As a marketer, it’s very important to maintain transparency while engaging in social media.

For the first time since the 80’s the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is revising policies regarding testimonials and endorsements. Today, more marketers are utilizing social media so the FTC is attempting to enforce stricter policies regarding social media and transparency. The goal is to hold marketers responsible for false claims and penalize them for not identifying their motives in the social media arena. I’m sure here in Canada policies are also being revised I was unable to find any Canadian articles addressing the issue.

Don’t wait for regulations to mimic how you interact with your target, remember what marketing in the social media space means. It involves searching out the target and asking permission to engage with them. It’s not like traditional media where you shout and hope they listen, for this honesty is always the best policy. If you don’t identity yourself it will likely come out later and result in distrust with brand.

I currently comment, post and Twitter for a variety of different clients. In all cases I’ve made it clear I represent a particular brand with motives of engaging with consumers and potential purchasers. Before jumping in I make a point of familiarizing myself with the discussion. It helps me find the right moment to introduce myself. Commenting on something already being discussed will increase chances that forum readers are more likely to read and engage rather than scroll over my message like they do most spam messages.

In my introduction post I always inform every one of my name, my company and the client I am working with. In most cases forum readers were pleased to see their brand reaching out to them. I’ve received a lot of very insightful feedback from consumers regarding the brand. I’ve made connections and am certain that in the future if I need any consumer insights for a category I will have these relationships to draw from. I trust their feedback and I hope they feel they can trust me.

In closing I’d like to reiterate my point - in the world of social media honesty is currency to build a relationship between customers and your brand.

I have been privileged to take part in the 10th Anniversary of the Cluetrain Manifesto. I was made aware of and signed up for a blogging event in which 95 bloggers each write a post on the same agreed date, April 28th, about one of the “95 theses” from the Manifesto. Details about this event and Cluetrain’s history are found here. I will provide viewpoint on thesis number #89.

For years marketers like me have believed that advertising had the strength to influence consumer attitudes and behaviour. Advertising had more power when ad vehicles were few. As consumers, we were easy to get a hold of – we read the same papers, listened to the same radio programs, and watched the same television shows as everyone we knew. Marketers had it easy…but it was rare for consumers to see an ad that was relevant to them. That was ok for marketers because 2% response rate or a break-even ROI was all they required to deem a campaign successful.

These days, technology has made it increasingly difficult to reach consumers. Media has become fragmented. Access profileration has allowed the consumer to be in multiple devices simultaneously including: access from radio, TV, mobile, MP3s, search, print, billboards, videogames, IM, email, video consoles etc. Overlay the incredible explosion of the number of radio and TV channels, magazines, newspapers. This pace of change is making it increasingly difficult to pin target consumers down with a relevant message at the right place and right time.

It’s become increasingly apparent that the difficulty in reaching the consumer has been compounded over time. Access proliferation has put the consumer in control of how, when and what media they consume. At the same time these same channels are giving the tools to communicate to many people at a much faster pace. Universal McCann’s Worldwide Comparative Study on Social Media Trends, April 2008 indicates the growth of social media since 2006. Some highlights include:

• 73% of active online users have read a blog
• 45% have started their own blog
• there are over 184 million bloggers worldwide, with approx. 1/4 from China
• 57% have joined a social network
• 34% post opinions about products/brands on their site/blog

People are talking about brands to each other and surprisingly many brands are oblivious to this; or if they are aware, they don’t realize the enormous impact it has to their reputation as a company. The power shift from the corporation to the consumer is apparent. Advertising messages do not influence as effectively as marketers have always believed.

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While talking to Jon Mok  (Information Architect at Mindblossom) about finding images under Creative Commons (CC) licenses ( a variety of licenses which allow creative work to be used with limited stipulations) to replace his copyrighted images, in a piece he put together for Nissan Hypercube Contest, I revisited a passion I abandoned after leaving university. That passion is  Open Access (OA)  publishing.

In school I concentrated on furthering the efforts of academic OA, but often researched both sides of creative issue including designs, photos, videos etc. Much like the academic research (though a bit less complicated politically), creative work has been in the centre of a heavily polarized debate on whether everything should be copyrighted or left to influence of public domain and freedom.

While this debate is too lengthy  to tackle in one entry, I found a great example of social media as a venue for a  shift towards a community-centric model with a flexible copyright under Creative Commons License on Flickr. I was surprised at the amount of assets that users were sharing for public use.

Below is a link to check out the Creative Commons page on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

If you are not familiar with the licensing terms Attribution, Nonderivative, Noncommercial, Sharealike, check out the Creative Commons site:

http://creativecommons.org/

It’s a really interesting issue that is relevant to our sphere and most importantly our times. While ideas of open access software and publishing have been around for a long time and are at the root of CC, never has there been so much momentum in proliferation of the initiative. In my opinion it is a combination of technology and new thinking that I am always looking to coin with a sort of umbrella term - ethical, socially inclined, cause-centered, etc.

Well, I may need Karen King’s (Copywriter at Mindblossom)  help finding the term to describe this mentality but CC movement is a worthy of keeping an eye on.