In my last blog post, "The Rapidly Diminishing Authenticity of Social Media Marketing," I explored how social media professionals have turned to tactics that undermine some of the core tenets promised by social media. We set larger fan counts as a goal above authentic advocacy, and when meaningful engagement became difficult to achieve, we settled for anything that would earn a like, reply or retweet rather than striving for content that fostered relationships and created value.

I will not rehash how I think these poor priorities and tactics undermined brand success in social media. (You can read my last blog post for that.) Instead, I want to explore a more sensitive question: Have social media marketers acted ethically or not?

For example, if we accept that a basic principle of social media is that "likes" represented something important--authentic brand affinity that others would see and rely upon--then what are we to think of those marketers and brands that took shortcuts to accumulate new fans who had no established relationship with the brand? Was it ethical to launch sweepstakes, contests and giveaways that motivated "likes" from people who otherwise were not inclined to express affinity for our brands?

And if we further agree that engagement such as replies, retweets and shares ought to be authentic signals of interest in what brands have to say, then are we acting ethically when we solicit engagement merely to elevate our brands' EdgeRank? Is asking Facebook users to "like" a post if they are on "team peanut butter" an ethical way to collect signals of affinity between consumer and brand, or is this a dishonest way to get our content into more users' news feeds?

Social Media Ethics on Display (or Not) During Week of Boston Marathon Tragedy

Instead of considering this in the abstract, let's examine two brands' actions last week, during the frightening events in Boston. NBC Bay Area posted a photo of a young bombing victim and implored people to "'Like' this to wish him a continued speedy recovery."  This desperate attempt to trade on people's feelings for a young victim of the bombing in order to receive a bit of EdgeRank-building engagement is horrifyingly unethical, in my book. (And if you do not agree, then please tell me how "liking" an NBC post lends support to or otherwise helps this poor hospitalized child.)

Ford, a brand I praised for authenticity in my last blog post, waded into dubious water with a Facebook status update following the capture of the second bombing suspect. The brand said, "To the first responders of Boston: Thank you. You are true American heroes." Nothing wrong with that--in fact, I love that a brand like Ford feels it can express sincere appreciation for the sacrifices of those who serve. The problem was that Ford didn't post that as text but included it within a beauty shot of their products, complete with the Ford logo and tagline.

Not everyone will agree, but I feel that Ford's use of brand imagery not only reduced the sincerity of the message but demonstrated questionable ethics. Before you disagree, I would ask you to view the two status updates below--one Ford could have posted and the other it actually did--and consider three questions:

1. Which is a more authentic expression of appreciation to people who sacrificed their safety to protect us?
2. What does the product and brand imagery of the post on the right add (if anything) to the sincerity of the gratitude compared to the simple text version?
3. Which version more clearly puts the focus on the heroes in Boston? 

The version on the left imagines what Ford could have posted as text while the one on the right is what Ford actually posted following the capture of the second bombing suspect in Watertown, MA.

Issues of ethics are difficult to discuss. They often are not clear cut, and while it is easy to see when a company crosses the line with both feet (as did NBC Bay Area), it can tough to discern as brands toe the gray line (as did Ford, in my opinion).

It is even tougher to see when you yourself cross ethical lines. If your boss wants to know why your brand has half a million customers but only 25,000 fans on Facebook, a sweepstakes to accumulate fans may not seem unethical. Your perspective may change, however, if you put yourself on the other side of this equation; if you do not want to see your friends becoming shills for brands in return for freebies and giveaways, then your brand should not follow this path. It is unethical to treat your own customers in a way you would not appreciate from the brands you buy or the people you know. (Fifty years ago, David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising, expressed the same sentiment when he said, "Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.")

We are roughly five years into the social media era, and I think perhaps it is time to reset our moral compasses, not to save our souls but to improve business results. Study after study demonstrate that consumers want something more from brands than silly images and memes; they want ethical behaviors and communications. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer Study found that customers increasingly expect brands to "place customers ahead of profits and have ethical business practices," and Interbrand's 2012 brand study noted that "Consumers... want to feel that the brands they love are, in fact, worthy of that love."

I'd like to believe this is always the case in every business situation, but when it comes to social media marketing, the ethical path also happens to be the best one for enhancing brands and business results. How can we improve both the ethics of social media marketing and our brands? Here are three steps:

STEP ONE: Understand Long-Standing Marketing Ethics, Advertising Rules and Regulation

"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it". 
- Winston Churchill

I am frequently disappointed to find social media professionals who do not understand the basics of ethics and regulation in the advertising industry. Marketing has a long and well established history of recognizing and enforcing ethical practices, and government regulation of advertising is over one hundred years old. The issues we struggle with today in social media marketing are not new, nor are the core beliefs of ethical marketing. The latter can inform the former for those who care to learn history.

In 1911, the Associated Advertising Clubs issued the Ten Commandments of ethical advertising, and the first Commandment was unequivocal: "Thou shalt have no other gods in advertising but truth." (The italics are theirs, not mine.) Shortly thereafter, the Postal Act of 1912 required that advertising content be differentiated from editorial content. Together, these two actions established one of the most basic tenets of advertising ethics: That consumers must know when they are seeing advertising and not mistake it for editorial content. This is as true in the pages of newspapers as in the tweets and posts of your customers.

Although the core principles of ethical advertising have not changed in one hundred years, the regulatory language has evolved with technology. In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." This document established that "When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, such connection must be fully disclosed." In other words, if it would impact a person's perception of a friend's post about a brand to know that the individual was posting in exchange for a contest entry or a giveaway, that creates a material connection that must be disclosed.

Just last month, the FTC updated disclosure guidelines, providing quite detailed guidance. For example, the FTC notes that "#spon" is not a sufficient disclosure of a sponsored tweet since, "Consumers might not understand that '#spon' means that the message was sponsored by an advertiser." And to those who might protest that Twitter's 140-character limit does not provide sufficient room for a clear and conspicuous disclosure, the FTC says, "Tough luck." (Really, what the agency says is, "If a particular platform does not provide an opportunity to make clear and conspicuous disclosures, then that platform should not be used to disseminate advertisements that require disclosures.")

An understanding of the history of advertising ethics and FTC regulations is only the start. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued several decisions pertaining to social media that brands' must consider for their social media guidelines, monitoring policies and employment practices. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has oversight into how and when social media may be used to share information pertinent to investors. Different states have enacted laws with varied requirements for consumer and employee privacy in social media. And then there are the terms and conditions of the social networks themselves, which define what is and is not permissible. (It is shocking how often pages violate Facebook's Promotions rules as defined in the Facebook Pages Terms.)

In the relatively brief period since social media's birth, brands have been tripped up by a variety of unethical and unlawful behavior including meddling with competitors Wikipedia entries, fake community groups, fake endorsements, fake blogs, fake accounts, and other questionable activities. It is vital social media professionals know the laws, rules and ethical standards that have stood the test of time, and it is necessary for marketing leaders to ensure their social media teams are adequately trained and supervised.

STEP TWO: Improve Social Media Metrics

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”
- Albert Einstein

Bad metrics lead to bad strategies. More than that, bad metrics can lead to unethical behaviors.

The Great Recession of 2009 was caused by many factors, but President Obama laid blame on the way executives were measured and compensated. He noted in a June 2009 speech that a "culture of irresponsibility" was an important cause of the crisis, and he criticized executive compensation that "rewarded recklessness rather than responsibility."

In some ways, many social media professionals are today being rewarded for recklessness rather than responsibility. Fans and engagement are not business metrics, but these are common line items on many social media scorecards and are used by social media agencies and vendors to validate performance. Any brand can count new fans, but how many are measuring the value delivered to the brand via social media? Instead of turning to the metrics that are easiest to collect, social media marketers must determine the metrics that best validate that their social media investments deliver upon the objectives (and if one of your goals is merely to collect fans, then the problem is not the metric but the goal).

This is the point in the blog post when I am supposed to furnish an easy answer for how to measure social media success; unfortunately, I cannot. The ways to measure success are as diverse as brands, audiences and corporate objectives. If you want to better educate your customers on your products, measure that. If you need to raise awareness, measure that. If increasing inbound traffic to your site is desired, measure it. If your brand is challenged to improve a particular perception attribute, then that is what you should measure. Start with your corporate goals and challenges; pick the metrics that align to those; determine the social media strategies that best deliver on those metrics; and execute!

As our investments in social media increase, so must the science and insightfulness of our metrics. Too many brands are merely counting things--fans, retweets, comments and likes--while ignoring the deeper and more meaningful measures of brand awareness, recall, consideration, association, preference and advocacy.  Smart social media professionals do not settle for ineffective metrics but work to educate peers and leaders on the social media metrics that matter for their brands.

STEP THREE: Be Honest

"Of all feats of skill, the most difficult is that of being honest."
- Comtesse Diane

Honesty sounds easy, but complete honesty can be surprisingly tricky. Honesty is not merely the absence of falsehoods; telling no lies in your social networks is only the starting point. Thorough honesty requires something more--more self-reflection, more care and more vigilance. It requires integrity and sometimes even courage.

Honesty requires a tenacious commitment to complete transparency. If you encourage people to tweet a photo of your product in return for a chance to win a prize, complete transparency demands those tweets be accompanied with a disclosure. It is one thing for consumers to choose to tweet their brand love with no expectation of reward (even if the brand solicits those recommendations), but if your brand creates the conditions where someone is motivated to promote your brand in order to win something, you must ensure transparency. It is deceptive to look the other way and allow consumers to be exposed to sponsored advertising communications without disclosure.

Honesty necessitates assertive vigilance to ensure that your employees, vendors and agencies are doing the right thing. It is not sufficient to assume your employees and partners know how to act with integrity, nor is satisfactory to set expectations and assume adherence. Honesty requires a commitment to education and engagement around ethics, and it demands that your brand supervises and monitors activities to ensure policies and regulations are followed.

Honesty demands sincerity in the intent of your communications. In paid media, brands communicate to persuade and sell, but in social media consumers expect something different from brands--it is a medium where consumers can choose to follow, comment and share, or they can choose to unfollow, block and ignore. Engagement should be earned with content that actually engages, not with tricks. For example, if you care to take a poll on Facebook, use Facebook's "Ask question" tool to do so; do not mislead your customers with fake surveys that request they "like" if they believe one thing or "share" if they believe another. Your intent with this sort of deceptive status update is not to engage consumers or learn from their answers but to manipulate Facebook's EdgeRank system. Honest relationships cannot be built with dishonest communications.

Honesty requires that you enter conversations to authentically join the conversation, not to co-opt the conversation. A new trend in social media is so-called "real-time marketing" (or RTM), where brands attempt to engage in the conversations consumers are having about sports, entertainment or world events as they occur. While it is possible for brands to post just the right thing at just the right time in a way that consumers will welcome, much of the recent RTM has been brazenly self interested and thus unsuccessful. The problem is that brands have dishonestly attempted to inject advertising messaging into consumer conversations rather than trying to authentically express themselves or add value to those conversations. If your brand can bring value to the conversation, do so honestly, but if you just want to interrupt consumers' conversations with brand advertising, then stay silent honestly (or honestly pay for media).

Honesty demands that you walk the talk. Consumers are so jaded about the way brands try to obfuscate their actions behind dishonest communications that an entire new lexicon has developed, including terms like greenwashing, astroturfing, sugging and flogs. Social media allows brands to chart a different course, not simply talking about how much they care but highlighting their care through real actions. At a time when some brands will hold their charitable donations hostage in return for likes, shares and replies, New Balance donated $1 million to the One Boston fund and did so without asking for a single "like." The actions of the Chicago Tribune went viral this week after the news organization sent pizzas to the Boston Globe newsroom along with a note that said news colleagues "across the country stand in awe of your tenacious coverage. You made us all proud to be journalists." The honest actions of New Balance and The Trib speak louder than any words could, and they are resonating honestly throughout social media. (How does Ford's branded expression of gratitude fare in comparison?)

Social media may feel quite mature, given that virtually every brand and the vast majority of people in the US have adopted social behaviors, but the medium is still very young. Social media professionals may understand today's best practices, but these continue to evolve as brands gain experience, laws and regulations change and the medium matures. In periods of rapid evolution, it can be difficult to discern the ethical from the unethical, but it starts with you. Ethical social media starts with ethical social media professionals--ones who consider the impact of their strategies, constantly challenge their own beliefs and are willing to stand up for what is right and not merely what is easy.

The idea that ethics comes from within rather than externally is not new. For support, I turn to a philosopher who died 2400 years ago and an animated insect. Aristotle believed self-knowledge was the key to individual ethics, and he wrote, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio's sidekick, echoed Aristotle's advice, reinforcing that ethics starts from self-knowledge: "Always let your conscience be your guide."

Before you click "submit" to your next social media post, do not simply ask if it will achieve its goal, fits best practices and suits the brand. Ask yourself if it is honest, transparent and ethical. That is a much higher standard, but higher standards are what consumers want and what brands increasingly wish to deliver, aren't they?

Join me in a journey back to a simpler time; a time of innocence, hope and more than a little naivety. I'm talking, of course, about 2008. Facebook has 100 million users, a mere 200,000 people access Twitter each week, no brands are doing anything more than experimenting with the nascent social medium and virtually no one is employed full time in the field of social media marketing.

Those of us who are predicting the future are writing about the power of this medium to create greater authenticity, to build trust and to surface genuine advocacy. Success will not be won, we emphatically declare, by the brand with the largest advertising budget but the brand that earns authentic relationships and activates authentic Word of Mouth based on trust, transparency and a commitment to do right by the customer. Brands that collect authentic fans and engage in authentic conversations will thrive while those that cheat to accumulate worthless fans and trivial conversations will suffer when consumers learn of the brands' inauthentic exploitation of the social medium.

Authentic, authentic, authentic--social media may hold many surprises as it matures, but by God, we know the future will be authentic!

Since then, social media has matured--we got that much correct--with consumers adopting social media in droves, making it a big business. Forrester reports that marketers will spend close to $3 billion this year on social media marketing, and with that kind of money comes a great deal of immediate corporate expectations. Authentically create fans? To hell with that, we want lots of "fans" and want them now. Who cares if they actually are fans (the kind that do not need to be bracketed within quotation marks)?

In the war for fans, authenticity was the first casualty, and the weapons deployed were sweepstakes, giveaways, contests and social game freebies. Einstein Bagels gave every new Facebook fan a free bagel, and it garnered a 7,000% increase in Facebook fans in just three days; perhaps a few of these folks were already fans--in the true sense of the word--but the vast majority had no affinity for the brand and were simply bought with a $1.10 bagel. Gerber deployed a baby photo contest in which those who wanted to vote for a friend's or relative's baby were required to become fans of the brand, regardless of whether they ever purchased a product from or had any relationship with Gerber. And Farmers Insurance gave away a freebie to Farmville players and set "the Guinness World Record for most 'likes' in a 24-hour period." (Does anyone else feel a bit queasy realizing there is a Guinness World Record for collecting "fans" that have absolutely no relationship with the brand? I wonder if Bernie Madoff gets his name included in the Guinness book for tricking the largest number of people with a Ponzi scheme.)

Weren't Facebook "fans" supposed to be authentic fans? According to the social media gurus, people who fanned a brand would be signalling their authentic affinity for it, and this genuine expression of brand love would ripple through trusted relationships in social networks, multiplying awareness and purchase intent from one consumer to the next to the next. This is not what happened for most brands, because most brands did not start with the most important thing: Fans with authentic affinity

No one benefited from the fact marketers used inauthentic means to amass meaningless fans. Although people could have gotten true value out of knowing which brands their friends love, today none of us can tell if our friends' likes were motivated by true brand advocacy or a Mafia Wars freebie. Marketers lost, as well. Thanks to EdgeRank, Facebook's algorithm to keep users' news feeds as interesting and sticky as possible, brands that accumulated disinterested fans failed to break through to most users' news feeds, and thus few "fans" ever see, much less engage with, brand status updates. The result is easy to see throughout Facebook--fan pages with huge fan counts but small ratios of them "talking about" the brands. Inauthentic fans cannot drive authentic engagement.

In desperate need of engagement to break through to fans' news feeds, many brands are opting to game Facebook's EdgeRank rather than build meaningful dialog--more inauthentic tactics piled upon inauthentic tactics. Why take the long, hard, authentic route of engaging people in a conversation about your product, service, brand or mission (or the things your customers really care about) when you can gather likes, replies and shares by posting pictures of puppy dogs or "Keep Calm" posters?

It is difficult, for example, to get people talking about insurance, risk and financial security, so Progressive's Flo rarely even tries; instead, she shares things like a picture of an ear of corn on a unicycle. (Oh, that Flo--it's a unicorn!) Other brands beg people to "like" if they believe one thing or "share" if they believe another. In my opinion, the nadir of inauthentic and desperate engagement tactics came when Blackberry challenged fans to "write out 'BlackBerry' one letter at a time in the comments box, without interruptions," resulting in almost 19,000 one-letter replies with "B," "L," "A," "C"... well, you get the idea.

Brands were supposed to build trusted networks with valuable content, and instead they have turned into carnival midway barkers, simultaneously shouting at passing customers hoping to catch the attention of one or two gullible enough to be hustled. Like us! Share this! Comment!

Thanks to the Condescending Corporate Fan Page for these examples.

How does any of this pass for authentic engagement that reflects authentic brand relationships? The better question is how can this sort of vapid, pandering "engagement" build brands? Are you encouraged to check out a brand, research its products or consider a purchase because one of your friends announced he or she is on "team Peanut Butter" by liking a post by GE Appliances? "OMG, my friend is on team Peanut Butter--I should buy a GE refrigerator," said no one ever.

Social media was supposed to strip away the meaningless clutter of the mass media era, exposing true brand affinity and advocacy; instead, social media marketing strategies have encouraged brands to post any meaningless thing in pursuit of a comment, like or share. The irony is that none of this actually helps brands--just as inauthentic fans cannot create authentic engagement, neither can inauthentic engagement build authentic brand value. Asking people to spell your brand name one letter a time or share your picture of a vegetable on a unicorn doesn't spark awareness, consideration, preference or usage.

For example, Einstein's freebie giveaway garnered hundreds of thousands of bought fans, but it did not prevent the company from stumbling. Today the brand has three quarters of a million fans and just 500 people "talking about" them. Moreover, six months after the Facebook stunt, Einstein reported disappointing revenue with same-store sales down more than a percent, and two years later, the company had the lowest earnings growth in its industry. So many "fans," so few fans.

For another example, Blackberry can get tens of thousands of people to type the letter "B" in a reply, but it cannot successfully launch the phone it desperately needs to succeed. In the United States, the new Z10 phone "started poorly and weakened significantly" after that. Look at its Facebook page, and Blackberry looks like a winner with 26 million fans; look at its stock performance, and you will see a company that has lost almost 90% of its market cap since the advent of the social era.

It turns out that, much like in every other marketing channel, it is possible to buy impressions but you cannot buy success in social media. Authenticity is not dead, you just have to look a little harder to find it in social media nowadays. You can find authenticity:

• On Ford's Facebook page: Every post on brand. Every engagement focused on customers and enthusiasts. Not a single attempt to trick people in liking a post if they love tires or share a post if they think rear view mirrors are the bomb. Ford is a brand that conveys passion, focus, respect for customers and confidence in social media, and as a result, social media is credited with helping to build the brand and successfully launch products.
    
• On Home Depot's Facebook page--and on its community, its blog, or the many online forums in which it participates:  Home Depot has earned praise and enhanced its business by putting its greatest asset--its experienced employees--to work answering consumer questions in the social networks where consumers are. The company does not dictate either the dialog or where consumers should interact with Home Depot but deploys resources and responds to consumer questions in the channels where customers are active.
    
• On the Duck Tape Facebook page:  While the brand's 14,000 people "talking about" is disappointing given its fan count (of five million), you still have to hand it to a brand of adhesive tape for getting 14,000 people talking. I frequently hear from people who feel their brands have little interesting to say, and Duck Tape shows how creativity and crowdsourced ideas can help even a boring brand earn authentic engagement.
    
• On the USAA Facebook page: My former employer continues to demonstrate how to mix highly-engaging content with serious information to educate consumers and build brand loyalty. The brand is not beyond posting a photo of smiling child wearing fatigues to celebrate the Month of the Military Child (and earning 10,000 likes for doing so), but other posts in the days before and after help fans learn how to switch accounts to USAA, furnish education on financial planning for a PCS (Permanent Change of Station in military speak) and address questions on flood insurance. 

The use of consumer ratings and reviews has already been a game-changer online. Ratings and Reviews (R&Rs) were the first true use of social media to support and enhance commerce, predating ads on Facebook, Groupon discounts and viral videos on YouTube. While some of us participated on a BBS or Usenet Board in the early days of the Internet, the first time most people posted anything for strangers to read was not a status update on MySpace but a R&R on Amazon, TripAdvisor or Yelp.

It is the success and maturity of R&Rs that leave me perplexed at how little innovation we have seen in the space and how much more the leaders could accomplish. This was the topic of conversation recently when I chatted with Jeremy Epstein, the new VP of Marketing at Sprinklr, a social media management service provider that Altimeter put on the top of its list of vendors to support large corporations. We both agreed that it is high time for the primary providers of online R&Rs to lead once again with new features that make R&Rs more powerful and reliable.

First, here is what is right about R&Rs: They remain the most trusted form of communication, lagging only recommendations from families and friends. According to Forrester (subscription required), consumer product R&Rs are trusted by 62% of US adults, compared to 57% who trust "expert ratings and reviews," 30% who trust company web sites and 23% who trust what they see on TV.

Here is what is wrong with R&Rs: That high level of trust may be about to evaporate. While I have no data, I sense more people having doubts as to the validity of the R&Rs they read online. These doubts may be well founded; recent articles have raised awareness of dubious or outright deceptive practices such as offering free product in exchange for ratings, people anonymously rating their employers' products, and farms of workers hired to post ratings.

If you are an authentic marketer and really want to get your blood boiling, check out fiverr.com, where people compete to write paid reviews. One person promises "I will leave 3 Amazon reviews from unique accounts that YOU write for $5," and 44 out of 45 reviews are positive. Comments include "I of course do always need more reviews, how many accounts do you have? And can you also do likes?" Obviously reputable brands are not on fiverr.com bidding for fake reviews, but the transparent sleaziness goes a long way to demonstrating the problem with R&Rs.

While those involved are smart enough to avoid saying, "We get paid to do positive ratings," the implication is loud and clear. "I would have done 4 stars instead of 5 without the deal," says one guy who received free product in exchange for his rating. And an employee of one of the R&R-writing services reports, "We were not asked to provide a five-star review, but would be asked to turn down an assignment if we could not give one."

In theory, it is not unethical to give discounts or freebies in exchange for a rating and review, provided a brand does not reward the effusiveness of the rating and--here is the part everyone misses--the consumer discloses the material relationship as required by FTC guidelines. (And just to be clear, it is the brand's responsibility not merely to instruct the consumer to reveal the arrangement but also to monitor that consumers are, in fact, disclosing appropriately.)

While I hope marketers are following the rules, I do not think the purveyors of R&Rs should rely on the willingness of those involved to adhere to rules--the stakes are just too high. For consumers, the temptation is great to earn cash, freebies and discounts in exchange for five minutes of faux exuberance on Yelp or Amazon. The reasons marketers are tempted to engage in dubious R&R practices are also obvious, as one recent study validated what we all intuitively believe about the value of positive ratings--each additional star on Yelp is worth 5% to 9% in incremental revenue.

Perhaps you believe you are a keen observer who can easily separate the fake reviews from the real ones. Turns out researchers have found the average consumer only gets this right around 50% of the time. You can even test yourself with an online quiz on the Marketplace site. (I scored 75% in the simple four-question quiz.) Even if we believe people have the power to spot and discount fake R&Rs, this cannot be the solution--it takes too long to review and assess individual reviews, and given the power of "star ratings" to furnish info at a glance and permit sorting based on score, we clearly need better ways to improve the quality and reliability of R&Rs.

Given the incentives to cheat, why haven't we seen innovations that encourage appropriate reviews and that filter reviews to make them more accurate and believable? A great deal of effort is going into technological advances to suss out fake reviews, but aren't there easier and better ways to accomplish this same goal?

For example, we are each unique, so why do we see the same information on most R&R sites? When I go to the San Antonio Things to Do page on TripAdvisor, the top-rated attraction in the city of the River Walk and Alamo is... a golf course?!? Even if it is accurate that the Palmer Course has the highest arithmetic mean for all of the submitted ratings in San Antonio, why would this matter to me? TripAdvisor knows I am not a golfer--I have made 101 contributions to TripAdvisor, and not one of them is for a golf course or shop.

One way sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor combat this problem is by showing me what my friends have rated. This is good, but I have friends who love golf. What I really want to know are the ratings of other people like me--it would be more informative to see the ratings of other museum-going, water-park-hating, jazz-loving non-golfing strangers who are similar to me. One of the benefits of furnishing ratings based on similar tastes is that it helps to filter out disingenuous raters. (Perhaps those who are paid or get discounts for the ratings they produce would like to see and rely on each other's ratings, but I rather doubt it.)

Another idea Jeremy and I discussed is discounting ratings from raters who only offer positive ratings. If a given user on Yelp or eBay only posts five-star ratings, wouldn't that call into question the authenticity of those ratings? Some may argue that people tend to write reviews when they feel strongly, but if this were true, we would see more ratings at both the top and bottom of the scale rather than the rating inflation exhibited on most sites. eBay data from 2007 demonstrated the median rating for "Item as Described" was 4.8 out of a possible 5; 67% of the ratings on Yelp are four or five stars; and virtually everyone who rates a video on YouTube gives it five stars.

This is when Jeremy offered the idea of using gamification to improve ratings. I am actually not as much of a fan of gamification as most social media pros. Even though I am an avid PC and mobile gamer, I just do not believe most people go through life wishing they could turn their communications, grocery shopping, dining, driving and TV viewing into a competition. In addition, too much gamification is designed to get people being inauthentic, distorting rather reflecting true opinion, influence and engagement. The fact a brand can amass a million followers by giving something away in a Zynga game is not sign of gamification's value to marketers but of its ability to falsify sentiment and destroy the legitimacy of Facebook "likes."

Jeremy's idea was one of the few I have heard that could turn gamification into a force for authenticity: What if reviewers were rewarded for offering R&Rs that most closely match a bell-shaped curve? Wouldn't reviewers' opinions count more to others if they reflected a more statistically accurate normal distribution of opinions? Perhaps discounts should be given not for any review (or positive reviews) but for people who create true value by creating the most believable and accurate content? If most reviewers were motivated to create R&Rs that were unbiased in a statistical sense, it would create greater dispersion of ratings, increasing the spread between the best and the worst products and services, and penalize (or remove the incentive) for paid reviews.

You probably have some of your own ideas for how R&R sites could be improved. The ease with which ideas can start flying as people discuss the problem is an indictment of how little has been done to improve the R&R process. Yelp says its ranking system "already factors in the number of reviews (and) whether they come from experienced Yelpers or first-time reviewers," but they've done little to make this evident.

If today's R&R leaders do not want to end up like Monster and MySpace, lapped by competitors with greater innovation and differentiation, it is time for the early market innovators to put as much effort into improving the usefulness and validity of R&Rs as they do into new marketing and advertising products. As Jeremy noted, "Trust is going to be the primary currency of the linked economy. If you lose it (and eventually you will get exposed), you're going to have a long road back."

Chrysler's ad was epic and memorable: Grungy unmistakable scenes of Detroit, a gritty voice expressing the poetry of hard luck and hard work; the rising strains of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" accompanied by gospel choir; and finally the man himself emerging from a Chrysler 200 to point at the camera and assert "This is the Motor City, and this is what we do."

Duplicating this recipe perhaps seemed easy to Fiat, but when they mixed together the same sorts of ingredients, the result was a disaster. Authenticity doesn't have a recipe and brands aren't created by photocopying best practices.

Chrysler's ad is a moving, breathtaking, convincing piece of work that combines art and commerce. This is what advertising should aspire to be, yet vast quantities of marketing budgets go into lookalike ads that fail to alter brand perception or market share. You don't need to take my word that this ad is a success--it earned an Emmy and boosted Chrysler's financial results. Said Chrysler's CFO, “It clearly had a fairly big impact also on market levels with [the] Eminem Super Bowl ad being extremely well-viewed on YouTube."

Fiat tried to recreate the Chrysler recipe. Jennifer Lopez is "Jenny from the Block," so having her drive through the Bronx in a new Fiat 500c seemed like a can't miss concept. Better yet, JLo herself offers, "This is my world, this place inspires me."  Ka-ching! The doors of Fiat dealerships must have been ripped from their hinges with the rush of business!

Fiat's outcome with their JLo ads was a bit different from Chrysler's results, however. Fiat sold only 19,769 Fiat 500's in the U.S. last year, less than half their goal. Performance was so bad that the head of the Fiat brand in North America lost her job.

(As if to prove one of my recent posts on how meaningless most social media marketing metrics have become, Fiat at first crowed about the results of this ad, saying they received a 500 percent increase in traffic to their YouTube channel and bump of 47 percent in brand awareness. That's great, but did it increase consideration, sell cars or motivate loyalty--you know, the metrics that matter?)

The reason for the divergent results for Chrysler and Fiat have everything and nothing to do with social media. Brands cannot and never could buy authenticity with a TV ad, but it is possible to earn it with the right advertising campaign. Today in the midst of the social era, authenticity matters more than ever before. There is no "best practice" for how to earn authenticity--it is different for every brand, audience and organization.

Let's count the many ways Chrysler's ad earned authenticity and Fiat's ad did not:

• Chrysler's ad was about Detroit; Fiat's was about a car. Chrysler's ad doesn't show the Chrysler 200 until 30 seconds into the ad; Fiat's ad puts the car full frame in the fourth second.  Can you imagine the discussion among ad execs at Chrysler--an auto ad that doesn't even show the car for 30 seconds!? That probably sounded risky and dumb, but authenticity isn't earned by impressions and GRPs; it's earned with confidence, context, shared values and history, all of which are on clear display in the Eminem ad.
    
• Chrysler's ad had chemistry between car and spokesperson; Fiat's did not: Marshall and I don't hang out, so I cannot vouch for the fact he cruises around Detroit in a Chrysler, but you and I probably recognize it's possible. JLo, the queen of bling who arrives to her American Idol appearances in a limo, tooling around in a tiny subcompact car? Ridiculous on the face of it. Chemistry is hard to measure and even harder to fake--Leo and Kate's chemistry made Titanic work while real-life couple Ben and JLo caused Gigli to crash. (Hmm, that makes two times Lopez has failed to bring convincing authenticity to a relationship with a costar.)
    
• Eminem isn't just "from" Detroit:  Search Google for where JLo lives, and you find answers like Bel-Air and Fisher Island off Miami. Do the same for Eminem and you get results like Rochester Hills, MI and Warren, MI. Eminem isn't just "from" Detroit--he (and Kid Rock) are Detroit for many fans. Eminem gives interviews to eighth graders in Detroit; he is a "Lions fan first and foremost," and  two years before the Chrysler ad, Eminem created a video "Love Letter to Detroit" for the NCAA finals. In contrast, JLo's association with the Bronx is so thin, it likely surprised no one when it was reported that JLo never left Los Angeles to film her scenes for the Fiat ad. JLo's spokesperson said "I don't see a problem" and compared shooting the ad to being on a movie set. Fiat found out the hard way that movies are about fantasy, brands are real and authenticity cannot be faked.
     
• JLo is brand promiscuous: Authenticity and trust are a currency--the more you spread them around, the less you have. Eminem, for the most part, is picky about lending his credibility to brands, having appeared in ads for Brisk and Chrysler. Lopez, however, spreads herself around--Fiat, Kohl's, L'Oreal, Harman/Kardon, Gillette Venus, Tous Jewelry, Gucci and her own branded fragrances. The more brands celebs endorse, the less each endorsement means. Some people were surprised Eminem appeared in a Chrysler ad, and that surprise speaks volumes about the value Eminem brought to the brand. No one was surprised to see JLo appear in a Fiat ad, except perhaps that it appeared she was driving in a tiny clown car.
    

 

I have long felt Facebook made a huge error with their "Like" button; or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Facebook's mistake was in failing to provide other options for following brands and pages other than the "Like" button. In furnishing no other ways for users to follow or subscribe to brand fan pages, Facebook has taken something that could have been truly valuable and made it insignificant or, worse yet, disingenuous.

Take, for example, my recent "Like" of the Gerber brand. If you know me, you know that I do not have children, so why am I fan of Gerber? Well, I'm not; or rather, I am a "fan" on Facebook but not a fan in any other sense of the word. A friend's child is in The Gerber Generation Photo Search and I wanted to vote for her, but in order for my vote to count, I was required to "friend" the brand.

Had Facebook provided a means for people to follow a brand without clicking the "like" button, the meaning of a "like" would be indisputable--a true signal of a person's affinity for the brand.  But there are no other ways to follow a brand on Facebook, so users click the "like" button for all sorts of reasons. According to an excellent ExactTarget study from last year, the top reason people "like" a brand is to receive discounts or promotions.  While the number two reason was to show support of the company to others, this was closely followed by getting a freebie, staying informed about company activities, getting updates on future products and sales and for entertainment. There can be no doubt that a Facebook "like" is not a true "like" by any non-Facebook definition of the word.

What's the harm if someone doesn't really like a brand when they click the "like" button?  The problem is that Facebook attempts to define users' "Likes" as something more than they really are. Facebook promotes a "like" as a relevant signal of affinity; their Sponsored Stories ad product turns users' "Likes" into ad impressions. When I see these ads, I am supposed to believe that my friends possess deep, warm feelings for the brands they like and, as a result, I should consider the brands for myself. But should I really care that my friend clicked "like" on a brand page simply because they wanted some Farmville trinket or a discount?

The fact a Facebook "Like" is meaningless at best (or misleading at worst) upsets me for several reasons:

• As a consumer, it could be truly helpful to know what products and services my friends like sufficiently to recommend, but that isn't at all what Facebook "likes" offer.
• As an employee responsible for a brand's Facebook page, I'd like for my company to collect true recommendations from customers and then use those to raise awareness of the brand; however, since a Facebook "like" has been rendered useless, I must find other, more meaningful ways to identify brand advocates and reflect true brand affinity.
• And as a marketing and communications professional, it upsets me that brands would encourage people to share "likes" with friends when those "likes" are not authentic brand recommendations. A very exacting read of the FTC Guidelines on Endorsements might suggest that my "like" of the Gerber brand be accompanied by a clear and conspicuous disclosure that I received something of value--a vote in a contest--in return for my endorsement of the brand. 

It is probably too late for Facebook to solve this problem, but adding a "subscribe" feature for fan pages would be a great step towards differentiating those who want to follow a brand from the real brand advocates. Facebook may believe it is redefining what it means to "like" a brand in the social era, but all they've really done is devalue the term "like."

You can see this for yourself--visit your Facebook profile and under "Activities and Interests," click the "Show Other Pages" link (and then, if present, click the last link in the series, which says something like, "And XXX more.")  Do you really like all of these brands?  Would you recommend them all to your friends?  No, but Facebook and many advertisers assume you would, and therein lies the true lost opportunity of the Facebook "like."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This is a saying that I've found thoughtful as a metaphor, but I've not before seen it realized in such a literal way, because now there is an actual (albeit virtual) road that I believe leads to a social media version of hell.

Empire Avenue is a game that also bills itself as an influence measurement mechanism--sort of a gamified version of Klout or PeerIndex. (By the way, I hope to soon feature an interview with Klout CEO Joe Fernandez on this blog.) The site is Farmville for the social media set, where one can "invest in any social media profile by buying their shares, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash."

There's always been an element of the fame game among social media gurus, and I admit I've tracked my blog's place on the Ad Age Power150 (a humble 448 now, but I was approaching the top 100 when Forrester asked me to abandon my personal blog) and my Klout score (a respectable 66). But while these sorts of scores have elements of competition, they are not games (or at least aren't intended to be games). To improve one's place on the Ad Age list or Klout requires hard work to offer valuable insight and build a network of engaged peers in order to earn authentic influence.

Now Empire Avenue furnishes a way to dispense with some portion (but not all, thank God) of that hard work. Since it is a game first and a legitimate measure of influence second, blog posts are popping up advising folks how to increase their value on the virtual social media exchange. For example, Eloqua's blog post on the game starts right with "Create Great Content," but it also includes "Advertise." Call me an old grump, but any social media influence mechanism that makes money off advertising as a way for players--excuse me, I mean social media professionals--to increase their score is on thin ice.

Empire Avenue strikes me as the latest in a trend toward tricks and tools that give the illusion of dispensing with hard work and providing an easy short cut to fame, influence, or business success. For example, when Google announced "Google +1," some SEO bloggers began predicting it would become a way to influence Google's search results. While it is unclear exactly how Google intends to use the data it collects from clicks on "+1" buttons, anything that replaces authentic signals of value (such as clicks to content and links from quality sites) with fake ones (clicks on buttons) will diminish rather than enhance Google's search results.

Another example is the practice of rewarding people for clicking the Facebook "Like" button for your brand. One company is currently offering Facebook users an entry into a sweepstakes to win a new hybrid car for those who will "fan" their page, and Einstein Bros Bagel famously gained 400,000 new fans by compensating these people with free bagels.

Obviously, it's much easier to pay people to friend you than it is to earn friends by authoring interesting content or creating great customer experiences, but are both equal in terms of building influence, advocacy, loyalty and business? Of course not; a fan you earn authentically is worth more than a fan who only says they're a fan because you compensated him or her to do so. The former will engage on your Facebook page, spend money with you and recommend you to others while the latter takes their sweepstakes entry and waits for your next discount or promotion.

Empire Avenue is full of good intentions, but I have the nagging feeling it is a road that leads us in the wrong direction. Should authentic social media professionals earn attention via in-game advertising and by trading shares of each other, or should they offer helpful data, insightful analysis, business-building ideas and a world-class network? To those doubters who already think social media is a self-involved fame game, does Empire Avenue send the message that we're narcissistic or that we're serious professionals focusing on serious business?

Obviously, I won't be joining Empire Avenue. If you think I'm missing out on something necessary or valuable, please comment below or tweet me; however, before doing so, visit Time Magazine's list of the most influential people of the last century. If you can envision Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa signing on to Empire Avenue to test and build their influence, let me know. Otherwise I'm going to take a detour away from shiny, digital Empire Avenue and continue to trudge the timeworn, analog, potholed road to influence.

Both routes are paved with good intentions, but I think one leads to a more pleasant, less infernal place.

Transparency and Authenticity are both important in Social Media and in our newly Social World, but what's the difference and which is more important?  The two are often used interchangeably, but authenticity is not  the same as transparency. Complete transparency may be thought of as revealing every private, confidential, or personal thought or experience; complete authenticity is more about being true to your ideals and never being fake or untruthful. Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre hotels, has provided us a lens through which we may evaluate the difference between--and the differing significance of--transparency and authenticity.

You can read about Conley's dilemma on BNET, but it boils down to this--he's a rock-and-roll CEO who lives large and believes in authenticity.  Some of his employees objected when he posted shirtless photos of himself to the Facebook profile the company PR firm created for him. He believes his employees are wrong to be concerned and asks "What, exactly, does it take to damage the image of the company?"

It's a great question, and the fact he asked it publicly in a blog post teaming with slights to his employees and justifications for his actions may furnish the answer he seeks.  I think a case may be made that Conley has damaged his company, but not because of his Facebook photos; it's his actions after his employees voiced their concerns--actions that prioritize transparency over authenticity--that may possibly prove troublesome for Joie de Vivre.

Conley's shirtless photos were clearly authentic. But so were the concerns of employees. The collision of two contrary but authentic beliefs provided Joie de Vivre with a golden opportunity for internal dialog about the brand, the organization's Social Media policies, and authenticity.  But this is not what happened, because instead of engaging employees, Conley took his concerns public in a blog post in which he admits his first reaction was, “Screw that; people who don’t like it can go work at Marriott.”

In making the concerns of his employees and his own reaction public, Conley has opted for transparency over authenticity.  Airing his grievances with employees was transparent, but it would have been more authentic to discuss the matter with his employees.   Remember that authenticity means keeping true to ideals, and it is clear Conley has an ideal that employee opinions matter. He is proud to have implemented a "cultural ambassador" program in which employees vote for their own representatives on matters of organizational culture.  In fact, it was some of these ambassadors who expressed concerns about Conley's Facebook shots!

Conley's desire for transparency ran headlong into his commitment to authenticity, and he opted to voice his opinions and seek support from outsiders rather than demonstrate care and respect for his ambassadors' feedback.  I believe he was transparent, but violated his own ideals, which was inauthentic.

This isn't the first time we've seen transparency collide with authenticity, nor is it the first reminder that authenticity always wins.  Cisco rescinded a job offer because the candidate tweeted she was weighing "a fatty paycheck against... hating the work"--transparent, but not authentic to her personal and professional goals, I suspect.  A PR firm Social Media consultant found himself in a very public embarrassment after tweeting that he "would die" if he had to live in his client's hometown--completely transparent, and also completely inauthentic in terms of his professional ideals.

I sometimes think we stress transparency too much in Social Media; after all, in the real world we are all  different people in different situations--we behave differently when interacting with our parents, our boss, and our friends.  Does that make us liars?  No, we sacrifice complete transparency in order to be authentic to our ideals in different ways within different relationships.  (I've had friends point out that I have a fairly blue sense of humor that never comes through on Twitter, but I feel my tweets are authentic to my professional passions, even though my guarded approach on Twitter may be less than fully transparent.)

So, my answer to Conley's question--What, exactly, does it take to damage the image of the company?--is that his photos didn't cause harm, but his overly transparent way of dealing with an internal issue may have hurt his relationships inside the organization.  He failed to honor his ideals that employees--particularly the ambassadors--have opinions that matter, and in doing so he made transparency more important than authenticity.

What do you think?  Was Conley authentic by venting his feelings publicly?  Do you think he'd be as accepting if one of his employees chose to post internal disagreements on a blog rather than address them directly within the organization?  And in a Social World, is it possible to be transparent but inauthentic?

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• How authentic should the CEO be on Facebook? (trafcom.typepad.com)
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IZEA is a leader in the "sponsored conversation" business, which is a euphemism for paid blog posts and tweets. IZEA promises benefits to everyone--hard-working bloggers can earn cash based on the size of their audience; brands can reach consumers via difficult-to-crack Social Media channels; and consumers can learn about new products and services from the bloggers they trust. It all sounds so positive, and it is complete and utter rubbish.

If you believe IZEA has the Midas Touch, it might help to brush up on your mythology; we all know Midas turned everything he touched into gold, but we forget how the story ends. Upon receiving his magical ability, Midas converted a few baubles into gold and at first was pleased, until he tried to eat and drink and found that solid gold food was not going to fill his stomach. His prayers to have the ability reversed were answered, and Midas renounced wealth and lived humbly the rest of his days.

IZEA promises easy gold, but those who engage with IZEA may find themselves wishing--as did Midas--for a quick exit. IZEA and other "sponsored conversation" firms are the wrong model for Social Media. Wrong for whom, you might ask? Absolutely everyone!

Why IZEA is Wrong for Brands

Like Midas, who was pleased with his initial results, IZEA claims their early programs furnished positive ROI. Brands would be wise to proceed with caution before basing expectations upon the outcome of IZEA's first programs; marketers have sometimes been enthused by the early success of new tactics and rushed into investments, only to be disappointed by diminishing results as those tactics became more commonplace.

For example, GM O'Connell, founder and chairman of the agency that in 1994 invented the banner ad we know today, noted that the very first banner campaign attracted a 42 percent clickthrough rate (CTR). That first banner ad garnered a CTR 100 to 300 times higher than is common today because it was unique and attracted attention. Paid blog posts and tweets are likely to follow the same path--furnishing some reason for initial optimism but ultimately earning the same consumer indifference and loathing as banner ads. For financial reasons, brands must proceed very cautiously with "sponsored conversation" tactics.

Another reason for brands to reject IZEA and their ilk is the quality of the blogs and Twitter accounts to which they furnish access. The IZEA home page lures marketers with names like Chris Pirillo (Technorati Authority of 537), Janice Croze (Authority of 1388) and Chris Brogan (Number 2 on the Ad Age 150) You don't need to scratch too deeply to see the giant chasm that exists between these people and the typical bloggers and Twitterers offered by IZEA. For example, on IZEA's SocialSparks.com I quickly found a "verified" blog called "OOooooh what does that do?!" offering sponsored conversations, but it turns out to be not a blog but a spammer's trap. In the IZEA community, this valueless spam site earned three "props!"

IZEA is now plotting to bring pay-per-tweet to Twitter, but this sort of platform already exists. As I noted in a blog post back in May called "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," Twittad.com has been offering paid Tweet opportunities for some time. As with IZEA, the quality is not what brands expect and demand. In that article I noted, "For just $918, you can sponsor the misspelled, fraudulent 'Official Joe Jonas Brothers' Twitter account, @JoesephJonas. With this sort of quality and authenticity, how could brands possibly lose?"

I am hardly suggesting that brands don't belong on blogs and in tweets, but for conversations to be truly valuable, they must be earned, not sponsored. On Twitter this weekend, I complimented a movie, recommended a brunch, and shared an interesting Social Media friend-tracking tool. I didn't get paid to tweet these things--my comments were earned by businesses that furnished the kind of function or experience I wanted to share.

I'm not even suggesting that brands cannot target bloggers or Twitterers for special attention. Far from it--Social Media PR that focuses on finding the right blogs and crafting the right approach for each blogger is an extremely valuable tool in the social marketing toolkit. But there is a world of difference between a smart, respectful, and customized Social Media PR effort and simply hawking your brand in a marketplace of mercenary bloggers willing to sell their readers' trust to whichever brands pay the price.

Paying for blog mentions is the lazy way for marketers to garner attention in Social Media, and as this approach becomes more common it will be apparent to consumers which brands earn buzz and which need to pay for it. In a medium as transparent as Social Media, brands that get people talking authentically create their own gold, but brands who pay for the attention they cannot earn legitimately will only make their brand's impoverishment of loyalty and influence that much more evident.

Please return tomorrow when we explore "Why IZEA is Wrong for Absolutely Everyone: Bloggers and Consumers".

In my last blog post, we explored the recent "Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions" report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). In this report, the IAB attempts to define metrics for Social Media, including methods for establishing the credibility of blog authors; unfortunately, the report didn't go nearly far enough on this matter.

Since blogs are increasingly important to marketers and because blog credibility is so vital but difficult to establish, it seems beneficial to explore this topic further. Based on research conducted into credibility on the Web, I suggest there are four dimensions that separate the credible and worthwhile blogs from the ones marketers should avoid. These four dimensions are Independence, Affinity, Transparency, and Presentation.

It is easy to see why brands are increasingly turning attention to blogs for marketing and PR purposes. In our newly Social world, blog traffic is increasing while traffic growth to traditional media sites is slowing. In the past year, traffic to Blogger and Wordpress went up 44% and 50% respectively, while traffic to CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times went up an average of just 17%.



Brands have many ways of leveraging the growing power and reach of blogs. In addition to launching their own blogs, brands may also sponsor blogs, target blogs for outreach and PR efforts, advertise on blogs, recruit bloggers into networks with special access to new products and information, and pay for posts (sometimes called "sponsored conversations.")

But all blogs are not created equal, and brands must proceed with caution, particularly when it comes to participating in networks that promise to play matchmaker between brands eager for blog attention and bloggers interested in a share of marketers' budgets. While third-party blogger networks may give the appearance that purchasing recognition and mentions on blogs is a cinch, the wrong impression on the wrong blog can do more harm than good.

Evaluating which blogs are right for your brand requires consideration of factors that include reach, relevance, and credibility. Reach refers to the audience for a blog, including total number of readers, subscribers, and visits. Relevance concerns the extent to which a blog's content and audience is appropriate to the brand; this can be determined by evaluating the number and frequency of blog posts on a given topic, the blog's organic search results for desired terms, and the percentage of readers or visitors that match desired demographics.

Credibility, the third dimension that determines if a given blog is right for a brand's outreach or sponsorship, is perhaps the most difficult to ascertain. Reach and Relevance can be determined by quantitative measures, but Credibility is more qualitative. Blog credibility has dimensions that include:

Blog Independence

Blogs that are already sponsored--even if the sponsoring brands are not competitors of your brand--have diminished value. In addition to the number of sponsorships, the quality of the sponsors should also be assessed.

Also, marketers should be cautious of working with blogs that have a noticeable number of paid blog posts ("sponsored conversations"). The presence of sponsored conversations can create brand clutter on a blog, but more importantly a large number of paid posts undermines the author's trustworthiness to readers. An endorsement from a blogger that rarely promotes brands is far more valuable than an endorsement appearing on a blog with many posts that begin, "This is a paid, sponsored blog post."

Finally, blogs that have a lot of ads or advertising of poor quality also reduce the perceived independence. In 2002, the Stanford-Makovsky Web Credibility Study found that advertising on a web site caused a reduction in the credibility of the site, and that pops-up ads and advertising that was difficult to distinguish from content caused substantial reductions in site credibility.

Quantitative measures of Independence: Ratio of sponsored conversations to total posts; Number of ads/sponsorships evident on each page.

Qualitative measures of Independence: Types of brands that sponsor or advertise on the blog; types of ads that appear on the blog.

Blog Affinity

A blog may be independent from other brands but still have a mission or point of view that is inappropriate for a particular brand. Unlike Relevance, which measures specific content and key terms that appear on a blog, Affinity is a consideration of how the brand's values match the blog's. For instance, a sponsored conversation about a new SUV will not be considered credible if it appears on an automotive blog that supports environmental causes and frequently criticizes vehicles with poorer fuel efficiency.

Problems of affinity or context are not new in online marketing, and marketers seeking to purchase advertising or sponsored conversations should heed the occasional missteps that have occurred with contextual banner ads. For example, it might have seemed a good idea for a travel company that offers experiences with sharks to use "sharks" as a keyword, until it caused their ad to appear beside the article, "Shark Kills Man Off San Diego Coast." In this case, the lack of affinity between the article and the ad reduced the ad's effectiveness.

Qualitative measure of Affinity: Before sponsoring or attempting to establish relations with a blog, marketers must take the time to evaluate each blog and ensure the correct affinity between blog and brand values.

Blog Transparency

As paid and sponsored conversations grow in frequency, a blogger's adherence to WOMMA ethics disclosure requirements must be an absolute requirement before a reputable brand establishes any commercial arrangement with a blogger. While sponsored blog networks such as IZEA claim to monitor blogs for obedience to rules intended to promote ethical behavior, it is important advertisers understand they and not the networks have the onus to ensure ethical behavior with respect to the advertisers' brands.

There are two reasons marketers should not rely on blog networks to police the ethics and disclosures of bloggers. First, WOMMA's Marketing Ethics Code of Conduct states (emphasis mine), "We require marketers to effectively monitor disclosure of consumers involved in their word of mouth initiatives." Secondly, in the event a blogger is caught passing off sponsored blog posts as unpaid editorial content, the damage will be much greater to the brands involved than to the network.

Quantitative measure of Transparency: One hundred percent of advertising and sponsorship on a blog must be clearly identified as such.

Blog Presentation

You already know this about your own marketing materials and Web sites, but spelling errors, poor grammar, and unattractive or unusable design undermines credibility. In a study of health site credibility conducted by Eysenbach & Kohler, it was found a professional design was strongly associated with perceived credibility.

Even though the standards for grammar and design may be lower on blogs than on brand or mainstream media sites, a recent study, "The Impact of Anonymity on Weblog Credibility," found that "the writer of the well-formatted, error free blog was more credible than the writer of poorly presented blog."

(Interestingly, this same study found that the quality of writing had no influence on the credibility of the blog itself, but the author notes this may be due to the use of students rather than a broader set of study participants. I suspect students are likely to have a much higher tolerance for grammatical errors than would older consumers and professionals.)

Quantitative measures of Presentation: Grammatical and spelling errors are easy to check. You might review a number of recent blog posts manually or use tools such as WebSiteOptimization.com's free Web Site Spell Checker.

Qualitative measures of Independence: It is recommended brands evaluate whether a given blog meets minimum standards for attractiveness, usability, and professionalism before associating the brand with that blog.


These four attributes--Independence, Affinity, Transparency, and Presentation--are important determinants of a blog's credibility. These are not the only factors that enhance or diminish credibility, but they are among the most important. Other factors that may be important, depending on the blog and brand, include Blog Attribution (the more frequently sites and blogs attribute their sources, the more credible they will be perceived) and Blog Reputation (presence of awards, Diggs, etc.)

In the future, it may be possible for marketers to assess blog and blogger credibility through automated means. A group of researchers in Austria is developing a system that analyzes words in blogs and compares them to words used in mainstream news sites as a means to estimate credibility.

It remains to be seen whether or not automated systems will ever be able to accurately assess attributes such as Independence, Affinity, Transparency, and Presentation, so for now marketers are advised to approach blog advertising and sponsored conversations with caution and to retain the responsibility for evaluating each and every blog. Networks may promise easy access to a large number of blogs, but you've spent too much time and money building, nurturing and protecting your brand to leave its stewardship to others.

If I gave you a nickel, would you say good things about me to your friends on Facebook and Twitter? How about if I gave you ten cents to post a link to my blog with a positive endorsement?

Are you offended? Do you think it's up to me to earn--rather than pay for--your goodwill and recommendations? Is the trust of your friends worth more than a couple of pennies?

That's okay, I agree with you, which is why "in stream" Social Media advertising is about as bad an idea as I've heard since "Social Media" entered marketers' vocabulary. I would not and am not recommending this ad tactic to clients, because I am concerned it could harm brands, increase complaints about advertising ethics, and be a terribly ineffective use of marketing dollars.

Of course, that's not to say that encouraging people to say kind things about our brands isn't vitally important in our newly social world. But let's recognize the cardinal importance of authenticity in Social Media and the Grand Canyon-sized chasm in authenticity that separates paying for Social Media buzz and earning it. Marketers have a wide variety of tools available to them to spark positive sentiment in Social Media, the laziest and most dangerous of which is "in stream" advertising.

The idea behind "in stream" advertising is that you are a media mogul. Yes you! In the age of Social Media, each of us is a mini publisher/broadcaster with our own readers/viewers. Your and my reach may not equal the New York Times' or ABC's, but the idea behind Social Media in-stream ads is that the eyeballs we command are worth no less than those controlled by big media conglomerates.

Of course, those aren't eyeballs; they're friends, peers, and family members. To those who believe in in-stream advertising, that's the holy grail--our friends trust us, and so a product we promote in our Facebook or Twitter status updates comes with built-in attention and authenticity.

But is that really the way it works if the brand is paying for the mentions? Is that authentic? Are you authentic if you engage in this sort of activity? How many times can you spam your friends before they start unfriending you, not just on Social Networks but also in real life? Which brings me to wonder who, exactly, would do this to his or her own friends?

The answer is that, contrary to advertisers' belief they are buying the authenticity that comes from one's friendships with others, the kind of people who prostitute their status updates aren't doing so to friends but to strangers. Since people with larger networks can earn more in-stream ad dollars, this encourages participants to amass "friends" by any means possible.

At best, these in-stream Social Media ad networks encourage people to spam friends, and at worst they encourage spammers to create spam profiles to disseminate spam to wide networks of strangers. (Any ad technique that requires the word "spam" to be used three times in a one-sentence description is clearly on very thin ice.)

And as the cherry on top of this spam sundae, this sort of advertising is unethical unless the people who get paid to post advertising reveal it as advertising. Failing to disclose one is being paid to promote a product is a violation of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)'s ethics code.

So, what sort of brand would engage in this sort of flawed, dangerous, and dubious advertising technique? Apparently (and disappointingly), brands are lining up. StatusPlug, a new network for spammy Facebook updates, has not revealed any clients as of yet, but TwittAd is bragging about its Land Rover campaign and the other brands who are in discussions for Twitter ads.

In the AdAge article, the CEO of TwittAd says, "We were worried it would be considered spam, but we didn't get a single complaint [about Land Rover]... What that tells me is that our connectors have influence." Funny, what this tells me is that it is easier to unfollow a spammy tweeter than to track down and complain to the spammy Twitter network that paid him or her to spam.

It is easy to see the value (or lack thereof) that TwittAd offers--check out the list of sponsorable profiles on their site. For a mere 58 cents you can sponsor angelguy1's Twitter account; over half of his tweets to date have been about getting paid for advertising in his Twitter feed, which is probably why he has just 14 followers. And for just $918, you can sponsor the misspelled, fraudulent "Official Joe Jonas Brothers" Twitter account, @JoesephJonas. With this sort of quality and authenticity, how could brands possibly lose?

While it's disheartening to see brands jump at the chance to pay for Social Media profile and update advertising, there are many brands who are taking a better route. For example, Ford has recruited 100 "agents" who will be given the new Ford Fiesta to test drive for six months. It is hoped they'll love the car and will share that excitement with their wide social networks. And General Mills has created MyBlogSpark, a network of blogging mothers who will be provided with General Mills product samples to review.

Even these efforts have been the subject of some criticism. For example, the General Mills network requires bloggers to contact the company before posting negative sentiment, which has caused some to question if General Mills is exercising "prior review" and if bloggers will have free rein to say what they want. (A General Mills spokesperson assured Adweek that those in the blogger network "are free to write anything they'd like.") Also, Adweek found a half dozen product review posts that didn't disclose the relationship with General Mills as required.

Time will tell if Ford and General Mills generate the desired success from their campaigns, but it is hard to find fault in their carefully conceived and executed strategies for developing authentic positive buzz in Social Media. Yes, it is more expensive to launch a buzz-sparking campaign of two-way dialog with consumers than it is to buy in-stream ads, but the positive difference in authenticity, transparency, and influence is absolutely worth it.

Of course, there is an even better and more organic way to develop positive sentiment in Social Media: Focus obsessively on having your product or service create a great, memorable, emotional, and brag-worthy experience for consumers.

A report on Social Media sentiment that I received today from Techrigy.com notes that Disney garnered a great deal of positive sentiment last week in Social Media. They didn't buy in-stream ads and they didn't give away free vacations; instead, Disney did what Disney does best--create positive consumer experiences. The favorable buzz generated last week came from things like people posting their fun Disney World vacation pix on Flickr, travel bloggers sharing a new Disney World deal, and people praising Disney for planting 2.7 million trees for Earth Day.

Inventor Edwin Land once said, "Marketing is what you do when your product is no good." As a marketer, I clearly don't agree with that, but the thinking behind that statement is more true today than it was decades ago when Land famously uttered those words. The better your product or service, more memorable the experience, and stronger the bonds with consumers, the less a brand needs to even consider paying people to spam their friends!