10 Principles for Ethical Contact by Marketers
Discussion Draft For Public Comment
Introduction
The WOMMA Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines gives marketers a 10-item checklist with which to make sure that they are always appropriate and ethical when communicating with bloggers.
This document is a public draft of guidelines for marketers to follow when doing outreach within the blogosphere. It is neither a "how to blog" nor a "what to blog" document. Rather, its intent is to give clarity and guidance to marketers who are working and corresponding with bloggers, and to ensure that their efforts adhere to the standards set by the WOMMA Ethics Code.
These guidelines are designed to help marketers embrace specific practices that are deemed ethical within the blogosphere. Adopting them will empower marketers to quickly identify issues within existing communications and will help ensure that future efforts at communicating with bloggers are ethically sound.
The tool is simple to use:
- Provide a copy of the Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines, along with a copy of the WOMMA Ethics Code, to all personnel reading, writing, and commenting on blogs.
- Prior to corresponding with a blogger, review each of the 10 ethics principles.
- Create a monitoring program to ensure that your staff is complying.
This is one of several tools in WOMMA's new "Practical Ethics" program, which will help marketers turn ethics from a concept into a series of action steps. It provides simple, specific guidance to prevent problems before they happen, and to help marketers train their staff on ethics.
Objectives
- Help marketers work honestly and ethically within the blogosphere.
- Promote disclosure by marketers within blogs.
- Protect consumers by establishing ethical standards for marketing to and within blogs.
- Protect marketers' reputations from the damage that unethical behavior will cause.