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Rules, Guidelines and Etiquette of Business Social Media

I was in New York City last week attending the 3rd Annual Summit on Digital Advertising Compliance for Social Media, Sweepstakes & Promotions hosted by the American Conference Institute. I was in a room mostly filled with legal counsel from many of the top brands as well as those from law firms who specialize in advertising and promotion.

What I mostly came away with is that there are so many grey areas when it comes to social media. Yes, there are laws regarding sweepstakes and contests that we follow. But when it comes to the various guidelines from all the social media platforms as well as the FTC, there are many cases when it is open to interpretation. Recently Facebook updated it’s promotion guidelines that I wrote about here. Also the FTC came out with new endorsement guidelines that was sparked by a Pinterest promotion that I posted here. It is hard to keep up with them all.

In my last post I wrote about the issues businesses face when trying to include a NFL team or the Super Bowl in their promotions without having an official sponsorship. At the conference we discussed this as well as the use of celebrities and sports figures in tweets, photos, status updates, etc. without their permission. We just had a client come to us with a sweepstakes where they are giving away as the grand prize tickets to a concert. They wanted to use not only the artist’s name in the official name of the sweepstakes, but also wanted participants to retweet the promotion with the artist’s name in the tweet. This is not a good idea to,first off, use the artist’s name without their permission, and then go broadcast it on Twitter that you’re using it.

While at the conference I came across this article on SmartBlog for Social Media written by Ivan Serrano which is titled “How to Mind Your Manners on Social Media”. Ivan created this infographic that I think is perfect so I wanted to share it here. It doesn’t include any laws or guidelines, just the simple etiquette that we businesses sometimes forget when posting on our social media sites. I think it’s mainly because we’re not face-to-face with our audience. Thanks Ivan for sharing this. Yes, I totally agree about the too many hashtags!

attending the 3rd Annual Summit on Digital Advertising Compliance for Social Media, Sweepstakes & Promotions hosted by the American Conference Institute. I was in a room mostly filled with legal counsel from many of the top brands as well as those from law firms who specialize in advertising and promotion.

What I mostly came away with is that there are so many grey areas when it comes to social media. Yes, there are laws regarding sweepstakes and contests that we follow. But when it comes to the various guidelines from all the social media platforms as well as the FTC, there are many cases when it is open to interpretation. Recently Facebook updated it’s promotion guidelines that I wrote about here. Also the FTC came out with new endorsement guidelines that was sparked by a Pinterest promotion that I posted here. It is hard to keep up with them all.

In my last post I wrote about the issues businesses face when trying to include a NFL team or the Super Bowl in their promotions without having an official sponsorship. At the conference we discussed this as well as the use of celebrities and sports figures in tweets, photos, status updates, etc. without their permission. We just had a client come to us with a sweepstakes where they are giving away as the grand prize tickets to a concert. They wanted to use not only the artist’s name in the official name of the sweepstakes, but also wanted participants to retweet the promotion with the artist’s name in the tweet. This is not a good idea to,first off, use the artist’s name without their permission, and then go broadcast it on Twitter that you’re using it.

While at the conference I came across this article on SmartBlog for Social Media written by Ivan Serrano which is titled “How to Mind Your Manners on Social Media”. Ivan created this infographic that I think is perfect so I wanted to share it here. It doesn’t include any laws or guidelines, just the simple etiquette that we businesses sometimes forget when posting on our social media sites. I think it’s mainly because we’re not face-to-face with our audience. Thanks Ivan for sharing this. Yes, I totally agree about the too many hashtags!