FTC Disclosure Guidelines

What are the FTC disclosure guidelines?

FTC disclosure guidelines, what are they and why should you know them.

Up until a couple of years ago the use of endorsements, sponsorship and influencers in social media was the wild west.

As a result the FTC stepped in and issued extensive guidelines late last year and you should know them.

Why should you k The FTC has stepped up its enforcement in the form of warnings and fines

As a business, you are require to educate your influencers, ambassadors… on what should be disclosed and how and the FTC is quite specific about it

As an influencer, sponsored or ambassador if you receive anything of value you have to clearly disclose that you do and the notion of value is pretty extensive

As an employee of the company you have to clearly disclose it

Disclosures have to be clear and conspicuous. What does that mean?

To make a disclosure “clear and conspicuous,” advertisers should use plain and unambiguous language and make the disclosure stand out. Consumers should be able to notice the disclosure easily. They should not have to look for it. In general, disclosures should be:

close to the claims to which they relate;
in a font that is easy to read;
in a shade that stands out against the background;
for video ads, on the screen long enough to be noticed, read, and understood;
for audio disclosures, read at a cadence that is easy for consumers to follow and in words consumers will understand.

A disclosure that is made in both audio and video is more likely to be noticed by consumers. Disclosures should not be hidden or buried in footnotes, in blocks of text people are not likely to read, or in hyperlinks. If disclosures are hard to find, tough to understand, fleeting, or buried in unrelated details, or if other elements in the ad or message obscure or distract from the disclosures, they don’t meet the “clear and conspicuous” standard. With respect to online disclosures, FTC staff has issued a guidance document, “ How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising,” which is available on ftc.gov.

By the way, if you are in healthcare, so did the FDA and in financial services so did the SEC and FINRA.

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018

Facebook Apps Privacy Check

Facebook app privacy check

How do you do a Facebook app privacy check? With all the bad privacy news emerging this past weekend, now is a good time to check your settings, especially which app you, wittingly or not, allow to dig into your personal information and allow to have access to your friends.

Photo courtesy blogtrepreneur

First, to understand what happened, let’s start from the beginning.

in 2015, a company called Cambridge Analytica, working on election campaigns was looking for extensive data to perfect their analytics model targeted at precisely influencing electoral behavior

One problem though, they did not have access to that massive amount of information

Comes in Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan. He creates a Facebook app called “thisisyourdigitallife” described as a tool used by psychologists

Facebook users open the app, by the same token allow the app to collect information about them and their friends.

Now, if that was the end of the story, no big deal, Facebook allows researchers to mine the data for research and academic purpose but Aleksander Kogan then crosses the line and sells the data collected from 50 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica then uses the massive amount of data to micro target voters for the Trump campaign

The moral of the story, be very careful as to what information you allow apps to have access on your Facebook profile. Before you can open any app the creators are supposed to tell you what information the app will access. Don’t just click yes and think if using the app is worth giving away that information

As we saw in this case, not all data collections are innocent and even if they are, there is no guaranty they won’t be used for nefarious purpose later on.

What now you will ask?

I bet you have given many apps access to your data, now is a good time for a privacy check and a clean up

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018

Instagram, is it for your business?

Is Instagram really the best business marketing platform?

I have been asked a lo

t of questions about Instagram recently.

I am assuming a lot of the noise comes from recent changes in the Facebook interface and algorithm, the organic reach disappearing and the fact that for businesses, Facebook has become an advertising platform where businesses and brands now have to pay to play.

Milleniums have been the most vocal in promoting Instagram as the newest and best marketing platform.

So, let’s dig into the numbers.

Pew Research is a well respected institution that has been tracking social media for several years so they are a pretty reliable reference

-80% of Instagram users are out of the US
-of the 800 millions active users, only 160 millions are in the US

-38% of users in the US are women, 26% men

-59% of users in the US are under 30

-95% of Instagram users in the US also use Facebook

-54% also use Pinterest
-63 percent of teenagers in the US use Instagram daily

Instagram is also a mostly mobile and visual platform

In the end, there is a lot more to marketing than fades and short term trends, not that I think Instagram is either.

The best marketing platform is the platform used by your clients and prospects. Before selecting a platform, look at the demographics and ask yourself the question, are the demographics my market or the market I want to reach.

If your market is young adults or teenagers, if your clients and prospects tend to be younger women, then definitely Instagram is a good platform for your business

May 4, 2016May 4, 2016

Marketing And Social Media Consultants too Expensive?

Marketing and social media consultants hear this a lot “Your services are expensive”, never mind when you are a consultant with extensive traditional and digital and social media marketing experience

When considering the quotes from marketing or social media consultants, a lot of factors come into play.

A Major part of every business (small or large) success is the ability to implement an effective marketing strategy.

That becomes even more important when you look at the constant and fast evolution of the digital/social media landscape.

Keep in mind that marketing, traditional or digital is not a magic wand, it does not work overnight, it requires perseverance and commitment.

Not all platforms will work every time or for every case, it takes know how, testing, measuring. Keeping up with the developments, especially in the social media field takes time, takes keeping up with trends with what is done, what has worked, what has not worked, not a time commitment most small businesses that takes time.

In my experience, most small business owners want to focus on the big picture, on their business, on what they are passionate about, not marketing. At the same time most small businesses cannot make the financial commitment for a full time marketing department. Continue reading “Marketing And Social Media Consultants too Expensive?”

May 3, 2016May 3, 2016

Social Customer Care

Social customer care or social care; when customer care goes social

Brands and companies have been slow embracing social customer care and even trail blazers have had mixed overall results, one of the main reason being that customer service and customer satisfaction is often times lip service rather than a core corporate value.

Did you know that :

80% of companies say they are good at customer service, but only 8% of their customers agree.
Only 5% of unhappy customers complain in a way brands can find it. The other 95% just disappear (often to competitors).
40% of customers who complain on social media expect a response within an hour, but the average response time of brands which respond at all is five hours.
Brands spend $500 billion on marketing every year, but only $9 billion on customer service!

Why is that?

Continue reading “Social Customer Care”

April 14, 2016April 14, 2016

The Psychology Of Choice

The psychology of choice:

Ask any entrepreneur and they’ll probably tell you it’s getting harder to forge meaningful relationships with customers Choices for just about everything multiply making emotional connection with the product or service critical.

A big part of an entrepreneur’s job is to notice things other people miss, understand the motivations behind the series of decisions that lead a customer to take action, hopefully being to buy your product. Understanding how users feel during that process is what differentiates your business. The better you know what turns them on or off, their emotional connector, the more likely your prospect will buy

April 14, 2016April 14, 2016

EEOC AntiDiscrimination Guidelines

Antidiscrimination:

Some states passed antidiscrimination legislation protecting LGBT employees and customers. Others decided to go the other way making compliance very confusing for the average small and medium size business, so what are small business owner or entrepreneur responsibilities wen it comes to preventing discrimination.

Lucky for you, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has released a free, one page guide to help startups comply with federal anti-discrimination laws.

Here are some of the highlights:

Download the free guide (PDF)

September 18, 2015September 18, 2015

Leadership BS

Very interesting NPR interview; Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer‘s latest book is “Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time.” The leading management thinker and columnist for Fortune magazine says almost anyone these days can call themselves a leadership expert.

He explains why people gravitate to leaders who are “lying narcissists” even though the best leaders exhibit qualities such as modesty, authenticity, truthfulness, trustworthiness and concern about the well-being of others.

Pfeffer tells Here & Now‘s Meghna Chakrabarti that CEOs who create bad workplace environments should be held accountable. Pfeffer says “just as we hold people and companies responsible for their environmental pollution, we ought to hold them… accountable for their social pollution.”

August 14, 2015

Basecamp co founder on valuations

Basecamp’s co-founder doesn’t obsess over valuation

How much are we worth? I don’t know and I don’t care.

I was recently speaking to a class at a local university and the topic of valuations came up. One student asked me what our valuation was. I gave her the honest answer: I haven’t a clue.

How is it possible that a successful software company today doesn’t know its worth? A valuation is what other people think your business is worth. I’ve only ever been interested in what our company is worth to us.

Startups these days are bantered about as if they were in a fantasy football bracket. Did you hear Lyft raised another $150 million at a $2.5 billion valuation? But Uber got tossed another $2.8 billion at a $41.2 billion valuation! Then there are the companies barely off the ground getting VC backing with 25x valuations, despite having no product or business model.

Entrepreneurs by nature are competitive. But fundraising has become the sport in place of the nuts and bolts of building a sustainable business.

The last time I considered Basecamp’s valuation was nearly a decade ago. We’d been approached by dozens of VC firms looking to invest. But with a solid product, a growing consumer base, and increasing profitability, we didn’t entertain any offers.

Then, in 2006, I got an email from Jeff Bezos’s personal assistant. Jeff wanted to meet. I’d long admired him for what he was building at Amazon, and how he generally sees the world. I took the meeting.

After a visit to Seattle and a few more calls, Jeff bought a small piece of our company. I didn’t take the cash out of some fantastical desire to turn Basecamp into a rocket ship. Instead, his purchasing shares from me and my co-founder took a little risk off the table and gave us direct access to the brain of one of today’s greatest living entrepreneurs.

Read the rest of the story

August 5, 2015

Porsche Social Media Backbone of its Digital Strategy

For Porsche social media is not just an additional tool in order to connect to online-savvy audiences, it’s the backbone of their online strategy

Porsche is mining the always-on sensibilities of social media to encourage fans to share and consume content from one integrated platform, which is www.porsche.com . Porsche is using content curation tool Storystream to steer this efforts, building microsites that give fans a holistic view of what’s being said about certain car launches of campaigns worldwide.

“We do not believe in a linear progression through a virtual funnel, but recognise that each customer chooses their individual path to form a purchase decision. We thus believe that Porsche must understand the specific needs of the customer in his individual situation and listen to signals he/she is sending in order to cater the right content at the right point in time. In order to work in this context, every bit of content needs to be responsive,” Porche’s digital marketing and dialogue manager and Deniz Keskin told The Drum.

To accelerate the plan, Porsche is encouraging its agencies and ad tech vendors to get tighter to companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter in order to create content that fuels business goals. It’s an approach the car maker tries to balance with what it hopes are more agile ways of working directly with its marketing partners so that it can respond to communication challenges.

“Social media is more than an efficient and speedy way of communicating to a (primarily) younger target group. As a luxury manufacturer, we see more and more of our actual customers in that space,” said Keskin. The discipline is used to hit three key goals; building additional awareness for Porsche’s communications, amplifying the conversation around through brand ambassadors and listening to conversations that could become early signals for business issues.

“This is why we regard Social Media not only as an additional tool in order to connect to online-savvy audiences, but as the backbone of our online strategy,” said Keskin.