I just got this email over the holiday weekend:
"I am A, work from my home in the Indian town of Mysore. I am a professional blogger and provide advertising services by promoting products and ideas on blogs. I blog with English speaking community. I charge nominal fee for my services. Eventhough, I do not have adequate data to claim the effectiveness of this form of advertising, it gives results. I will be glad and you could use my services to your esteemed Organisation. You can contact me on my email id...:
Now, "A." doesn't make any mention of disclosure but I would guess that is the last thing on her(?) mind. There are so many layers of 'wrong' here, Is the social media and word of mouth marketing space getting so sloppy that there is a market for this type of outsourcing/offshoring/paying people to promote without any integrity to what they say? I am assuming the worst, of course, as "A" is a little vague about how she will do her "job."
We must protect the integrity of word of mouth marketing lest it devolve like email marketing did with the onslaught of spam.
On the 14th of September, we (WOMMA) will have a timely online summit around best practice disclosure in social media and word of mouth marketing. Add that to the WOMMA Honesty ROI and brands and customers will be protected (along with the value of word of mouth marketing)
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