Last week I had a professional difference of opinion with a colleague, which was the catalyst for this post, so I’m particularly interested to hear people’s thoughts and comments this week.

I was invited to join a Brisbane Lions group on Facebook at the start of the AFL season. The logo is the profile pic, there was a link to the official Brisbane Lions website, professional photos of players, links to articles, regular status updates… for all intents and purposes, it looked like their official Facebook page. But I was wrong.

After pointing out a spelling error in a status update one night, the administrator of the page sent me a message to say he was just a fan, not someone who worked for the Brisbane Lions. As a fan, a PR professional, and someone who’s passionate about upholding brand integrity, I was appalled. I felt like I’d been ripped off, cheated, deceived.*

After learning a PR colleague is maintaining a Twitter profile for a brand they don’t work for, I was just as unimpressed. I reckon we should know better. To their credit, the brand knows this person is managing the profile. However I fear their followers do not, and this is misleading. Even as PR/communications people, we’re still consumers. And we all know what it’s like to be misled by a company.

In Australia, PR people are required to abide by a Code of Ethics (if you’re a member of the PRIA). Just like accountants, lawyers, doctors and countless other professions. Read the first couple of Codes and you should get where I’m going with this…

These two recent experiences have really driven home for me how transparency and integrity in all forms of communications, especially social media channels, are paramount.

The rules of how we engage with a brand’s stakeholders haven’t changed. However, we now have the opportunity to talk and interact with them directly though sites like Twitter and Facebook, making the conversations we have with them even more important to how our brands are represented. Gone are the days when a CEO or Chairman was the only heard human voice of a brand. As brands (and people) establish identities online they’re stepping into a new world where the community is more actively taking part in the shaping and defining of their brand. There are now potentially millions of voices.

Your brand is not just an image or word, sign or symbol. It’s a promise. A promise to deliver a product, service or experience, to live up to expectations.

Life is injected into a brand by eliciting an emotional reaction and connection with stakeholders, resulting in the branding and marketing holy grail: loyalty.

Promise, loyalty… it all implies a level of trust. And the stronger the trust, the stronger your reputation (and we’re all aware of what lies at the opposite end of the trust/reputation spectrum).

Social media is, without a doubt, providing countless opportunities for us to talk about our brand and our brand’s promise, and build trust with consumers directly. If someone else is doing that on a brand’s behalf without being upfront to its customers and stakeholders and misrepresenting who they are and the brand, they are potentially doing long-term damage to that trust and reputation. This goes for any communications channel, not just social media. Social media has simply exaggerated the possible outcomes, whether they be positive or negative.

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I’m speaking at an event tomorrow (Thursday) night for AIMIA Qld and PRIA Qld, titled “Feeling a Little Overexposed Online? Why Online Reputation Matters“. Starts at 5.30pm at Central Eagle St Conference Venue. Would love to see you there.

*As a result, I shot them a rather curt email asking them to make it clear they are running an unofficial page, keep in mind they’re bordering on breaching copywrite laws by not having permission to replicate the Lions’ brand and not referencing where they were getting their information from, not to mention potentially angering a club they’re so passionate about. I’ve noticed they’ve since made the adjustments I’ve suggested and sent them a thank you.

I’ve been blogging on and off for a few years now, but this is the first time I’ve taken the leap into writing a blog about my profession: communications.

I had about half a dozen different names I was toying with, but in the spirit of PR people making up their own words, I decided to give it a crack myself.

The word “connectucation” is made up of two words (original, I know) – connect and communications. It’s not rocket surgery that those of us in PR have kissed the days of “spin” goodbye. We’re accountable to more than a marketing manager and a CEO/board of directors. What we say is now subject to the scrutiny of scores of stakeholders no longer confined to a mere postcode. The two-way street has become a super highway where road trains and scooters just try not to kill each other.

Ok, enough with the naff metaphors. Let’s get on with it.

When I began planning what this blog was going to be about, I read. Lots. The biggest influence on the (r)evolution of public relations in the last five years has been the tsunami of social media sites and how it’s shaped the way we communicate, personally and professionally. I’d argue that public relations is now something much bigger than we’ve currently defined it as.

What grabbed (and still grabs) my attention is how some of the industry’s biggest thinkers and doers are trying to define what social media is; but some of the most interesting stuff I came across was what everyone is saying about social media in general. After all, we’d be naive to think it’s more than just us PR types who are shaping how these tools are being used as a catalyst for shaping thinking, discussion and action.

So I thought this would be a good place to start to the blog ball rolling. Here’s a few of my favourites:

• “Social Media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.” – Brain Solis Principal of FutureWorks

• “Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun.” – Pete Cashmore, Mashable CEO

• “What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into ’social media breaks’ as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking.” – David Armano

• “Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t want plastered on a billboard with your face on it.” – Erin Bury, Sprouter community manager

• “When there’s a buzz out in the blogosphere that your company has shipped a defective product, is closing its doors, or is under investigation, for example, a press release on the wire is no longer the fastest or most effective way to respond.” – Joel Postman, blog for Social Media Today

• “Monitor, engage, and be transparent; these have always been the keys to success in the digital space.” – Dallas Lawrence, Levick Strategic Communications

• “We’re still in the process of picking ourselves up off the floor after witnessing firsthand the fact that a 16-year-old YouTuber can deliver us 3 times the traffic in a couple of days that some excellent traditional media coverage has over 5 months.” – Michael Fox, founder of Shoes of Prey

• “New marketing is about the relationships, not the medium.” – Ben Grossman, founder of BiGMarK

• “Being the first is old media, while being to the point is new media. And Twitter never forgets.” – Mercedes Bunz, theguardian.co.uk

• “A marketing person should always ask one key question when beginning to develop a social media strategy: how much chaos can this organization handle?” – Gary Stein, vice president of strategy for Ammo Marketing

• “In the end, the winner is content. Good content, sharable content, and consumer-driven content will allow us all to have a broader spectrum of information and, for the marketer, an easier way to connect with their base.” – Aaron Kahlow, chairman and founder of the Online Marketing Summit

• “It has never been easier to be as influential as you can be today. Information is cheap. Information is easier to produce. And if you have a quality message, it’s never been cheaper to get out.” – Jordan Raynor, Republican Web strategist, as quoted at RealClearPolitics

• “Search is about figuring out what people are looking for when they enter keywords into their favorite search engine. Social media is what people are actually saying to each other; they’re telling us what they’re looking for. We, as marketers, should be able to fit it all together pretty nicely.” – Norm Elrod

• “Advocacy is the newest kid on the marketing block. While we’ve always known that people make decisions based on advice from their peers, we’ve never been able to bake that into a plan the way we have now.” – Gary Stein, vice president of strategy for Ammo Marketing

• “The difference between PR and social media is that PR is about positioning, and social media is about becoming, being and improving.” – Chris Brogan, author of “Trust Agents”

• “If content is king, then conversion is queen.” – John Munsell, CEO of Bizzuka

• “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…The old paradigm was pay to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to play to play.” – Alex Bogusky, co-chairman CP&B

I’d be keen to hear your favourite quotes about social media. Look forward to your comments.