Tip of the Week- New FTC Guidelines Regarding Endorsements and Testimonials-
New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines went into effect today advising bloggers and celebrities to clearly disclose their relationships with advertisers.
According to Richard Cleland, the FTC assistant director of advertising practices, "The test here is, if the relationship were known between the blogger and the advertiser, would that affect the credibility of the endorsement? That question has to be determined on a case by case basis. What we have produced is a general guidance that says in certain cases receiving a free product is not any different than being paid directly for an endorsement."
The revised guides also add new examples that address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other "word-of-mouth" marketers (which I take to mean affiliate marketers).
In order to protect yourself, you should disclose any and all material connections between you and others when a product or payment is exchanged and your review or commentary might be considered an endorsement.
Fortunately there is a website, CMP.ly, that has been proposed as a standard for disclosures. On it, you will find 6 different types of disclosures (all keeping within the 140 character Twitter limit) along with the necessary wording or link back to CMP.ly's website. It's currently in Beta, free of charge, and additional features are being developed.
Check out TheSolutionMovie.com, our 90 second video and please share the movie with anyone you feel might benefit (web-owners, bloggers, authors, job seekers, speakers and others) who would like to achieve greater success.
Watch it again to affirm your own decision to improve your website and online marketing efforts.
In the near future we'll be posting articles on the IOP site which show how you can make (or have made) a movie like this for your site too.
The primary reason that Karl and I've together this website is to help you make more money. We know the things that you need to know, but we also want to hear about the topics that are of special importance to you.