Bloggers who are compensated for endorsing products and services could be held liable for any false statements they make, if newly proposed FTC guidelines are adopted. I’m pleased to see some movement beyond voluntary blogger transparency.
I’m a fan of voluntary transparency. It puts peer pressure on bloggers to tell you about sponsorships and other compensation. It has uncovered several unethical promotional campaigns. However, I see shortcomings as well. Voluntary transparency does not hold bloggers’ feet to the fire with regards to the honesty of their statements.
Consumers and brands suffering unfairly due to false statements have little recourse. This situation favors the powerful and wealthy — who can afford to pay for endorsements and posts — and undermines the value of word of mouth (WOM) influence.
Excerpting from coverage at AdAge:
As part of its review of its advertising guidelines, the FTC is proposing that word-of-mouth marketers and bloggers, as well as people on social-media sites such as Facebook, be held liable for any false statements they make about a product they’re promoting, along with the product’s marketer. This could present a significant issue for marketers, including the likes of Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi, who spend billions on word-of-mouth and social media. PQ Media projects that marketers will spend $3.7 billion on word-of-mouth marketing in 2011.
The current FTC guideline on endorsements and testimonials in advertising was issued in 1980.
Hat tip to Andy Beal, Markeing Pilgrim, for raising the topic.
Popularity: 1%
An application called MrTweet caught my attention over the weekend, mostly due to a discussion on influence initiated by its creator, Steve Ming Yeow Ng. Check out the discussion at the MrTweet blog.
Two important points from the discussion:
1. Influence is in the eye of the audience.
2. No such thing as a universal grade for influence.
These points resonate with Josh Greenbaum’s comments, as well as the mantra shared by Duncan, Nick, me and the rest of Influencer50.
As for MrTweet: I’m on the record as a died-in-the-wool skeptic on these kinds of applications. None have given me worthwhile recommendations or insights to date. Now MrTweet is in the hot seat. I’ve followed MrTweet and will share my thoughts once it returns something. As with so many of these social network applications, MrTweet puts an awfully big stake in the ground:
“I’ll suggest to you which influencers and followers you should check out.”
OK, MrTweet. Pimp my twitterverse.
Popularity: 1%
Duncan raises some good points about the evolution of blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter). Blogging is becoming the online publishing platform of choice in many industries, from politics to pharma. This has a couple of implications for influencer programs in 2009.
Top of my list, is that 2009 should see the end of consternation over classifying influencers as “bloggers” or in terms of their other roles in a market or community, be it their job title, employer, profession or expertise.
The crossover point started to become clear in mainstream tech media relations when you could no longer distinguish between columnists and bloggers at ZDNet and other top-10 media networks.
In analyst relations, Gartner brought the point home a few months ago with the launch of the Gartner Blog Network. Trust me, no one is dithering over whether to reclassify Gartner employees from analysts to bloggers.
Sure, some people will be best classified as “bloggers”, just as we still have syndicated columnists from the hardcopy print days. In general though, the confusion over doctor-lawyer-blogger man-thief should die down.
Popularity: 1%
You would think that Chris Brogan, an impossibly wise and kind thought leader in social media circles, would never run into difficulties in engaging with influencers. Yet, he does. He shares a personal story about it, and how he succeeded, on this beautiful autumn morning.
His story highlights one of the tenets of influencer marketing: human beings respond differently to different types of outreach, at different times.
In short, if you are going to touch a new influencer 5 times, don’t use email for all 5 of the attempts. Don’t rely on posting 5 comments to their blog. Don’t try to get attention by connecting on 5 different social nets.
Mix it up.
What works today with one person, may not work again tomorrow. It may not work at all with another person.
Remember too, that every outreach doesn’t need to have precise aim and content. Don’t always strive to be erudite and thought-provoking.
Like Chris, just try to be genuine.
Popularity: 3%
Vinnie Mirchandani is one the enterprise IT influencers not attending Oracle OpenWorld in the flesh this year. Instead, he’s plugging into event content and buzz through the new “Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Influencer Community.” Smart move by Oracle.
Oracle invited media and bloggers alike to join this event-specific influencer community. That means bloggers don’t need to request access from different marketing groups or provide different kinds of information. There’s just one place/process for joining, whether you are a journalist, blogger-journalist, blogger-analyst, blogger-consultant, blogger-pundit, etc.
This is not to say that Oracle marketing, sales and support departments no longer quibble over how to classify specific bloggers. Silos are a fact of life in most marketing departments. It’s just that in this instance, the silo mechanics are hidden neatly behind the curtain.
Big step in the right direction.
Popularity: 1%
Voices arguing that blogger popularity does not equate to influence lost a little more ground this week. A new ad network promises to deliver influential blogs to media buyers. My reaction is a mix of cheering and concern.
What’s up: San Francisco-based BuzzLogic has launched its BuzzLogic Ad Targeting service. Essentially, the service enables companies to identify and place ads on the most popular (linked) blogs on a given topic. The ad service is based on BuzzLogic’s social media monitoring solution for PR.
I cheer because many high-profile bloggers need more and better revenue options. Most find out the hard way that advertising revenues from Google Ads do not trend upward with any kind of reliability. Meanwhile, sponsors can be hard to find and harder to sign. Even influential bloggers like Tom Foremski speak candidly about the challenges of growing new media revenues.
I cringe because there’s been so much controversy over the impact of pay-for-play on the reputation of industry analysts. There’s a deep-rooted perception that vendor revenues taint analyst objectivity. What’s to stop the same sort of backlash from tarnishing the most popular bloggers?
Popularity: 1%
A few industry analysts are experimenting with weblogs, or “blogging”, as an additional, more informal or more immediate vehicle for expression. For analyst relations managers, the greatest value of these first-generation analyst blogs is not in delivering influence or mentions for their employer. The value is in providing candid insights into analysts as normal, socially connected human beings.
AR Benefits Embedded in Weblogs
Thoughtfully reading analyst blogs can help you maintain a healthy attitude about initiating and building analyst relationships. After all, it’s easy to think of analysts only as gatekeepers of your firm’s reputation. Blogs can pull you out of this unhealthy state of mind.
Blogs reveal analysts as well-rounded individuals. You get a quick sense of their personal perspectives: who they think is or is not influential, what they read, what seems surreal and, how high tech touches their own human experience. Blogs tend to reveal all of this, and more.
Often, analyst weblogs reveal a reaction or opinion in its earliest stage of development. This is the kind of personal expression you don’t see in traditional industry research publications. For example, you can see what brought an incident or idea to their attention and their immediate reaction to it. Some analysts include references to other people inside the industry who share similar or condratictory reactions. Others point back to earlier research.
More AR Envy
It’s appropriate to note that analyst weblogs to date show no downsides for analyst relations managers. This is yet another cause for envy by public relations counterparts.
Blogs are complicating life for many public relations professionals. Some columnists and journalists are blogging in parallel to their traditional editorial presence. This mucks up PR effectiveness and ROI measurements, such as press clips weighted by publication. Do you rate the journalist’s importance in the same way, whether the clip is from a personal blog or the leading publication? Do you ignore the blog? How do you know who’s reading the blog?
Analyst relations program measurements are more focused on relationship factors, and therefore less subject to such dilemmas. In addition, blogging fits well in the complex landscape of industry research deliverables.
Analyst Weblogs and AR Best Practices
All AR program benefits — information exchange, trust, advice, fair analysis, media mentions, sales leads, short-listing — depend on healthy analyst/vendor relationships. Healthy relationships, in turn, depend on a good understanding of the analysts. It’s a good idea to embrace weblogs into AR best practices. Off the cuff, consider adopting five steps:
- Track down the blogs your analysts are writing. Don’t be afraid to simply ask if web searches do not produce results.
- Browse the analyst blogs periodically to get a better sense of their personalities, interests and rationale. This is most useful if practiced regularly, rather than when you are preparing a briefing book.
- Include weblog URLs in analyst profiles for your spokespeople and executives. In particular, ensure that executive relations and buddy program participants browse their analyst’s weblog.
- Keep an eye out for weblogs of employees within your company. You don’t necessarily want to find out about them from an analyst during a visit. Point the analyst to worthwhile weblogs of your official spokespeople, evangelists and executives.
- Keep a healthy perspective on your role as a relationship facilitator and primary support contact. What you bring to the relationship will have a bearing on the analyst’s attitude toward working with the vendor you represent. Remember that industry analysts are more than industry watchers, consultants or statisticians: they’re human beings.
If analyst blogs are new to you, take a few minutes now to browse some of the blogs at these links:
Burton Group
Jupiter Research
Amy Wohl
Reprinted from Tekrati
Popularity: 1%
