Now that I have established the significance of Google Places with today’s consumers, let’s talk about how to get more leads from Google Places by building your listing’s credibility.

1. Create a complete account using the Google Places Quality Guidelines found here: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528. Don’t be fooled into thinking you can game the system to get around these guidelines, as the results could be disastrous. It only takes 30 minutes to read through the guidelines and any competent local internet marketer can walk you through the process to make sure your account is properly setup. Make sure to complete your business profile as much as you can (yes, this includes the optional fields such as uploading pictures) and add the appropriate categories for your target market.

2. Use a consistent, Google Places friendly NAP (name, address, phone number) on your listing, website, and other online citations (see Tip 3). Google automates everything so even a minor variation in your business name, address, or phone number between your Google Places account and other sources can cause your listing to drop in credibility. Another good practice is to make sure the exact address from your listing is displayed prominently in text format on your website’s homepage (i.e. not as an image). Using a P.O. box as your address is considered spammy by Google but you may consider registering a virtual office (around $50/month) if you don’t want to show your address publicly. As far as phone numbers go, the best option is to use a local landline for your listing. A VOIP or forwarding local number is less ideal, while call center or 1-800 numbers are highly frowned upon.

3. Citations for your listing serve as votes of confidence to Google about your listing’s credibility. You gain citations by listing your business in as many credible online directories as possible. The process of doing this manually can be time consuming, but the results are worth it. Here is a starter list of business directories to consider: Axciom.com, InfoUSA.com, yellowikis.wikia.com, merchantcircle.com, cityslick.net, citysquares.com, facebook.com, google.com/profiles, superpages.com, hotfrog.com, ezlocal.com, surveylocal.com, getfave.com, local.yahoo.com, kudzu.com, manta.com, yellowpages.lycos.com, bbb.org, citysearch.com, insiderpages.com, yelp.com, and many, many more.

4. Online reviews have recently exploded in importance not only in gaining credibility with Google but also potential customers. There are 2 methods to obtaining these reviews: wait for them to appear naturally (not ideal), or encourage your satisfied customers to post them regularly. The key benefit of the second method is an obvious advantage in review quality and control. You will want to have positive reviews on multiple review websites to gain maximum Google credibly for your listing. How to best obtain these reviews is a delicate matter that should at least coincide with each review website’s quality guidelines. Because of the importance and complexity regarding obtaining online reviews, we have created an online review generating tool to simplify the process for business owners called Survey Local.

5. If you do not supply photos for your listing, chances are Google will supply them for you which is not always to your benefit. Adding videos and photos to your listing is part of completing your profile and is one of the easiest ways to draw attention to your listing. One exciting new option is Google Business Photo’s which uses 3D photography just like the street view on Google maps to give customers a virtual tour of your business. If you are near Dallas, we can recommend a photographer that is certified by Google to utilize this new technology for you.

6. Unlike Groupon or other emerging coupon sites, Google Places gives you a free platform to promote coupons for your business on the internet. Once your listing is verified, you can add or remove coupons at your discretion.

7. Lastly, I’ll address the all important topics of website optimization and SEO. A highly credible and optimized company website will pass significant influence to your Google Places listing. The benefits of using SEO for your main website are already huge, and knowing that it directly affects your listings is just another reason to get it started.

I know how proud you are of your website from 2005, but just like marriage proposals on reality TV shows, some things are not meant to last. Websites today are what business cards were 30 years ago. You can either hand your customers a bland, bent-up mess that looks like it has been sitting in your wallet for the past 8 years, or provide a fresh, eye-catching representation of your business.

While visual appeal is an obvious reason for updating your website, the benefits are more widespread. For example, Google has recently announced a “freshness update” to its omnipotent search engine algorithm that rewards websites for fresher content with higher search engine rankings. Also, integrating your website with certain social media tools can vastly increase your website traffic and brand awareness.

Tip #1

Dates and Links

Update or remove old references on your homepage. In particular watch out for old dates, outdated events, and broken links that no longer point to their original source. Another commonly overlooked example is the copyright date usually displayed at the bottom of websites. Using the same copyright date from 2008 will make website visitors question the “freshness” of all other website content. Here is an example of a professional format for the copyright date on websites:

Copyright © 1998-2012 Example Corporation. All rights reserved.

If you have not taken the time to do this for 2012, now is as good a time as any.

Tip #2

Old School Visitor Counters/Website Analytics

Whenever I find a rectangular box on a website informing me I’m the 11,658^th visitor, I look outside my window to make sure I didn’t accidentally step through a crack in time on my way to the office and get transported back to 1999. What’s worse than the tacky, completely inaccurate counter is knowing that behind the scenes of this website there is a hamster wheel powering the analytics where there should be a modern day V8. Good website analytics have become so crucial to the modern business I can’t imagine trying to use a website without them. In fact, most of the major business decisions we make are based on data collected from our website analytics. Even free tools such as Google Analytics can provide comprehensive insights such as how and where people are finding your company online, what marketing methods results in actual sales, and the list goes on. While I admit there is a small learning curve to using these tools, many of them are free to use and the investment in time/money to learn how is always worth it.

Tip #3

Overly Flashy/Unrecognizable Content

As much as I appreciate a good episode of “Wheel of Fortune”, flash and mystery have little place on a modern website. Today’s consumers want information clearly laid out and easily accessible online. If customers have to scroll down and/or click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for, they will drop like flies. My pet peeve for industries breaking this rule is restaurants. As much as I appreciate the decadent slideshows of featured cuisines and pages regarding unique philosophies for seeking out only the best ingredients, I do not want to feel like I’m looking at a Where’s Waldo book while simply trying to find the menu. As a business owner, you need to identify what your customers want most from your website, and give it to them in as simple a format as possible while retaining a professional appearance.

Tip #4

Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Many recent studies have found that while pay-per-click advertising can still be effective at driving website traffic, SEO is the leading vehicle of choice for growing online traffic as consumers become more adept at discerning ads from natural search engine results. Many older website designs lack SEO rich features that search engines like Google look for today. The first step of SEO is to include local and specific keyword phrases into you web pages. If your website is heavily designed with images instead of text, search engines are likely skipping over important content. A good way to determine what is being read by search engines is to click and drag your mouse to highlight all the text on a web page. If the text is part of an image (bad), the entire image will be highlighted or you won’t be able to highlight the text at all. If you have additional questions regarding SEO for your website, we are happy to provide a free consultation and quote.

Tip #5

Social Media Buttons

Simply put, they are free to use and allow your satisfied customers to instantly connect with your social media sites which can create social buzz about your company and promote branding. Rather than get into a lengthy How-To here, I’ll direct you to a host of other sources dedicated to this topic:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/11/add-social-sharing-buttons/

http://www.addthis.com/

If you want more ideas, just google “how to add social media buttons to website” and you will find several detailed guides.

Tip #6

Online Reviews Tools

In typical format, I have saved the best for last. One of the fasting growing trends in social media regards how customers interact with businesses via online reviews on social websites. Gone are the days when customers patronize a company because of a glossy brochure or fast talking salesman. Customers today have especially grown a distrust of testimonial web pages (for good reason) in favor of social review sites like Yelp, Insiderpages, Google Places, and so forth. This has led to an explosion in online review website usage which is not always advantageous to business owners. As consumers turn to outside sources to evaluate businesses, owners can be crippled by negative reviews (true or not), constantly needing to monitor the plethora of review websites, and long drawn-out processes for addressing harmful content. Rather than accept this as fact, there is another option. Several companies now offer very inexpensive online review tools that allow business owners complete control over 3rd-party, verified reviews.

For example, our tool, SurveyLocal, lets businesses automatically invite customers to review them, while directing positive reviews to social websites and negative reviews to be addressed offline (over the phone or in person). Once collected, the entire report can be made available for the owner to post on their website (optional of course) in place of an outdated and mistrusted testimonials page. While your complete report may include a few minor blemishes among all the positives from your real customers, if you choose to display it on your website you will gain significant trust from potential customers while reducing the need for people to turn to outside review websites that you have little control over. Also, most companies that offer this kind of tool give you the option to have positive reviews shared on your Facebook page which is a great way to populate your page’s feed.

Summary:

In case you are still thinking: “Well that sounds great and all, but I still prefer our website from 2005,” let me conclude with one last statement. The tips from above are not merely suggestions for future experimentation, they are all tried and tested methods that have produced real results for our clients. I purposely singled out the simplest and most cost effective ideas in hopes that 2012 will be an improved year for your company as we all endure the tighter economic climate together.

5 Worst Banner Ads of 2011

#1 Worst Banner Ad

For the past few months, I have been repeatedly seduced by the claims of a “revolutionary new muscle builder” from numerous variations of the ad below:

Inspired by the genius marketing design and compelling title, I decided to create a banner ad promoting a healthier lifestyle that all the non-steroid injecting folks can relate to:

#2 Worst Banner Ad

Being the overly self conscious, money-smart person that I am, I’m always on the lookout for the next latest and greatest home remedy for teeth whitening. Just when I was about to give up hope, this ad caught my eye:

Unfortunately, it turns out that Mom is more into accounting tricks than home remedies as this product will net you a recurring $100/month charge for what’s probably an unregulated knockoff version of Crest Whitening Strips. Perhaps a more accurate ad could read:

#3 Worst Banner Ad

These days it seems you can get about anything online…

This ad was admittedly hard to improve; however, I figured a more targeted and direct ad copy might give it a little extra oomph:

#4 Worst Banner Ad

Let’s be honest, we all are busy people, constantly looking for shortcuts to help us save time in an increasingly time-demanding world. Well, when every second counts, there are always pajama jeans:

Personally, I’m waiting for the 3 piece suit option to come out before jumping on board, but perhaps a different version of the ad would be more enticing for the mass markets:

#5 Worst Banner Ad

And finally, what list of 2011’s worst banner ads would be complete without a completely legitimate sounding get-rich-quick scheme while relaxing from the comfort of your home, no doubt wearing your newly purchased pajama jeans.

What my version of this ad may lack in flash, it more than makes up for in practicality:

That’s it! 

For the past 100+ years, most business marketing plans were pretty simple: treat your customers right so that they happily tell others about you. In the past 5 years, however, the internet has spun this traditional method on its head by introducing online word of mouth. Online word of mouth has taken on many forms in recent years and business owners should make it a priority to understand how each of these forms can and do affect their businesses.

Don’t Get Left Behind

Here is a story about one of our recent clients and how they nearly missed the recent shift to online word of mouth marketing:

Business over the past 15 years was going great at XYZ Company, a medium-sized and locally oriented corporation. In fact, business was growing every year just from the glowing word of mouth produced by providing an excellent quality of service. Then came the “Great Recession” and the growth slowed and even started to reverse. Nothing had changed about the business and nearly every customer was still extremely satisfied. I know this for a fact because once hired, our company conducted a satisfaction survey from a large customer sample size and found that 99% of XYZ’s customers would recommend this business to a friend. I then discovered an overlooked area of the businesses that had seemed insignificant until now and was greatly lagging behind most of their competitors: their online word of mouth.

I found that the most influential form of online word of mouth marketing for this local company was their Google Places page, which showcased all of 2 reviews, one of which was blaringly negative. Having just surveyed the company, I knew that what the majority of potential customers were finding about this company online was in no way an accurate representation of just how good the company really was. At the same time, many of their competitors had accumulated dozen of positive reviews making XYZ’s profile that much less appealing.

Building Positive Online Word of Mouth

Before you can set off on promoting your business through online word of mouth, you need to narrow down the list of ways your potential customers find out about you online. The most straightforward way to do this, of course, is to simply ask your customers. There are usually certain industry specific review websites (e.g. urbanspoon for restaurants) that you should be aware of. You also might want to check to see what information comes up when you google your business name or related products.

Google Places for Local Businesses

If you are targeting a local audience, you cannot afford to ignore Google Places, which thanks to Google’s recent search engine layout update, has taken a staggering leap to the top of both online and offline local search tools. The graph below, provided by www.clickz.com, illustrates just how important Google Places has become to local businesses:

One takeaway from this chart is that in most cases online reviews displayed on your Google Places page will be seen by more customers than those on any other review site.

The bulk majority of online word of mouth is generated by review and social media websites. Keeping up with every one of these websites can be a hassle so make sure you focus your time and money on first improving your reputation on the websites that count the most. An easy and free method to track any mention of your company is to sign up for Google alerts and enter your company name which will then let you know if your company is mentioned anywhere on the web. It’s no silver bullet, but it should provide a useful resource at least.

The next step is to begin directing positive customer feedback and reviews to the websites of your choice. The best way I have found to do this is to constantly invite your customers to leave you feedback (we provide a short online survey tool for our clients) and then invite the most satisfied ones to help support your company by leaving a positive online review. Our statistics show that on average, 20% of your customers will complete a 5 question survey that is emailed to them without any incentive. Of those, roughly 15% will then also leave a positive online review if prompted without any incentive. If you do provide some sort of incentive, those percentages jump up dramatically.

Combating Negative Online Word of Mouth

If you do happen to find negative reviews or comments out there on the web, many review websites give you the option to flag comments that are spammy or violate the website’s terms of agreement. Sites like Google Places also have a voting system where you can vote down the helpfulness of any comment. While these options can help for fake or derogatory comments, you should pay close attention to negative comments that are from real customers. When available, you should always try to respond to negative criticism online and practice your diplomacy skills to resolve the issues which can help demonstrate your commitment to customer service to other potential customers. One of the major benefits of providing your customers with a short survey is that it is much better to catch and address complaints before waiting until you find out about them online where they can be difficult to remove. Finally, the simplest way to combat negative online word of mouth is to overwhelm the negative with positive feedback from your real customers through the steps previously mentioned.

Professional Online Word of Mouth Services

Whether or not you decide to hire an online reputation manager, you should make improving your online word of mouth every bit as important as maintaining your traditional word of mouth. Although the internet makes keeping track of your online reputation somewhat complex, there are many automated services available that cost little to use and can be of great assistance, such as our survey local tool. If you want more information about automated reputation management tools or other professional online word of mouth services, just give us a call.

For this survey, I asked each respondent to rate 4 sources of consumer driven information on a scale of 1 (least reliable) to 10 (most reliable) in determining whether or not they would use a company for the first time. They were also asked to briefly explain their ratings. Here are the averaged ratings for each category:

Disclaimer about the survey method.

I did this survey on a small scale and used a rather informal distribution method (my email contacts). The results above are from about 40 email responses and although I would consider this survey sample small, I think the results still provide a relevant estimation of today’s consumer buying behavior. Using the data above in conjunction with the additional explanations provided and my personal knowledge of the survey respondents’ demographics, I made the following observations:

Observation #1: Online Reviews

Anonymous online reviews scored least reliable as many of the respondents noted the increasing trend of fake reviews and the belief that only a small portion of customers with extreme experiences (either good or bad) take the time to write reviews online. However, many respondents pointed out that online reviews are the most plentiful and easy to access of any of the above sources and therefore are used most frequently when evaluating businesses.

Observation #2 BBB

The Better Business Bureau easily attracted the most polar responses garnering trust from older respondents (40 and older) and being more or less ridiculed by the under 40 crowd. The older respondents used phrases such as “feel good”, “trust”, and “well known” when describing the BBB. The younger respondents had more verbose comments such as these:

“The BBB sticker on a business actually means nothing to me and I would even go so far as to say the sticker makes me wonder what the business is hiding from — are products and services of such poor quality that they need the sticker to encourage me to use their business?”

“I’m sure there are lot of good companies that aren’t members, and a lot of crappy companies who are members.”

“The BBB is just trying to make money like everyone else. I don’t know that they always have the consumers best interests at heart.”

Another factor that kept the BBB at the bottom of the pack was that many respondents simply did not know enough about their membership process or how a BBB membership correlates with trustworthiness.

Observation #3 Independent Survey

Most respondents considered a customer satisfaction survey to be a highly reliable source when evaluating a business as long as the survey wasn’t gamed and had a good sample size of respondents. In fact, a few respondents indicated that they would trust a survey even more highly than a referral due to the fact that a referral is based on one person’s experience where a survey is a broader sampling of experiences. The single common factor that held back customer surveys is that they are nearly impossible to find for local businesses. This is one source customers would like to see more of.

Observation #4 Referrals

It comes as no surprise that people generally trust referrals above any of the other sources mentioned. This source was mainly included as a base to measure against. Any business owner knows the biggest downside to utilizing this source is that you are limited by the willingness and availability of your satisfied customers to do this for you.

Takeaways for Business Owners

#1 Online Reviews Still Affect your Business

Just because online reviews have the lowest credibility does not discount the fact that most of your customers will view them and be influenced by what other people are saying about you online. In recent years, online reviews have become the primary source for customers looking to compare similar companies. Pay attention to the various review websites and actively encourage your satisfied customers to post their positive experiences online.

#2 Is BBB worth the Cost?

There are many forms of BBB membership to consider as well as your business type and target market. If you are in a business with high amounts of distrust and are targeting older customers, the BBB might make sense. Overall BBB usage by consumers seems to be on a downward trend and may soon become obsolete as review websites become better at filtering fake reviews and customers have more options for comparing businesses online.

#3 Utilize customer surveys in your marketing

Whether you serve 1 customer a month or 500, customer feedback collection can be incorporated cost effectively (thanks to the internet) with your customer service and marketing plans. We even offer a free trial of our professional survey service, Survey Local, so that you can see how easy and valuable feedback collection can be. Also, Survey Local gives you the option to publish your survey results right on your website (and on ours) so that potential customers can easily find and read them. Making this information available to potential customers will really help you stand out from your competitors.

#4 Promote Word of Mouth Marketing

As mentioned above, the best way to get more referrals from your customers is to first of all find out what you are doing right and where you need to improve. It doesn’t matter how good you think your business is because you’re not the one making the buying decision. Fortunately, the internet makes feedback collection more affordable and easier than ever.

The Domino Effect

All the sources measured in our survey are direct reflections of your customer service. By measuring and improving your customer service you can effectively improve your results in all 4 of these categories. Our survey tool is designed to easily integrate 3 of these sources by collecting customer feedback, screening the good from the bad, and helping you get noticed both online and off for the good things you are doing. Give us a call to get a free 30-day trial of Survey Local today.

Comment on this post if you agree or disagree with the survey results above so we can broaden the sample size!

The Power of Positive Online Reviews

It is no wonder that online reviews carry significant weight in consumer buying behavior with the information overload on the internet. I’ll be the first one to admit that whenever I’m making a significant purchase I first check reviews from Amazon, Google and others. Similarly, online reviews have become one of the quickest ways to make or break a local company’s worth by accomplishing what used to take months of traditional word of mouth marketing in mere seconds. In fact, our research shows that 70% of Americans say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before making a purchase (Business Week, October 2009).

The Plague of Fake Online Reviews

As online reviews become more important to businesses, there is more incentive to fake and manipulate reviews for profit. It is impossible to know just how prevalent fake reviews are in a specific industry, but one can only guess the percentage to be quite high (at least 30% by some estimates). I always knew that anyone could post a fake review on Google or Yelp with any made-up user name, but I was shocked to learn that major review sites like Amazon allow people to leave reviews for items they haven’t even purchased! To me, that seems like opening the door to fraud and the equivalent of leaving keys in a parked car with a sign that reads “Please do not steal”.

In the news and on the web, I commonly see opportunists cashing in on the power of online reviews by offering everything from fake review writing to services that literally blackmail companies by posting negative reviews and then requesting a fee to take them down. If your business has yet to be affected by fake reviews either promoting local competitors or demoting yours, consider yourself lucky because this is one of the most common complaints I hear from clients in highly competitive markets. I have seen these factors cost even the most well-run companies customers and in extreme cases, cause businesses to shut down completely. One thing is for sure, online reviews have become too powerful to simply ignore.

The Solution

Removing fake reviews is often not possible because they are difficult to prove and many review websites lack the level of support needed to handle every case of fraud. By far, the most effective solution to both fake reviews and negative reviews hurting your business is to have your own customers come to your defense online and overwhelm negative responses with true stories of their own satisfaction. This not only dilutes negative ratings, but it pushes them off the front page of review websites where most people are going to be looking. Recent reviews also carry greater weight in a customer’s eyes than older ones. Even if your competitors are stuffed with fake positive reviews, your real reviews can easily outpace theirs in quality and validity in the eyes of your potential customers.

Our Service: Survey Local

Due to the frequency and severity of issues we hear regarding online reviews, we went searching for an easy and cost effective solution to recommend to our clients only to find that no such option exists. At best, current online review services act as an intermediary to try to moderate negative reviews as they surface. Referencing what I mentioned above, we know this is not the most effective way to improve your online reviews. What we were looking for was a tool that could not only prevent negative reviews from being written in the first place, but proactively collect and submit positive reviews from real customers without requiring the business owner’s involvement. Realizing that no such service existed, we decided to develop our own online review management/survey tool which we named Survey Local.

Survey Local: Feedback Collection

In a perfect world, all your satisfied customers would happily take time out of their days and post their positive experiences for others to read. If you think that is the reality, then you probably haven’t been in business for very long. Most customers are willing, yet lack the time and motivation to act. Therefore, the first step in improving your online reviews is improving feedback collection from your customers. To do this, Survey Local assists you in setting up a short, yet effective online customer satisfaction survey. We then help determine to most effective delivery method such as email or printed materials like business cards or invoices.

When done correctly, a satisfaction survey provides a large demographic to pull online reviews from which essentially hits two birds (improving online and offline word of mouth) with one stone. Once you have this feedback, you will not only gain a better understanding of your customers’ buying behavior, but you can segment your customers based on satisfaction levels so that requesting positive online reviews is much easier.

Online Review Integration

Customers who take the survey are automatically funneled into two groups: unsatisfied and satisfied. Notifications are sent instantly alerting you to those who are unsatisfied so you can quickly address their problems and avoid negative online reviews before they are posted. Satisfied customers are asked to submit their reviews to the review website of your choice. We make this step very easy by providing a copy of their review from their survey right next to the link where it can be submitted. Most of your satisfied customers genuinely like to publish positive reviews because they know it will help you out, they just don’t want to take the time writing them up and trying to figure out where to publish them. Survey local eliminates both of these obstacles.

Survey Benefits

Having a professional and experienced marketing company develop and help distribute a short customer satisfaction survey for you is one of the most beneficial activities your company can engage in. We know how to distribute surveys and incentivize your customers so that they you collect more quality responses. We also know what questions to ask and how to ask them so they directly relate to your profitability. You should want to know things like:

• How are your customers finding you?
• How likely are they to recommend you to a friend?
• Why are certain customers leaving?
• What do your customers really think about your friendliness, value, professionalism, and service?

Guessing about these things is like guessing why your check engine light in your car is on rather than taking it to a mechanic. In today’s economy you cannot afford to throw away customers or lose on possible referrals just because you don’t know what your customers think.

How to Start

It just makes sense to combine a survey tool with an online review promoter because they can both work together making feedback collection and review publishing easier for you and your customers. We realize that professional customer survey tools in the past were expensive and even mysterious to many small-medium businesses, but that ends here and now. Our Survey Local tool is offered for a $200 setup fee and can then be continued on a month to month basis for only $80/month with unlimited email support. Also, our satisfaction guarantee states that if you don’t absolutely love the results after 2 months, we will refund your purchase 100% because we stand by its value.

Why are you still reading this, request your free Survey Local consultation now!

Learn about our Marketing Strategy Package…

The Results:

• When the Kiss was a penny & the Truffle was 15 cents – the selections:
  The Kiss = 14%, The Truffle = 36%, None = 50%
• When the Kiss was free & the Truffle was 14 cents – the selections:
  The Kiss = 42%, The Truffle = 19%, None = 39%
• In a 3rd round, the Kiss was still free & the price of the Truffle was reduced to 10 cents – the selections:
  The Kiss = 40%, The Truffle = 12%, None = 48%

What We Learn

As marketers, there are many take-aways from this study, including:

• With regard to promotional pricing: while the actual dollars and cents may be the same, the BOGO promotion (buy one, get one free) may perform far better than 50% off.
• Free is powerful – but it still may not influence the audience if the perceived value is not there.  39% of the participants didn’t want the free Kiss.
• Price reductions may influence the cost-benefit perception with other associated products (test 3).

The Research

The study was conducted by Kristina Shampanier, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely in 2005 and contains additional tests, examples and data that sheds light on the power of free products and their influence on purchasing decisions. I highly recommend downloading and reading it – a truly interesting read.

Additionally, Dan Ariely has recently released a book, Predictably Irrational, and should you want to further explore how the world often works according to principles of irrationality in the places where we least expect it, give it a try.

All company and product names are the trademarks of their respective owners.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) press release (5 Oct 2009):

“The post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.”

Given the core of social media is transparency and honest discussion, most bloggers and word of mouth marketers agree with this policy.   We have a published disclosure policy on this blog and have encouraged other bloggers and social media marketers to do the same in the past.  However, for social media marketing, the method for disclosure is not as straight forward.   We occasionally send tweets about our  (Seven Aspens’) clients and/or their products. How do you disclose in a 140 character Twitter message?

With potential hefty fines looming for violators, this is a good time to review your policies, ensure compliance and learn the best practices.  To assist in the education process, the Word of Mouth Marketers Association (WOMMA) is hosting a free webinar Thursday, October 8, to help explain what the new FTC regulations mean for marketers, advertisers and bloggers. Additionally, the Social Media Business Council provides a great Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit.

A Twestival or Twitter-Festival is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world under short timescales via Twitter, which brings people offline for a great cause. The first Twestival Global happened on 12 February 2009 with 202 cities around the world hosting events and rallying fundraising efforts around one cause, charity: water. $250k+ was raised on one day through these events and online donations which resulted in 55 wells with 17,000 people impacted in Uganda, Ethiopia, and India.

Twestival Local

Twestival Local events are taking place in cities around the world between 10-13 September 2009.  Twestival is an international movement where people meet offline for one night, have fun and do some good for an important cause in the process. Twestival Local gives cities an opportunity to select a local cause to support.

Dallas Twestival

The Dallas Twestival will be held on September 12 @ 6:00PM @ Mockingbird Station. Proceeds will benefit The Women’s Museum at Fair Park – a home for programs and exhibits where people can honor the past and explore the contributions of women throughout history. Purchase tickets online – hurry quantities are limited.

Hope to see you there!

Follow us on Twitter @DallasMarketing