Paying for fake reviews and disguised blog post advertorials is wrong. It’s lying to people, plain and simple. If your company does it, you’re evil, untrustworthy, and stupid. Why risk your brand reputation and FTC prosecution for a back-alley marketing stunt? Good news: Researchers from the University of Victoria have designed and validated a detection [...]
Tag Archives: FTC
Ethical disclosure is absurdly easy — learn how
We’re required to disclose any form of compensation when writing a blog post, which has led to all sorts of stresses, excuses, legal discussion, and bloviating by bloggers. It’s really easy to do proper, simple, legally-compliant disclosure: Just write a sentence at the start of each post explaining your relationship to whomever is compensating you [...]
FTC investigations have begun
Ann Taylor stores are the first major brand to get a warning from the FTC under the new disclosure guidelines, and I’m sure more are coming. Read more from MediaPost. If you haven’t prepared your disclosure policy, you’re already too late. Use the Social Media Business Council’s Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit to create yours. Watch [...]
Video case study: Social Media Ethics Briefing: Staying Out of Trouble
Come to BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media on February 16 in San Diego to hear Starbucks, Clorox, Intuit, Avery Dennison, USAA, Community Medical Centers, State Farm Insurance, and the U.S. Navy share case studies in corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program [...]
You’d be fired if you paid for fake testimonials in your TV ads …
… so why would you even consider using a service like Izea to pay bloggers to write about you? Just because it's social media doesn't make it right. This isn't an issue of fine lines and gray areas: Writing an endorsement of a product you have never used is illegal and has always been illegal [...]
On The Media Interview: How to be an ethical marketer. Why it’s wrong to pay for blog coverage.
Welcome to all the new readers who heard me on On The Media this morning. I did an interview with host Bob Garfield about the most important issue in the world of blogging: ethics. Specifically, we talked about what happens when marketers pay for placement in blogs. (More here) Paying for blog coverage — what [...]
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