social media ethics for business: a reflection.

This week’s topic was of great interest to me as we were able to focus it on a theme that interested us. After I posted mine I was tweeted to let me know that my article had been featured on a website bringing together articles relating to social media use in businesses, which was a great way for me to read other peoples’ take on the matter, such as this article about social media etiquette but put together in a really informative and easy to read way.

Andy’s blog post this week discussed the problem of Twitter trolling, which was insightful in that it discussed how trolling should be dealt with and whilst in the comments we discussed problems with policing and judging the severity of crimes, it did highlight how a new wave of criminality is appearing as a result of the internet.

Lucy wrote about a number of issues for businesses when it comes to social media and the internet, including the way businesses manipulate social trends to promote themselves, such as Coca-Cola and their participation in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. She also covered the idea of unreported endorsements, as I did in my blog post for the week, but it was interesting to note how she believed companies could add transparency to this by using Native Advertising, which I have noticed has gained popularity in recent years and could well be a good way to ensure that consumers are completely aware that an article has been sponsored. As I mentioned in the comments on my blog post, businesses are looking for creative and innovative forms of advertising, and the example that Lucy showed in her post highlights that sponsored articles that are written in the style of normal ones can look good and are likely to entice the reader into clicking on them.

Din raised an interesting point on both mine and Lucy’s blog posts about the idea of people reviewing products and how honest they really are. I have to admit I am prone to Googling a product before I buy it to read what other people think, so I understand why companies would want to provide “well-known” reviewers with a product in the hope of a positive review, but I guess this is something that we should take into consideration when watching these types of videos.

So to conclude, another insightful week of #UOSM2033 blogging, especially considering we all wrote about a variety of subjects!

Sophie