‘Yet another talent lost early’  as tributes to Amy Winehouse pour in, there are quite a few shameless self-promotions going on out to market her sudden death. This post is not to serve as an eulogy to Amy but to point out to companies how not to market on their official twitter accounts during the death of a celebrity.

‘Should Traffic Ever Trump Taste?‘  gives two examples of  such behaviour and we pick the Microsoft UK PR twitter handle post – and yes they were crass enough to post this…

Clearly their later apology and tribute did nothing to cover up the real intention of the tweet.

This is a great example of how not to be a PR handle on Twitter and clearly puts Microsoft UK  in a bad light, despite the opportunity of increased sales of Amy’s music. Definitely a big ‘thumbs down’ from us here at Reputation Management For.com.

Do you have an active social media life? If the answer is a ‘Yes’ you need to be reading this post.

Post the ‘Weinergate’ incident, when an accidental tweet with an obscene photo that should have been made via direct message to an on-line girlfriend went public on Rep. Weiner’s timeline forcing his resignation, it is time to list out ways to avoid such social media disasters.

Armed with Android smartphones and numerous social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter is by itself a challenging situation. So you have your personal Twitter and Facebook account, and your companies’/clients’ both on a computer and sometimes even on your smartphone. Juggling these daily is daunting to say the least.

The other aspect is your own social life and how you conduct yourself in social circles, what pictures you post on Twitter and Facebook and so on. Ask around and you’re sure to know quite a number of people who have suffered the ‘Freudian slip’ or in this case the ‘Freudian click’ sending the wrong message to an ex-flame/spouse. You end up dealing with not just the horror of such a predicament but also the sinking feeling that it could have been easily avoided.

Here’s how you can avoid accidental social media disasters:

1. Always have multiple browsers for handling personal and professional social media accounts. This is by far is the simplest way to sort things out in your head before you post both professional and personal status messages. So, having IE, Chrome, Safari and Firefox for different purposes is adding order to the chaos.

2. Applications like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic and others all provide quick social media posts from multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts. So, using a particular application for professional use and another for personal is the way to go.

3. Direct messages on Twitter or Facebook messages may seem private, but never forget that nothing on the internet is really private.

4. Be funny but remember the virtual world is full of real people and this includes your friends, family, professional acquaintances, co-workers and other plain nosey people. And there are a few things that should not be shared on Facebook and Twitter.

5. If you are a politician or celebrity, the personal and the professional blur – the social media world may have a lot of bots but there are real people out there, so behave as you would in the real world.

6. After writing out a post or attaching a photo make sure to read it again and checking that its leaving from the right account before hitting ‘send’.

7. Posting from smartphones both in a professional and personal capacity is not good idea. Period. Unless you have two smartphones, which again is just a disaster waiting to happen.

So well accidents happen online all the time and some people pay a heavy price as online reputation is there for all to see and every action you take in the virtual world leaves a trail for someone to dig it all up again. Hiring online reputation management consultants is another way to deal with this.

The Twitter outing of celebrity names who have taken out superinjunctions in the UK courts to prevent the reporting of adultery and other private misdemeanors has been a watershed moment in privacy laws in the UK. The Ryan Giggs superinjunction and his law firm Schillings’ decision to pursue Twitter Inc. aggressively seems to have backfired for both client and the law firm.Even though a Twitter spokesman clearly stated that they will comply with the law of the land and hand over the details of twitter handles, the vast number of people on Twitter tweeting from different countries has suggested that this might be a herculean task. If a twitter user wants to retain anonymity they simply need to use a false email address and tweet from a cybercafe or tweet using a proxy service like HideMyAss.

Law firms promising blanket privacy for celebs through superinjunctions should perhaps reflect the times we are in – the social media era and the power of Facebook and Twitter. Celebrities who think money can buy privacy would perhaps have to  accept that a public life is just that – public and not private. A definition of celebrity is not private. Governments and justice systems who grant superinjunctions to celebrities and the wealthy should perhaps debate the justice in allowing such a legal way out from social or moral accountability.

From purely a reputation management and PR point of view superinjunctions seem like the holy grail – the master tool to prevent all kinds of bad press, but is this tool really available for all? On the flip side is the hounded celebrity who has thousands of paparazzi following their each and every move – isn’t the need for a bit of privacy a just requirement?

Superinjunctions have been granted to retain privacy under European human rights legislation and not to protect monetary interests, which is why John Terry was unable to get a superinjunction as the judge decided that John Terry’s purpose was to protect his monetary interests.

Celebs who make large endorsements deals selling their wholesome image are clearly not eligible for a superinjunction to prevent their private life from being reported. Tiger Woods or Arnold Schwarzenegger can take heart from the fact that the UK too would soon be debating this privacy issue in the days to come.

It is too early to tell whether this has been a bad week for social networks or for super injunctions in the British courts. Super injuctions are a legal rulingtht forbids media reporting of court case. It can even cover the very existence of the court case. They were usually used to protect vulnerable individuals whose life could be placed in jeopardy if they were named. More recently they have been exploited to protect celebrities from media coverage on the basis they would invade their privacy.
Here is the problem: celebrities have a lot to protect in terms of endorsements which have substantial financial value. Should courts protect them from the fallout from their peccadilloes? Is a man who is cheating on his wife also a “family man” in the case of the widely reported footballer? Was the banker who had an affair with a colleague and had a super injunction so powerful that it could noteven be reported so deserving of court protection that even the regulators of his bank (the largest bankruptcy in UK history) were not aware of his behaviour.

The review of the system looks like it will remedy some of the issues by ensuring that all injunctions are fully explained and that they are for defined periods. This will almost certainly resolve the Twitter issues. The anonymous twitter user, like many others, was frustrated by the exploitation of the law by celebrities.
There is a wider question of whether celebrities should have a “private life” in the sense that you and I understand it. They are highly paid as celebrities and it is unconscionable that the court should protect their livelihood at the expense of freedom of speech.

Often the centre of controversy, Celtic manager Neil Lennon has had an absolutely torrid season up in the SPL by way of publicity. And unfortunately, very little of it recently has had anything to do with football. When it comes to the two football giants in Glasgow – (the Old Firm), little of the rivalry between them is sporting and the at-times mutual sectarian exchanges from the fans has landed them both in hot water publicly. However, whereas Rangers have been handed appropriate discipline, Neil Lennon has had a reputation mostly imposed upon him that’s led to consequences far worse, and infinitely more inexcusable.

“Football is a sport and should therefore be enjoyed accordingly”. It’s a simple sentiment, but one a lot of people don’t seem to appreciate as much as they really should. Anyone taking up the reigns on either side of the Old Firm mantle is putting their personal reputation on the line due to the insane idiocracy that makes up the moronic fans that vehemently hate what the Old Firm (or ‘the other side of the Old Firm’) represents. And, with Neil Lennon as the perceived figurehead of Celtic Football Club, he’s been exposed this season to some horrendous acts that you would see literally nowhere else in the ‘beautiful’ game.

Due to the nature of his job, Neil Lennon finds himself frequently talking to the Scottish press before, during and after games, and any other time there’s something topically prevalent to discuss. While it’s traditional to try and manage a club’s image via the newspapers, the Scottish press seem to have abandoned any and all sense of journalistic integrity in favour of creating their own stories. Case and point being this week as Lennon was intentionally misquoted during a press conference with Heart of Midlothian manager Jim Jefferies. Upon hearing the slanted version of what Neil had said, Jefferies responded negatively and that mentality filtered down into the players and fans. One of the Hearts fans felt so strongly about what the press had (mis)reported Neil as saying, that during the teams encounter last night at Tynecastle he broke out of the stands, made a 30-yard run up the touchline and physically attacked the Celtic manager.

There are no circumstances under which this kind of conduct would be deemed acceptable, and the Scottish national newspapers have been quick to condemn what happened. Neil doesn’t seem to be able to catch a break and it takes the strongest kind of character to prevail against the torrents of abuse he’s getting. He needs to be seen to be acting as responsibly as possible and despite his best efforts to do this in the press, they’re not cutting him any slack. He’s had to resort to the use of social networking site Twitter to get his message out to fans, which he did so this morning with the following ‘tweet’:

Don’t let what happened to me tonight take the shine off a wonderful team performance… I don’t walk alone.

Making reference to the popular Celtic club anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which the fans sang at the tops of their voices over the final whistle last night, Neil shows that he appreciates all the support he’s getting from fans whilst maintaining that his focus is still on the football. Which, to be honest, is where everyones focus should be.

There’s no ‘quick fix’ to Neil’s situation and I hope he sticks at it so that the scum who partake in this hatred-fueled crusade against the man from North Ireland wont have ‘won’. Until then, we’ll continue to see a decline in the effectiveness and integrity of the written press as they struggle to keep up with popularity of readily-available and unregulated, bordering-on-prose journalism online.

Television, radio, newspapers and the internet. Which is the odd one out? The internet, for as Monday proved – it’s the one thing that can’t be controlled by a court-issued super-injunction. One can’t help but feel bad for Jemima Khan, who this week held an awful lot of limelight and felt the full force of social media scrutiny. And now, thanks to the mockery Twitter made of the British judicial system, privacy laws are facing review according to UK ministers.

In the small hours of Monday morning, a twitter user made a series of posts claiming to have insider knowledge about a collection of super-injunctions (those new-fangled gagging orders which stop the press commenting on either the existence, or contents, of a superinjunction) and it took the internet like wildfire. Caught up in the center of this was socialite Jemima Khan who, as the Twitter poster at #injunctionsuper claimed, was named as part of an extra-marital affair with BBC’s Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson.

While people were left reeling from the possibility of pictures that exist of Jeremy Clarkson being intimate with anyone (let alone Jemima Khan), the affair has since been denounced as pure fabrication. Despite this, it still caught the nation’s attention as the Twitter posts were referred to (but not quoted, you know – due to the SI’s) as the story was picked up by television, radio and newspapers up and down the country. Khan took to Twitter herself to refute the stories, and pleaded for people to stop sending her threatening and unpleasant ‘tweets’.

A certain footballer was also named as the footballer who took out a superinjunction to keep stories of him having an affair with a model a secret. And unfortunately for him, whilst the UK media wasn’t allowed to comment due to the gagging order, it was confirmed by a Spanish sports news publication that doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the British courts. You know, being from Spain and all.

Both instances prove examples to the potential for social networking sites such as Twitter to have massive and immediate impact on reputation; irrespective of accuracy. The reason this particular episode has gained so much attention is due to the legal ramifications involved, but that’s not to say that the internet can’t be a vessel for disruption on less high-profile cases. Often due to the sheer volume of news and column sites available online, it can be difficult to muzzle independent reports and accusations and it’s easy to lose control over content flow being afforded to the casual observer.

With the exception of the handful of 24-hour news channels available in the UK, news (save for nationally prevalent broadcasts) comes on at fixed times. Radio stations have dedicated news presenters that have fixed slots and report the news at predesignated intervals. And most newspapers come out once a day; in the morning. The internet, on the other hand, works in ‘real time’. The moment somebody’s finished writing something it can be seen online. If derogatory comments and claims are made on the ‘real-time web’, it wont be long before it becomes global. As such, it’s imperative to set up provisions for handling such outbreaks of negative publicity, or at least know where to look for help once it’s happened.

Take a look at our home page for ways in which we can help stem negative content published online, or stay tuned for our upcoming feature article on the top 10 do’s and do not’s of online reputation management.

Twitter has outed the celebrities who have taken out super injunctions in the british courts to stop the press mentioning their names and to protect their reputations. Twitter users know who they are now after a weekend of febrile speculation and outing. What does it mean?

The rise in the British courts of the dreaded “super injunction” whereby individuals can ask the court to slap a blank ban on reporting or mention of their “issues” has been heavily criticised as a abuse of freedom of expression. Perhaps the most notorious and meaningful use of the super injunction was by oil services company Trafigura who attempted to censor even parliamentary references to their problems with pollution in Western Africa. The injunction was broken by irate MPs who decided that parliamentary privilege could not be compromised by court order. The super injunction was widely viewed as a mistake by the courts as it sought to protect a powerful company from criticism of its business practices.

Since then the anxiety over their use has focused on their exploitation by celebrities who don’t want their domestic misdemeanour’s from being aired in public. One of the wider questions was whether british courts could actually police a global news system. This weekend has revealed that they can’t after a Twitter user (@InjunctionSuper) named the supposed “injuncted”. Within 2 hours the user had 24000 followers which shows the viral impact of Twitter. The press in the UK have jumped on the story, and while they give only a few clues, it seems apparent that they are keen to help their readers discover the twitter stream for themselves.

What will be the impact of the disclosure for the celebrities who now face denying that there has been both an injunction as well as the underlying story which seems like a damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Jemima Khan has had to publicly deny that there is an injunction covering a supposed affair with Jeremy Clarkson – an allegation which has horrified female users of Twitter who consider Jeremy Clarkson about as sexless as you can get. However, since there “is” an injunction we are in no position to know whether the allegations are true or not  - as if we care!

So what started out as an attempt to use courts to protect reputations has become a debacle where the injuncted cannot protect themselves publicly since they are covered by the injunction as well: never was a petard hoisted to more amusing effect. What the disclosures on Twitter may have done is closed off super injunction from celebrities and returned them to their more proper place of protecting those that need genuine protection. The notion that an internationally renowned chef who has legal issues with ex-employees needs to have court protection is laughable. It is not like you cannot guess which internationally renowned chef is likely to have legal issues, is it.

There were mutterings that Parliament might get involved in legislating over the use of Super injunctions – now it looks like the “Fifth Estate” of social networks has done the job for them!

Should celebrities be protected from domestic misjudgements by the court?

Twitter and other social networking sites have the potential to be a great source of information and entertainment, if you have the patience to filter through all the “I am eating toast”-like posts. Of course, they also have the potential to cause a whole world of grief if handled incorrectly. For celebrities, a bit of misdirected anger will usually result in some negative media coverage. For former trainee accountant Paul Chambers, his mis-Tweet resulted in legal action and the loss of his job. As a result, a whole host of famous faces have been up in arms, including (and especially) Stephen Fry.

Back in January, whilst frustrated with the bad weather airport closures, Mr Chambers Tweeted: “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”. He has since been convicted of sending ‘menacing electronic communications’, fined by the court and is being made to pay the cost of the prosecution as well. He was arrested at his place of work at a car distribution firm in Sandtoft, near Doncaster, and lost his job because of the ensuing prosecution.

Twitter is designed in such a way that each person with an account can have ‘followers’, or ‘people that also have accounts that get automatically updated when the person being followed makes a post’. Chambers’ argument centres around his ‘joke’ being aimed specifically at those people he has following his account. But Twitter operates in a way that allows anyone – even those without accounts – to read and search for specific content/people. As such, very little about Twitter is actually ‘private’.

Ignoring for a moment how a trainee accountant was deemed interesting enough to be followed by 600+ people, nothing he said was actually ‘private’. The proof of the pudding came when Robin Hood Airport picked up the Tweet and forwarded it on to police Special Branch. All in, his only argument was that he “didn’t realise anyone [that wasn't a follower] would see it” and that it “never crossed his mind people would take him seriously”. Ok, so we’ve got a publicly announced bomb threat and ‘ignorance’ is his best line of defence. And then he wonders why he was found guilty.

The case was high profile enough to attract celebrity names though, such as Al Murray, Rufus Hound, Katy Brand, Graham Linehan and Stephen Fry, to rally around Chambers in support. There was even a fundraising event in his name, to help cover the costs of the legal action, and give Paul Chambers the support he needed to keep fighting his case in the appeals process. Celebrities rarely need an excuse to add their name to a cause, which they’ll do any time they see the publicity working out in their favour. The premise behind supporting Chambers in this case is the concept of supporting freedom of speech, with Fry declaring the Twitter joke was “typically British, self-deprecating” and just “banter”.

What the end result of this will be is as yet unknown, but Stephen Fry has pledged to continue repeating the post (as have hundreds of other members of the Twitter community) and would face prison “if that’s what it takes”. The fact that the joke was posted on Twitter seems to be the only point of contention, as had Mr Chambers made the same joke at the airport itself, he’d be facing much stronger repercussions and would face the likelihood of being tried under the Terrorism Act of 2006 under much stronger terms.

2011 is seeing its first great celebrity meltdown with Charlie Sheen; and as reputations went, he clearly was the highest paid TV actor, and all this is changing.  Charlie joined Twitter in the middle of it all and in 24 hours @charliesheen has amassed a following of  1077386 and counting.

His tweeting fascinates one and all, from his ‘goddesses’ and twin boys’ pictures to his polygamous life its all in the headlines. Talk shows are increasing viewership with a Sheen appearance like Piers Morgan did or ABC did. Hugh Hefner may soon have a successor in Charlie Sheen, but Two and a Half Men is cancelled and his soon to be ex-wife has managed to get their twin boys out of the house and away from their dad.

The celebrity meltdown paradox: However, the thing about celebrities’ reputation is that they almost always manage a comeback professionally and otherwise a la Robert Downey Jr, Mickey Rourke, Brittney Spears, George Michael and Martha Stewart. Even Mel Gibson could make a U-turn and be the toast of Hollywood in the years to come.

For now, the Charlie Sheen reputation as a professional has taken its biggest blow, but strangely his tweets are not as bizarre as one would expect them to be. He’s actually quite funny in the pictures he tweeted and let’s hope this twitter avatar gets him back on track. But as all public meltdowns go this could be a painful watch.

By the way, Lindsay Lohan, are you watching the Sheen saga?

In an era whereby the mainstream media is overpopulated by nerds in their mothers basements writing up scandals on blogs and forums, it’s sometimes easy forget that normal people use the internet too. But nothing carries itself faster over the internet than a celebrity being lambasted on a social networking site by another celebrity. Cesc Fabregas found this out recently as he and thousands of others read on Huddersfield Town’s Anthony Pilkington some disparaging comments about the Arsenal captain’s antics after the 2-1 victory over Huddersfield in the FA Cup.

It was reported on Twitter that Cesc Fabregas had been less than courteous upon being approached by two opposing players after the match had finished. Anthony Pilkington Tweeted:

“2 lads asked him for his shirt and he told them to f*ck off!! Sick player but what a tit!”

Having a direct line to the thoughts and ponderments of celebrities and sports stars is proving to be a huge hit, and Twitter certainly seems to be leading the charge in some respects. But with everyone having access to these public outbursts, it places an even greater emphasis on managing one’s online presence to ensure that any negativity is kept as far out of the spotlight as possible. And it’s not just Cesc Fabregas that’s landing himself in trouble because of posts made on social networking sites.

Recently Liverpool’s Ryan Babel made all kinds of mistakes, earning him the honour of becoming the first player to face an improper conduct charge from the FA after he made his ‘opinions’ known. Making some very ill-advised comments about a referee and posting a picture of said ref in a rival’s strip are enough to get a footballer into trouble, it seems. But it just goes to show how seriously a celebrity’s actions can be taken, and demonstrates a clear example as to why people should take care to manage their image and reputation online. One wrong move can see you in a whole lot of bother, and it can take time and expertise to make it go away.