BlogPaws Report: Writing Pet Product Reviews

At BlogPaws, I attended the “Fair, Focused & Fun Product Reviews” panel while John headed to the panel on search engine optimization. We’re doing an increasing number of product reviews here on DogTipper, and I was interested in learning more on this topic including how to best comply with the new FTC guidelines for bloggers writing product reviews.

The panel included:

• moderator Michelle Friedman from PetSmart
• Susan Getgood from Getgood Marketing and Blog with Integrity
• Jennifer Lilly blogger at Mr. Tuck’s Neighborhood and publicist for Del Monte
• Mary K. Engle of the Federal Trade Commission

Susan, who just the day before had appeared on the “Today Show” talking about mommy blogs and blogging integrity, discussed creating an emotional connection with your reader and maintaining that relationship. She also spoke about disclosure and the importance of having a statement to identify whether or not you accept products for review and if you do or don’t accept money for the review. Along with a blanket site policy, she talked about the importance of clarification of the relationship on the individual product review post itself.

(On a personal note, here’s our position at DogTipper.com: we accept free products to review here on the site. We don’t accept money for reviews; our reviews are solely our opinion and are not sponsored.)

The next speaker was Jennifer Lilly who works both sides of the writing desk, both as a blogger for her own site, Mr. Tuck’s Neighborhood, and as a publicist for Del Monte. (Jennifer was later at the Kibbles ‘n Bits and Meow Mix booth in the trade show area…where I meant to go over and sign up for press information but completely ran out of time and forgot to do it!) Jennifer noted that PR professionals are looking for bloggers. To get started, she recommended that bloggers:

• contact companies directly
• respond to emails from publicists (even if it’s to say that that product’s not right for them but please keep them posted on future news)
• post a statement on their site saying they would like to review products
• talk about products on their site
• call attention to problems they may be having (such as cleaning, hairballs, etc.)

Within the product review, Jennifer suggested bloggers tell readers what they liked about the product and why, post lots of photos including photos of their animal interacting with the product, and send the company a link to the post (often they’ll repost and drive additional traffic to your blog).

The last speaker was Mary K. Engle, Associate Director of Advertising Practices with the FTC. This year the FTC instituted new guidelines about the necessity for blogs to state their relationship to a product, and Mary helped clarify those guidelines (which have been the subject of many urban myths in the blogosphere.)

According to Mary, “a blog that is a product review site doesn’t have to disclose because it is clear that the person would not have bought all those products.” On sites where there are other types of content besides product reviews the line becomes blurred…was the product purchased by the reviewer? was it given to the blogger? did the blog receive compensation to review the product? Blogs need to have a disclosure statement about their policy and also clarify the relationship in the individual post.

As far as enforcement, Mary explained that the FTC enforcement will rely on complaints with enforcement focusing on advertisers and agencies, not individual bloggers.

Great information…all packed into less than an hour-long presentation!

About Paris Permenter and John Bigley

DogTipper publishers Paris Permenter and John Bigley are a husband-wife team of full-time writers. The couple has authored over two dozen books and 2,500+ magazine articles.

• Mail
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (5404)

You might also like these posts: