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mom bloggers, continued ...Published: February, 2010

The Federal Trade Commission waded into the question of ethics in the blogosphere last year, when it issued guidelines requiring bloggers to disclose if a company pays them or supplies them with products.
   
“In some ways, bloggers want to be treated like traditional media, but they are not held to the same journalistic standards,” says Bailey. “They don’t fact check, necessarily, or get both sides of the story. There’s no governing standards or benchmarks for bloggers.”
   
That is one reason Bailey encourages companies that want to get their messages out to mom bloggers to do their homework and get to know bloggers before making a pitch.
   
“A lot of times, companies will just Google ‘top mommy bloggers’ or look at the Nielson list without going to their site and reading what they are about,” says Bailey. “Not every blogger is the right fit. Disney wouldn’t want to associate with a blogger who uses the F-bomb.”
   
For their part, mom bloggers in Orange County have their own horror stories about what some public relations folks have asked of them. Massura has her own ethics policy posted in her blog, starting with the statement “I never make stuff up.”
   
“The ethics policy is mostly responses to real-life situations. I was asked to make up a post about something after the fact, like they would give me $50 if you say you went to this play and it was good,” Massura says. “Some PR folks misunderstand and do not quite realize that bloggers have ethics. We want to live up to our readers.”
   
Massura says that, while she does review products, she does not do negative reviews. If something wouldn’t have a positive review, she won’t post it. She also keeps at least a 20-to-1 ratio of regular posts versus product reviews (“what I call, ‘pimpin’ posts’”), because, she says, “You don’t want to be the ginsu knife salesman.”
   
Another popular Orange County mom blogger, Suzanne Broughton (pictured above), says that, while she accepts free tickets for things to review, such as Disney on Ice shows or the Discovery Science Center, she steers clears of any product placement.