In October of this year, the FTC released guidelines for advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act. This has raised much controversy; espcially in the realm of bloggers.

Under the new guidelines, it is the job of bloggers to disclose their connection with an advertiser and whether they are being paid to endorse a product. Questions have been raised since the release of the guidelines on whether this takes away from the credibility of a blogger's product recommendation and possibly even diminish the value of blog marketing.

The new guidelines specifically address advertisements that feature a consumer and convey their experience with a product or service as typical, when that is not the case, will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. This is different than the 1980s version, which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial, as long as they included a disclaimer such as "results not typical."  The revised version no longer allows this disclaimer to be sufficient.

Whose Responsibility Is It to Disclose?

The obligation to disclose the connection between a blogger and an advertiser rests "primarily" on the blogger, but is also shared by the advertiser.

The determination of whether a blog post is deemed an "endorsement" depends on a variety of factors. This means that each will be determined on a case-by-case analysis, leaving both the advertiser and the blogger subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of the blogger endorsement.  A blogger is now also liable if they fail to clearly disclose that they are being paid for their endorsement or review.

Your Turn: What are your thoughts regarding these new guidelines?  Will it make bloggers more credible or will it hurt advertisers when it comes to the disclosure?  What will this do to word of mouth marketing?

Did you miss marketing to the crowds of people shopping online today? No worries, did you know that Cyber Monday is not when most of the purchases happen online, but rather it serves as an indicator of how the shopping season will be when it comes to online purchases.  The busiest shopping time is the last 15 days leading up tot he holiday - which is December 10th through the 25th, so don't worry if you missed reaching out to those consumers - you still have time.

In 2008 Cyber Monday actually beat out sales on Black Friday for the first time.

The most popular Christmas items this year include UGG Boots, Wii, American Dolls and Digital Toys.

Twitter is creating buzz, but many people are still unsure how to use it and utilize it for their businesses. I'm here to help.

This 10 day course will answer all of your Twitter questions and get you well on your way to experiencing and gaining value from the Twitter experience. The course is free and each lesson is delivered to you via email.

The 10 day course syllabus is as follows:

Day 1: What is Twitter?
Day 2: Create Your Own Twitter Account
Day 3: Twitter Terminology
Day 4: Twitter Noise (Spam, Porn and other Annoyances)
Day 5: Integrating Twitter Into Your Marketing Mix
Day 6: What is and How to Use a HashTag?
Day 7: Best Practices for Building an Engaged Twitter Following
Day 8: Finding Prospects Using Twitter
Day 9: Time Saving Tools That Help Manage and Optimize Your Use of Twitter
Day 10: Mobile Tweeting (Iphone / Blackberry / Andorids / Palm)

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I recently had the pleasure of seeing one of my favorite sales trainers, Jeffrey Gitomer speak. His speech was informative as well as entertaining and drenched with energy. There however was one thing that stuck in my mind, Jeffrey would often talk about the materials that marketers provide their sales teams and how the marketers should try to sell with the tools they had produced.

Truth is as marketers we often overlook the needs of the sales team in order to create marketing materials that are drowning in branding terminology and less on the information that will help sales convert prospective customers and clients into new customers and clients.

I understand how hard it can be to step away from traditional marketing techniques and transform our marketing materials into sales tools that work, but it's never been more important to do this than in today's economy. It's time to work together to come up with tools that make that conversion happen.

Take the time to gain an understanding of the phases your sales people go through, and start creating materials that will make you both superstars in your company. It's time we stop working against each other and started work together to benefit the companies that we support. Are you up for the challenge? Learn how you as the marketing department can support your sales team.

Your turn: How do you work with your sales team to make sure that you are creating materials in your marketing department that help them convernt potential customers into new customers?