A 10 item list of guidelines for marketing utilizing blogs and blog marketing has been issued by the WOMMA. (word of mouth marketing association) There have been a few stories lately of fake blogs and fake viral videos that everyone finds out were really just being done by Wal-Mart or some other corporation. These are sometimes called a “flog” or a corporation fronting blog or “fake” blog. Which is different from splogs which are all spam generate content.

If you think about it “fake” blogs or fake blog posts that someone is paid to do or blog that a company has out there that is not acknowledged is just as deceptive as pay per click search ads would be if they were not labeled. The FTC came in and regulated Pay Per Click ads to make sure that the consumer knew they were ads. If we follow that logic should they also step in and require the same sort of labeling on commercial blogs in order to ensure that consumers are not tricked?

The principle is the same. In search results people were trusting the engines to deliver relevant results when some ads weren’t clearly labeled the FTC said no you have to make sure people can tell the difference. Here is an article about the FTC recommendations from 2002…by Danny Sullivan.
Here is a quote from the article “Commercial Alert filed its complaint last July, claiming that a lack of disclosure about paid content integrated into search results constituted “deceptive advertising,” something the FTC regulates against.” Are some of these blogs deceptive? Will Ralph Nader target them? Stay tuned..

You can check out the Blog Marketing Code of Ethics here.