Social Media Video Case Study

This Video case study by Andy Sernovitz basically pitches a very simple concept for getting out of trouble regarding to social media, which is truthfulness. It is no longer an opinion anymore; it is the law by FTC. There are three recent rules posed by FTC to regulate the social media marketing.

1. Truthfulness in social media. Require disclosure. Don’t lie to people. Tell public the truth about your brands.
2. Monitor the conversations and correct the misstatements. Clean up you mess. Be responsible for what has happened and amend the mistakes.
3. Create social policies and training programs. It is the marketers’ responsibility to teach rule 1 and 2.

Staying with those rules and creating policies with training programs provide employees guidelines to follow. And that is the simplest and easy way to make your company out of trouble and safe. Establishing fake blog is just a short-term proven for your brands; I was pretty shocked that a company was fined for $300000 for using a fake blog. Once the scandal is out, your reputation is over and hardly to restore it back. Therefore, I think being a smart marketer should have a formal social media program to protect the liability from your customers.

I learned a lot from the personal opinions from Andy to keep up with the clean level of ethical social media. Never pay cash to bloggers for covering. That is not social media anymore and it is advertising. Do not hire people to write positive experiences about your brand which are not what they actually feel. It is false advertising which is illegal. Be able to provide real disclosure. Like whom you are and what your identity is. What your relationship is and where you get paid.

Do not hire agency or contractors to pitch positively for your brand which is not real. Since according to FTC, you are a hundred percent responsible for whom you hire. If you were being tracked, you will get into trouble and the penalty will be on you; not on the agency that you hired. Therefore, be honest and do not cross the line and the ethical standards.