SXSW Panel Picker season is upon us again! Last year, I was privileged to be on a panel with friends from FUNimation, Capcom, and some other great companies discussing how we speak to our niche audiences.

This year, I corralled some friends (and they corralled some friends) to put together a panel about some of the issues that we face as community managers. The darker side of community management, if you will. Here’s the description of us & the panel:

This is the true story of five community managers picked to work on a brand, fixing problems and engaging with the community to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. Katie Morse is the music-loving technology geek. Active in the dubstep scene, she snagged a role a Billboard only to learn you do not cross Lil Kim fans and live to tweet about it. Nick Ayres is happy-go-lucky, and potentially the nicest guy on the interwebs. He’s also been one of the social media voices behind two big brands that really like orange (like, a whole lot) – The Home Depot and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The question is: can the man with the million dollar smile keep a cheerful grin when things go awry? Kellie Parker is the ragtag rebel ruling the male dominated world of gaming. When you think Sega you think blue hedgehogs, but Kellie gets to see the darker side of gamer behavior– like all those penis photos. Sam Haseltine can commonly be found standing on a chair at a football ground orchestrating hundreds football fans in glorious song. The ultimate in community management. The same can be said for him online, but without the chair. Anna OBrien is the typical left of center creative girl, with a background in numbers and web analytics. She once made waves in community management for Citibank, but can she survive the challenge of managing brands in a new country? Welcome to the The Real World, Community Management.

We’d really love to make it to SXSW so we can share our stories and advice. I also personally really want to hear Katie’s story about Lil Kim. So please take a second and vote for us, won’t you?

I saw a lot of great stuff in the last few days. The “Worst Website Ever” panel was definitely a standout. (I really hope those slides get put on slideshare, because “the fap store” and “40 chan” were truly hilarious.) I got to see Matthew Inman, who writes and draws The Oatmeal, a site that I read nearly every day. He’s just as funny in person, and I’m glad I stayed even though I was in the beginning stages of a bangin’ migraine. My friend Kelly Feller from Intel also did a great presentation about using contests for social marketing. But the most validating and one of the funniest presentations I saw was from Gary Vaynerchuk about the same subject as his new book, The Thank You Economy.

I have been a fan of Gary’s for a long time. He’s an engaging and energetic speaker, he knows his stuff when it comes to community and social media, and he swears a lot… just like me. One of the reasons his session was so validating for me is that his new book is about how brands need to be humanized, and genuinely interact with their fans instead of just shoving marketing down their throats. This is so much of what I do in my day job, and it’s something that my team and I are really dedicated to. We work really hard to be human — we respond to comments, we make small talk, we share behind-the-scenes of our offices. We know the fans that interact with us by name, and our fans know us by name, too. We let our personalities shine through and we have reaped the rewards for it. Yes, we market too — it is part of our job, after all. But brands that think of Twitter as 140 character press releases are simply doing it wrong.

One of the things Gary mentioned in his session… something I truly thought was not an actual thing that would ever happen… is brands exploiting the tragedy in Japan for their own gain. But as I am catching up on my social media streams from the last few days, I was shocked to see that this really is happening. It’s incredibly tacky and crass. And (hopefully!) it’s about to bite these brands in the ass in a big way.

Bing (and Microsoft) have already apologized for their RT campaign wherein they pledged to donate $1 per RT of their content/link, up to $100k. And they just donated the $100k. Mastiff, a video game developer, is pledging to donate $100 for every 100 people that “like” them on Facebook, up to $25,000. Voskos yogurt is also pledging to donate $1 for every “like” they get on Facebook. And I sort of get where they are coming from. Especially in the current economy, not everyone can afford to give money. A lot of people want to help out, and beyond giving money, they don’t know how. So it’s easy for a brand to see it as a win/win — they get to donate money to a great cause, they get new people to market to (or, in the case of Bing, get their name and content out), and people get to feel like they did something to contribute without actually paying out money.

But what’s really easy to miss is how incredibly tacky this is. It smacks of opportunism, of holding relief dollars hostage for selfish marketing purposes. Because essentially, what a company like Mastiff is saying is that they are willing to donate $25,000 to the Red Cross, but if they only get 500 new fans, they’ll only donate $500. So, you know, it’s our fault that the Red Cross (and the people of Japan) missed out on $20,000 because we didn’t click the “like” button. That’s why Bing did the right thing with their apology — they gave the full $100,000 they had pledged.

If you are going to give money, give money. If you want to donate profits from sales of your product, do that. All of those things are perfectly noble and acceptable. But exploiting victims of a terrible tragedy for your own marketing purposes is just reprehensible. These companies should be ashamed.

OK, now that that’s out of my system, I need to go pack. Since, you know, I have to get up in 5 hours to go the airport.

I’m going to be presenting at NewComm Forum 2010! My session is on April 21st and is about corporate uses of Twitter. If you’ve been thinking about coming to the conference, which is April 20 – 23rd in San Mateo, CA, I’ve got a discount for you.

Just use this link to register, and enter code NCF141, and you’ll get an extra $100 discount.

I hope to see you there!

That said, I do have some updates! First, I’ve added some new speaking engagements for 2010. I’ll be at the New Communications Forum in San Mateo from April 20-23rd, and at the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference in Boston from May 3-5th. To see all about my past (and future) speaking engagements, including quotes from conference participants and video, head over to the speaking page.

If you’re planning to attend the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference but haven’t registered yet, I’ve got a discount code for you! Just use the code SOCIAL10KP when you register for the conference. Hope to see you there!

I’ve just added two new speaking engagements!

In October, I’ll be speaking at the Digital PR Summit in New York City. I’ll be on a panel about measuring your digital PR efforts. Now, I certainly don’t want to misrepresent myself or confuse anyone. I do not work in PR, and never have. I think there can be a lot of overlap between community and PR, but there are a lot of areas where they don’t overlap at all. Earlier this year, I co-presented at the New Communications Forum with Connie Bensen, where I talked about the different tools that we use at SEGA to measure our community efforts, including brand monitoring tools, traditional web management tools, and the stats provided by social media sites. I also discussed some of the ways in which we are limited in how we measure effectiveness. The fine folks from PR News Online were in the audience, and asked me to speak at the Digital PR Summit later this year. I happily accepted, and I’m hoping to share my unique knowledge and experience, and I’m hoping to learn a lot, too.

I am also pleased that I’ll be speaking again at the Community 2.0 conference next year. All of the speakers are still being confirmed, but it’s looking like I’ll be on a panel about the business uses of Twitter (where I hope to discuss SEGA’s Free Stuff Friday giveaways) and I’ll also be doing a solo session on managing multiple brands in community. I have really learned a lot in having multiple people managing multiple brands over multiple tools, and I hope to share some of my learnings.

If you are interested in having me speak at an upcoming conference, I’d be honored! Please look at my page on speaking, and send me an email.