Ethical Social Media Marketing: It’s (now) the Law
According to Social Media Today, “recent changes to U.S. law, enacted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), make it clear that bloggers and marketers must “clearly and conspicuously” explain issues of payment or endorsement.” Stealthily marketing a product or service while acting as if you are simply participating in online discussion is not only unethical, but now illegal. Marketers must be more transparent, disclose who they are, and what they want.
It may sound like these sort of practices are more applicable to scams, rather than legitimate companies, but scammers aren’t the only ones taking advantage of not disclosing their relationships with their employers. Even with legitimate companies, a grey area exists with their marketing activities online.
In Spring 2014, I accepted a position to be a “Campus Influencer” for a popular desktop music streaming service, Spotify. As part of my job, I was instructed to share playlists and promote Spotify via social media. The most successful influencers were given bonuses and prizes for their effort. For me, questions of ethics arose from this. I was not given instructions to disclose the nature of my compensation, but was instructed to bombard my Facebook friends with links and content promoting Spotify to receive it. This was an ethical grey area for me. I eventually objected to the way I was supposed to market Spotify, and opted to forego doing this part of my job. I completed the other aspects of the “campus influencer” program, but I did not agree with the ethics of the social media-based marketing efforts because I was not required to specify my potential compensation or relation to Spotify. While Spotify is a wonderful platform which everyone should use, I will not use my social media accounts to be a shill.
