Open The Dialogue

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen-in on a webinar being presented by WOMMA about Ethics and Endorsements on today’s web.  Specifically, discussion surrounding best practices for disclosure (summary of reactions).  With the FTC’s regulations pending, the panel kicked-off WOMMA’s efforts to create an industry-wide set of standards and defenitions for marketers and communication professionals when it comes to disclosing brand involvement, affiliation, compensation, etc.

It was a solid panel and discussion presented by several big voices – John Bell, Jory Des Jardin, Sean Corcoran, Tom Collinger and Anthony DiResta.  Most of the discussion surrounded how different parties would approach disclosure – mainly marketers & brands vs. publishers.  Each panelist was able to offer unique perspective in relation to their background – especially POV from Mr. Collinger & DiResta, who spoke about the actual definitions and legal fortitude of disclosure.  Building legal language standards and definite explicit points of view for disclosure can help clarify confusion – especially for the consumer who, often, don’t have the history and background about a relationship a marketer or publisher has when they first click on that link.

John Bell was able to kick-off the panel with several practical points of advice for brands and influencers to work with whenever entering into a relationship where editorial opinion could be affected:

• Create terms of engagement for both parties – being clear and explicit about the terms of the program, make them public as well.
• Official agreement promising true opinion – to protect both the publisher, brand and most importantly, the reader.
• Disclosure execution – explicit explanations per post and on the greater property (i.e. blog, Twitter, etc.)
• Stick to your guns – show your readers that these set of ethics permeate throughout by adding notes in bio sections and aligning with organizations like Blog With Integrity or WOMMA

Jory and BlogHer’s standards for disclosure represented the best tactical examples on the panel but I think the true publisher voice was missing.  What about the people writing these posts and running these blogs?  Their perspective would’ve added valuable context to this discussion.  Certainly, how an author wants to and does handle affiliation on their property is a necessary piece to include when discussing relationships between brands and those whom they’re trying to influence (both the publisher and the publisher’s audience).

Since the webinar and sitting down to write this post I’ve had several healthy discussions with people who are both close and far from this subject.  With signs pointing towards sponsored conversations, how does that affect the value of engagement?  My colleague Laura and I would argue that outright sponsorship, even with proper disclosure, devalues a brand’s participation ROI.  In theory, an influencer’s audience is engaged for reasons that a sponsored conversation can’t support.  I’m most likely reading someone else’s blog because I value their opinion or perspective.  When I find out that they’re being paid to express such – credibility is lost (regardless of negative or positive opinion).

A full summary will eventually be live on WOMMA’s Ethics Review blog but, in the meantime, how do you feel about disclosure?  What are your standards?

Elisa Camahort Page is one of the co-founders of the women blogging organization, BlogHer, along with Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins. Elisa has been a marketing executive for 18 years in Silicon Valley, and currently leads all events, marketing and public relations for BlogHer.

Prior to BlogHer, Elisa ran Worker Bees, a marketing consultancy company. Elisa can be found on several blog, including: Worker Bees Blog, where she writes about marketing, social media, customer service and web 2.0 initiatives; Healthy Concerns, where she writes about health 2.0 and healthcare from the patient’s point of view; and Elisa’s Green Scene, a collection of green news in areas from design to cooking to politics.

In addition to the BlogHer events, Elisa is also a frequent speaker, having made recent appearances at SXSW and Fem2.0.

-AB

DM: BlogHer’s fourth annual conference is coming up in less than two months. What’s new on the agenda that attendees can look forward to?

ECP: Every year we try to mix it up, so there are indeed new topics on the agenda, such as:
• A travelblogging session
• Sessions around healthcare and medblogging
• A mini-writing workshop from Katie Orenstein of the Op-Ed Project
• An ongoing Geek Lab with presentations, tutorials and the opportunity to just informally connect and hack solutions all day long

When creating the schedule for the conference, what are your goals? What do you hope bloggers get out of the conference?

Our goal is truly to have something for everyone, to feature new, fresh, diverse voices, and to highlight the true diversity and quality to be found at every corner of the blogosphere. We hope bloggers walk away from every session with something they want to do, to try, to talk about, to tell someone about or to share.

Last year, the New York Times story became a bit of a scandal, but I was intrigued by the title of the piece, “Blogging’s Glass Ceiling.” Do you think BlogHer and women have broken a ceiling by blogging? If so, how?

Blogging provides the opportunity for every person to have their own personal platform to use as they wish. Some people use it purely for personal expression and connecting with friends and family. Others use it to promote their ideas and their work. Still others want to parlay their blogs into businesses. Blogging is just the tool. A very accessible and powerful tool. It’s your intent that defines what you can do with it. So yes, many women have had breakthrough facilitated, even precipitated by their blogs! Still others have simply discovered they are not alone with whatever issues they’re dealing with. It’s all good.

What do you think is the biggest barrier for women bloggers or for women who want to become bloggers?

Well, again, it entirely depends on what they want to achieve. There is certainly no barrier to get started. Many tools are even free, so you could start a blog on the computers at your local library. From there, this question could be answered many different ways. Certainly there are more blogs than ever, so finding a way to stand out is a challenge for us all. Often the best blogs reflect a lot of work on the part of the blogger, so our time-impoverished lives are another challenge. The biggest barrier is probably misconceptions about how much it costs, or how hard it is, or how scary the Internet is. To which I always just say: Start a blog and give it a shot. You’ve got to do it to get it sometimes! Certainly true with Twitter

Why do you think it’s important for the companies to get involved with BlogHer?

Because BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online today. The women in our network are hard to find via other channels, and yet they are your customers…and influencing your customers. We now reach over 14MM unique visitors per month…most of whom report being influenced by blogs to make purchases. As a commercial power, women bloggers are hard to beat! BlogHer is deeply invested and engaged in this community. We are part of this community. We know what makes this community tick. That being said, we also have business and professional journalism in our backgrounds, so we are out there figuring out the best practices for this blogger outreach. It’s a great combination of broad reach, deep engagement and best practices!

Women bloggers are mostly known for mommybloggers, because of their influence in the family and buying power. Do you see any other up-and-coming niches of women?

I don’t know if I agree that women bloggers are mostly known for mommybloggers. I would agree that consumer companies certainly recognize that buying power. But the media and political infrastructure pays a lot more attention to other segments of the blogosphere. What I see is that many women hate to be nichified at all. At BlogHer we don’t silo a woman’s interest. Our conference and our web community cover every topic under the sun…and women can hop from commenting about politics to commenting about parenting. We encourage companies to see that women who blog are influential and powerful consumers, whether they’re mom, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, daughters…

Graduation day is right around the corner for many public relations students. If you were professors at the University of BlogHer, what would be your closing remarks to your students?

It’s our mantra regarding best practices:

• Ask, don’t tell
• Listen before speaking
• Be transparent and fully disclose
• Forget about “the A-List”, find YOUR A-List, the bloggers out there who already care about the same values you care about and products or services you represent
Remember, we’re doing fine out here in the blogosphere without you. We’re building trusted community and finding empowerment. What are you doing to be trustworthy? How can you empower us?

Everyone talks about the A-list mommybloggers, like Heather Armstrong at Dooce, but who are three up-and-coming women bloggers that you think we should keep on our RSS feed so we can say “we knew them when…”?

There isn’t one blogosphere, there are many. There are three, four, ten up-and-coming women who blog in every blogging topic there is. I couldn’t possibly choose just three