Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

New FTC Guidelines and Social Marketing

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission approved revisions to the guidelines it gives advertisers on appropriate use of endorsement and testimonial ads.

The update includes new examples to reinforce the notion that connections between advertisers and endorsers (connections that may not be obvious to consumers) must be disclosed. These are timely updates with the continued emergence of word of mouth marketing via the social web. 

From my point of view, this is a welcomed update. We continually work to understand the online behaviors of our audience. Peer to peer content continues to be among the most trusted sources of information during the buying cycle, regardless of size of purchase. Before purchasing just about any product, I always turn to opinions of others for perspective.

The notion of paid blogging (and micro-blogging) has been an emerging and heavily debated trend for some time. To me, exploiting consumer trust by seeding fictitious or paid 'peer reviews' is simply bad business, and runs the risk of truly damaging the credibility of user-generated content and the social web in general.

There's much more detail in the entire update for those interested.  I look forward to digesting a bit more, but in the meantime, will continue to take the approach of transparency rules... It's the safe and proper approach.

New Bloggers in the 'Sphere

Well, not new per se, but new to me anyways. It looks as though these guys have been part of the conversation for some time...

I recently came across Chad Sakak's blog - Virtual Geek. Chad's the Sr Director of our VMWare strategic alliance. On his blog, Chad discusses all things virtual. A good read - although in full disclosure, some of it's a bit hardcore... Trying to follow a couple of Chads posts gave me one of those 'ice cream headaches'... Man they can hurt.

Also of note, Craig Randall is sharing his thoughts over at Craig's Musings. Craig is a Software Architect within our CMA division and blogs about software services, service-oriented architecture and all sorts of neat things ECM.

Two great blogs from fellow EMC'ers. Be sure to stop by and say hello. Of course, you can check more of our provocative and awe-inspiring bloggers here.

Alltop - All of the Top Stories

Friend and fellow blogger Adam Cohen turned me on to Guy Kawasaki's latest project, Alltop. Alltop's tag line - "We've got all of the top stories covered all the time". I'd describe the service as a user friendly aggregator of relevant blogs organized around high level topics.

A screenshot of the main page:

Getting added as a source was as simple as drafting up an email with a brief description of who I am and what my blog's all about. The folks @ Alltop are very much open to feedback as they look to evolve existing categories and build out news ones. Once identifying a category that's of interest, you can jump right to it by going to (subject).alltop.com - In my case, Socialmedia.alltop.com.

An interesting approach on aggregation. Guy has a long track record of delivering interesting and innovative thinking. Thanks to the folks @ Alltop for being so responsive and for being open to suggestions for other future categories... Alltop.com is definitely something to watch.

Designing a Social Media Team

Much like the traditional web property, organizations will soon recognize the need to build a team around their Social Media offering. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out as there's not a 1 to 1 correlation of skill sets when you move from a 1.0 to a 2.0 model. You'll likely focus more on the social capabilities of the team and less on more traditional web responsibilities (HTML, production, editorial, etc). You'll need individuals who understand the very nature of community engagement and social interaction.

I've been thinking a bit about the team I'd like to pull together as we evolve our social offering and thought I'd share for input and comment...

EMC World Bloggers Unite!

It looks like I'll be attending EMC World this year - along with fellow EMC bloggers Mark Twomey, Barry Burke, Bill Petro and Steve Todd.

I thought we'd try something a bit different this time... I'd like to round up all of the attendees who will be blogging, Twittering, Flickr'ing, Utter'ing or (insert your favorite trendy tool here) their way through the event...

I want to gauge interest from the community and will work out logistics based on how many folks sign up... If two of you sign up, Storagezilla and I will be hanging out in the parking lot of the Manadalay Bay with a six-pack of Schlitz for a meet & greet and a game of kick-the-can. Any more than that and we'll find a formal venue where we can get together and have some fun...

I've put together a Wiki for sign-ups. If you'll be @ World and want to get together for a blogger meet & greet - please sign up here (The password to update is community). We'll use this Wiki as main point of information sharing as we try to pull something together.

There's also the EMC World community for attendees. If you haven't already signed up - check it out. There's a cool 'people finder' like app that let you find peers with similar interests and get together for a chat. Discussion forums are also available to help you interact with the minds behind the event and other attendees to help shape the breakouts and talk about what you'd like to see @ the event.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Edit - One more thing, Twiiter users, be sure to follow Twitter.com/EMCWorld for real time news & info during the conference...

Blogs Abound

EMC has had a presence in the blogosphere for well over a year now. We'd originally started out with a small handful of key voices, and the experience to date has been quite positive.

This week, we've extended our presence considerably by adding several new employee blogs. In the interest of full disclosure, most of these folks aren't new to blogging. Like myself, the majority have been doing it for some time. For others, our internal Social Media platform was a great way to test drive blogging and hone their voice before going public.

So what?