Digital Influence Mapping Project

Wall-to-Wall Brand Cases, the FTC and Sugarland: WOMMA Summit 2009

This year's Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Summit is something else. It is the fruit of two years effort by a lot of smart marketers to bring the best of social media and word of mouth marketing together. We wanted to help experienced marcom experts share best practices in the best way possible - via our peers. As current Board President of WOMMA, I can proudly say that this event reflects the essential and exciting role WOMMA plays now.

Here are 7 reasons why this year's WOMMA Summit is a must-attend event for any marketer who needs to apply social media in a disciplined, impactful way:

1. The best insight comes from real brand cases. WOMMA Summit will feature disciplined cases from Ford, Tropicana, General Mills, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Microsoft, CDW, IBM, SAP, Walmart, BestBuy, HP and more. Learn from real practices.

2. Our session "The Role of the FTC in Word of Mouth and Social Media Marketing" will feature the Chuck Harwood, Assistant Deputy Director. he will help everyone better understand the new FTC Guidelines and WOMMA's next effort to define best practice disclosure

3. The Brands Council at WOMMA will host its own meetups for brands allowing marketers to share experiences and get advice from their peers.

4. Ray Day, VP of Global Communications at Ford, and Scott Monty will keynote and share insights about how Ford has woven social media into the fabric of the company.

5. A post-hearing analysis session dedicated to the FDA Hearings on social media in health product marketing.

6. A full "track" dedicated to Research and Measurement AND the release of a final draft of the WOMMA Measurement Guidebook. I don't know about you but measurement - both performance and ROI - is the most important issue from brands who want to expand their use of social media. You will get practical, applicable-now models.

7. The first annual WOMMY Awards will identify the best of the best in social media and word of mouth marketing (I think there were over 200 entries!)

Bonus reason: The band, Sugarland, will keynote about their extraordinary work with fans and that's just cool.

This will be a terrific and talked about event. Just go to the Website and judge for yourself. In tough economic times, we each have to choose what is essential to our business. This event was designed to deliver an essential experience for brands and marketers needing to learn expert and best practices for social media from the people actually doing it not just talking about it!

When: November 18-20
Where: The Paris in Las Vegas (a Harrah's property!)
How: Go here to register 
Go here to learn more

Register today with the code "fanofogilvy" and receive $200 off the fee. There will be no other discounts.
I will be there. Tons of brands will be there. I hope to see you there. 

The Power of Owned and Earned Media

The power of social media going forward is in integrated programs, not stand-alone, "earned" media programs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that complimentary media - social (the new "earned" media), owned media (a brand's web presence) & paid media will produce a compound effect if they work together. And that is what Group M saw in their recent study.

A sister company of Ogilvy inside WPP, Group M, released a bit of interesting research a week back. Essentially, their study pointed to the positive effect of social media on the performance of search.

"...a 50% lift in click-through rates across the board when consumers had been exposed to social media and paid search."

"Every day consumers express their intent via search. Now, we better understand how that intent is established via social media and the interplay between the channels," says Chris Copeland, chief executive officer of GroupM Search for the Americas. "There is a valuable audience for advertisers to focus on who are engaged with brands through social media and search. The study further validates our view that media discovery -- specifically. a brand's owned and earned media -- is as important to success as the paid media we handle every day. Generating upper-funnel awareness and influencing consideration through social media can produce better down-the-funnel performance with paid media, such as paid search."

"The study reveals that people who search and engage with social media, especially those exposed to a brand's influenced social media, are far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms than consumers who do not engage with social media. Furthermore, consumers exposed to a brand's influenced social media and paid search programs are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand's products compared to users who only saw paid search."

Social IRM - Influencer Relationship Management Pt 3

or 7 ways you can add scale to an influencer program

Previously, I have covered theresearch and activation of influencers in a Social IRM stratgey. Overall, this is an approach to managing influencers with the same discipline that we try to manage customers - without any of the abuse. By that I mean, the approach to CRM that tries to stimulate customers right to the brink of annoyance but hopefully not over. Like how many emails you send to them with offers before those emails convert to spam. The industry I would most like to see have a CRM overhaul is the magazine business. I am a 15-year or more loyal reader and subscriber to Metropolis Magazine. Do I get any love or acknowledgment? Do they still send me subscription renewals 6 months before they are due hoping that I will think the sub is up and send a check?

Anyhow, the principal of Social IRM is far more benign. It is ultimately built on the premise of 'Value Exchange' covered in a previous post. You cannot 'game' influencers nor can you push them where they don't want to go. The discipline of Social IRM is about serving them better and creating a protocol inside the brand marketer for constantly delivering value that is talkworthy.

Once you have engaged influencers in an experience they care about and they find it worthwhile to post, comment, tweet, video post or otherwise share word of mouth (WOM), how can you add scale to have a bigger impact?

Scale or Amplification
There are 7 key ways to add reach to a influencer program. If there are others, I would love to hear about them. One of the key tenants of Social IRM is that you are engaging relevant influencers on behalf of the brand. This means outdoors experts on behalf of REI or enterprise IT managers for SaS services targeting....enterprise. These folks are not always going to have the largest reach. Certainly they may not have what the professional alpha bloggers have. So the question remains, how can you have their WOM reach more people - without spoiling the WOM?

7 Ways to Scale
Aggregate the voices: If we collect all of what people are saying about the brand or relevant topic and pull it altogether via a content aggregator we can potentially increase the reach. I say potentially because either you will be integrating that aggreagation in a high-traffic site or driving awareness via an ad campaign to the aggregator. Just creating one doesn't do it. Good examples include:

• The Ford Story
• Lenovo Voices of the Summer Games (not active)

Content-driven advertising: A modest ad buy that features the content of the conversation - what people are saying in tweets, comments or posts - can drive new people into the conversation and can also celebrate and reward those who are participating by featuring their conetnt in the ads. If you send the traffic to the aggregator, you can raise the spotlight quickly on what you are doing and create a virtuous circle by making it worthwhile for influencers to contribute to earn visibility for their efforts.
 
Extended influencer outreach: For every 20 influencers in a particular niches that you engage, there may be 20-200 more who would find it relevant to know about what you are talking about and who may want to participate. Extended outreach - done carefully and thoughtfully - can extend awareness via their combined reach.

Traditional media relations: Some of the things we do online are media-worthy.Traditional press may find it interesting that we are co-creating a new product with customers or whatever we are doing. 

Partnerships for reach: Finding a great partner who has a relevant constituency is a fundamental PR and marketing tactic that is equally relevant to the social space. Perhaps the online community around the Appalachian Mountain Club would work with REI on its "Stories of the Appalachian Trail" project (I made this up) and notify their members.

SEO & SEM: Making our content as visible and findable as possible via both organic and a "strategic" SEM buy can ensure that we earn as much search engine traffic for our WOM program as possible. Again, the aggregator is key as a hub that we can build some decent Google Juice around.

An Enthusiast Network: If you maintain long-term relationships with a group of enthusiasts - enthusiasts for the brand or the topic of interest (overnight hiking?) gives you a network of relevant folks to invite into an activity. This can also reduce your cost of "influencer acquisition." We are launching a software platform with several clients now that enables us to grow this type of network and deliver valuable content and offers directly to them for sharing (i.e. this is our value exchange).

Generally no one tactic is the answer. Think of this more as a checklist and all may apply. If you want to go beyond scoring a handful of posts from influencers and stimulate an environment where sharing on a topic is productive for all and reaches as many relevant folks as possible, consider an amplification strategy with these tactics.

Three Important Concepts for Marketers in the New FTC Guidelines

At 81 pages long, the recent FTC Guidelines on Endorsements and Testimonials (and blogger outreach programs) has gained a lot of great attention with a few thoughtful distillations of those 81 pages. Via WOMMA, we were involved when they were first posted for comment. It's great that WOMMA was cited so many times (more than any other organization?) for our best practices. It supports my biased opinion (disclosure: I am Board President at WOMMA) that WOMMA is really the best organization to help guide( and protect brands and marketers who need to operate social media marketing and communications programs).

There is nothing in the final draft that surprises me.As posted earlier, your bets strategy overall is to support a policy of full disclosure by both marketers and influencer to stay both within the spirit and "rule" of teh Guidelines. This is easy for WOMMA members as our own best practice and ethics policies wrote the book on disclosure.  

Still, after a careful read here are 3 big areas that warrant all of our attention:

The Definition of "Sponsored"
I am not nuts about the use of the term "sponsored" by the FTC but I understand why they did it. If you send out a free sample of cookie dough to mombloggers to try the dough and post about if they wish, there are circumstances that would qualify this as sponsorship (e.g. do they regularly receive product to review or does the value of the product exceeds some threshold (not named)). I don't want to get hung up on a word as I do agree that the marketer and blogger should simply reveal that they recieved the cookie dough.

One main reason I am not thrilled with the word "sponsor" is the expectation it breeds on the brand side. "Sponsorship" usually comes with a formal quid pro quo where the marketer gets as much value from the compensated exchange as possible. They don't pay for a chance that their banner shows up on the conference wall. That is part of the package. With most influencer engagements, marketers are providing product experiences hoping that the influencer/blogger will write about that experience. But there is no contract that they will write anything let alone something positive. The pressure is largely on the marketer's side to provide a literally "remarkable" experience. The intent of the FTC is clear and I can see no problem with their desire to have influencers be extra careful about diclosing any material relationship they have with marketers and letting their followers judge their credibility. Remember, the FTC is not trying to prevent endorsments. They are trying to enforce or motivate full disclosure.

"whether the speaker is compensated by the advertiser or its agent; whether the product or service in question was provided for free by the advertiser; the terms of any agreement; the length of the relationship; the previous receipt of products or services from the same or similar advertisers, or the likelihood of future receipt of such products or services; and the value of the items or services received. An advertiser’s lack of control over the specific statement made via these new forms of consumer-generated media would not automatically disqualify that statement from being deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides. Again, the issue is whether the consumer-generated statement can be considered “sponsored.”"

Liability of Endorsers
If we engage influencers/bloggers to experience a product or service in the hopes that they will find it worthwhile to share about, we bear some responsibility for what they say most clearly in the claims of product efficacy. The example the FTC uses here is a healthcare claim which is probably the most urgent context as no one wants to see consumers mislead around their health because the context wasn't clear. As Ogilvy has "terms of engagement" for ourselves and those influencers who choose to participate in programs with our brands I am not concerned that the FTC points about liability change much. Our terms require participants to disclose the material relationship, emphasize that their POV is their opinion and make no broad claims of efficacy.

"Nonetheless, if the advertiser initiated the process that led to these endorsements being made – e.g., by providing products to well-known bloggers or to endorsers enrolled in word of mouth marketing programs – it potentially is liable for misleading statements made by those consumers....The Commission is revising new Example 5, however, to clarify that both the advertiser and the blogger are subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of the blogger’s endorsement."

Disclosure of Material Connections Between Advertisers and Endorsers

Both the marketer and the endorser (i.e. influencer/blogger) are responsible to disclose.

"...the Commission believes that the endorser is the party primarily responsible for
disclosing material connections with the advertiser. However, advertisers who sponsor these
endorsers (either by providing free products – directly or through a middleman – or otherwise) in order to generate positive word of mouth and spur sales should establish procedures to advise
endorsers that they should make the necessary disclosures and to monitor the conduct of those
endorsers"

Again,based upon our own best practice this is not a challenge. The trick may be the new requirement to monitor and presumably take action should an endorser not fully disclose as promised. Splitting hairs about whether a particular influencer program qualifies as endorsement or "sponsorship" in the FTC's eyes is not time well spent. If you refer to their definition above for "sponsorship" your best bet is to diclose everything and require disclosure of all of the folks you engage with. The big question remains not how you monitor (that part is easy and we all do it anyhow) but how you enforce a certain disclosure behavior with influencers you have no contract or obligation with. The action they are looking for is some effort to remind the influencer/blogger to properly disclose and then ceasing working with that blogger should they not follow through.

Here is how they frame that issue up:

"the manufacturer has an obligation to advise the blogger at the time it provides the gaming system that he should make the disclosure in any positive reviews of the system. The manufacturer also should have procedures in place to attempt to monitor the blogger’s statements about the system to ensure that the proper disclosures are being made and take appropriate steps if they are not (e.g., cease providing free product to that individual)."
 

Those are the big concepts that affact us on a day to day basis. Again, they are very much aligned with current best practices for marketers like WOMMA members.

other issues covered in the Guidelines:

Celebrity Endorsements: More should be written about a new best practice related to celebrity endorsements. One thing is clear, these guides will motivate celebrities (or their "people") to better understand the claims they may be relating in a script.

Testimonials Reflecting Non-typical Consumer Experiences: Again more shoudl be explored here to interpret the effect of the Guides on marketers. It is clear that the new guideliens remove teh "safe harbor" clause that allows marketers to state "results not typical" when making claims. Claims must be typical. But even here, the FTC allows some wiggle room, "Although the Commission is, admittedly, skeptical that most disclaimers of typicality will be effective in preventing deception, Section 255.2 does not rule out the possibility that a clear, conspicuous, and informative disclaimer could accomplish this goal."

Expert Endorsements: A bigger topic yet one point is that their expertise should be brought to bear upon evaluating the product performance.

Endorsements by Organizations: The goal seems to be that the majority of an organization supports the endorsement.

Some important definitions
According to the FTC Guidelines, here is how they define "endorsement" and "endorser:"

"For purposes of this part, an endorsement means any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or otheridentifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser. The party whose opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience the message appears to reflect will be called the endorser and may be an individual, group, or
institution."

"Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. Furthermore, an endorsement may not convey any express or implied representation that would be deceptive if made directly by the advertiser. [See §§ 255.2(a) and (b)regarding substantiation of representations conveyed by consumer endorsements."

To really dig in to this issue, attend the WOMMA Summit in November where we will have the FTC on hand to participate in a discussion about the nuances and details of the guidleines. (Register now and use code "fanofOgilvy" to recieve a discount on the registration fee.)

Social IRM - Influencer Relationship Management Pt 2

or How do we motivate people to get involved and then add reach to their voices? 

Engagement
Marketers are learning that we all need to think in terms of the value delivered to people via our marketing efforts. Now add to that the obligations associated with inviting people to participate with brands in some way that may cause them to share with their social graph - friends, family, fellow dining-out enthusiasts. What will drive people to share word of mouth?

Every time we reach out to influencers, we must think through the "value exchange" - what will they recieve and what will the brand recieve that makes it worthwhile to engage in some way.For Ford, influencers have the chance to drive a Ford car in a somewhat exclusive situation - like the Fiesta Movement "agents" and the drivers who took a Fusion or Flex on their Spring vacation drive. For the BlogHer community, they saw their ideas and in fact, themselves included in the weekly TV show online called The Juice. But they received more than that and every relationship has several possibilities that add up the value exchange.

Value Exchange Ingredients
Here are the building blocks of reciprocal value that can motivate each of us to participate in an influencer program.

1. Social Capital
If you give me a preview of a book, say Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro, then I would likely read it and quickly share my impressions with my friends. If you offered me an interview opportunity that few had with Unilever's Chief Marketing Officer, Simon Clift, I would take you up on it in a minute as I have always admired him and the brand. Each of these examples are social capital that I accrue and can spend with my peers to earn status. It's human. It's not diabolical nor "low." It just is.

2, Spotlight
Simpler than Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, the idea of shining a spotlight on influencers is straightforward. There are influencers all along the Long Tail out there - some quite popular, others popular in their niche, still others who may be on the rise. If we feature their content (with their permission) and profile them, we are celebrating what they do and who they are. Aggregators do this all the time. My content is pulled into Social Media Today. I appreciate that they felt it and me worthwhile. When they feature a post of mine, I benefit. This spotlight conveys status and may also drive other tangible benefits.

3. Traffic
Can brands drive traffic to bloggers and other influencers? The answer is "yes' given the right circumstances. In many cases it is an empty promise. But if a brand is aggregating consumer generated content - the best thoughts out there on adventure travel or family green living - and spending energy and budget to raise awareness and traffic to that aggregation, then the blogger should see an impact.

4. Brand halo
Some brands have a valuable halo. Our client, American Express, has a positive halo effect. The presence and even prestige of the brand rubs off on those associated with it. There are plenty of brands whom I would love to cozy up to for the status that might rub off. Why did I establish a presence in BusinessWeek Exchange? I love the BusinessWeek brand and jumped at the chance to be a part of. Not all brands quailfy and the 'halo' is in the eyes of the beholder, Still, I would be proud to be featured alongside many brands.

5. Value
All of these things could be described as value of some kind. Here I mean tangible value like loaning someone a car for their Spring vacation or giving them case of product to give away to their followers. So long as all parts of this value are fully disclosed by all parties, value can be one of the simplest ways to satisfy another big requirement for WOM - the product experience. People have to have that experience to have anything to share to begin with.   

6. Social Good
Beyond the relevance of the brand and whatever larger platform is going on - e.g. people joining a fuel efficiency discussion alongside Ford - having some social benefit can motivate people as well. If folks know that their involvement will translate into a donation to charity or a much needed relief effort, many will jump in. The hazard here is using a social good motivator as a crutch vs. an organic extension of the experience or brand.
 

Which one of these "values" is more valuable? Which one is the "must-have?" There-in lies the rub. Different people are motivated by different drivers. The best strategy is a net of 3-4 of these value elements to ensure the overall value exchange is strong enough. Cut any one and you might just weaken the value exchange too much.

Next time: Scale & Optimization

Social IRM - Influencer Relationship Management Pt 1

or How do you add impact and efficiency without losing the soul of social media?

(the following is part of my kick-off today at Ogilvy London's Social Media Day)

Social Media is not a channel

Let's 'tick' off the true benefits of social media marketing to brands. Social media is not some new channel. Pity the poor brand who starts jamming content or ads down our throats without understanding the 'value exchange' necessary to earn our attention and participation.

Social media is not just a growing collection of technologies allowing us all to communicate, share, create and publish. I mean it is all that, especially for you and I - people who have discovered a new platform to express ourselves. We can connect with others who share some affinity no matter how niche that is (Will some of my fellow Nick Cave fans please help me figure out how to get a signed copy of The Death of Bunny Munro?).

Social Media = Word of Mouth

But what does that mean for brands and brand marketers?

Ultimately, everything social media enables is a new form of word of mouth. Whether I blog about my love for the new Ford Taurus,  become a fan of Lance Armstrong Foundation on Facebook, tweet a link to Amex tix for the Rolling Stones concert, or pass a video of Nick Cave reading from Bunny Munro to a friend - it's all word of mouth. (disc: all clients)

And word of mouth trumps most other forms of communication in influence on many purchase decisions and opinions. For brands, social media is an imperative to embrace in any way they can the power of word mouth. 

We need to help customers, enthusisasts, fans, "strangers with expertise" share about our products and the topics and ideas that bring us together with them. We want people to search in Google and find the endorsements of our advocates - third parties who say our products are good because they are.

Who are these third parties and how do we engage them so that they will authetically want to share? They are the new influencers.

What is Social IRM?  

Social IRM is the discipline of managing relationships between influencers and brands. It's built on the principles of social media - respect, trust, and a true value exchange between brand and influencer. The goal of Social IRM is to activate genuine word of mouth online at a scale that can positively impact business.

Finding Influencers

We identify influencers by looking at data that tells us how conversational they are, how many people link to them, what their affiliations are, the combined reach of their social platforms from their blog to their Facebook page and Twitter handle. Seven different criteria come together to plot them on a map of relevance and influence. We build a segmented database of these influencers. For Ford we identified over 2 hundred influencers in 6 new segments we had never spoke directly to before....

How do we get them to talk? How do we get them to tell a friend how great the Ford Flex, Fusion or Taurus are?

Ford starts by making a great car. Never underestimate the power of a great product....and the risk of a lousy one.

We have to earn their attention, time and involvement. We have to offer them value. That brings us to the "Value Exchange" as my colleague Virginia Miracle would say.

Next: Engaging and adding Scale.....

Special Event: WOMMA SUMMIT 2009 - Wall-to-Wall Brand Cases

The best, most practical social media summit for brands will happen on November 16-18 in Las Vegas at the Paris Hotel. It's the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Annual SUMMIT 2009. This year, we have packed the agenda with real world case studies from brands applying social media and word of mouth marketing to their marcom and business needs. Join Ford, Pepsi, CDW, General Mills, Weight Watchers,iTunes, SAP and more.

• Ford's Ray Day and Scott Monty pair up to talk about driving social media transformation through the enterprise
• FTC Chief of Staff Chuck Harwood will talk about the FTC's role in social media marketing and the imminent FTC Guidelines
• Comcastcares, Twelpforce and others convene for a customer service smackdown on the mainstage

If you are creating and executing social media and word of mouth marketing programs for your brand or organization (or client), come to the WOMMA Summit to share best practices and the latest innovations in the use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogging and offline word of mouth.

• The new WOMMY Awards will highlight the best of the best including best measurement models in social media and WOM.
• The Brands Council will offer special brands-only meetings
• And networking events will give you intimate conversations with your peers and colleagues from other companies to share experience

Join us now. While space is limited and no special price offers will be introduced, if you register and reference the code "fanofogilvy" you will recieve $100 off your fee.

Ogilvy will see you there.

Best Practice Disclosure: What Brands Should Do (and Why)

At WOMMA, we are launching a project to define the best ways brands and influencer/bloggers should tell the public of their "material relationship." If you are a brand and plan to try and engage influencers to get them to talk, share, create content about you, then you owe it to yourself to pay attention to this issue and establish your own principles.

Three simple reasons why:

1. If you want to activate word of mouth it must be genuine. You might be able to "incent" the first voice (G0) but their followers/readers (G1, G2, Gn) will insist on knowing what you did to engage that blogger. They need to judge the credibility for themselves. I don't care how much credibility that blogger has earned over the years, credibility and trust is established anew everyday. 

2. You will protect your brand from online backlash. Will the villagers rise up against your brand? The answer is that you just never know. Do you want to be that marketer who gets "outed" for secretly paying bloggers to post reviews? Or paying their expenses for a visit to HQ? Some brands believe their online reputation is key to their overall reputation and wouldn't like that.

3. The FTC is about to release their guidelines about testimonials and disclosure. They will require you as the brand to disclose and to motivate your influencers to do the same. The FTC wouldn't have to do this if every brand followed to principlies like WOMMA's Honesty ROI ("R" is "relationship" as in what-is-your-material-relationship)

What brands should do for best practice disclosure:
The WOMMA Disclosure Project invites industry practitioners and thought leaders (like those at the kick-off Web Summit) to articulate the form of best practice or "clear and meaningful" disclosure. New platforms and behaviors are going to require new examples. The following are my own initial thoughts for elements of best practice disclosure for a brand and the influencers they engage.

Terms of engagement
Every word of mouth marketing program that seeks to spark third parties to talk about them, their products or topics relevant to the brand must draft a "terms of engagement" and post it visibly on the program or brand Web site. I have described this document in a recent post.

• Be clear and explicit. Name amounts or ballparks of any expenses or other consideration you delivered. Was the product a loaner or a keeper? Go ahead and say. No one likes it when brands are cagey about these details.
• Ask your blogger/influencers to link to the terms of engagement or post their own version on their site. Sometimes its best if that is their first post about what they are doing.

Influencer Agreement
If you are working extensively with the same bloggers (any of the brand panels talked about here are goo dexamples of that) then craft a simple one page agreement that compels the bloggers to disclose and promise to only state their true opinion. It may not be enforceable beyond you stopping working with them but it sets the right tone.

Per post disclosure
If the inlfuencer is not part of a formal program with its own badge (think: Walmart 11 Moms or The Fab5), then there posts and comments should include a refernce and link to the terms of enagement, program, or their on-site disclosure statement - e.g. "... this post is part of my BrandX series. Click here for the terms of engagement." 

• Tweets - here's a special case. The format is short and not always connected to your full bio or your blog. Tweets should be marked whenever practical. When I write about a client, I almost always mark the Tweet with (cl) to indicate it's a client. If I were an influencer and loaned a new computer to try (like maybe an Alienware - hint, hint) and I blogged and tweeted about the experience, how should I mark those tweets? Alienware didn't pay me. The entire material relationship is the 2 month loan of the computer (I have never done this. This is just a hypothetical). I can't call them "sponsor" nor can I call them "partner" as both are too formal and inaccurate.

Three solutions:

• Add mention of the program in your Twitter bio page with a link to the Terms of Engagement on your blog
• Add (disc) to your tweet, preferably with a link to the Terms of Engagement.
• If you are simply linking to a post that is fully diclosed, the Tweet, itself, can go without. But if you are stating opinion in a tweet, then mark it.

 

Site badges
Many sustained programs have the influencers post badges on their main blogs identifying them as part of a group program or brand panel. That badge is good for everyone. It works best when it links to the prgram description complete with a Terms of Engagement. It serves everyone best if that badge is above the fold to be in line of sight with the latest posts. The influencer still needs a per post disclosure to deliver via  RSS feed or if she syndicates content anywhere.

Social media bio
By adding a statement in your "about us" or bio page about your involvement with a particular brand or your likelihood to engage with brands from time to time, you have gone the extra mile to be clear with people.

Align with WOMMA
WOMMA has the industry standard ethics policies including policies on disclosure. If you are a member, then those policies becme your own. They will protect you, your brand and the consumer. It is a great way top get a large organization aligned about a non-partisan standard. Just tell everyone in the marcom disciplines that they need to behave according to the WOMMA ethics.

What do you think is "best practice disclosure?"

WOMMA Webinar: Best Practice Disclosure

On September 14th, I will participate in a live webinar on behalf of WOMMA that will kick-off a process to define just what forms "disclosure" must take between brands and influencers to live up to WOMMA Ethics and the impending FTC Guidelines (likely October 2009).

• How should bloggers disclose they recieved a loaner car, laptop or big screen TV to experience?
• How should they disclose if they receive product to keep whether a digital camera or a case of shampoo?
• What about tweets about sponsors? How do you tag tweets?
• How can brands push influencers to disclose their 'material relationship' on the bloggers own site?

These are examples of the reality behind the core question of what is 'best practice disclosure.' WOMMA helps brands via the WOMMA Code of Ethics. This year's challenge is to drill down on disclosure and put specific definition on the best, most ethical and practical ways of doing it.

Here's the skinny:

Monday September 14 at 2pm ET

Ethics and Endorsements: What is Adequate Disclosure?

Moderator:
Paul Rand, WOMMA-President Elect and President/CEO of Zocalo Group will serve as moderator.

Panelists include:

• John Bell, WOMMA President and Managing Director at 360° Digital Influence
• Jory Des Jardin, Co-Founder and President, Strategic Alliances at BlogHer
• Sean Corcoran, Interactive Marketing Analyst at Forrester Research
• Tom Collinger, Chair of the Integrated Marketing Communications program at the Medill School Northwestern University
• Anthony DiResta, WOMMA’s general counsel and partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP

REGISTER NOW!

Should B2B Marketers Be Using Social Media More?

The simple answer is yes.

A lot has been said about the differences between how marketers are using social media in B2B vs B2C. Some say that social networks favor consumer-facing engagements only. Some say that B2B marketers need crisp, demand-generation tactics and that is not social media's strength. 

The truth is that so many people in the US are creating or consuming social media that your B2B targets are out there. And social media is proving itself effective against all levels of the funnel especially when integrated with your other PR and marketing tactics.

“More than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in or reading some form of social content at least once a month .”
Josh Bernoff/Forrester/August 2009
  

Consider these points:

• Let's face it, Social Media spans all age groups. If your customers are 50 year-olds, you'll find them consuming and participating in social media.

• The Social Web is a gathering place for all types of affinities whether drawn from their shared interest in paint manufacturing or virtualization. It's a perfect place to find and engage your customers as they are likely to already be assembling somewhere online Many people continue to blur the lines between their personal lives and their business life and interests.

• Unlike trade magazines (which in many industries like the tech sector are fading out)social networks are not just for one type of information. I might be on Facebook one moment to connect with a friend and responding to a trade event invite at another moment.

• Some 74% of all marketers surveyed said they use Facebook; 60% of B2B marketers said so. Twitter also ranked higher among B2B marketers than B2C marketers: 70% vs. 46% (These stats are from a great Marketing Profs article).

• 8 in 10 B2B marketers (81%) use LinkedIn, vs. 25% of B2C marketers. If you wanted to find people by their professional interest, what could be more useful than Linked In.

• Many B2B marketers have reasonably sophisticated approaches to more traditional forms of digital marketing like search marketing, email, and content marketing. Using social media simply to extend these activities (Tweet out the new white paper), is pretty straightforward stuff.

• Many B2B businesses have deep commitments to customer service. The role of social media in customer service is becoming clearer and clearer every day most notably with the growth of cgm listening programs and the use of Twitter for rapid response.  

Probably what is happening is that, in general, B2B marketing is driven by lead generation and demand generation (oh, and sales, of course). These have become the domain of strict marketing ROI measures based upon a static understanding of what 'reaches' and motivates buyers. Social media's 'causality' in a sale or conversion event remains a work-in-progress - i.e. did it cause a customer to purchase or contribute in some lss-than-obvious way.

Consumers vs. Creators

Are B2B customers as willing to create content and engage in that deep way that consumers often do given the right context (think Ford's Fiesta Movement)? No. But that doesn't mean that they are not engaged in meaningful ways with social media. Forrester's Social Technographics profile now has 2009 data in it for B2B customers and it reveals high scores all around (except "Inactives") with very high scores for Spectators - those reading blogs and consuming other social content.

Trust Critical for Big Sales

Beyond the fact that B2B audiences are consuming and participating in social media, that social media is a great place to find target affinities, that trade print is fading, that the trneds for social media adoption in the B2B sectors are all incredibly positive, and despite the known impact of social mdia on serach - the new homepage for your products and services, you may still remain doubtful.  

An insightful point comes from the comments of Chris Brogans blog. The post is about the similarities of B2C and B2B and the calim that the real difference is between major and minor purchase. most B2B sales will be major and require deep consideration.

“However, and here's where social media comes into play, the defining element between the major sale and the minor sale is TRUST. Major sales require a LOT more trust on behalf of the purchaser! See how social media comes into play?”
Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

Time for more B2B social media.