Transparency, authenticity, disclosure, etc., are common buzz words in social media marketing.
To me, those and similar terms are about good ol’ honesty and integrity. Yes, integrity in public relations (or whatever realm you put social media marketing in).
I see nothing wrong with being paid or having other commercial/financial vested interest in promoting a company or group via social media technologies and tools — as long as you disclose your relationship, motive, etc. Heck, I’ve been paid to do it for the better part of the past four years.
Social media marketing is an interesting work process compared to traditional, offline media relations. It has forced PR pros to “step out from behind the curtain” because social media can easily intertwine our personal and professional online personas.
While the content is important, the source is just as important because the source is one way to help me judge the quality of the content and if I want to follow any links (such as content that is tweeted). If it’s a corporate or association Twitter account, for example, I don’t care who’s behind it because it’s a safe bet that most of the content is designed to help the company or association.
But, if it’s a person behind the tweet, for example — whether I know him/her or not — I definitely want to know if the content he/she is tweeting is because of personal or professional interest, or both.
To me, there’s a very basic litmus test to determine when you should disclose the relationship:
If you are being paid, will otherwise financially or somehow professionally directly benefit from a blog post, tweet, etc., you should disclose — even if the topic also is of personal interest.
For me, I am involved in public relations, social media marketing, and other marketing communication activities. I also do freelance journalism work for a couple Toledo-based newspapers. One is the Toledo Free Press. Every so often, I’ll retweet a tweet by the TFP. I do that because I think an article is important and I think others should know about it (others meaning people who may follow me but not the TFP).
I don’t think RT’ing the the paper’s tweets will directly benefit me (and I’ve never RT’ed a TFP tweet that was one of my articles). I guess by helping spread the exposure of the paper, one could argue that I’ll indirectly benefit by the chance that more people will be exposed to its articles, and likely visit its site, which could reinforce to advertisers that the TFP is a sought-after paper. And, if the TFP does well, one could argue that I would benefit.
I haven’t disclosed that I’m a stringer for the TFP in my RTs. Should I? To me, it’s a bit of a stretch that I’ll benefit by RT’ing the paper’s tweets. I also have RT’d the Blade’s tweets. Are those RTs any different?
If you disagree with me and think I should disclose my relationship with the TFP when I RT, please leave a comment.
And what about you: Do you disclose your business relationships with your tweets, posts, etc.?
-Mike
