Disclosure Best Practices Checklist 4: Compensation and Incentives

Focus: Best practices when providing incentives to bloggers.

When providing bloggers with any form of compensation such as rewards, incentives, promotional items, gifts, samples, or review items, I will be completely transparent by:

1. Setting formal policies on using incentives with bloggers for our staff and agencies.
   a. Review products can be returned at their own discretion.
   b. Review products must be returned or paid for at fair market value.
   c. Items of nominal value (low cost product samples or consumables) may be kept.
   d. Review products should be returned, paid for, or retained by the blogger based on standards for the specific industry. (Examples: restaurant reviewers pay for the meal, tech reviewers return the product, hotels provide complimentary stays.)
2. Communicating these policies clearly to the blogger in advance, and asking that they do the same in any post that may result.
3. Encouraging bloggers to disclose the source of any compensation directly in any post they write about us.
4. If you choose to use paid posts or reviews, you must insure that it is clearly disclosed in the specific post that it is an advertisement.
5. Not manipulating advertising, link-trading, or affiliate programs to impact blogger income or traffic.
6. Understanding that if I send bloggers products for review, they are not obligated to comment on them at all, and they are free to write a positive, negative, or neutral comment.