FTC Guidelines For Social Media And My Disclosure

December 1 is soon upon us, and that means that the FTC will be watching social media (I think bloggers particularly) very closely as it is related to disclosure of products and services. In a nutshell, don’t shill online if you haven’t disclosed that you got something for it, money or otherwise.  Good news for me, I am an open book and simply don’t talk about stuff that I don’t want to and really talk up stuff that I like…paid or not.  However, if I have not made it perfectly clear, just wanted everybody to know who has paid my bills at one point or another, or given me cool stuff to check out.  I am going to keep this list dynamic and current on my Disclosures page. If you want a good FAQ page for the FTC guidelines look here, if you really want to read the entire text, check out the PDF here.

I work with a lot of brands, running social media programs in all shapes and sizes. As such, I want to be perfectly open and clear about who I work for and who I do not. It would be impractical to list companies and brands that I frequently mention that I do not work for (there are far too many), but I will list those with in some capacity. Between my previous consultancy and my current position as Senior Director of Social Media Strategy at M80 I get to do some pretty amazing things with some really exceptional companies. Below is a list of organizations that I have (or had) a professional association with in some way. Some of them have paid me to run social campaigns, some have given me products or services to review. In any case, I do my very best to disclose that I am associated with them in some way. That said, what I write on my blog is my own opinion (same for Twitter and Facebook) and I only say what I feel to be true. In other words, when you read what I write, you can believe that it is my own opinion and not that of my employer(s) or anybody else. Lucky for me I happen to really, really like most of the products that I build programs for!

Here’s a list of some organizations that I currently or very recently have worked with.

Zune

Xbox360

Dr Pepper

Volkswagen

LG

Sony Ericcson

T-Mobile myTouch 3G

Warner Brothers

Snapple

Geodelic

Operation Smile

Macy's

Ingram Micro