Okay, here’s the scenario: You’re in charge of blogger outreach for Brand X.

Now, let’s put aside all the questions of identifying the proper bloggers and approaching them one-on-one vs. a mass mailing and offering them appropriate news and all the rest of it. For the sake of this post, we’ll assume you have all those issues covered.

Let’s further assume you’re engaging bloggers in some sort of a product sampling program for Brand X.

Okay, now let’s look at two possible approaches:

(1) You send the blogger your product sample and ask them to try it and comment.

(2) You send the blogger your product sample along with an eight-page document from the Brand X legal department containing nearly 4,000 words of legalese that they need to read and sign before they can receive your product, said legalese to include language regarding Web site liability, expectations of what and how the blogger is to post, how the Brand X trademarks can and can’t be used, how often the blogger is to also post to Facebook and Twitter and more — all capped off with a hearty “This Agreement, including any and all Schedules and other attachments to this Agreement, which are hereby incorporated by reference into this Agreement, constitutes the entire agreement between myself and [company] with respect to the subject matters of this Agreement and supersedes all prior agreements, understandings, negotiations and discussions, whether written or oral, with respect to the same subject matter.”

I’m not joking about (2) above. Pretty much this exact situation crossed my path this morning from a company that is otherwise superlative and smart in so many ways. By the way, that “hearty” language is presented verbatim, and the email accompanying the 4,000-word document included language that said: “You MUST use this if you work with any individual bloggers.  We know most mom bloggers will be intimated by a LOA but Legal did a good job of making this as short as possible.”

Okay, so you know most bloggers will be intimidated … which means most bloggers won’t bother giving you the exposure you otherwise would have received … so why, exactly, are you doing this?

I gotta say: If I’m a blogger (hey, wait: I am!), I’m telling any company that does this to take a hike. I don’t need this kind of a paperwork headache, and I have tons of companies offering me all kinds of free stuff anyway.

And if I’m a social media agency who works with bloggers (hey, wait: I am!), my message to any company who asks me to implement this sort of thing is: If you’re expecting me to use this paperwork with every blogger, then also expect to get a tiny fraction of the coverage you’d otherwise get.

(Oh, and when I contact the bloggers, I’m totally disavowing connection to said paperwork, apologizing profusely for it, agreeing with them that it’s ridiculous, and my pitch to them necessarily changes from “This is a great thing, check it out” to “You’re right, this company is nuts, but try to look the other way, the paperwork isn’t really all that bad, and give the product a try.” Anyone else think this might have a tiny effect on the earned media won via blogger outreach efforts?)

A ton of legalese may be called for when you’re a legal department looking to set blogging guidelines for salaried employees, but bloggers aren’t your salaried employees. They’re press. They have no obligation to you or your products, and asking them to sign a 4,000-word legal document to tweet about how great your product is may very well be the height of social media absurdity.

Takeaway for marketers: Ask yourself, seriously: Why in the world would you want to intimidate the very people you’re hoping will provide you with positive word of mouth?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 at 11:00 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Rants 'n' Such, Social Media.