Nike Censors LeBron James Dunk Incident; Creates Needless PR Fiasco
Nike takes the heat as they learn a lesson about transparency – the hard way.

Blogging Truth: No One Likes Your CEO
Lisa Barone from Outspoken Media serves up this fun and entertaining post about why your company’s CEO might not be the best person to write the corporate blog.

Since When Are Blogs Not Social Media?
Brian Clark from Copyblogger reminds us that the blogs were the original form of social media and still hold tremendous value in your social media strategy.

Life after 80, or what World of Warcraft can teach you about marketing mastery
Christoper S. Penn channels your “inner-gamer” with this fun look at how World of Warcraft compares to marketing strategy.

How P.F. Chang’s Uses Twitter to Be Awesome
Word of Mouth Marketer, Andy Sernovitz shares this inspiring interview that she shot with Kelly Morehead of the restaurant chain P.F. Changs. Their innovative use of Twitter is a story that B2Cs’ can learn from.

My favorite answer, however, was from @tgruber. She said:

It’s my favorite answer because for me, if I’m interacting with a company’s brand online, it seems obvious that the marketing team would be behind it unless otherwise noted (as in the case of @zappos which is clearly identified as the CEO, Tony Hsieh; or in our case @PerkettPR – where we identify who is behind the Twittering of the brand right in our bio).

But I’m in marketing and PR – so I wanted other viewpoints. If you are interacting with @Lotame (client), for example, do you assume you are talking to the CEO or a marketing executive, or someone else? If a PR firm maintains the account should they say in their bio, for example, “We’re PerkettPR Twittering on behalf of Client.”? If you follow @TJMaxx, @Starbucks, @JetBlue, @LuckyShops or others, does it matter to you who’s behind the social media curtain – as long as they aren’t claiming to be the CEO when they are not?

We’re excited to announce several new clients today and as we continue planning and launching many social media campaigns for them in the coming months, we continue to value and learn from the collective communities and their opinions. That includes you – so what do you think?

1) Facebook/Microsoft – While the market was abuzz with a battle between Microsoft and Google over Facebook on Wednesday, a PR representative from Facebook “leaked” the deal by posting a new “friend” on her Facebook page. That friend just so happened to be Adam Sohn, who heads up global sales and marketing PR at Microsoft. ValleyWag – always the innovative thinkers – used this as enough confirmation of the rumors.

2) Your written PR pitches are on display – make sure they are quality! Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead writer at Read/WriteWeb (and a consultant in new online software and marketing), highlights in a late Wednesday blog five PR pitches he’s recently received that not only had the opposite effect of grabbing his interest but, collectively, impassioned him to post them for critique on his blog – with names. Yikes.

The lessons here? Social media is by its very nature transparent – what you put out there can be reposted, repurposed and on display for anyone to research critique, link to and comment on – forever. Make sure you are sending quality communications that you can stand behind. Learn and abide by unspoken etiquettes of the communities, engage in using social media intelligently, and moreover, give reporters more than just “stuff” regardless of the vehicle in which you choose to communicate.

You’re busy, right? Imagine how busy they are – and how many pitches they have to read through in a day. If you want to connect, do it only when you know you’ve got something good – or maybe when you don’t want anything at all (old fashioned relationship building) – and give them quality, concise and personally relevant information (no one blasts generic email pitches these days…right??).