.  Some form of quasi-judicial review will also take place online. Screenshot of Anshe Chung courtesy Second Life Herald.

According to the Second Life Herald, the gesture seems to be a call for repentance by anyone who is claiming to be "first" at things that have been done before in Second Life.

The Herald, meanwhile, takes offence at comments about Second Life by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson on their podcast.

Update:  I missed this part of Chung's news release that explains the terms of the ban:

"Organisations and their avatars will be warned after a violation has been determined by a jury of residents. A ban will be issued if no adequate retraction and public apology is made by the offending party. In case of repeat offenses or especially severe violations a ban may be issued without prior warning."

Update II: With BL Ochman commenting that "IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano's avatar will become the first Fortune 10 CEO to appear in SL" next week, does that mean Palmisano will get spanked by a Second Life jury if it turns out not to be true? Has IBM called each of the other Fortune 10 CEOs to verify that they don't already have a Second Life avatar?

Previous post:  Backlash against Crayon's Second Life Launch

You Can Tell a Blog Has an Audience When...

Antonia Zerbisias doesn't post to her popular blog about media, politics and culture for two months.

She drops in on Halloween, posts 17 words, and gets 157 comments. Those are dedicated readers.

With some blogs, half the fun is in the comments section. (Or in this case, all of the relentless personal attacks and mind-numbing semantic debates are in the comments section.)

Tags:  media, torontostar, blogs, canada, debate,bitchfest

I'm an Angry Customer. Deal with Me

Note to every employee of every company I deal with:

My anger is not personal.  If I am pissed off, there's usually a good reason, and often that reason relates to a product or service you've sold me.

I may be lying to you, for one reason or another.  I may misrepresent your company's promises to me.  I may let other factors get the better of me and behave badly.

For these things, I apologize.

Now, let's talk about how you behave...

I don't care what your company policy is, unless you indicate you've heard what my problem is.

I don't care whose fault it is, but I'm willing to listen if you show you're listening to me.

I don't care why you can't help me.  I want to know who can help me.

I'm assuming you're working from a script and will try to thwart me.  I hope you prove me wrong.

I do care about your company, or I wouldn't be bringing this problem to your attention.

Seth Godin has some good tips for employees. It's not rocket science. It's manners and being human.

Update:  John Andrews has a great response on his blog, suggesting I haven't even begun to act like an angry customer.  He says I'm just a miffed customer...

Tags: service, retail, behavior, anger, rage, sethgodin, business, communications, manners

Powered by Qumana

Missing the Zerb

After taking some pretty intense criticism over her postings about the Middle East, and putting up with frequent nasty flame wars in the comments sections of her blog, Antonia Zerbisias put visitors on notice that their comments will be deleted and they will be banned if they get out of hand.

Then her dog died.  She has been taking a well deserved break for the last 10 days.

Not afraid to express an opinion, and usually willing to argue a point in the comments section, Zerbisias hosts a compelling blog about the media and politics.

Every blogger needs a bit of a break from time to time.  Glad to see Ms. Z went offline before the flame wars burned her out.

Tags: antonia zerbisias, media, politics, flame wars, blogs

Powered by Qumana

The Last Time I Did it Was in Early July

Ragan Communications editor David Murray scoffs at my pledge this month to be a bit more understanding about the impact my writing might have on individuals. He wonders aloud (well, as aloud as clacking away at a keyboard gets) whether I ever pick up the phone and conduct an interview for this blog:

"With as little original reporting as most bloggers do—we wonder if Eggertson has ever uttered the words, “Hi, this is Eric Eggertson of the Mutually Inclusive PR blog, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about the campaign you’re doing on behalf of cigarette companies …”—their “snarkiness” is often the only reason to read them."

Now, you might wonder why a paid editor of a communications trade magazine (among other duties) would publish speculation, when the answer to that question is just a phone call (I'm the only Eric Eggertson listed with a phone in Canada) or an e-mail away.

But we at Mutually Inclusive PR have vowed to be more patient with people we perceive to be arrogant, lazy or misguided, so we will indulge this indirect way of asking me a question, and respond.

I hardly ever conduct phone interviews. I work full-time at a communications job, and tend to contact people or organizations by e-mail at lunch or after business hours, if I get the chance.

The last time I did it was in early July, when I e-nterviewed Steve Osgoode of HarperCollins Canada about the book promotions they're doing involving podcasts.

Thanks for asking, David! And thanks for continuing to be a faithful, if skeptical reader.

Related Posts:

Lessons Learned from the Nobody Thing

I'm a Nobody in the Communications Business

IABC Blog Battle Royale

Tags: ragan, davidmurray, snarkiness, research, journalism

Powered by Qumana

Lessons Learned from the Nobody Thing

Ragan Communications blogger Steve Crescenzo watched a colleague get crapped upon by what he and some others perceived to be a horde of rabid, hysterial bloggers.  He has learned several things from the episode:

• Don't insult people, if it makes you look like a pompous ass (I'm paraphrasing);
• Don't piss off insecure bloggers, or they'll attack you;
• A lot of bloggers are blindly prejudiced against the traditional media.

Which is too bad, because I hoped he and others would learn these truths instead:

• It's more gracious to apologize and move on than to bluster about why you should have used a different adjective to insult someone;
• Bloggers are a lot like ordinary people. In fact they are ordinary people (a lot like trade magazine editors and columnists);
• People generally have more in common with others than they think. When they can truly see the other person's perspective, they gain far more than they would by winning an argument.

Steve has a great sense of humour. If not for a personal attack on his reputation by Nobody Allan Jenkins, I'm sure Steve would have found something funny and enlightening about this situation to share with his readers. Instead, he launched a counterattack, slamming Allan for bringing up, out of the blue, an incident from years ago that suggested Steve once acted like a drunken boor.

I'm with Steve on this one. Even Nobodies can be insensitive, and even mainstream media can feel unfairly attacked and personally offended.

An apology for the original Nobody comment by David Murray would have been nice, but I didn't expect it. I'm not holding my breath for Allan to offer an apology for slinging mud in Steve's direction, either.

Assuming no apologies are forthcoming, what else do we learn? In the comments to Steve's post, Ragan Communications' Mark Ragan misses the point about the Nobody movement. He asks for a future report on progress, metrics, and sales.

The Nobody thing wasn't about sales, or site traffic or performance objectives, so don't ask for them. Our lofty goal was to bring people together and try something different. To follow a sense of indignation to its logical conclusion, and see where that took us once we got past the initial slam at an arrogant offhand comment by a trade magazine editor.

It was a bit of agitprop street drama, acted out in the blogosphere instead of at the corporate offices of its target.  It was a social thing, where creative people who barely knew each other beforehand had some fun, made some statements about personal dignity, and showed how a group can quickly coalesce around an idea.

Our goals were achieved when we first extended a hand to others, and got a response. Everything else is gravy.

If no one writes another word about the Nobody thing, we will have exceeded our expectations.  A bunch of people who I used to think of as competitors for audience are now acquaintances, maybe even friends, thanks to an experiment in satirical blogging.

I've learned that it's better to reach out with an open hand than a closed fist.

And that is a good lesson to learn.

Update:  Comments on Steve's blog and a new post on the Nobody blog renew my faith in people. Apologies all around (well, David Murray seems uinable to actually apologize, but he makes cheery noises), and promises to get together for beers at the IABC international conference this June in Vancouver. Now if somebody could strum a guitar, we can sing a round of Kumbaya and put the nastiness behind us.

Scoble Puts the Trolls where they Belong

Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, who has long boasted about his policy of not censoring comments on his blog, has decided to moderate comments.

About time.

Setting aside the legal implications of giving a wide audience to comments that often get out of hand and sometimes are just hate screeds against various targets, the personal wear-and-tear of reading through raw bile has to wear you down.

Smart move, Mr. S.  I don't have a comments policy on my blog, but as soon as I have to deal with a fraction of the crap Scoble has been enduring for years, I'll come up with something.

Wikipedia on trolls.

Previous post:

Blog Comments Lead to Lawsuit

Tags: blogs, robertscoble, trolls, netiquette

Powered by Qumana

A Movement of Nobodies Is Born

I guess it was the dismissiveness of David Murray's insult that pissed me off. The way he called communications consultant Allan Jenkins "a nobody in the communications business" in the closed milieu of his trade magazine editorial added to my ire.

If he'd just called Allan a rude, insensitive curmudgeon I wouldn't have had an issue with it. But the insult wasn't based on Allan's actions, but rather on his perceived lowly position in the Ragan Communications universe.

My media relations advice to the executives I've coached has always included something about remembering that when you act arrogant and nasty to the media, the impression given to the media's audience is that you are being arrogant and nasty to them.

The vehicle through which their message is transmitted (print or electronic media, online or in person) becomes transparent to the audience. And so it was when Murray took aim at his target.  His words got recorded in a bunch of blogs. Murray's irritation with the PR blogger from Copenhagen was barely noticed, but the arrogance of his statement came through as an insult to all the other Nobodies out there -- people who don't necessarily get invited to speak at Ragan conferences, people who spend their lives making a living, sometimes doing exceptional work. People who sometimes get recognition, but too often don't. People like you and me.

I'm sure Murray only wanted to insult one person, not a whole class of people, but I felt insulted nonetheless.

Meh. That was Wednesday morning at 2 a.m. when I was pounding away on a keyboard, searing my anger into my blog post. Today I'm back to my live-and-let-live approach. Being controversial is part of the trade magazine editor's bag of tricks, if they want to keep readers renewing their subscriptions. This controversy will probably be good for business in the Ragan stable of publications and seminars.

In the meantime, me and the other Nobodies who took notice of this issue have been having some fun with the Nobody thing. There's a blog for Nobodies now. And an online store where you can buy logoed items for the International Association of Nobodies. A podcast, paper hats and a number of other creative ideas are in the works.

And in the midst of all that fun there will be a discussion of what it is to be a Nobody, and why that isn't such a bad thing.

I suspect that to Murray (who's been attacked by bloggers in the past), this grouping together will just seem like a pack of rude loudmouths shouting more jargon about the power of social media.

He wants proof that social media can have business applications? What more proof does he need? The very forces that have unearthed his editorial, put it up for display, dissected it, rebutted it, posited alternatives, given examples, pointed to sources of information, and engaged people from several continents in a healthy debate about the issue are available to the average corporation.

There is a world of unengaged or semi-engaged workers out there who don't see the connection between their ambitions and the goals of their employers. A corporation would do well to have exactly this kind of lively debate (without the personal insults) happening within their workforce. So a few corporate sacred cows get bruised in the discussion. So what? The tools we "social media evangelists" are  using to connect with other people about the issues we care about are also available for organizations to use for the same purpose.

You want proof, David?  Open your eyes, and see the value of the discussion you're now involved in. Get over your annoyance with a few bloggers' rude manners or overzealous advocacy, and take a look at a potential tool for discussion, engagement and information sharing. And none of us Nobodies are going to charge you a nickel for the information and opinon we offer you.

Previous posts:
International Association of Nobodies Newsletter, Vol.1, No.1
Join the Nobody Club
I'm a Nobody in the Communications Business

Tags: ragan, communications, blogs, social media, etiquette, netiquette, engagement, employees

Powered by Qumana

Drive-by Blogging: My PR Blog Neighbours Are Revolting!

The appeal of snarky, bitchy blog posts is undeniable. And, quite frankly, reading blogs would be boring without some of the raw entertainment of celebrity-style journalism thrown in for good measure.

So I'm not entirely sure why I have such a negative reaction to the shoot-first-check-facts-later approach that has burbled into my RSS feed aggregator lately.

I think it's because I'm uncomfortable with the basic premise of gossip -- that someone else's pain is a source of entertainment. It's bad enough when a writer highlights some embarrassing or unwise moment in someone's life (I've done my own share of calling people out on mistakes when I spot them).  What's worse is when the writer manufactures a controversy, and hammers their target quickly and harshly. I call it Drive-by Blogging.

Gossip-mongering entered the often bland world of blogs about PR and business communications this weekend. A Gawker-style blog was started by someone who claims to be a woman, with a provocative I'm-naked-but-covering-my-breasts photo in the top banner without actually saying it's a photo of the author. "Her" first target is an obvious one - the top PR blogger Steve Rubel, and the agency that recently hired him with great fanfare. None of the "facts" in her post solid enough to prove or disprove, right down to the supposed office pool paying out on the exit date of Rubel from his new firm.

(Do I believe the author really exists by the name she gives, and that "she" really heard about an office pool as "she" describes? Nothing I've seen so far leads me to believe this was based on a real event. This could just as easily be one of those Penthouse Forum situations, where some nerdy guys write fake letters from women about their hot sexual encounters.)

A nasty little post, with lots of innuendo and references to male and female sexuality. The first post to the blog was accompanied by an e-mail campaign to many PR bloggers (myself included), leading to lots of enthusiasm expressed by the iconoclasts and traditional males of the bunch, and lots of traffic to the new site. Giddy does not begin to describe the response (see links below).

This comes hot on the heels of the lambasting by Allan Jenkins of a company that republishes others' blog entries for cell phone users, calling out a European blogger who appeared to be connected to the company.

Unlike attack-and-run artists, Allan sent an e-mail asking for clarification. After a fair bit of digging, Allan discovered the blogger in question wasn't involved in the company, and the company was more naive than devious. To his credit, Allan revised his post and published a follow-up describing what he'd discovered. But the post had already been published, complete with accusations of stealing content for commercial gain.

There are dozens of examples of nasty attacks on A-List bloggers like Robert Scoble, all of which no doubt serve the purpose of gaining the attacker some attention.

Despite evidence that this sort of behaviour is remarkably effective at attracting links, site traffic and buzz, I'm sticking to the Phil Gomes Golden Rule of PR Blogging.

Long-time PR blogger Phil wrote a new year's post promising to focus more on persuading people about effective communications and less on finger-pointing and superficial tricks of the Web 2.0 trade. Phil hasn't let this get in the way of his sense of humour, but I've noticed him being less fixated on the popularity of his blog. He's taking the high road, and I respect him for it, even if it comes at the expense of large spikes in site traffic he isn't getting from the salacious posts he isn't publishing.

I'm not adding to the link love that has already given the new Strumpette blog a big boost. If you want to find the original post, click on one of the links below, and you'll find the new blog easily enough.

Strumpette blog buzz: 

• How to Get Ahead, Andrea Weckerle;
• Bad Character Blog Falls Flat, Robert French;
• Amanda Chapel, Fishing for Comments, B.L. Ochman;
• New 'Naked Journal' on PR Business Doesn't Read On Message, John Wagner;
• Strumpette's First Post - 41 Comments and Counting, Scott Baradell;
• If that Is your Real Name, David Parmet;
• Naked PR, Neville Hobson.

(My headline is an obscure reference to the old joke about the courtier rushing up to the king and saying "Your majesty, the peasants are revolting!"  "They sure are," replies the king, "but you're no beauty yourself.")

Tags: strumpette, gossip, gawker, drive-by-blogging

Powered by Qumana

Lost Art of the Apology Version 5: Apology for Lame Presentation

I've been to several conferences where the speaker I was expecting to capture my imagination utterly failed. It happens to even the best speakers, and it happens a lot on panel discussions and with tag-team speakers who don't have a well--polished performance prepared.

So it's nice to see Shel Israel apologize to attendees of the Les Blogs conference on blogging. No need to grovel, but a short nod to those who were expecting a better presentation goes a long way toward showing respect for the audience. Israel and Naked Conversations co-author Robert Scoble co-presented for the first time.

Says Israel:

"To those of you whom we disappointed at Les Blogs, all we can do is apologize and tell you we will try to do better next time. A lot better."   

Update: For the hundreds of visitors from Scoble's blog, welcome. I'm glad I caught the broken link in this posting before you arrived.

Previous posts:

Lost Art of the Apology: Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, Version 4

Tags:  robert scoble; shel israel; lesblogs