The guide will provide specific recommendations for different channels including blogs, Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms, social networks such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, podcasts, and video and photo sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr.

I haven’t seen the guidelines yet so can’t comment in detail. It’s expected that WOMMA will attempt to mandate consistent disclosure hash tags on Twitter and social network status update. Personally I’m not convinced by this, there are already ‘standards’ floating around, none of which has really taken off.

A far more sensible recommendation and one that we advocate at Wolfstar is that there should always be an easily accessible link to a page which describes what it’s all about and who is behind it – a rules, transparency and disclosure statement.

WOMMA and the USA is actually lagging somewhat behind the UK and Europe. As over here we’ve had the new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPR) since May 26, 2008. The FTC guidelines were only introduced in May 2009. The CPRs specifically outlaw “falsely representing oneself as a consumer” and “using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion.” The ultimate sanction for breach of the CPRs can be jail for directors and senior managers.

In the UK professional organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and trade bodies such as the Internet Advertising Bureau already have guidelines in place.

DISCLOSURE: I was a founder member of WOM UK and sat on its governing council for the first year. Wolfstar’s chairman Tim Sinclair was the founder member and set-up WOM UK’s partnership with WOMMA. He also worked pro-bono as WOM UK’s first chief executive to get the membership organisation started. WOM UK has simply adopted WOMMA’s code of conduct.

We’ve been celebrating in the Wolfstar office today as we’ve just found out that we’ve won the Chartered Institute of Public Relations President’s Grand Prix Award for Best Use of Social Media Award for our campaign to support the global launch of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 mobile phone. That makes it officially the UK’s best social media campaign. I didn’t do it on my Wolfstar blog post, but I want to do so here and say a massive thanks to Sony Ericsson for being a brilliant client and being brave enough to not be afraid to push the boundaries of what’s possible with social media and for really ‘getting’ that it’s an integral part of corporate communications strategy. I also want to say an equally massive thanks to the brilliant team that I’m privileged and humbled to have working with me at Wolfstar.

The COI is full of excellent PR and marketing professional’s whose job it is to ensure that the millions of pounds that the government spends on PR and marketing is spent in the very best way. In terms of spend it is one of the UK PR industry’s biggest ‘clients’. The fact that the COI has recognised how bad AVEs are should send a very strong signal to the PR industry and clients in the commercial sector.

I started my first public relations job 20 years ago and even then AVEs were a totally discredited metric. Personally I think AVEs are mainly used by weak PR people who aren’t confident, mature or strong enough to stand-up to marketing people who ask for AVEs because they are simple to understand and compare with other marketing communications spend. The fact that AVEs are intellectually vacuous seems to be irrelevant because they can hoodwink and mislead the board/C-suite with a metric with a £/$ sign in front and pretend it is something to do with ROI. It isn’t.

I will provide clients with AVEs if they insist, but only after first counselling why they don’t work and then making sure that every time I provide them they come with a health warning and accompanied by a more intelligent way of measuring and evaluating success against agreed objectives.

Last night the Wolfstar team went to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRide Awards. Wolfstar was nominated in three categories and was lucky enough to win the Best Use of Social Media award. I’ve just been going through the other winning case studies and was disappointed (actually no I was disgusted) to see that so many of them used AVEs as part of the measurement and evaluation. What’s even worse is that some of the entries use the even more spurious “PR value”. This is where they multiply the AVE by a made up number (usually three) and say that it’s because “editorial is worth three times as much as advertising because it’s more credible”.

How is public relations going to be taken seriously as an industry and profession if PR people aspiring to be the best of the best use such discredited measurement tools? It’s little wonder that PR is not always given the respect it deserves if we’re surrounded by those with so little understanding of their own industry. What’s even worse is that the judges let them get away with it and gave them awards! It’s the judges who have really let the PR industry down.

For next year I’d like to see the CIPR following the COI’s lead and proving that it is at the forefront of the profession by sending out a strict instruction that AVEs are not an acceptable measurement and evaluation metric for award entries. At the very least it should start a debate and consultation on the issue.

I’d welcome comments on this post as I’m sure that there are many PR people who will disagree with me – and many that will agree!

It’s a slightly different format at this year’s conference with just four keynote speakers and a small number of master classes that delegates can choose from. The other three keynotes are:

Yasmin Diamond, Director of Communication, Home Office

Heather McGregor, Columnist, Weekend Financial Times

John Nielson, Director of Group Media Relations, BAE Systems

Three of the master classes are on different aspects of online public relations. I’m delivering one of them and am convinced it’s the hardest of the three – Twitter – so much to say, so little to say! The other two online PR master classes are social media (that’s Rob Brown who gets the easy gig) and online evaluation (with Robin Wilson, who I’m know will make a seemingly dry subject stand up). The other master classes are creativity, social marketing, relationship management, budget PR and finally PR survival in the credit crunch by Paul Willis, director of the Centre for Public Relations Studies, Leeds Business School.

For those of you who may not be able to attend but wish to follow delegates comments on Twitter, we’ll be using the hashtag #CIPRNC.

I find it very worrying that two young PR professionals both have to question the value of CIPR membership. However, I also a huge degree of sympathy.

I’ve been a CIPR member for 20 years and I’m not sure I’ve had a great a deal out of it either. But that’s not why I’m a member.

The reason I think CIPR membership is so important is the work it does to improve the professionalism, quality and standards of the public relations industry. I’m a member for what I can contribute, not what I get from it.

The CIPR is far from being the professional institute that I would want to be a member of. Just one example is the social media guidelines, which I have questioned the existence of as we don’t have similar guidelines for mainstream media relations (despite the evidence from journalists that they are still spammed by too many PR people, some of which will doubtless be members).

You change things from within the tent, not from without.

Everyone’s buzzing in the Wolfstar office today as we’ve just found out that we’ve won the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Grand Prix PRide award for outstanding small consultancy. I’m not going to say much as Tim Sinclair, our chairman, has already said it all on the Wolfstar blog. It’s enough to say that I’m delighted at what the team has achieved and grateful to be working with some fantastic clients that give us the freedom to explore new and exciting ideas for how public relations should be engaging with social media and the online world.

I’ll leave the last word to the judges:

“The judges felt Wolfstar demonstrated outstanding achievements coupled with exceptional CSR for an agency of its size. The growth the consultancy has undergone since its inception is impressive and it is well on its way to meeting many if not all of its business objectives, particularly that of being a global agency, headquartered in Leeds.

The campaigns Wolfstar chose to showcase in its entry simply underscored the judges strong feelings that this is a consultancy to watch! “

One of the main reasons that I continue my CIPR membership is because I think it is essential that public relations professionals abide by a code of ethics. The CIPR Code of Conduct says:

Fundamental to good public relations practice are:

Integrity

• Honest and responsible regard for the public interest;

How can a man who refers to black people as “piccaninnies” and talks about “water melon smiles” even be considered for an honour by CIPR if it is truly committed to ethical communications that reflect the diversity of the UK? This wasn’t a simple slip of the tongue, but actually appeared in a by-lined article that presumably Boris thought about before writing. How can he be considered to have “integrity” and “regard for the public interest” if can write things like that?

Just for the avoidance of doubt I want to make it crystal clear this isn’t a political statement because Boris is a Conservative MP as I can think of several Tory politicians who are genuinely good communicators and deserving of the honour – not least David Cameron or George Osbourne.

Personally I think most of the people commenting have got a point, but it’s not really such a clear cut issue.

Do you need a PR degree to be a good PR person? Of course not, you don’t even need a degree. What a PR degree does do is give people a head start in certain areas. A PR degree very much helps to set in context what public relations actually is.

One of the problems of moving into PR from journalism is that they’ve only got experience and expertise in one small part of public relations. It means they should be an excellent writer (sadly that isn’t actually always the case), with an eye for a strong story – but not always a full understanding of using communications to meet a business objective. I once remember working with an ex-journo who had a brilliant story idea that would almost certainly have made a decent splash in The Sun. She was right, it was a great tale. Unfortunately, it would have had almost zero business benefit. The time and other resources were far better spent on something more productive.

One of the big benefits of PR degrees is that they try to equip students with the ability to see the big picture and understand PR in context. They also teach the basics of many skills needed, they don’t do it in depth as that’s what experience and investment in ongoing training is for.

You can easily come into PR from a different field, but if you do you then you must start to learn and develop the areas you don’t know about – for example by doing the CIPR Diploma.

What you can’t and shouldn’t do is pretend you can learn it all on the job. That isn’t providing good counsel. If we are to hold our own with professionals such as lawyers and accountants, then we need the training and qualifications to back it up.

My thought before it was published was – why do we need a separate code, we already have one for CIPR and its principles should apply to social media. We don’t have a separate code for media relations, event management, internal communications, newsletters, video or dozens of other PR channels and activities.

My first thought after reading it is probably the same. The Social media must be ethical headline should read “Public relations must be ethical” with the sub-head “and social media is no different”.

A code should be simple and should deal with issues such as honesty, integrity and competence. The CIPR’s includes confidentiality which I’m not sure about as I think it is just part of integrity, but so perhaps is honesty. If I was to promote one of the two it would be honesty.

Some of the detail in the draft does require further thought – such as ghosting. The question isn’t just is it acceptable and if so when, but also what exactly is it because there are nuances. The devil is in the detail.

UPDATE: Seems that I’m not the only one thinking along the lines of less is more. Richard Bailey talks about the Hippocratic oath and that codes shouldn’t be changing every week.

“There must be a strategic reason for posting a video – and that video must suit the brand.

It’s the same with all social media. First identify what you are trying to achieve and then look at what tools you need to achieve it. Use the best of old and new media tools.