IAOC would like to welcome the Advanced Learning Institute (ALI) and its Social Media for Internal Communications Conference as a sponsor of IAOCblog.com.

The Social Media for Internal Communications Conference covers topics such as blogging, podcasting, new web 2.0 technologies, and how these technologies impact business. The event takes place in San Fransisco, CA on February 4-7, 2008, with an exciting lineup of presenting organizations. To learn more, feel free to check out the conference brochure.

To register for the Social Media for Internal Communications Conference, please fill out this registration form, or contact ALI customer service at 1-888-362-7400, ext 1 -- mention IAOC and get $200 off!!!

In addition, anyone who attends this conference will also receive $50 off IAOC's June 2008 conference in Iceland! More details on the IAOC conference to come.

At Morty's gentle insistence, since they weren't mentioned earlier during my guest blogging on CEO blogs here, here, here, here and even here.

My books (no drum roll necessary please) are:

Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care with the inimitable Shel Holtz

What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting, Real-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere
and my very recent audio and physical book combo thingy:
The Secrets of Successful Blogging System.

And yes, there probably is another book or two in me. Don't hold your breathe though, it might take a few months years a decade
a little while still before I start.

We at IAOCblog would like to wish our readers in the U.S. a Happy Thanksgiving. We are in a membership drive now and we are thankful for your financial support.

Morty Schiller, Don Dunnington, and me, Steve O'Keefe, are working on these upcoming programs for "This Week on IAOCblog.com":

Book Review Week!
Send us your books to review on the blog. I'll be reviewing two textbooks for 2008 classes at Tulane University and George Washington University. Morty's got a couple books he's anxious to blog about. We welcome your book reviews, too.

Online Reputation Management
There's no hotter topic in Online PR than reputation management. We're trying to coax Sally Falkow to come school us on the subject as soon as her schedule allows.

How About You?
Do you have a show idea for "This Week on IAOCblog.com"? We are building our schedule for the Winter 2008 Season which begins in January. Guest bloggers are asked to take the helm for a week and bring a couple of colleagues with you. Contact info is below.

Thanks to Peter Gloor, Lois Kelly, Dave Taylor, Dianna Huff, Shel Horowitz and Ted Demopoulos for making the Fall 2007 Season on IAOCblog.com an outstanding success. Unique visitors to the site averaged 25,000/month this fall while pageviews averaged 100,000/month! Well done!

Send your show suggestions or books for review to:

STEVE O'KEEFE
steve.okeefe at patronsaintpr.com

MORTY SCHILLER
morty at mortyschiller.com

DON DUNNINGTON
DDunnington at ktron.com

Morty wrote,

I'm making an open, transparent and blatant request for you to plug your books... Can you please pick a couple and post the links to buying them?

Well, since you asked so nicely, how could  I refuse ?

On the topic of ethics, my most relevant book is Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First. I'm extremely proud of this book, which shows how ethics, cooperation (even with competitors), and an attitude of abundance can for a kind of positive perfect storm to create and increase business success. This book won an Apex Award, has been endorsed by 79 entrepreneurs and marketers including Jack Canfield, Anne Holland, and Mark Joyner, and has been republished in India and Mexico.

Also, I have two books in the Grassroots Marketing series: Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, which is specifically about book marketing, and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, which provides low-cost high-return marketing strategies (and lots of examples) for any type of business or nonprofit. Both of these books have won some honors and have great endorsements, too.

Thee are various "combination platter" offers and bonuses on my order page, which lists all the products I sell, on frugal, ethical, effective marketing, and also on frugal fun.

For my final turn at bat, I thought I'd look at the first section of the Code of Ethics: Be Honest and Fair.

These are three of the bullets:

• Never publish information they know is inaccurate -- and if publishing questionable information, make it clear it's in doubt.
• Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context.
• Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

In short, it's a blogger's obligation--or at least a blogger who subscribes to this Code of Ethics--to make it clear what you're talking about,whether you have a vested interest, and whether you're making assertions or citing facts.

Sounds like basic common sense, yes? But keep in mind that the concept of objective journalism is relatively new; in the Civil War era, newspapers unabashedly had an opinion and weren't afraid to show it--much like many bloggers today.

More of an issue to me is that we've had a number of instances of severely biased journalists not disclosing that they wee on the payroll of some organization. And of course, we have one-sided coverage on the part of (just to cite one example) Fox News that pretends to be objective but in reality is anything but "fair and balanced." I rather prefer the 19th century newspapers, often named after a political party, where you didn't have to figure out where they stand.

I am not sure there actually is such a thing as "objective journalism." Every article or broadcast has a point of view, and any story can be told a dozen or a hundred ways. The question to me is whether the biases are identified.

 

Well, it's been fun. Thanks for reading here, and for making comments. I'd love to see more comments on my own blog. Come join the party. I'm about to make a post about Iraq--and my bias will be clear in the post.

After a whole bunch of hype and hoopla, the Ad News write-up of the Digg Dirt study can be found here.

We're talking about the Bloggers' Code of Ethics this week, but I'd like to
explore a tangent today.

We bloggers, at least those working in the U.S., have the luxury of writing anything we feel like. Other than those who are employed by some corporate or nonprofit entity and blog as part of their jobs, we have no one looking over our shoulder and saying "you can't do that."

Today I had a long phone call with a client in a particular slice of the financial services industry. I had sent her a draft press release, and one of her concerns was that she was not allowed to use the word "investment."

And last month, I was speaking at a national convention, and the man who hired me told the audience that some of his motivation for bringing me to speak about ethics was his concern that if his industry didn't self-police, they would face government regulation that would sharply limit their actions and their income.

Then, of course, there's Sarbanes-Oxley, the U.S. law that requires corporations to meet some basic, minimal ethical standards--and process a huge amount of paperwork.

Seems to me, we as bloggers should abide by the Code of Ethics (and perhaps sign the Business Ethics Pledge) out of self-interest as well as out of common human decency.

Five bullets in the Blogger's Code of Ethics address the concept of minimizing harm.

Here are two of them:

Once again, I think it's not only bloggers who need to follow these guidelines; mainstream journalists, and especially TV crews, can be unbelievably insensitive. Some poor soul is grieving over a sudden unexpected tragedy, and the idiot reporter is shoving a microphone down the victim's throat and asking often very stupid questions.


With blogging, one of the issues that comes up under the do-no-harm guideline is the tendency of some bloggers to print opinion as if it's fact, or to republish accusations without either checking their veracity or making clear that you're repeating an unsubstantiated opinion.

Journalism in general, whether people's-journalism such as blogging or mainstream commentary, tends toward a presumption of guilt until proven innocent--the opposite of American criminal law. I confess I've fallen into that trap every now and then.

 And journalists' words can wreck a business a relationship, even a life. One of the reasons I do features and opinion instead of hard news is that it decreases the likelihood that I will hurt an innocent person. But it doesn't eliminate it, especially since I frequently write about business ethics scandals.

In my own blog, I'm going to make an effort to consider the effects of my words. What about you?

For me, one of the key points to consider in a discussion of ethics and blogging is pretty far down their list: * Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas   more »

Thanks for letting me plug the book, Morty.  Here's a link for Beyond Buzz. 

I had wanted the title to be "Something to Talk About," because the book provides so many examples and pragmatic ways for finding interesting ideas that get people engaged and talking. While companies  "get" Web 2.0 techniques, many, many struggle with finding ideas worth talking about -- especially the type of ideas that make meaning and not superficial buzz.

Alas, the editor overruled me -- and even used the "B" word  I so hate.

Lois

To answer any outstanding questions, no, I was not "rubbed out" by a militant wing of the Ron Paul army. In fact, last summer's Digg Dirt series opened up a lot of new opportunities for me.   more »

Two final thoughts as I wrap up my guest blog gig. Understanding the five-year-old mind  and acting like a ...   more »

The thing that scares executives the most about social media is that people can get on negative rants ...   more »

The folks over at MIT Media Lab have created some interesting ways to assess whether someone is interested in or ...   more »