Ok so the FTC passed a new mandate that Bloggers must disclose any financial benefits they receive in publishing a promotional post. But before you get all worried, know that the spirit of these changes is geared toward those fake blogs (flogs) that are merely a sales page. From what I understand the intent of these guidelines are not to regulate blogging, but put promotional blogs into the same category as television and broadcast media for the purpose of advertising regulations. Personal, ad-hoc blogs are covered and regular customers are free to make any statements about a service or product they use if they do not receive financial benefits from their post. This blog post has a recap of the changes: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/130058.

If you are blogging professionally, you do need to follow the guidelines, but it can be done tactfully with a disclosurepolicy.org statement on your Website or within a piece of content itself stating that you benefitted from publishing the post (like pay-for-play kind of blogs) or they receive a benefit when anyone signs up from their affiliate links.

Some criticism surrounds the enforceability of these guidelines and the ambiguous explanations by the FTC about what is accepted and not. Personally, I’m good with it as it keeps blogs honest. Of course, it’s not difficult either for a company to gerrymander their way on review sites giving the illusion of user-generated content.

The bottom line is that bloggers need to make it clear when making reviews or promotional statements about a product and where they stand. Brands themselves are free to make promotional statements about their products or services, given that the owner of such blogs are not ambiguous in nature. Make sense? Good!