Forrester thinks paid-for blogging is OK, but Gibbs disagrees because – well, you’ll have to read it to find out. He also wonders about what you might do if you discover malfeasance in your company.
Just over a week ago Forrester Research posted a blog item titled “Sponsored Conversations: When it’s OK to pay bloggers to post.”
The essence of the piece is that in Forrester’s opinion paying someone to blog about you or your company is acceptable — I presume they mean ethically acceptable as opposed to simply being a safe business practice — if two criteria are met. First, when it is publicly admitted that the blogger is being paid by the entity they are writing about and, second, the blogger is honest in expressing their real opinions such that if they dislike the sponsor’s products or services they say so. Presumably the same criteria apply to third parties posting to other social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and so on.
This sounds reasonable but I have to disagree. Once you pay someone to write about you it is impossible for them to be objective. Look at it this way: If the author (no matter what medium) doesn’t like the products of the company writing his check and says so publicly it is going to be a very short contract (this is pretty obvious because what would be the point of paying for bad press).
On the other hand, if the blogger is positive about whatever he’s writing about, then it will always, and I repeat always, be assumed by the majority that the author is not objective and is biased in favor of the client. There is no way out of this. Moreover, even if he is occasionally negative the implication of bias will still be there from the positive stuff he wrote.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that any blogger, tweeter or columnist who publishes paid-for content under their own name would have to be brain dead or at the very least making a huge mistake. They will be, in effect, flushing away any credibility they might have even if they are truly being as honest and objective as they can possibly be.
For example, if I was to write a review in Gearhead about a product from the XYZ company and there was a disclosure somewhere in the piece that said “This column is underwritten by XYZ company”, would what I actually wrote matter? Wouldn’t you suspect my motives?
Given that the column was paid for it’s unlikely I would be able to say the company’s product or service was no good unless the XYZ company had completely lost its mind and its lawyers.
So, if I were to say the product was really good then you would quite rightly be suspicious. And even if I were to say the product was “OK, but …” you would still probably be suspicious. There’s simply no way to win because my objectivity would be compromised by the implications of taking money. In this situation everyone looks “dirty.”
So, if your organization is considering paying bloggers or Twitters or any other social media producer to get coverage, make sure you speak up and tell them it’s a really bad idea. If that fails, get in touch with me and we’ll do a conference call with them.
This leads, slightly tangentially, to another honesty issue I’ve been wondering about: You work in IT for a large company. You know what your company is up to and, of course, you have access to the raw data. So, tell me:
1. If you were to suspect that something dubious was going on, in what situations would you actually look for evidence, even if it meant violating your internal security policy?
2. Let’s say you find evidence of serious wrongdoing (whether you had to look for it or whether it was just sitting there) and whistle blowing might cost you your job, how serious would the malfeasance have to be for you to risk your employment?
3. If you knew that whistle blowing wouldn’t cost you your job but your co-workers would shun you as a consequence, would you do it?
4. If the malfeasance could destroy the company, would you do it?
Gibbs awaits your responses in Ventura, Calif. Please don’t disappoint him at backspin@gibbs.com. And don’t forget to follow him on Twitter — @quistuipater.
