Marketing Roadmaps

Blog with Integrity

Disclosure, FTC and Ad Club

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Today the FTC published the final guidelines  for endorsements and testimonials. Nothing terribly surprising, although I was pleased to see some additions to the examples about blogging and word of mouth marketing that made things much clearer. [Full text of the changes to the guidelines (pdf) as submitted to the Federal Register.]

More from me on this later this week. We’ll also be updating and repeating the Blog with Integrity webinar on disclosure to reflect the final approved guidelines. Follow @BlogIntegrity on Twitter, fan on Facebook or subscribe to the email list for updates.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will be tweeting live from the Ad Club of Boston’s Hatch Awards tomorrow, courtesy of an invite from the folks at 360 Public Relations. Hashtag #AdClub.

Blog with Integrity Webinar on Disclosure – Wed. Sept. 9th at noon

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BWIThe Blog with Integrity campaign will be hosting its first free webinar, Disclosure: What it means, why bloggers need it and how to get it right next Wednesday September 9, 2009 at 12 noon EDT.

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Disclosure. We’ve been talking about it for months, and more so since May when word first hit that the FTC was revising its guidelines on commercial endorsements to include blogs and other social media. But, there’s still a lot of confusion. What exactly do bloggers need to disclose? Why is it so important ? What’s the best way to do it? And, what happens if we don’t?

In this webinar, Blog with Integrity co-founders Julie Marsh, Susan Getgood, Liz Gumbinner and Kristen Chase will answer these questions with clear explanations, concrete examples and best practices for blog disclosure.

We’ll be joined by Joanne Bamberger, blogger, political analyst and former SEC attorney. Joanne will clue us into what we can expect from the FTC’s enforcement process with an inside look at how federal agencies really work.

There will be plenty of time for questions at the conclusion of the webinar.

Whether you regularly write sponsored posts, review products now and then, or simply have a few affiliate links on your blog, disclosure matters. You need to protect yourself. We’ll help you get it right.

The Disclosure webinar is free to attendees thanks to sponsor Wiley. Support was also provided by GetGood Strategic Marketing and the Parent Bloggers Network.

To register: Email us at blogwithintegrity@gmail.com to confirm your plans to attend. We’ll forward an official invitation with all the registration and login details.

Sponsors:

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the one about badges and integrity

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Eventually, I will share my thoughts on BlogHer ’09 and report on a terrific breakfast meeting I had during BlogHer with Beth Smits and Erin Bix of Best Buy to learn more about Best Buy’s Women’s Leadership Forum (WOLF).

Today, though I want to talk a little bit more about badges and integrity. As I’ve written before, you don’t need a badge to blog with integrity, and if you don’t have integrity, slapping a badge up on your blog isn’t going to magically give it to you.  Integrity is a deeply personal thing, and in the context of blogging, a matter between a writer and her readers.

Blog with Integrity, the initiative I co-created with fellow bloggers Liz Gumbinner, Kristen Chase and Julie Marsh, is simply a public statement about how we intend to behave as bloggers.  It’s not prescriptive nor does it attempt to classify blogs by content or policies. It’s a simple code of conduct based on fairly universal principles – respect for others, responsibility for one’s words and deeds, and disclosure of our interests. If bloggers want to display their support of these principles, they can sign the pledge and/or display a badge.

Just as some folks like to display their support for causes and political candidates by wearing buttons and putting bumper stickers on their cars and others do not, some bloggers like badges and others do not. All we can say for certain is that the person wearing the button or the blog displaying the badge supports the cause. It is incorrect to conclude that the absence of same indicates lack of support. Or in the case of Blog with Integrity, a lack of integrity.

Some people don’t like badges. Don’t read more into it.

Is the badge a nice cue about the blog and the blogger? Sure, but it’s not enough, and we never intended it to be viewed as such.

Make your judgment about a blog based on everything presented to you as a reader, not just on whether it displays a badge, and please don’t assume that a blog without the Blog with Integrity badge is somehow “less” than a blog with it.

Such an assumption is in direct conflict with a core principle of Blog with Integrity: there is no one right way to blog.

That includes our own.

Integrity: What it means, why it’s important

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Integrity: the quality of being honest, fair and good

(Oxford English Dictionary)

Nearly two weeks ago, we launched Blog with Integrity. Reception  was overwhelmingly positive. At last check nearly 750 bloggers had taken the pledge.

Bloggers from all spheres agreeing that it is time to reaffirm our commitment to blog with integrity.

The most common critical comment was that bloggers don’t need a badge to blog with integrity.

Which is absolutely true. You don’t need a badge to blog with integrity, and if you don’t have it, no badge on your blog is going to give it to you. What the pledge and the badge do, however, is give us a way to collectively reaffirm our commitment to blog with integrity.

We need to do this now more than ever in the short but eventful history of blogging and online communities.

Not sure yet? Think it doesn’t apply to you because you don’t get swag or product pitches?

Consider this example.

Early last week, a company called The Speaker’s Group issued its top 10 Social Media Speakers list. To a resounding HUH? in the social media community. No women on the list, as pointed out on Twitter by Allyson Kapin, @womanwhotech, and only a few on the list had a significant profile in the social media community, discussed in a post by Geoff Livingston.

On closer look, it seemed pretty obvious that the post was bald-faced promotion for speakers repped by the company without clear disclosure of the relationship. “Our” top ten. Making the list nothing more than promotion. Not illegal, but a bit dodgy.

Subsequently, in the comments to their post, the company did acknowledge the relationships with the various speakers, changed the title of the post to “Ten to Know” and committed to adding women to its roster. In other words, they ‘fessed up, sort of, and promised to do better next time.

But really, shouldn’t they have been more transparent about their relationships from the get-go? Speaking only for myself, I would have more confidence in the company if they had acted with integrity from the start.

Examples like this happen every day, across the blogosphere.

Blog with Integrity is more than a description OF your blog. It is a pledge TO yourself.

To take responsibility for your words. To respect others. To disclose your material relationships. To be honest, with yourself and your readers.

It’s what most bloggers do already. The pledge and the badge are just the tangible symbols that we are part of a community with shared values.

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While we were in part motivated by recent events in the parent blogging community, it has always been clear to us that integrity is an issue for all blogging communities, not just the one currently being singled out in the media for a bizarre combination of damnation and faint praise.

We are glad so many of you agree and grateful for the support. We have some ideas on where we’d like to take the initiative next, but welcome your ideas. If you have suggestions, please email blogwithintegrity@gmail.com, or contact any one of the co-founders — Liz Gumbinner, Kristen Chase, Julie Marsh and me.