A fake blog (also known as a flog, or “flogging”) is a blog that appears to be written by a respected blog author or internal company rep but, in fact, is written by an outside ghost blogger. As social networking tools gain in popularity, corporations and special-interest groups legitimately use blogs to promote company agendas with transparency and honesty without cloaking their identities. Flogs are corrupted and deceptive forms of marketing that, if exposed, can do great damage to reputation.

One notorious example was when public relations firm Edelman Worldwide created a fake blog in 2006 called “Walmarting Across America.” It was purportedly written by two Wal-Mart “enthusiasts” who decided to journey across the United States in an RV, blogging about the experience as they visited Wal-Marts along the way. While two people actually did travel across the United States in an RV, the publicity stunt was revealed to be paid for by Wal-Mart, a client of Edelman. What was intended to be positive press ended up as much negative press.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 4:34 pm and is filed under blogging, Marketing, Online Marketing, PR, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, Viral Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.