The Wall Street Journal has a great article on how Facebook can ruin friendships when online buds share too much information. For those that use Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis, personal information overload is all too common: who really cares if you’re having your (gasp!) third cup of coffee since you got to work? Unfortunately, many people don’t stop to think if their friends or followers give a hoot about the minute details of their lives. Either that, or they might subscribe to the theory that it doesn’t matter if their online friends and followers care; it’s their profile to share what they darn well please.

There’s a valuable business communications lesson here: no matter the platform or channel by which you communicate your message, always stop to ensure it’s relevant to your audience. Sure, you might want to toss in a few tweets about what’s happening at the office in order to break up the stream of industry news, trends, key messages and more, and that’s fine. Just pause before you hit “update” or “post” and think about whether or not your little bit of wit is relevant.

Do you ever find yourself wondering if there are undisclosed motives or hidden agendas behind the media you consume? Though probably not correct, having that suspicion can turn consumers off to a particular journalist or media source entirely.

On a recent visit to AllThingsD.com, a Web site devoted to news, analysis and opinion on technology, I discovered that the site’s contributors are taking a surprisingly up-front approach to laying it all out for readers “in the age of suspicion of the media” (as they put it). Each of the main contributors to the site has a page containing their individual Ethics Statement outlining their personal ethics and coverage policies, leaving pretty much no question unanswered.

The detailed statements explain the journalists’ roles as contributors to the site, how they get tech product samples and what they do with them after testing, and where their own personal technology comes from. The statements even address notions about being influenced by companies they cover, outlining that they do not accept any form of compensation from those companies. Some of the statements have a lot of personal information about the journalists, down to their personal investments. And since the site is owned by Dow Jones, the statements also assure that the journalists adhere to the Down Jones Code of Conduct.

So are there any hidden motives or agendas behind the site’s news, analysis and tech opinions? The detailed information provided by these journalists in their Ethics Statements works hard to squelch any suspicions readers might have and builds credibility for both the journalists and site.

Personally, I appreciate the honesty and transparency – it’s quite refreshing. I’d love to see more members of the media do the same.

It’s 8/19/2009, the weather outside is frightful.  @collegewolf takes a pic of the tornado happening on 35w.

The views soar on his picture from 500 to 900 to 7,000 to over 12,000 in a matter of minutes. Somewhere along the way, @kareemy notices that for some reason, @collegewolf is not being credited for the photo any longer.

@collegewolf

It is long lost in the social media storm…

Minneapolis Tornado and Twitpics

Before I get into the jist of it- let me just say that it must be a slow news day (are we sick of Farve already?!)

At 8:42 AM this morning, Beth Brody of Brody PR sent out a generic email pitch titled ‘New Social Media Marketing for Small Business E-book.’ These sorts of emails go out all the time, but the problem here was that not only did Ms. Brody send out a mass, untailored email, but she CC’ed everyone instead of BCC’ing everyone. Awkward! Not only did Brody make the mistake of spamming many of the industry’s A-list bloggers and journalists, but everyone could see everyone and even reply-all! Then, according to AdAge, ” a good 90% of people on the list felt some weird need to reply-to-all when asking to be removed from the list, thus continuing the foolishness ALL DAY LONG.”

Besides the shotty pitch and the reply-all maddness, what many people were complaining about was the total lack of response from a Brody PR rep. Chris Abraham of SocialMedia.biz says it well, “The real issue here is that Beth Brody and Brody PR completely missed an opportunity to throw herself into the conversation. This didn’t have to go nuclear…” “There is a very valuable lesson here for one and for all. On the surface, it seems like the A-lister email blast and the open CC were the kill shots, but they were just contributing factors. Beth Brody and Brody PR, your error was in the realm of crisis management and a failure to respond.”

What bothers me about the whole situation is how quick marketing professionals are to burn their fellow marketing professionals at the stake. The mob-mentality is really alarming. The PR 2.0 landscape- heck, the marketing 2.0 landscape- is evolving and changing every minute and everyone is trying new things and making their best efforts to adapt (albeit some are better than others). For me it boils down to the fact that No one is an expert, but everyone’s a critic. Sure, Ms. Brody messed up, and definitely with the wrong audience- but i feel the media swarm around incidents like this should be learning opportunities, not a virtual ‘slam book.’

That said, if you would like, please visit these other articles showcasing ‘learning opportunities’ from your fellow marketing professionals.

Bad PR Pitch #317
Bad Pitch to Men’s Health Magazine
Text Message Pitch- on ‘The Bad Pitch Blog’

To follow up on the conversation surrounding the Brody incident check out the Twitter stream here.

We’ve all heard stories about copy machines that call the Feds if you try to duplicate money or how they can’t reproduce the green color of a dollar bill, well here’s a little morsel for us creative types who still have the tag on our mattress. It’s a screen shot a friend sent me while working on an image of a dollar in Photoshop. Enjoy!

When it comes to the phrase “no comment,” public relations practitioners and lawyers usually are on opposite sides. Lawyers generally like to invoke the phrase, while PR people work to communicate as openly as possible instead.

Rose McKinney, APR, president of Risdall McKinney Public Relations, recently analyzed the relationship between public relations and the law on the Winthrop & Weinstine Duets Blog. Check out her post and share your thoughts.

Lauren Fernadez has a nice blog post up today that addresses whether or not social media participants are hypocrites for blogging one message or point of view while orally espousing a different one. She raises a good point, which both @jaykeith and RMPR’s own Ryan May expanded upon, pointing out that many social media participants are just “followers” and spend most of their contributing comments simply agreeing with another person’s idea (@jaykeith) or that perhaps social media platforms are yet another arena in which people are just trying to fit it (Ryan).

Lauren’s post and @jaykeith’s comments reminded me think about what friends of mine have called “blog stalking” – the updated equivalent to chat room lurking. Are we also social media hypocrites if we partake only by reading blogs, following Twitter updates and not volunteering our points of view on personal social media sites? @jaykeith suggested fear of being ostracized as an obstacle to honest contributions, and I think he’s right on the money. Is there room for introverts in the big, wild world of social media?

Sometimes in module development you want to swap controls within the same module definition.  In doing this DNN (somewhat annoyingly) swaps the Skin and Container definitions to the default admin selections.  To get around this you need to specify the SkinSrc and ContainerSrc in the URL.  This little chunk of code provides just that checking the full hierarchy for overrides:

VB.NET

Protected Function GetSkinContainerSrc() As String

    Dim strReturn As String = String.Empty
    Dim objTabs As New TabController()
    Dim objTab As DotNetNuke.Entities.Tabs.TabInfo = objTabs.GetTab(Me.TabId)

    'Get the skin source
    'Check the tab settings first.
    Dim strSkin As String = objTab.SkinSrc

    If strSkin = String.Empty Then
        'Not in the tab settings, check the portal
        strSkin = PortalSettings.PortalSkin.SkinSrc
    End If

    'Cleanup the string if it doesn't have the global/local information.
    If strSkin <> String.Empty Then
        If strSkin.IndexOf("/Portals/") >= 0 Then
            If strSkin.IndexOf("/Portals/_default/") >= 0 Then
                strSkin = "[G]" & strSkin.Substring(strSkin.IndexOf("/Skins/") + 1)
            Else
                strSkin = "[L]" & strSkin.Substring(strSkin.IndexOf("/Skins/") + 1)
            End If
        End If

        strReturn += "&SkinSrc=" & Server.UrlEncode(strSkin.Replace(".ascx", String.Empty))
    End If

    'Get the container source
    'Check the module settings for the container first.
    Dim strContainer As String = Me.ModuleConfiguration.ContainerSrc

    If strContainer = String.Empty Then
        'Not in the module, check the tab.
        strContainer = objTab.ContainerSrc

        If strContainer = String.Empty Then
            'Not in the tab, check the portal
            strContainer = PortalSettings.PortalContainer.SkinSrc
        End If
    End If

    'Cleanup the string if it doesn't have the global/local information.
    If strContainer <> String.Empty Then
        If strContainer.IndexOf("/Portals/") >= 0 Then
            If strContainer.IndexOf("/Portals/_default/") >= 0 Then
                strContainer = "[G]" & strContainer.Substring(strContainer.IndexOf("/Containers/") + 1)
            Else
                strContainer = "[L]" & strContainer.Substring(strContainer.IndexOf("/Containers/") + 1)
            End If
        End If

        strReturn += "&ContainerSrc=" & Server.UrlEncode(strContainer.Replace(".ascx", String.Empty))
    End If

    Return strReturn

End Function