Sigh, again with the FTC.............

Disclosure / Disclaimer:  I received this info, free of charge,from Mom Central Consulting, as part of being subscribed to their newsletter.  I received NO compensation, for this post. Nor was I what to say, all opinions are my own, and yours may be different.

One of the banes in your life when blogging is to put it simply, the FTC.

AKA the FCC (as it was before Obama).

The Federal Trade Commission sets the rules for advertising on ALL forms of media.

They have come out with MORE/ NEW/ Revised rules that will change the way we all blog and post on our social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

The changes that you will see on this blog:

• Disclosures must be at the TOP of the post (like above), or in the post body BEFORE any links to the sponsor of said post. Now sponsor is not solely defined as PAID, but as if an item was sent to review, it is PAID via product, thus is to be considered a sponsored post. Plus the disclosure itself cannot be a link to another page or site.
• Sponsored posts can be considered ADS. Thus when tweeting or posting on Facebook, AD or Sponsored Post MUST be in the front of the post, and again, before any link to the post or product web page. Which one to use depends on the nature of the post. 

In theory not too much of a big deal, but it does mean that Facebook tweets will look like this:

Sponsored Post: Win This is Our Time christian teen/college age dvd,  @BlessTheirHeartsMom at http://blesstheirheartsmom.blogspot.com/search/label/giveaway

and Tweets will look like this:

AD: Win This is Our Time christian teen DVD @BTHM1 http://blesstheirheartsmom.blogspot.com/search/label/giveaway

or

Sponsored: Win This is Our Time christian teen DVD @BTHM1 http://blesstheirheartsmom.blogspot.com/search/label/giveaway

You can view the new FTC rules on their website. HERE

Example 15 in the Appendix is a sample tweet

Example 21 is how NOT to have links before your disclosure (which most bloggers have been doing)

Thanks to Mom Central Consulting, for helping us bloggers wade through the new rules!

This is sure to create some headaches, especially for auto syndicators, like Networked Blogs, so we'll all have to take some extra time and work on our promotions of our blog posts!

Also be sure to go and make the required changes, to the entries in all your Rafflecopter giveaways, that are already running, or our scheduled!

What are your thought bloggers and readers?