In the latest episode of The New Mediology, Nathan and I talked about social media ethics. We used the recent story about Belkin paying people for positive reviews on Amazon.com as the basis for the discussion. This is a classic case of someone trying to use social media without understanding it...at least I hope the guy from Belkin who did this was simply ignorant. It's much worse if he knew better but did it anyway.
In the end you have to remember that the promise of social media is the chance to influence through candid and genuine content and conversations. You must remember three things about social media:
- Be genuine.
- Be authentic.
- If it feels less than genuine or authentic, it probably is (and you don't want to go there.)
Authenticity wins in the long run. Trickery and gaming the system will always come back to bite you in the rear end.
The podcast is only 20 minutes and you can listen online or on download it in iTunes.