1) Don’t Kill All the Lawyers
I enjoyed this short piece on managers and lawyers by Ted Weisman of Lois Paul and Partners. The truth is, between bigger brand with their own established standards and practices getting better at social media, and regulations piling up, having to deal with lawyers – not stonewalling, avoiding or scrunching your eyes in the hopes they will go away – is the norm. I deal with clients’ legal departments (directly or indirectly) regularly, and the positive far outweighs the negative.
2) Homeless Hotspots: Two Sides of the Story
I was happy to be following South by Southwest Interactive from afar this year. One of the most talked about stunts was the marketing firm BBH’s Homeless Hotspot campaign, in which homeless eople in Austin were equipped with portable wi-fi for SXSW attendees, who would make suggested donations. It was easy to mock the campaign’s apparent dehumanization of the homeless (a Hotspot? How about human patio furniture or piggyback cab rides? You bet I had fun with it).
But yet, was it a laudable attempt to get people to talk about the homeless problem, including and talk to homeless people? There were reasonable arguments on both sides. Kneejerk reactions from people like me (whether you were there are not) often oversimplify the story.
Read.
3) My Version of Diving Into the Pinterest is Craze (such as it is)
I like Pinterest. I really do. I do counsel caution to companies wanting to jump in (why are you doing it?) and am cynical about breathless quoting of growth statistics, but understand the addictive nature of visually sharing things we like.
I jumped in, but on my terms. I have spent the last year or so commenting on the sometimes horrifying trend towards producing “infographics” for any possible,sometimes grotesque, application.
To be fair, I have spent time trying to find infographics that work and I like as well as those I hyperbolically deem “Crimes Against Humanity.”
4) Bloggers: Stop Trying So Hard
After scrolling through post after post in my RSS feeds, one thing is clear: bloggers are trying too hard. I’m a big fan of writing to publish on personal blogs rather than fussing too much about perfection and format. However, does that mean everything is a top ten list? That we can find social media lessons in everything from the latest unrelated news event to (to pull an email ample from a friend) pole dancing?
Sometimes I think we try to hard. Not everything fits neatly into a Top 5 list, not even this weekly blog post series (which you might notice is far from weekly).
There is no 5).
Photo Credit: Robert Thomson on Flickr