What Your Disclosure Policy Says About You

September 20th, 2009 by Tim Barkow
In Social Marketing Tips

It was probably inevitable that the issue of disclosures on online reviews would rear its head. With the FTC issuing recommendations this fall and bloggers uniting to head off any controversy, we realized early on that addressing the issue of disclosure would need to be part of our solution. But understanding the issues is a bit more complicated than it seems.

The advent of personal publishing, and frankly, Google Adsense, has obliterated the line between personal and professional publishing. While it’s convenient to fall back on notions of trust and professionalism provided by traditional journalism, the genie’s out of the bottle and we’re probably better served by embracing the future, as messy as it is, and trying to make some sense of it.

The truth is, all of this only matters if you care about your audience. It used to be that building an audience was the foundation of any media business model. That’s not so true today, where a site can rely solely on Google searches or automatically generated Amazon affiliate stores to catch unsuspecting visitors and generate revenues. These types of sites clog up Google search results and create reader confusion, so it’s doubly important that you address this issue if you’re trying to build up a valuable audience for the long haul.

The First Rule
The first rule of thumb is simple: disclose any relationship you have with a manufacturer or seller. This is about maintaining reader trust. When someone reads one of your reviews, they are demonstrating that they need this information. It’s important to them. If they find out later that you were paid, they will feel deceived. You absolutely want to avoid this, as it’s eroding the trust you’ve built up.

• If you’ve been paid for the article, disclose it
• If you received free product for the article, disclose it and whether you are giving it back or not
• If you have an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer, disclose it

The surprising thing is, your readers will likely appreciate it. Disclosures build trust.

The Second Rule
The second rule is much harder: Sometimes, when you have an obvious conflict of interest, you really shouldn’t write about it. This one’s tough since it’s subjective: you need to ask yourself, are your readers going to react negatively to this article, enough that it’s not worth it?

What defines a conflict of interest? Mostly your audience. If you pay attention to reader comments, these things will be pretty obvious. On the low end of the scale, always posting about your work colleagues’ projects could be considered brown-nosing for the boss. On the high end, if you’re getting paid by a company (directly or indirectly), but fail to mention it, readers will probably feel manipulated. A lot of times, a conflict of interest emerges after several posts. Readers will notice and you’ll have to decide what to do about it.

The Third Rule
Sadly, the third rule is that you can ignore all the rules. These rules only matter if you care about building trust with your audience. And sometimes, your audience might not care that much either way. It’s a judgment call.