Some people probably will never learn. During every single presentation I’ve done about social media and how to engage in that space during the last year at least, I talked about Honesty ROI. Remember the ethics code WOMMA built regarding social media? The reason for that is that it’s a very easy to understand and simple to remember guide for any kind of engagement in social media. And probably for any type of conversation. Who cannot remember this?
- Honesty of Relationship: You say who you’re speaking for
- Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
- Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity
Honesty ROI. If you care to understand this, you’re off to a good start. If traditional marketing media were to write about one thing related to new media, social media (and I know most of them don’t care too much) then it should be about this Honesty ROI. It’ll help the clueless.
Reason for the repetition on honesty is this post I read today at Media Culpa: “Swedish Minister fakes online chat”
“Maud Olofsson, the Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Energy, was scheduled to chat with readers at Aftonbladet.se yesterday. The problem was that she was in an interview with the local daily Västerbottens-Kuriren at that time. So instead of calling the thing off, her press secretary Lisa Wärn chatted in Olofsson’s name without revealing that readers weren’t atually chatting with the Minister.”
Some people will never learn, and this goes far beyond social media if you ask me.
Technorati Tags: womma, honestyroi, socialmedia, sweden, aftonbladet
'Cross The Breeze 
That’s really shameful – particularly for a public official! Unfortunately, we can expect the cloak of presumed anonymity on the Web to foster even more abuse as social media grow in prominence.
Roger
@Roger: It’s pretty unfortunate indeed, but I agree.