We talked about a lot of things, from the ways in which traditional PR must thread with the new stuff, to the ways in which students will find themselves challenged in the coming months. We talked about the importance of your personal database, and how to better annotate (post coming about this on Mashable shortly).

One question that Steve raised at the very beginning that we didn’t touch on nearly enough, but that floated around in my head after we’d long since departed the campus was this: in modern public relations, there’s a stronger sense of maintaining your personality, your personal views, and a level of ethics that doesn’t square with how things got done in the old days. Sure, there were ethical practitioners in the old days, but there were plenty more people just taxed with getting a result for a client. My thoughts on this couldn’t fit into the remaining minutes. Here, Professor Quigley’s class, are my answers:

Ethics in the World of Social Media and New Marketing

First, my simple measure of what is ethical and what is not, as told to me by a professor in the late 1990s: “If you don’t want to talk about it with your family at the dinner table, and you don’t want to read about it on the front page of the Boston Globe, it’s not ethical.” Seems easy to me. (Essentially, ethics are our guideline of what we consider right and wrong.)

In public relations and marketing, the primary goal is that those acting as an agent for an organization, their professional communicators, move the needle in some way. In PR, that might be press mentions, or blog posts, or publicity through speaking at conferences. In marketing, the projects can be more complex, or more indirect, but all relate to getting some other lever or number somewhere to move. There are nuanced and personable ways to do this, and then there are heavy-handed, let’s just call them SPAMMY, ways to do this.

You could do that. You could spam 10,000 people to get 100 positive results to show your client. But, as Todd Defren pointed out in the class, in the old days, those people used to have no voice, no real recourse that mattered or could be seen. Today? Everyone can blog. Everyone can put the word out that your organization is spamming them. Not only would it be less ethical to attempt to gain customers this way; it would be bad business.

Here’s the thing: Google remembers everything. And by “Google,” technically I mean the web at large (by which, I still mean Google, don’t I?). So, by extension, pretty much ALL business you do in social media can be “remembered” by anyone interested in what you’re doing, and where you’ve been, and what comes next. This, by the way, features heavily in Trust Agents, my forthcoming book with Julien Smith, but that’s a tangent for another time.

In a world where the entire space around you “remembers” your choices and your actions, do you have much in the way of an alternative but to operate ethically?

You Can Hide it For a While

There’s an entire mechanized side to the web. If your firm gets my site onto the Digg home page, I’ll get tons more traffic than I normally get. If you orchestrate a complex way to build all kinds of links to my site, I’ll gain rank or authority or whatever system you use to measure relevance. All of this happens and can happen such that people can’t see it easily.

But people who understand these schemes can figure out if that’s what happened. There are trails back to actions. It can eventually be uncovered that your organization architected a false Digg campaign, a doctored Wikipedia entry, another stuffing of the votes in some Internet-savvy way.

We already have stories of people doing things wrong. Most of you in the space already know them.

Be Human or Else

This space will remember. That can feel a bit daunting, but please realize that there’s a world of difference between doing something out of ignorance, or in a weird situation, versus gaining a reputation as someone who performs unethically. If you’re someone on the rise and learning and you twinge someone the wrong way, that’s one thing. If it turns out you’re “that guy” habitually, it just won’t really fly well this time around.

I’m grateful to Steve Quigley for turning over his classroom to Todd and me. I had lots of fun, and I look forward to the opportunity learn from the rising stars of PR and Marketing, and to share what little I know in return. And besides, Steve bought us noodles for lunch afterwards.

And, for further reading, check out Steve Rubel’s post on ethics in social media marketing. Seems it was in the air today.

Before I go further, I should say that there are variations on the theme. I was speaking with Todd Defren of Shift the other day about content marketing, and this was his take on it. That’s another great way to look at it. I spoke a few weeks back to Francois Gossieaux about another variation that he’s done for years. It’s all in the same ballpark. This is essentially what Brian Clark has talked about for two years and counting.

Content Marketing Will Deliver

First, it’s simply a better way to go. Why spend time, money, and creative effort making fake, glossy, slick pieces of marketing material when something honest and informative (and ENTERTAINING!) would likely do a better job? Twizzlers are great, but not for breakfast. I think traditional marketing efforts, the slick and shiny kind, are like red licorice. I think of content marketing as a well-balanced meal. Crazy? Maybe.

Let’s say your goal is lead generation. A good chunk of marketing effort and attention seems to be shifting in this direction, especially for products and services with a complex sell. In a traditional approach, you might work very hard on explain just why your product is the best tool for a certain job. But what if, instead, you wrote up some really great suggestions for how one might do that certain job better, with or without your product, and then made a very simple link back to whatever your product offer might be? Which would offer more value to your prospective customer?

Slower? Yes. More effort? Yes. But I believe the results will speak for themselves. Instead of gorging on data culled from yet another Free iPhone offer, you will start to accumulate relationships with people who actually care about the space where your company is doing business, and might actually benefit from your product/service.

Examples of Great Content Marketing

One just sold for $125 Million. Daily Candy. If you want proof in the pudding, there’s a big fat content package that someone put to good work.

The Fast Forward Blog produced by Corante is a great lead generator for an enterprise search company. I’m subscribed.

Whole Foods has all kinds of great content. In their case, it’s a bit of customer retention, community support, and also lead generation. Look at how they use Twitter, too. Great content marketing, and filled with personality.

My two most overused but beloved stories of content marketing: Financial Aid Podcast and Wine Library TV. Both sell a product, but do it by giving you lots of interesting information.

What Comes Next

For you to consider doing this, I’d recommend the following steps:

1. Decide on your content marketing strategy. Is this lead generation, customer retention, thought leadership, or related to product marketing?
2. Determine if you have content creators on staff right now, and whether this is something they should be doing for your business. If no, start thinking of whether you want to hire or source this kind of work.
3. Determine the type of content to create, the frequency of your new materials, the form it will take, and whether you have a platform in place to deliver this without much effort.
4. Build appropriate measurement and listening tools around the platform so that you know who is doing what with the content you’re creating, and so that you can see the impact it has outside of your website as well.
5. Wrap this all into a process with ties back to your standard lines of business, including marketing, sales, and possibly even R&D. Ensure that this isn’t an island, but rather a strong part of how you intend to deliver value for your organization.

This kind of project can be done in a pilot flavor, and/or can be done in lots of different iterations. I’ve been looking at it very closely for the last several months as part of my work with my colleagues at CrossTech Partners. As businesses are seeking to acquire more quality leads, to retain their existing customers, and to deliver relevant sales, this is where I think the most impact can be had.

Are you using content creation to build your business? Have you tried any of this yet? Where have you seen this done well or otherwise? What’s your take?

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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

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Photo credit, Jon David Oakley

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