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.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Mia Cambronero, who currently holds the job, “will be stepping down from my infamous role as ‘Barack Obama’s twitterer,’” she said in an email message posted to a listserv. “We’re looking for someone who is available to start immediately.”

Essential qualifications include:

• Excellent writing and editing skills with strong attention to detail; your writing is strong, sharp, and personable
• Strong organizing and campaigning instincts; you can craft messages that move people to act, and you know what actions will achieve the right impact at the right time
• Strong familiarity with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.
• Ready to work hard; this isn’t a 9-5 sort of job
• Ability to work under deadline pressure
• Ability to manage multiple complex projects
• Passionate about engaging millions of Americans in advancing President Obama’s agenda and changing the country
• Candidates must be willing to relocate to Washington, DC

Bizarrely the job advert on the Obama website doesn’t give a closing date for applications.

Peter Horrocks: backing Facebook and Twitter. Photograph: Martin Godwin

He told BBC in-house weekly magazine Ariel: “This isn’t just a kind of fad from someone who’s an enthusiast of technology. I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things. It’s not discretionary.”

This is just the latest sign of how quickly things are changing because as recently as last year BBC’s 2009 editorial guidelines (PDF) mentioned social media just once, in the context of warning about copyright issues if you re-use content. It will be interesting to see how quickly the guidelines are updated and what they say.

Wolfstar is increasingly working with clients to help them modernise how they do traditional media relations. It’s not just about social media news rooms (of which we’ve now done quite a lot), but is far more fundamental and is about the everyday activities of public relations professionals that need to do media relations. It’s about understanding the different types of stories that journalists are searching for, the new types of content they need, how journalists research stories and how journalists interact with sources.

Q&A: BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks on social media and news

If you pop over to the Wolfstar blog, you’ll see that we’re recruiting experienced public relations consultants to work on global, European and UK online PR and social media for clients such as Sony Ericsson, Discovery Channel, First Direct and Philips.

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 other interesting fact about Conversationalists is that they’re 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. They are also among the youngest of the groups, but 70% are still 30 and over.

What intrigues me is that Conversationalists sit above Critics, which strikes me as odd as the effort required to be a Critic appears to be greater than the effort needed to be a Conversationalist. Hopefully Josh Bernoff will comment to explain the reasoning behind this.

National Express East Coast: Lions led by donkeys – 10 comments
In January I used my blog to express dissatisfaction with National Express East Coast’s abysmal customer service. At the end of November it was time to rejoice as it lost its franchise and the east coast mainline once again became a nationalised rail service (however temporarily). In just one month service has improved phenomenally.

Public relations is about reputation, not SEO – 16 comments
This post on the relative merits of public relations v. SEO resulted in me being asked to debate with Antony Mayfield at the New Media Knowledge event on online PR. It was a bit of an artificial debate as despite now working for a search agency Antony is a PR person so we agreed on far more than we disagreed. The arguments in my post focus on the fact that far too many people don’t know what they are talking about when discussing PR and SEO. I’d like to see more facts and less opinion.

Obama shaking hands with black policeman at No 10 Downing Street – 4 comments
A photograph showing the evident pleasure on the face of a black policeman as he shakes hands with President Barack Obama.

If you want to be a thought leader, blog don’t Twitter – 3 comments
Steve Rubel shutters his blog in favour of a ‘lifestream’, for once I agree with Robert Scoble and argue that thought leaders need to blog, not Twitter.

The only three questions you need to ask your prospective PR social media agency – 14 comments
A post that generated lots of retweets and was in a similar vein to one of my most popular posts of 2008 – Top ten ways not to choose a social media consultant.

How can local government use social media? – 1 comment
The IDeA asks how local government should use social media and I provide some answers based on not only on my public relations and social media experience, but also as an ex-councillor who served as Lead Member for Corporate Communications.

Will PR ever be free of the curse of AVEs? – 5 comments
The Central Office of Information announces it will stop using AVEs to evaluate public relations, I blog about hoping that the rest of the PR industry will follow suit.

Lots of interesting new social media research statistics – no comments
Short post that simply points to two other of my posts – Forrester publishes third global social media and social networks research report and Teens DO use Twitter: real research with the facts and statistics, not myths and hype on the Wolfstar blog. Illustrates the importance of search friendly headlines.

Social media campaign hammers the Daily Mail – 5 comments
When the Daily Mail ran a racist poll on its website, a vigorous Twitter campaign meant that it didn’t get the result it hoped for, a useful illustration of the power of social media.

Mandelson v. Marr: Master class or disaster class – you decide – 6 comments
YouTube videos of Lord Peter Mandelson getting the better of Andrew Marr, in what I think is a master class of how to handle a media interview.

1) Do they walk the walk?

"If your key agency people are not participating as thought leaders in the space, should they be advising you?
They need street cred themselves."
Ed Nicholson, Director Tyson Corporate PR

Does the agency have a credible social media presence of its own and for how long? Personally I’ve been active in this space for more than seven years (more than 12 if you include Usenet, mailing lists, forums etc) and most people in the Wolfstar PR team also have impressive social media track records, as well as Wolfstar having its own presence.

2) Do they have case studies to share with you to demonstrate their success incorporating social media into clients’ overall marketing strategy?

As Ochman says “if they don’t, they’ll be learning on your dime.”

Good as these questions are I think a third one is essential.

3) Do they have excellent experience and expertise in traditional public relations?

Social media isn’t the be all and end all. It must integrate into the existing corporate communications strategy. Does your prospective consultancy have the experience and expertise to not only integrate, but also advise intelligently on how that strategy needs to change.

Ochman says “there are a handful of credible social media agencies and consultants on the planet”, but I’d argue that simply being a credible social media agency or consultant isn’t enough. First and foremost you’ve got to be a credible public relations person.

Some people thought that the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 outlawed ghost blogs. They don’t. They outlaw fake blogs, which are a totally different issue. Fake blogs are where a brand or agency create a blog that that appears to be independent or from a customer, when in fact it is being written by them.

A ghost blog is where a blog is transparently from the company or organisation, but where the posts have been written by someone other than the person identified as the author. Neville Hobson sparked the debate by stating that ghost writing a blog post was inherently wrong. Some in the audience thought it was OK and likened it to a speech being written for a politician and that people thought was was acceptable and therefore a blog post could also be ghosted. Neville’s argument (I paraphrase) was that a blog post was personal and therefore couldn’t be ghosted.

I’m a realist, not an absolutist. The politician’s speech analogy is a good one, because it actually helps to prove that ghosting can be acceptable. In reality the substance of most political speeches are actually written by the politicians. A good politician will brief a trusted staffer to write the actual words of the speech, but the ideas, tone of voice, emotion and meaning are all the politician’s very own. Step one is the politician, step two is the writer, step three is the politician polishing the writer’s work.

You can quite legitimately create a blog post in exactly the same way. The reality in many companies and organisations is that there are lots of people who only half want to blog. They want to do it, but won’t/don’t because of barriers such as a lack of time, insecurity about their writing ability, worries they can’t think of enough topics etc. That’s where the in-house public relations team or external PR consultancy can help. They can work with an author to create a post that the by-lined author is happy with. That might mean dictating the copy and the PR person typing it and polishing the prose. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of the post, but can mean turning it into plain English by reducing jargon. Usually, as long as the blog makes it clear that the author had assistance then that’s totally acceptable.

There isn’t just one right way to write a blog. There are hundreds of different approaches that all work, there are also hundreds that don’t. That’s why appropriately experienced public relations people can help an employer or clients to get it right. Unfortunately you too often get the problem of PR people who don’t have the appropriate experience or expertise and then provide bad advice.

Matt Bamford-Bowes, head of social media at MediaCom Beyond Advertising tweeted “it isn’t surprising that companies pay PR teams to maintain blogs. It gives aligned tone of voice and point of view.” I disagree that the role of public relations should be to ensure an “aligned tone of voice and point of view” as that sounds far too much to me like turning it in to corporate or brand speak and the type of thing that marketing people who are used to controlling the message would want to do. If that was the role of the ghostwriter then I’d be opposed to it.

Vikki Chowney was faster off the mark than me and has already blogged about it. In the comments Benjamin Ellis makes a sensible reference to the divide between social media natives and traditional PR/corporate folks:

“It will be a 50:50 split in the big wide world :- social media natives will say “bad bad bad” traditional PR/corporate folks will say “fair game”.

Lots of mature businesses are stuck with “can’t blog won’t blog” senior execs – the temptation for PR folks to ghost blog for them is almost irresistible. That doesn’t make it right of course. The biggest down fall is when the CEO meets a customer and the customer starts to talk to them about what they said in the blog post – big #fail / embarrassment, or if a customer posts a comment and someone else responds as the CEO #biggerfail.”

His example ideally illustrates how PR people shouldn’t crudely simply ghost write a blog, but there are so many other ways we can help clients to blog which legitimately do involve helping to write posts.