The Social Path

Social media mishaps: 3 very different case studies.

Thanks largely to the immediacy of Twitter, the Web has developed a bit of a bloodthirst for corporate mistakes, which can quickly spiral from “poor decision” to “PR disaster.”

The good news? The backlash is usually short-lived. But that doesn’t make it any easier on the companies having to deal with an unruly, unforgiving online mob.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a few high-profile flaps that can teach us all some lessons about how to manage or even avoid these kinds of nightmare scenarios.

After the jump, we walk through what happened, why it exploded and how companies reacted (for better or worse):

5 ways to try social media without your boss’ permission.

One of the most common complaints I hear goes something like this: “I really want my company to be using social media, but our bosses won’t let us.”

The good news? Your company will come around, sooner or later. The bad news? If you personally wait until that day to try social media as a marketing tool, you’ll have a hard time starting strong.

Using social media for business is dramatically different from using it for everyday life. Once your company decides to make the leap, you want to be ready to hit the ground running.

So how do you get social media marketing experience without the boss’ permission? A few tips, after the jump:

New work spotlight: InternHero.com

If you've got an intern who's starving for attention — and muffins — then you need to check out Intern Hero, Luckie's newest project for Little Debbie.

The concept is simple: Interns get five free boxes of Little Debbie Muffins just by sending in a photo asking for them. We post the winners' photos daily.

The site just launched last week and has already racked up quite a bit of buzz, not to mention some fantastic photo submissions from interns across the country.

As with all our social media projects, this was a fun group effort involving several departments at Luckie. I specifically want to thank Art Director Miles Wright for the logo design, Design Director David Adams for the site design, social media intern Whitney Sides Mitchell for coordinating the whole giveaway, and the folks at Little Debbie who have been wonderful about handling the logistics of shipping hundreds of boxes fresh from the bakery.

This is the week blogger outreach goes on trial.

In just a few days, an estimated 1,500 women will gather in Chicago for BlogHer, the mega-conference for women of the Web. And while there are sure to be countless topics for discussion, you can expect one to eclipse all others:

How should bloggers — most notably mom bloggers — be compensated by marketers?

This is a topic that has sparked heated debate for months (if not years), but it’s sure to come to a head this week as some of the largest brands and most influential Web personalities meet at the social media Mecca that is BlogHer. (Not to mention pending government regulations on how bloggers and marketers can work together.)

I should note I’m not exactly neutral party here. I’ve reached out to bloggers many times for coverage, product reviews, giveaways and more. More often than not, I don’t offer to pay these bloggers. This is a personal stance, one that likely lingers from my years in journalism and surely has cost me some potential coverage. But I believe (however naively) that paying for reviews and similar coverage usually creates more trouble than it’s worth.

That said, I’m constantly looking for ways to make our relationships with bloggers more rewarding, and yes, that includes finding ways to get them paid. I assure you this isn’t hypocritical; I’m happy to pay for projects where it’s obvious that money has exchanged hands (free-lance writing gigs, involvement in promotional events, etc), just not for product sampling that’s intended to spark earnest feedback. I also try to route client money to places where it can help the most people possible, most notably through event sponsorships that help bloggers get together, have fun and share what they've learned.

As you can tell, these aren’t easy decisions to make for people in marketing, and it’s about 1,000 times more complicated for the bloggers themselves.

Last month, Lucretia Pruitt wrote a hard-hitting blog post on GeekMommy’s WebLife called “Why mom bloggers aren’t flipping for just a sample of your product.” It pretty soundly eviscerated marketers who aren’t willing to pay for giveaways:

Here’s an excerpt:

That’s what keeps repeatedly being asked of us.  “Will you work for free?” And for many of us, the answer is now becoming “well no - I’ve got this other company over here who is offering to compensate me for the same work and isn’t treating me as if being a blogger and/or a mom somehow made me lose my business skills and common sense.” Because seriously?

Yes, I love helping my readers experience new things and potentially win something… but I’m not going to be the only person working for free in this equation.

Yeah you there offering me this wonderful opportunity for my readers?  Are *you* getting paid?  Or do you just do that PR & marketing gig out of the goodness of your heart because you love it so?

I’m a big fan of Lucretia’s, so it was especially tough to read a post where she’s essentially vilifying people like me. But I’m the first to admit it’s a conversation that needs to be had. And it sounds like BlogHer is where it will all come to a head. (I would go into my own opinions on the matter, but we'll save that for another day, perhaps for my presentation at the Type A Mom Conference in September.)

In an Advertising Age video posted today, BlogHer Co-Founder Elisa Camahort Page outlines her blog network’s rules on disclosure and separating your “real blog” from your “review blog” — guidelines that some high-profile writers have criticized as being onerous and micromanaged.

You can expect some of these policies — along with a litany of other real-world dilemmas — to be hot-button issues throughout many of the BlogHer panels.

A few questions that are likely to come up quite a bit:

• If bloggers feel they should be paid, how much is fair? Who sets the pricing, the marketer or the blogger?
• How much money does a successful blogger make in a year?
• Do you need a “PR FRIENDLY!” button on your blog? If you’re “PR hostile,” do you need a button for that?
• Should you have a standard policy for reviews and giveaways? If so, where should it live on your site?
• What happens if you’re paid for a review and it’s not positive? Do brands appreciate the constructive criticism? Or do they take their ball and go home?
• If you’re not paid for a giveaway, how do you make it worth your time?
• Are there long-term benefits to working with marketers that make it worth writing about their products unpaid?
• How do readers react when you switch from unpaid to “sponsored” content? Do they notice? Do they care?

What about you? What would you ask the experts, brand evangelists, Twitterati, social media marketers and mom mavens who will be headlining BlogHer? Be sure to share your questions (or answers) in the comments.

Photo credit: 4PIZON on Flickr.

Twitter's privacy lost, teens' purity found (in the iPhone app store).

As I finish a few weeks of nonstop travel, Luckie intern Whitney Sides Mitchell keeps the blog stocked with her weekly roundup of social media news, The Social Pathology Report:

This week has been a rough one.

It was jamp-acked with top secret business plans falling from the cloud, entire new OSes in the works and yet another reason to show off your iPhone.

• People from all over gather behind a worthy cause: the complete obliteration of IE6. [Mashable]
• App-stinence: Someone just getting a little too close at the weekend BBQ? Give 'em a little peek at your newest download: a Purity Ring app. [Switched]
• UNBELIEVABLE: Twitter's entire internal strategy was stored using Google Docs. As our IT guy clenches in horror, I'm sure you can imagine what happens (or gets emailed to all 300-400 contacts) next. [TechCrunch]
• Despite the aforementioned security fiasco, I return to Google for a fix of their newest innovations: an entire Google operating system and Google Reader's addition of social tech! [Google OS blog]

  This week's photo credit: Holster®/Flickr

Whitney Sides Mitchell is an intern social media planner for Luckie & Company, founder of the local-music blog BHAM.FM and a music blogger for AL.com. Her Social Pathology Report appears here each Friday.