Sponsored content in general, and even more specifically sponsored tweeting, have spurred both misaligned and poignant conversation. The naysayers will always say nay and the advocates will have brown noses until they are hardly recognizable, but the majority of those who are considered thought leaders are skating in the middle (Cough… Lisa Barone). It’s as if people are waiting for sponsored tweeting to fail or succeed before they chime in and say ‘I told you so’.

“I thought sponsored tweets was the answer and I also disclosed that I have been doing sponsored tweets for the last year.” - Shoemoney

As a Media Director I am an equally unadulterated backer of sponsored content. I’ve used it, very effectively, to foster high performing and highly targeted online branding campaigns for many clients both big and small. Then just last Monday, alongside another agency, we were thankful enough to receive a preview of the sponsored tweeting platform from SponsoredTweets.com.

All arrogance aside, think about the Internet as it exists in everyday life. We’ve been born into the ability to log-on with very little barrier of entry 24/7. We can find most any piece of news content that we have interest in reading, experience just about any video or music content (by any means necessary), and freely entertain every needful resource to help us go about our lives. This leads us to the main point here, users that complain about sponsored content are plain and simple, spoiled brats.

Nothing in Life is Free

Yet many people assume the contrary. It has been long realized that on the net if you provide some sort of value, people (outside of those jerks that use ad-blockers) aren’t too averse to receiving blatant advertising. Because, if you are consistently offering value to your readership, then you have earned the right to advertise to them. Make your own decision regarding what level you are over saturating your pool of followers with incentivized content. And do so based on data and not a hunch. You might say “if I release sponsored tweets to my followers I will lose them.” But the reality is that you will only have substantial attrition if you aren’t monitoring your balance of paid tweets.

This doesn’t mean exploitative marketing tactics, spamming and scamming should be condoned, but with proper disclosure nothing is out of bounds. As Ted Murphy of Izea points out in his reply to naysayers,

“What the overwhelming majority of people fail to recognize is the FTC Guidelines deal largely with soft-money incentives that happen outside of a platform.”

Most of what people are up in arms about with reviewing disclosure strategy and Truth/Integrity in Advertising, will primarily go unnoticed by the FTC if managed by the major networks and affiliates that are already playing ball with ruling bodies.

Michael Jordan Does it, Why Not Web Celebs?

“Whether it’s on Twitter, in blog posts, or in television commercials, paid tweets are technically no different than the array of commercials and advertisements that are available to marketers already – except that everyday people become the spokespeople and thus become difficult for followers to discern real experiences versus influenced perspectives.” – TechCrunch

This is an important parallel to draw in the discussion of endorsed content because it’s been going on for decades in the form of the celebrity plug/endorsement. A public figure becomes a spokesperson because he or she resonates with a target audience. These are people… you know; that eat, live, breath, and hopefully wash themselves everyday like the rest of us. There is no difference between paying Michael Jordan to be the face of Nike, Gatorade, or Hanes and getting Shoemoney to wear your funny t-shirt or tweet about your product or service. Audience targeting is the simple name of the game.

Sponsored blogging and tweeting are successors of this ‘oldest trick in the marketing book’. If sponsored content is scrutinized then this slope becomes a very slippery one. We marketers can avoid this entirely if we get out of this crazy Internet-snobbery that we are currently experiencing. Marketing is marketing, friends, join the ranks of the masses and I assure you there will be a greater good. If you attack sponsored content then you are denouncing celebrity endorsement via all mediums. And if that is the case then I invite all of you sponsored content naysayers, along with the FTC, to go after every brand that uses a celebrity or pro to endorse their brand!