Corporate citizenship is a big term. Rosenberg Communications is a small (but growing!) shop. But I’m finding that being a corporate citizen supports my bottom line without costing me much.

For a long time I’ve understood corporate citizenship, or corporate social responsibility (CSR). The Hitachi Foundation, one of our clients, is a leader in the field. We’ve worked with the Foundation, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, and Net Impact, to create the blog, corporatecitizen07.com. And we’re managing the rollout of the State of Corporate Citizenship 2007, the only survey of executives’ attitudes and behaviors that includes small, medium, and large businesses. The most important finding? Action trails behind talk when it comes to CSR.

I was one of those — a good talker, not much of a walker. But I figured, “I’m small. Just keeping afloat is my biggest contribution!” I’ve since learned that being a good corporate citizen doesn’t cost me much at all, and has some immediate payback. (more…)

On Blogenberg, I’ve talked a lot about the direction we are heading, much of it built around Word of Mouth Public Relations (WOMPR). We’ve done some walking of that talk — quite a bit actually, for a number of clients. We’re about to start walking that talk deep into Pennsylvania coal country.

We’re working with a rape and victim assistance center that’s trying to address sexual abuse by helping young people decide to wait to have sex — there’s a lot of young girl, older (much) guy relations going on, all of it, almost by definition, exploitive and harmful. One of their strategies is to help parents talk to their kids about avoiding unhealthy risk behaviors, especially sex. We’re building a WOMPR campaign throughout the county to support the effort. (more…)

One of the benefits of being Facebook and MySpace literate is I don’t cringe when my 13-year-old son opens a MySpace account, and launches his page. Instead, I realize it’s as natural a communication vehicle for youth today as is the telephone. And I teach, and set rules.

I explained safety, and made sure he understands that nothing goes on there that he wouldn’t want his principal, priest, or parents to see. I tell him about people who didn’t get a job because a would-be employer looked at their MySpace page. I tell him nothing negative about anybody or group ever goes on his page. And I tell him I have to have his user name and password, that I will be visiting his page, including private sections, frequently.

The other night, we sat and went through his entire page. To his credit, he didn’t see this as invasive or overly restrictive (like I care, if he did!). He really saw it as a chance to learn — maybe it’s because his Dad is a blogger, with his own Facebook and MySpace pages.

Oh, and how cool is this? In his profile, under heroes, he listed, “Dad.” Of course, he explained, “well I had to enter something!”

I broke one of my personal rules last week while visiting Jackson, Mississippi: I claimed race creds.

I was down in the south conducting a day of communications strategy development and media training. The folks I was working with were all African American. I really liked them. It was just one of those groups that I really connected with. The media training went great — every individual I worked with, we really sharpened their talents as communicators. Towards the end of the day together, as everybody was just sitting and talking, feeling good about our six or so hours together, somebody told me that one of the participants was the former president of a well known HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). I went out of my way to note that my wife attended an HBCU, and so did several of her siblings. I wanted everybody else in the room to know that I was almost-kind-of-sort-of-really-connected-to-them-even-though-I’m white.

I immediately cringed inside. I don’t like to do that. It’s a rule of mine that I don’t lay out my race cred (that is, race credentials) because it always feel as if it’s just me trying to prove something or impress somebody — as if I’m yelling, “Don’t I really understand people who don’t look like me?!” or, “Aren’t I cooler than most everybody else?!”

One of the participants laughed and exclaimed, “So you’re a brother!” He wasn’t being sarcastic. He wasn’t poking fun. It was said with real warmth.

But I still cringed inside. Though I will say this: with my wife’s help it is true that I no longer dance with my arms glued to my side!

*The title of this Blogenberg is a takeoff on a song, originally by the Hollies, called He ain’t heavy he’s my brother. It was covered by The Osmonds, resulting in one of the worst “artistic” endeavors in history.