One of the issues that large brands must worry about — especially franchise brands — is IF and HOW local affiliates and employees decide to participate online.

For example, take a look at a well-known brand like real estate giant Century 21.

In addition to the official @C21realestate handle managed by Corp Comms in Parsippany, there are over 350 Century21 employees and/or franchisees on Twitter.

Their Twitter handles range from @C21_SUNBELT to @Cntury21, from @Century21Seller to @RealtorToCall (and any number of @firstnamelastname combinations, i.e., no C21 affiliation).

Some of these real estate twitterati have embraced the medium — and in fact, many of the realtors have 100–400 followers! — yet, most of the agents and franchisees clearly abandoned Twitter after a handful of tweets, or post only very sporadically.

In other words, there is no rhyme or reason, no overarching strategy, no way to consolidate nor highlight the company’s massive scale in order to present a compelling and unified presence on one of the world’s top social networks.

Let’s look at Facebook.

The official Century 21 Real Estate LLC fan page on Facebook is pretty well done, in terms of the depth of content and volume of posts.  The page boasts over 5,000 fans.

But then again, there is no explicit suggestion that this actually is the OFFICIAL fan page.  In fact, there is another fan page titled, more simply, “Century 21” — with over 1,300 fans.  So maybe that is the official fan page??

I am presuming that “Century 21 Real Estate LLC” is the official page because of the ### of fans and the amount of content, and, the fact that there are no other distinguishing qualifiers, e.g., “Century21–(Geogaphy).”

All of this is important because there are 1,600 search results on Facebook when you run a query for “Century 21.”  Over 500 of those 1,600 results are fan pages.  The quality of each page (based on a cursory review) is spotty and inconsistent, at best.

So: on the world’s #1 social network, it is hard to tell at-a-glance what the heck is going on, when it comes to Century 21.  I’ll say it again: there is no rhyme or reason, no overarching strategy, no way to consolidate nor highlight the company’s massive scale in order to present a compelling and unified presence.

I do not raise these issues to call-out Century 21 specifically. Having met (and, full-disclosure: unsuccessfully pitched) the folks at Century 21, I know them to be smart, nice and well-meaning.  I point to them only as one great example of WHAT CAN GO WRONG if a large company takes too long to establish some guard-rails on their Social Media approach.

And again, this situation becomes much worse – hardly containable and neary untenable – for companies that rely on a franchise model.  Those franchisees who don’t feel amply supported by Corporate will tap their entrepreneurial zeal to ensure that they miss no opportunity to toot their local horns.  If “the folks in Corporate don’t ‘get’ Social Media,” the franchisee will experiment on their own. And, as we’ve seen via the C21 example, they’ll largely do a lackluster job.

In the end such companies will have hundreds – maybe thousands – of “stray” Social Media sites.  Inconsistent.  Abandoned.  Off-kilter.  Hardly any of these independent Social Media efforts do a good job of boosting the master brand, yet all of them are still clearly affiliated: dragging down the brand, calling out the lack of strategy.

This post is not a call for control for controlling’s sake; it’s a call for planning for brand’s sake.

But surely I am missing something?  And I hope you’ll tell me all about it in the Comments?

Continuing our series on Social Media Ethical Dilemmas, this post is about the guidelines related to agencies who help client contacts to identify and engage, via commenting, on industry/influencer blogs.

The goal is to insert our clients’ executives and perspectives into industry conversations; to help them build up their credibility, and ultimately to create valuable relationships with influencers.

How do you do this?  How can you effectively inform and educate busy clients while also cultivating the bloggers’ goodwill in an authentic way?

Here’s the general process…

The Agency is tasked with monitoring a series of influential blogs.

The Agency staff read the blogs every day, and sometimes comment — with full transparency, i.e., they comment as themselves, since it is not only in the client’s best interest but also in the PR pro’s interest to be engaged with the blogger.

On occasion, the blogger writes about something — a trend, a client competitor, etc. — that truly impacts the client.

At that point, the PR agency pro alerts the client, with a note that describes the blog post, its relevance to the client, and a brief description of the key points that the client might want to use in their own response, should they choose to engage.

EXAMPLE: Let’s say we have a client in the Search industry.  An influential blogger drafts a post about the evolution of SEO.  Our team reads it, drafts a synopsis, and immediately sends it to our client with a recommendation…

“We recommend inserting yourself into this conversation from a broader standpoint in terms of how many technologies, not just SEO, are changing in response to innovations in Search… Helping consumers move beyond the limits of traditional search is a more important end-goal than focusing on tweaking SEO.” (etc.)

Ethical dilemma #1: is this an unethical engagement strategy??  On the one hand, as I just noted, our PR team is taking an inordinate amount of time to read and really think about each of these blog commenting opportunities, on behalf of our clients.  The resulting comments (ultimately written by clients personally) come across as lucid and engaged.  BUT, yea, there’s no denying it: many of our clients need us to tell them when, where, why and how to engage — and that engagement is often a cursory exercise.  The Agency often does the heavy lifting in terms of monitoring, identification, analysis, and recommendation.

Why?  Because the clients are busy running their companies and working with customers. Because there are now hundreds of blogs to monitor.  And because, over time, it tends to happen that genuine relationships are cultivated, e.g., when the blogger reaches out to the client contact directly, as a result of their interesting comment. What started out as a 1–level-deep commitment can convert into a true relationship; the Agency just helped plant the first few seeds.

In other words: it’s a gray area that I am comfortable living in.

This is not about misrepresenting the client; it’s actually about a) making sure the client is well informed about the trends and opinions of the blogosphere, b) saving time for the client and, c) making sure the influential bloggers are justifiably made aware of the fact that our clients do care about their content (even if they can’t keep track on a daily basis).

Ethical dilemma #2: it happens that sometimes the Agency’s suggestions can be pretty easily cut&pasted as the actual comment… the busy client might not take the time to put their own touches on it.  Worse, they sometimes say, “Yea, that sounds good.  Just use that language, and assign my name to that comment: you post it.”

While we are chagrined when our suggestions are used whole-cloth, there’s not much we can do.  When asked to post a comment on a client’s behalf, we always decline — both because our IP address could be traced back, and because, well, we don’t think it is ethical… though some clients are left scratching their heads.  After all, we will sometimes “ghostblog!?”  What’s the difference?  I don’t have a good answer.  My gut says “don’t go there.”

You can see how, as this series progresses, the dilemmas get trickier, stickier, harder.  All I can assure you, Dear Readers, is that we grapple with these ethical issues mightily, and often.  We take nothing for granted.  We harbor no cynicism nor deviousness.  We operate with every intention of maintaining the highest degrees of integrity…but we also live and work in a gray and uncharted land.

Your thoughts appreciated.

Several of my friends have launched iPhone apps recently.  (I am lookin’ at you, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Tamar Weinberg and C.C. Chapman.)  This is getting easier and easier to do, thanks to emergent services like Mobile Roadie and Motherapp.

On the one hand, yea, I admit it, I smirked at each new announcement.  Felt a little too self-reverential.  Even Mitch Joel — no shrinking violet — called them “Golden Calf” apps.

But I parleyed with C.C. about it, and read his post carefully.  His point is not lost on me: RSS is a tool of the elite; most folks surf their Bookmarks rather than use an RSS Reader.

Meanwhile, apps are becoming ubiquitous — not just on iPods, iPhones (and upcoming iPads), but via the Android Store, etc.

So why not create a single-serving RSS feed, in app form, which offers the further benefits of providing additional content (podcasts, etc.) in one place?

I get it.

I’m just not ready to do it.

Last Thursday was a banner day for SHIFT, as we cut the ribbon at the opening of  our NYC office.  We celebrated in style, ‘natch, with a party that included everyone from SavvyAuntie Melanie Notkin, to reporters from the Wall Street Journal, PRWeek, MediaBistro and RealSimple, to venture capitalists, and many more friends and colleagues.  Full-house.  Raucous and fun.

David Parmet of Marketing Begins at Home probably did the best job of capturing the “real me” — an unmatched combination of goofiness and ego.  I half-drunkenly stumbled out onto our NYC office’s (illegal) patio for this video interview:

Todd Defren – SHIFT Communications from David Parmet on Vimeo.

In other news, I am traveling a lot this week (thus being a week late with this post!) but, yes, I plan on writing up additional posts in our Social Media Ethical Dilemma series soon.

A new survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that “an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories.”

Specifically, “89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.”

Per the news release: While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream journalists, the survey also (noted that) eighty-four percent said Social Media sources were less reliable than traditional media.

The survey also noted that “most journalists turn to public relations professionals for assistance in their primary research … they depend on PR pros for ‘interviews and access to sources and experts’ … ‘answers to questions and targeted information’ … and ‘perspective, information in context, and background information.’”

Let’s take a step back; it’s too easy to come up with a self-serving “See? Told ya so” statement in defense of PR’s role.  Let’s take it up a notch.

The VAST MAJORITY of journalists now turn to Social Media for story ideas.

Part of the PR pro’s new job in this era is to create, seed and cultivate content about clients in the socialstreams.

We are casting breadcrumbs. Done well, consumers react.  Journalists notice.  They follow the trail of breadcrumbs to PR pros, who can then validate and augment their prospective stories.

It’s not just about pitch, pitch, pitching, 1:1, PR to Journalist, anymore.  The pickup of story concepts at a grassroots level, by consumers, is now part of that process.

The last post in our Social Media Ethics Series essentially explored ghost-tweeting.  Now let’s talk about a far more widespread issue: ghostblogging.

For the uninitiated, ghostblogging is simply ghostwriting for someone else’s blog. It’s generally frowned upon.

Is it ethical for a PR agency to write an unattributed post for a client’s blog?

First, we need to define what type of blog we’re talking about.

Corporate blogs tend to take two paths:

—There are personal blogs that happen to align themselves with an organization (as in the case of PR-Squared, which is my personal blog but which also serves as the primary blog of SHIFT Communications).

—And, there are more corporate-style blogs in which the posts are more officious, a la a corporate newsletter run on a blogging engine (in this latter case, sometimes the author is known, sometimes not).

Next, we need to make an acknowledgement: blogging is a tyrannical activity.

A quarterly newsletter is a breeze – heck, even a weekly newsletter feels infinitely achievable — compared to a blog.  In my deepest baritone, I am fond of telling clients, “If you are posting less than 2 – 3x a week, what you’re publishing is not a blog but a newsletter.” Blogging evangelists expect a busy executive to scratch out some reasonably compelling content 2 – 3x a week …  It is an incredibly difficult pace to maintain.

For the personal blogger, the fact that one’s failures are one’s own, and that the blog can suit their changing tastes (and schedules), relieves some of that pressure.

For the successful corporate blogger, however, their content becomes part-and-parcel of an overarching communications strategy.  It impacts inbound lead flow, thought leadership, SEO.  There can be no retreat!

Because of the increasingly must-have nature of official corporate blogs, in-house marketers will insist that the content flow must.not.stop.  And since these in-house marketers tend to have limited control over the executive blogger, there needs to be a fall-back strategy.

More and more, that fall-back strategy is going to include supplemental ghostblogging.

You can rail against it as a black mark against authenticity, but, it is happening and it is a trend that will only grow.  Not enough people see this as a bright line separating “good” from “bad” to forestall the rise of ghostblogging.

After long deliberation, SHIFT execs agreed:

Ghostblogging for a corporate-aligned but PERSONAL blog (like this one) is not ethical.

However, ghostblogging for a CORPORATE blog is no more unethical than drafting a piece for the company newsletter, especially since the final draft would need to be approved by a client representative.

(It did not go unremarked that, in these latter cases, PR agency pros often hold as much knowledge as our client contacts.  We sit in on analyst briefings, pore over and/or draft many official client materials, etc.  Our knowledge is not false, even if it is not our name on the byline.)

So … “Ghostblogging is an approved activity?!”

Now that you’ve read my rationale, what are your thoughts?

Yesterday’s debut post on Ethical Dilemmas in Social Media was very well received (thanks!) … The vast majority of readers thought that we took appropriate measures to be authentic/transparent — or at least, authentic/transparent enough.

There were a few purists who suggested we’d crossed the line; and, there were several suggestions from helpful readers on how we might better handle the same situation down the road…

… All of which led me to think about the rest of the posts in this series, and how THEY might be received. I got a little jittery.

I’m telling you right now: of the seven planned posts on Ethical Dilemmas, there will be instances in which I feel we CROSSED THE LINE.  We faced ethical dilemmas and then arguably did the WRONG thing, took the WRONG path.

For what it’s worth, in these cases, no one was hurt. No puppies were throttled. Also, importantly, the transgressions we’ll look at came from a place of innocence or ignorance on the part of our staff and/or the clients. In some cases, we were literally experimenting — which I applaud — but then we drew back, once we realized where our experiments were headed.

There was never a moment where anyone involved rubbed their hands with malicious glee at the prospect of tricking people.  But, still: lines were crossed.  I can’t get around it.

Here’s what I am hoping:

I hope you are a long-time reader with a reasonable respect for the fact that a) this Social Media stuff is still very new, and the “rules” evolve in a gray area; that b) we run a for-profit business whose raison d’etre is to promote client interests; and, that c) Todd Defren and SHIFT Communications have a long and distinguished track record of thoughtfulness, generosity, and honesty.

Do you possess a reservoir of goodwill for me and my company that will ultimately cause you to give us the benefit of the doubt? To forgive transgressions?

That’s a test I hope to pass.

It’s a test that every marketer must keep in mind.  “Am I doing the right thing?  Am I being honest with my customers and prospects?  When I screw up, will I have built-up enough trust among them to weather the storm?”

I am going to start off with a bang, in this 1^st of 7 planned posts about Real-World Ethical Dilemmas in Social Media.

What would you do if a client contact — who had a pretty solid Twitter following — asked you to tweet from his account, as if you were him?

Crazy? Wrong? Unethical? Let’s discuss.

The client contact is well-known in his field.  He enjoys a loyal following of industry peers on Twitter.  He posts regularly, sometimes several times a day.  He “gets” Twitter; he finds value in the dialogue and his followers appreciate that a well-placed exec from a Big Company is engaged with them online.

Now, a big industry tradeshow is coming up.  He’ll be very active there, as a speaker and organizer.

The executive wants his tweetstream to reflect his activity at the show, and to highlight other happenings at the conference, as well.  He’s very concerned that he won’t be able to support this many to-do’s.

We work closely with this executive and he has come to trust us implicitly… which leads to the ethical challenge.  I’ll paraphrase the request as it came from him:

“I want SHIFT to ‘take over’ my Twitter account, and tweet as me, during the course of the show.  I’ll also tweet, but very sporadically and with far less ability to interact and respond to my followers.  I don’t want to let them down, and I trust you guys to act in my stead. I know you won’t answer questions that you don’t know how to answer, and I trust that you won’t embarass me or misrepresent the company … Be ‘me’ online, so I can make a full commitment to my engagement on the show floor.”

You can see how this request comes from a “good place.”  This executive’s commitment to online engagement is so fierce, he doesn’t want to abandon it even for an important event. He knows his followers would understand his absences, but he thinks there is going to be real value in tracking what’s happening at the conference, and in responding to folks online throughout.

While it’s true he is asking us to misrepresent ourselves, he feels that it would still be authentic because of his trust in us.

How do you respond to that? Do you just say no?

Well, there’s no such thing as “no,” when you work in a Service industry (thus this series of posts!) … So we suggested a compromise …

Yes, we would tweet from his account, but with the following conditions:

—-Prior to the event, he must tweet, “During the show some of my tweeting will be supplemented by our extended team.” We felt that the term “extended team” was appropriate, suggesting that that term covered both internal and 3^rd party colleagues.

—-A reminder to that effect would go out, regularly, throughout the conference, i.e., every 10th tweet would remind followers that someone besides the executive might be “at the controls” of his Twitter account.

—-When character spaces permitted, we’d add a #team hashtag to denote that the tweet was not published by the exec — but honestly, this attribution fell away more often than not; we largely relied on the “every 10th tweet” approach to cover our ethical backsides.

For the record, there was no pushback from the executive’s followers.  Anyone who took the time to react to our approach seemed to appreciate the fact that, for a short time, his tweetstream became a mix of on-the-floor reporting by the exec, supplemented by dispatches from a 3^rd party response team in Marketing.

Still, no doubt there were folks who only checked-in on the executive’s tweets intermittently.  To them, our team members were ostensibly tweeting under false pretenses; they were unwittingly “duped” by our approach.

I’m not troubled by that, as the tweets authored by SHIFTers were always innocuous and helpful.  But … should I be troubled?

How would you have handled such a request?

Even as Social Media has quickly become integral to corporate communications strategy, it also presents a very, very new model, with new challenges.

As in any new endeavor, questions arise about ethical boundaries.  As discussed in the recent Slippery Slopes post, those boundaries are rarely marked by a bright line.  “Shades of gray” need exploration.

With this in mind, I asked my senior staff to outline for me the ethical questions they had faced with clients in the past 12 months.

The ensuing dialogue was fascinating.  I was often at a loss for answers.  We muddled through, though, and I want to share the results with you in a SERIES of posts related to our real-world Social Media Ethics challenges.

I am not going to commit to a once/day or once/week schedule, cuz I’m one of those underpromise/overdeliver guys, but my blog posting schedule for the next little while will predominantly be exploring each of these 7 ethical dilemmas in turn.

Throughout the series, I will be very eager to hear your feedback — and your pushback, whenever you feel we may have gone off the rails … because in some instances, we might have done just that. (Cue ominous music…)

Where I felt doubt, where I think we may have gone wrong, I’ll be straight-up candid about it, and will try to avoid defensiveness.

Stay tuned.