Social Media & Disclosure

We've been speaking a lot about word of mouth marketing and blogs within class and the topic of disclosure has come up a few times. When a person is endorsing a product, it's useful to know whether their being paid to do so and what their relationship to the company is. The more honest people and companies are about these connections, the more validity there is to the information they're sharing; however, did you know that the Federal Trade Commission released a set of guidelines, rules, and regulations that covers testimonials and endorsements within social media?

Although the guidelines are a few years old, they had to be updated in 2009 to include the new channels that endorsers are using to spread their messages. Before that, they had not been updated for over three decades! I realize the importance of these guidelines and definitely think that the connections should be fully transparent, but I was definitely surprised to find out that the FTC has carefully outlined them for everyone. If you're just finding out about them, how do you feel about it? Check out the article that covers some of the rules and let us know about anything you find that's interesting.