Disclosure Matters. WOMMA Shows How.
WOMMA has been all over the social media marketing issues related to transparency and disclosure. We’ve held open discussions on the Living Ethics blog, hosted webinars, shared legal perspective, and delivered panel presentations at conferences. And now we have issued a GUIDE TO DISCLOSURE IN SOCIAL MEDIA.
BACKSTORY
The issue of ethical word of mouth marketing has taken on new prominence given the rise of social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. Many brands and agencies are designing word of mouth marketing programs to foster relationships with online influencers.
To foster these relationships, brands and agencies will sometimes give bloggers material compensation (loaner product, free services, in-kind gifts, and special access privileges) and/or actual compensation (cash) in exchange for talking online about a product/service a business provides. For such testimonials and endorsements, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now requiring marketers and bloggers to be 100% transparent in disclosing any material relationship between the two.
DISCLOSURE MATTERS
At the most basic level, if there is a relationship between a blogger and a brand that might affect the credibility of an endorsement; such a connection must be adequately disclosed. This act of disclosure protects both consumers and advertisers because it assures consumers that testimonials are truthful and trustworthy, and it offers marketers a proven way to reach audiences with credible information. The matter of disclosure is vital because word of mouth works best when it is 100% credible.
While the WOMMA Ethics Code, updated most recently in September 2009, is compliant with everything the FTC is now requiring from marketers and bloggers, our member companies have asked for more specific guidance as it relates to adequately displaying disclosure online.
BEST PRACTICE GUIDANCE
WOMMA’S GUIDE TO DISCLOSURE IN SOCIAL MEDIA was written and vetted by a cadre of industry leaders, WOMMA members, non-members, academics, and social media participants. This guidebook details how and where to make online disclosure clear and prominent. It also outlines the responsibilities of marketers and bloggers to ensure adequate disclosure happens.
Key online platforms covered in this Disclosure Guide include: Blogs, Online Comments, Twitter, Social Networks, Video Sharing websites, Photo Sharing websites, and Podcasts.
Nice article, and great all-around work on the Guides. This will be helpful for a lot of companies. At Magpie, we’ve already implemented them. If you like, check out my recent blog post about how we did it: http://be-a-magpie.com/blog/2010/02/18/wommas-guide-to-disclosure-in-social-media-marketing/
In your guide, you suggest that people should use hashtags to indicate various sorts of commerciality involved in tweets.
Tags are the wrong way to indicate something is a sponsored post, an offer of a sample, or an ad. Tags are used to indicate what the content of a post is about, not the class of post that it is. That’s why RT is such a good bit of microsyntax.
Last year, I recommended that those involved in sponsored posts put a very clear and unambiguous AD (or SP, for sponsored post) at the start of an paid-for Tweet.
That would be much better for us as individuals, because we could mentally filter them out before reading to the hashtags.
I actually don’t think that indicating an offer for a sample is as big a deal as making it clear that a post has been paid for.
Steve … as mentioned in the Guide, our disclosure advice is a “living document, continuing to be refined to reflect industry best practices.” Perhaps the slashtag idea you favor will gain widespread usage and thus, WOMMA may need to reflect that as a best practice. Hashtag notations (#paid) don’t have to come at the end of a tweet. I’ve seen it used just as you recommend, at the start of a tweet to help people better understand the frame of mind the tweet was written under. As for the #samp notation… free product samples (books, laptops, cars, etc.) are considered “material compensation” and its best to let people know you received a free sample when you blog/tweet about it than not let people know.
Great website, keep up the hard word.