The Online PR Podcast with Pete Codella of Codella Marketing and Mark Polson of Code Greene this week discusses some lessons learned from the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas and a couple of recent bumps in the road for companies that have embraced social media, Aflac and Chrysler.

SXSW Interactive Festival

This year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival was bigger than ever, although there has been some debate about whether or not it was better than ever.

Most of what we’ve seen reads more along the lines of people realizing this is a huge trade show now, the likes of CES in Las Vegas, and SXSW, like it or not, has forever changed.

Pete and Mark discuss some ways to learn from the material shared at SXSW, including visiting the conference program site and checking out SlideRocket, a new service like SlideShare.

You can also view presentations on SlideShare – just search for SXSW – and search for the Twitter conversation using the hashtag: #sxsw.

Being careful in social media

Mark and Pete talk about the reality that the more people you involve in your company’s social media efforts, the more likely an undesired situation will arise. People make mistakes, and sometimes they post statements in social media that may not reflect appropriately on others.

When these things happen, it’s important to accept responsibility, apologize and make it right if you can, and move on.

The two most recent examples:

Aflac

A spokesperson for Aflac, Gilbert Gottfried, was fired after he made comments deemed inappropriate about the crisis in Japan on his own Twitter account.

Chrysler

A PR firm employee was canned after publishing a derogatory tweet about Detroit that included the F-bomb under Chrysler’s Twitter feed instead of his own.

Read about these two recent situations in The New York Times.

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