Posts made in November, 2009
Navigating FTC’s Guidance on Social Media Marketing
With the rapid growth in social marketing, the Federal Trade Commission has become increasingly concerned about these new methods of reaching out to consumers. Specifically, it’s wary about ways in which some brands and their agencies have abused these evolving media tools, betraying the trust of consumers and the social communities in which they interact.
These practices include paying Internet users to post disingenuous positive product reviews; “astroturfing,” where advertisers pretend to be unaffiliated consumers and post misleading or false information; and creating FLOGS, fake blogs that purport to be objective, but are really designed to covertly promote a product.
As a result, effective Dec. 1, the FTC will have new guidance in place for advertisers who make use of social media.
The FTC expects companies to make reasonable efforts to educate the celebrities, bloggers, employees and others promoting their brand at their behest regarding disclosing their connection to the advertiser and not making false or misleading statements or claims. The guidance specifically singles out celebrity spokespeople, requiring them to disclose financial connections to brands when promoting them other than in ads and commercials, such as on talk shows or via social media, and making them personally liable for false claims made about a product.
Even if a celebrity is contractually obligated to make scripted comments, they’re still personally liable if they know or should know the claims are untrue. The FTC has also put an end to the use of testimonials indicating atypical results that include the disclaimer “Results not typical.” Now, the typical expected results must be explained. Companies must also monitor these activities and take corrective action when the rules are not followed. The FTC says it’s taking these matters seriously, noting it has prosecutorial discretion and will likely target the more egregious cases and repeat offenders.
There will likely be some practical hurdles for advertisers as they work to comply with the new FTC direction. Advertisers may not be able to control every comment posted to third-party sites, but the FTC may still hold them liable for misleading claims, particularly if they did not exercise best efforts to prevent them. And, while the FTC states that “the advertiser should take steps to ensure that these disclosures are being provided,” it does not give guidance as to what it expects to see in the form of disclosures or monitoring and corrective action. Disclosure becomes more difficult in a chat room or on Twitter, where there is a limitation on the amount of content that can be posted. An evolving disclosure method in such instances is to add the text “Sponsored Post”, “#paid”, or “#Ad.” A new service at http://cmp.ly/ provides free mini-URL links to detailed disclosures and upsells monitoring services. Whether these notices and monitoring efforts will meet the FTC’s requirements is yet to be determined.
Whatever the practical considerations affecting compliance, the FTC is placing the risk of viral and social marketing’s lack of control on brands and their agencies, and telling them they must institute sound policies and practices to make reasonable efforts to prevent activities that may result in consumer confusion. Accordingly, every company, and all PR, marketing and advertising agencies that utilize social media for promotional activities, should have and enforce policies and practices for the use of social and other evolving media, as well as use by its employees, spokespersons, vendors and agents. This includes policies regarding how consumers are engaged, educated, monitored and handled.
Best practices reflective of the FTC’s guidance are already emerging. In May 2009, in anticipation of the New Guides, IZEA, a blog-network-advertising firm that pairs advertisers’ products with relevant bloggers, began providing its clients with reports tracking whether its bloggers were disclosing compensation arrangements. Companies can also look to industry best practices to guide them in developing their own policies. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association Ethics Code of Conduct, was specifically pointed to by the FTC as an “important step” to ensuring “transparency for marketers who engage in new forms of marketing.” WOMMA requires disclosure, veracity and transparency, and prohibits cash payments to consumers for their support.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau published its Social Media Advertising Best Practices in May 2009. Reportedly, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU), another self-regulatory body, is currently examining use of social media for selling to children as part of soon-to-be announced guidelines on blurring, which are expected to counsel for a more conservative approach regarding children.
These various industry best practices are a good place for a company to start when developing policies and practices under the guidance of experienced legal counsel. Such policies and practices, along with ongoing training and compliance review, can help companies navigate the complexity of this developing field and reduce potential liability and negative consumer backlash.
[via Adweek by Alan L. Friel, partner and advertising lawyer at Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon]
Facebook Marketing: IKEA Rocks Social Media with Photo Tagging
We talk a lot about how big brands are embracing social media as a mechanism to connect directly with customers. Still, it’s much easier to talk about integrating social media into your brand than it is to actually do it. That’s why IKEA’s recent Facebook campaign is so awesome. The Swedish furniture company opened a new store in Malmo, Sweden and rather than spread the word the old-fashioned way, they decided to go directly to the people using Facebook.
An account was created for the store manager at the Malmo store. Over a two-week period, showroom images were uploaded to his Facebook photo album. Using the all-popular “tagging” feature, customers were able to locate items in the pictures and put their name on it. The first person to tag an object got to take it home.
The word spread through Facebook and users started embedding links and images in their own profiles and across news feeds. In turn, thousands and thousands of users willingly promoted IKEA and its new store to others, creating a big win for IKEA.
[Via Christina Warren @ Mashable]
Read MoreBest Practices For Building Your Facebook App… Brands listen up.
The Sociable blog posted a good article listing some best practices in Facebook application development. Considering 400,000 applications are already scheduled on Facebook. And not all applications are created equal — the conception and the implementation have to be perfect to drive success. So, here are some important things to remember while developing your new Facebook application.
1. Importance of idea : This stage is of utmost importance. The business idea on which the Facebook is being developed should be exclusive, unique and scalable. The idea should have a social significance.
2. Participation from all : The Facebook application should involve all its users in such a way that people of all age group can make use of the application and enjoy its usage.
3. Usefulness : The application should have utility fort all its users. For example, online availability of a car pool application promotes car pool by recording normal car routes and suggesting pool partners.
4. Individual information : A good Facebook application should make the user capable of sharing their personal information with other users. This could mean their hobbies, photos, interest, blogs, video content and ideas, etc… remember that Facebook is a website that promotes social networking. The users of this social networking website feel proud of sharing their personal information with others so that they will be able to get exposure to the outside world.
5. Faith : The Facebook application should be such that every user develops faith and trust in your application. The information that is shared by users in the application should not be misused or shared with others until the writer gives consent to it. If the personal information of the writer is misused the faithfulness of your application will be spoiled because of which you might have to face a huge loss.
6. Fair deal : A Facebook user should not be cheated during any stage of using the Facebook application. Although the purpose of making and using them is commercial, but the customers should be charged only after getting specific consent from him.
7. Personal Info : Usually Facebook users place only that information that is to be disclosed to other users. However, the application should restrain from seeking personal information from users. In case it is necessary take care that it is not shared publicly.
Read MoreHulu and Facebook Taking Share Away from YouTube…
Last week Mashable’s Ben Parr posted this article that made me do a double-take. The numbers speak for themselves:
YouTube’s huge lead in online video just got a little bit smaller due to surging growth from two up-and-comers in the video space: Hulu and Facebook.
Web analytics firm ComScore released their data for online video usage in October, and the numbers are astounding. While Google/YouTube (YouTube) continues to dominate with over 125 million monthly viewers (and over 1 billion views per day), both Hulu (Hulu) and Facebook (Facebook) had double-digit percentage gains, shattering their previous video records.
Online video continues to sustain its surge in growth. According to ComScore, there were 27.94 billion videos viewed in October, up a big 7% from September. Out of that, Google/YouTube is still on top with 10.52 billion videos viewed.
The big mover in October though was Hulu. In September, the News Corp/Disney/NBC joint venture delivered 583 million views. In October, that number shot up by 31.8% to a total of 855 million video views. This is by far a record for the TV video website. Most of this however can be attributed to the fall primetime season being in full swing:
In terms of unique viewers though, there wasn’t that much of a change. YouTube had 125.3 million unique viewers in October, nearly identical to its 125.5 million in September. Hulu didn’t have a lot of growth, either: 42.4 million people tuned in to the service in October, compared to 38.7 million in September.
In fact, the biggest winner seems to be Facebook. In September, it had 31.18 million unique viewers. In October, that number skyrocketed by nearly 25% to 41.15 million uniques. Once again, this is a record for the world’s largest social network, and one that speaks to how powerful Facebook is becoming in the video space.
There were some other eye-popping numbers (84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October and the average person watched 10.8 hours of video), but the central theme is the same: online video continues to grow and the end is nowhere in sight.
Read MoreSocial Media Revolution… Reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution.
The Future of the Social Web is here today and we’re learning that engagement is not a matter of if or when, but to what extent, how and what value can we deliver and derive from it. The Social Web is much more than a window into information and interaction, it is a completely transformative medium that is changing how we forge relationships, interact with one another, and distribute and discover information. In many ways, the online social revolution is reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution.
Access to free and expansive media platforms and distribution channels has democratized influence and shifted the power of authority from those who previously controlled the media to those who disseminate it.
Attention has become a precious commodity as it becomes increasingly elusive and diverted. The competition for attention is only intensifying as those who benefit from your awareness venture to attract it when and where it is focused.
According to a 2007 story in the New York Times, market research firm Yankelovich estimated that a person living in an average city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. The numbers vary depending on the source, with estimates soaring as high as 9,000 estimated impressions daily. I can only surmise that with the proliferation of socialized media, that we are also directly and indirectly exposed to messages and brands as a result of conversations transpiring within our social graph.
As consumers, we are starting to fathom that our attention is valuable. We are also experiencing a powerful form of validation and significance as we embrace social media to extend our networks of relevance and influence. There is a great sense of individual empowerment that exudes as a result of this realization.
The battle for attention begins where your attention is focused. For some, it’s the Facebook News Feed. For others, it’s Twitter or desktop social applications such as TweetDeck or Seesmic. These platforms are fueling an emerging category that symbolizes the Attention Dashboard, channels where information finds you, filtered and qualified by those in your social graph.
Forrester Research observed the substantial growth of social technologies in 2009, observing that four in five US online adults use social media and participate in social networks.
In a published report, The Broad Reach of Social Technologies, Sean Corcoran, Nate Elliott, Josh Bernoff, Cynthia Pflaum, and Emily Bowen documented that the most rapid growth of social adoption occurred among consumers 35 and older while young people continued to march toward a universal adoption of social applications.
The report includes an updated version of Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder, which graphs the social technology adoption of consumers and how they specifically embrace social media.
Almost one-quarter of US online adults are Creators, people who write blogs, upload original audio or video, or post stories online. Easy-to-use blogging tools encouraged some less tech-savvy adults to create social content this year, but the majority of consumers are still consuming, not creating, content.
Half of online adults now belong to social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, a 46% growth rate year-over-year.
Nearly everyone’s a spectator: Three in four online Americans now consume social content.
Only 18% of US online adults don’t use social tools in 2009 — down from 25% in 2008.
Regardless of adoption, however, one of the primary hurdles now and in the future is that Social Media, as popular and empowering as it is, is still a largely compartmentalized experience. Social Networks and the relationships and interactivity fostered within each are silos. The true power of social media is the portability of not just content, but relationships.
Forrester concludes that now is the time to build social marketing applications and that Interactive marketers should influence social network chatter, master social communication, and develop social assets – even if their customers are older.
The social (r)evolution calls for distributed participation. But it requires strategic engagement that is directed and governed by listening and research. The conversations tied to keywords that are important to your industry define your participation level and focus. They also reveal opportunities for contribution and resolution.
Source: Shutterstock
Now is the time to pay attention. Now is the time to learn from the behavior and interaction that defines our markets. They develop and mature with or without our participation. We too, are empowered to engage and without it, we intentionally remove ourselves from the radar screens of our influencers and customers. As such, we are either part of or absent from the decision making process.
The state of socialized media is but only a chapter in an ongoing saga that will evolve and change over time. We are forever students of new media and as a result, our roles in this production are defined by our intentions and our actions. Before we are marketers, we are consumers. And, before we are consumers, we are personages of distinction. And when we align under a common goal, mission, or voice, we can change the course of behavior.
This article was originally written / contributed by Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks.
Read MoreAbout Me
Proud father, devoted husband, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, a full-service marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from Content To Commerce.
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