The monthly presentation on March 24, 2010 brought more than 200 Twin Cities-area marketing professionals together at the Nicollet Island Pavilion to network and explore what is legal – and what is ethical – in the rapidly evolving world of social media.

Kind of an abstract topic? Hardly! Issues facing interactive marketers every day, from compliance with Federal Trade Commission regulations to your company’s policies on Tweet attribution, ghostwritten blog posts and restrictions on social media activity, raise a number of important questions.

• What’s the difference between law and ethics?
• Why worry about what is ethical?
• How are social media ethics different?
• Are anonymous comments okay?
• Should we delete negative comments?
• Who owns content published on social media sites?
• How deep can marketers dig into personal data on social media sites?

Mike Keiler, client relationship manager at Fast Horse, provided commentary on ethics. And Michael Flemming, an attorney specializing in intellectual property, technology and internet issues at Larkin Hoffman Daly and Lindgren Limited offered a legal perspective.

In just under one hour of time, Keiler and Flemming offered a framework for thinking about ethics and law, in addition to a number of valuable insights to help sort out what’s a best practice, what could damage your reputation and what could send you to prison.

Summary

• Law provides, at a minimum, a floor for what you can do – but ethical codes might provide an answer “above” that floor.
• Professional organizations provide codes upon which your own ethical system can be built.
• Often, these codes won’t have specifications for the unique questions you face.
• Rely on the insight and support of others in your organization, industry and outside your industry.

MIMA resources

Hungry for more detail? Looking for more definitive answers to your ethical and legal questions. Check out the audio and video downloads from this presentation now available from the resources section of the MIMA website.

Other resources

• Word Of Mouth Marketing Association: www.womma.org/ethics
• Public Relations Society of America: www.prsa.org/aboutprsa/ethics
• American Advertising Federation: www.tinyurl.com/ethics-aaf
• American Marketing Association: www.tinyurl.com/ethics-ama
• Federal Trade Commission: www.tinyurl.com/ftc-disclosure-guides
• Santa Clara University Markula Center for Applied Ethics: www.tinyurl.com/ethicalframework
• Legal bloggers: www.lhdl.com/news/rss.cfm