Ethics shall start with e-mail marketing first!

E-mail is the most important one in daily communication. Quote from a post, "e-mail is the glue that holds the social web together". A simple example is, you cannot sign up for any social media without using an email address. The memory of signing up for a gmail account remains fresh to me. That was when I decided to apply for graduate studies in the States, and I found out nobody at the other side of the world knows what mail.163.com is. With a gmail account, I signed up for several online forums, submitted my application materials, and so on.

It is hard to talk about ethics without thinking about e-mails first. While social media marketing is a hot topic, e-mail marketing takes a big part in the marketing mix. As social media and PR practitioners, we need to spend our time thinking about guidelines and codes of ethics for social media marketing, with e-mail marketing a focus.

Here is what I think PR practitioners should follow:

1. Respect your stakeholders and try not to bombard their e-mail box.

If you are a marketing/PR professional thinking about email marketing, you want to respect the people you will be sending your emails to. Most people don't like receiving boring and repetitive sales messages. You would want them to open the email b/c they felt comfortable to do so. Why would they open your emails? The good answer is, your messages are helpful. Something fun, useful, or thought-provoking. Their time is valuable. Pay attention to your mail 'load'. No one wants to get 20 messages a day from the same forum/mailing list they subscribe.

2. Be sure to offer an "unsubscribe" function.

If someone truly want to get away from your messages, I would appreciate if you give them the option to do so. That "unsubscribe" may not lose a customer---he/she will think of you when he/she needs the service; while not giving the unsubscribe button will annoy some people and help you lose them forever. It is also respectful to give people options. A very important ethical practice for professionals. For the most of time, we are selling our ideas, not forcing people to buy it, aren't we?

3. CAN-SPAM

Similar to what I mentioned in No. 2, CAN-SPAM is another thing practitioners need to get familiar with. CAN-SPAM means that you are free to spam as long as you follow the rules of the law.
Here's a rundown of the law's main provisions:

• It bans false or misleading header information.
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines.
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method.
• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address

I quote the following paragraph from another post to explain (The Ethics, Laws and Tips to Success with Email Marketing ):

"In theory, you could buy a list, harvest email addresses, steal them from others or do whatever you need to do in order to collect email address as long as you let people unsubscribe, don't deceive the recipient and provide your valid postal address to spam them under the law. The law isn't useless by any means as most people who spam are trying to deceive, can't provide legitimate physical mailing addresses and don't honor unsubscribe requests. There have been prosecutions already under the law. However, simply complying with CAN-SPAM laws can't protect you from having your Web site shutdown by your provider and not hurt your company's credibility by being labeled as a spammer."

4. Follow writing etiquettes and avoid mistakes/grammar & spelling errors.

Be polite and appropriate. Also as part of the respect topic, practitioners will want to show respects to their prospects by using good grammar and avoiding spelling errors. From my intern experience, companies usually proofread a few times before they send anything. It is due to the respect and also brand reputation.

Please leave me a line with your thoughts and ideas. Thanks!

Terry Moran's ethics

I digged some old news but related with the ethics topic we covered this week. It's about Terry Moran tweeting about President Obama's off-the-record comments to his followers. To me, that is very unethical for a media worker/journalist.

Terry interviewed President Barack Obama, and during the interview, they talked about Kayne West off the record. Maybe Mr. President gave his comment about Kayne West by calling him a jackass for grabbing microphone from other singers (Taylor Swift). Terry, however, tweeted this off-record comment to his 1-million followers.

This "news" later became a hot topic. Like Chaofan's post, this is a good example of social media being a drama queen. There's news titled Obama Calls Kanye West a 'Jackass' and even Obama Caught on Tape Calling Kanye 'Jackass'. I cannot believe journalists being so mean to a up-front, honest president.

Of course there are ethics and rules you need to follow even in social media world. This platform supports open, free speech, while at the same time, journalists should keep their ethics of traditional media---no plagiarism, tell the truth, and most importantly respects other people's human rights.

Also, we want to leave a tip for the president: in such a dramatic social media world, watch your language will be the safest way to protect yourself.

SNS: virtual world

Social networks bridge communication gaps by engaging more people to interactions regardless of their ages, genders, locations, time differences, culture backgrounds, and so on.

However, one interesting fact about social networking, also discussed in Groundswell, is the virtual worlds provided by the groundswell.

Teenagers are obsessed with SNS. I asked students from the sessions I taught, and more than half of them said they checked their facebook page every day, if not more often. Some boy/girlfriends may break up over Facebook messages or status updates, which seems crazy to us living in the 'real' world.

Recently, I noticed people of their 40s (or older) turn to SNS during their 'down' time. In China, there is this popular game called 'Happy Farm' (Farmville cloned from it, and Happy Farm claims to come to the U.S. market in near future: http://www.pcworld.com/article/187444/china_online_game_companies_plan_us_games.html). I saw my friends' moms play Happy Farm and they had a fun time being in the virtual world created by the game. That is when I realized that social networking and the virtual worlds it established are not far away any more.

Like Li & Bernoff said, SNS shifts power from institutions to people. It allows people to interact in new ways.

Social Media Marketing Thoughts for Small Businesses

Link To Article: 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Posted using ShareThis
I am very interested in how to promote small and medium-sized business. Although they are not as powerful and influential as huge international companies, they have their own market share, they run in their unique ways, and they make profits just as their big peers do.

The other reason for small business to use social media is, social media costs little money. If you know accounting, you will understand how much money a company is expected to spend on marketing and PR alone annually. And often times these efforts don't add up. If a crisis occur, the reputation may go down in no time.

Grunig's theory talked about building and maintaining good relationships with stakeholders. For small business owners, social media is their magic to help build reputation, relationships, and corporate images/culture.

In social media, there will also be a group of loyal twitter followers, facebook fans, as well as youtube watchers. The above link leads you to 5 effective strategies to use.

1. Is your business visual?
This is fairly important since the information age blocks people from comprehensive reading and learning. All everyone wants to do is to skim, to watch, and to get as much information as possible in no time. So visuals are ideal for a small business owner to attract followers/customers/attention.

2.Real-world interaction still needed!
Even if you move most of your marketing efforts online, you have to admit that offline interaction with customers and prospects is very, very important. That is a way to connect virtual reality with reality. You may not need to spend much, but definitely do something to keep your messages consistent. Say you can make these koozies, cups, T-shirts to spread the same messages as in social media. This can enhance the messages.

3. Be visible in your consumers' areas
A best way to do that is to stay aware of your competitors. One simple thing is to check what kind of social media they are using. If you want to sponsor an event to build some reputation, you also need to know where to start. For Triangle small business owners, they may want to check Share Triangle, GOLO, and MyNC to keep up with local activities. Be visible, but also be smart. No one wants to waste money on some useless ads that can never get to their target audience.

4. Go paperless.
The last tip in the "Strategies" article talked about discounts and contests. I want to elaborate on discounts. Social media provided a good interacting opportunity for business dealers and buyers, yet we may want to start from another perspective---environment-friendliness. If discounts can only be printed to use, business owners may stick to print ad to do the job. This will cost almost the same amount of money, and you save some trees. So I would suggest, instead of coupon, we can customize them into personal PIN numbers. Anyone who types in their name can get a unique PIN number for discounts. They just use IDs to get the discounts. Isn't that a better choice? Maybe we can call it "paperless coupon".

New and the last semester...

Ha, new semester's coming.Also the last semester here. Time flies. Time flies.