I read that new legislation will come into force in Europe making it illegal to create fake blogs (flogs) or post blog or forum entries purporting to be from someone else. It is designed to remove the process of astroturfing or “fake grassroots”… This is a good move and will hopefully remove the fake hotel review and blogs pretending to be an individual when it is actually a company behind the initiative. I know last year Walmart got involved in this practice (not illegally by the way) but the blog police (so to speak) found this and outed the practice. This raises the question would self governance have found out the practice anyway? It’s true that any major brand engaging in this is asking for serious trouble, at a minimum to brand credibility. Maybe in the long run this legislation will stop smaller companies with lower brand value as I believe it was never in a large brand’s long term interest to do this.
The article in Register reflects that “Whatever happens, the new laws are likely to have advertising and marketing agencies scratching their heads as they think up new (legal) online marketing campaigns” What is that about?
There are a myriad of ways on engaging with social media without pretense. (Disc. we provide some of these services)
1. Give people samples of your product and they can write about it. Just tell them to say where they got the sample and don’t tell people what to write.
2. Share useful information with people who will in turn may share it with their network.
3. Provide great content that will create buzz. Virals, micro web sites etc.
4. Identify the bloggers that are important for your business and communicate with them
5. Create forums, blogs or social networks connected to your brand (if your brand has emotional appeal) and bring the people to you so they can communicate
6. Listen to the online conversations that emerge on the web and bubble up in forums, blogs, networks and news
7. Try and start conversations and see what people think of your ideas via a blog on your web site or well sign posted separate web site
The list goes on. In my view if you are an agency that hasn’t looked at these alternatives (and others) already you are letting your customers down!