We have had the wonderful opportunity of working with a financial advisor to do her marketing, be it social media marketing, email marketing or print marketing. To work with her, I had to go through security screening and fingerprinting for compliance. Needless to say, we take the responsibility of working with her seriously. Every article, advertisement and online change to the website goes through a process of approval. We actually have an employee who has been trained to make certain there are no issues with any sort of implications of guarantees. All her posts are monitored as well by an electronic system to make certain her posts meet the standards set by compliance.

Have you held off on getting involved with marketing your business because of compliance or HIPAA or any other legal reason? What can you do?

Let’s start with one of the most difficult marketing pieces for those whose need have everything be approved, photos and videos.

We know that photos and videos are very important to the success of marketing your business. So here are a few rules we have learned:

• Take photos which don’t show faces. Just show the backs of people or blur the photo enough that those viewing it can tell what the concept is of what is happening without compromising the privacy of those in the photo.
• Take closeup photos of equipment you might use.
• Not a good photographer? There are free and paid sites with photographs available to download.

Here we are showing an example of one of our clients, who is a chiropractor, who does a procedure with his clients that needed a particular photo. When we were unable to find a photo, I became the model and we show just enough of the procedure so you see what he is doing without showing faces.

Whenever we take photos or videos of children for Facebook we always ask the parents if it’s ok to take their child’s photo. You wouldn’t believe how many people will personally thank us for asking permission to tape their children or take their picture. When in a situation where we are taping a group of children, where I can’t be as careful to exclude those who do not want to be in the videos, I tell parents to please be aware of where I am and always keep my back to them. It works. Those are the moments when at WK&S Railroad with the kids hunting Easter eggs or finding their favorite pumpkin. Talk about kids running around. There is no way for me to monitor who I can and can’t video tape. Check out their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/WKSRailroad.

Don’t know what types of photos you can use for your business? Just do a search. You’ll quickly find out. A word about using photos from the internet. Do not just copy photos from another website. They may be copyrighted and, if protected by a copyright, may be very costly to you should your site be discovered. Again, as was mentioned earlier, there are numerous websites with free and paid photography and videos available to use. One of my favorite free sites is called Pixabay and my favorite paid sites are DepositPhotos and Shutterfly. The small investment in purchasing these photos and videos is a very small investment when it comes to advertising your business.

Next, let’s talk about social media channels.

All the major social media channels are very sensitive to what you can and can’t do. This section alone could be an article itself. I will keep it brief and general to say, with the onset of privacy issues with social media sites like Facebook and the European Data Protection Regulations, social media channels have become safer and easier to set up your accounts exactly how you want them. A for instance, our financial advisor can’t receive reviews or recommendations on social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Both of these social media channels make it very easy to choose not to receive these. In the case of private groups on social media channels like Meetup, you are able to approve anyone wanting to join as well as only allow certain people to have access to your information. YouTube has also tightened up their privacy. I could go on and on with examples but will stop to say, whatever your challenge, there is a solution.

How about what to write?

Not sure what to write about? Maybe it’s best to source information already on the internet and write a brief description of why you want to encourage the readers to learn more about the topic you find beneficial. If you don’t know what to write about, Google it. A word about plagiarism, Google frowns upon copying and using content from another site but doesn’t have a problem if you write your own comments and copy the link back to the source as well as give mention of what it is you are sourcing. That is not only beneficial for you and your website but also proper.

So, is compliance holding you back from getting involved with marketing your business online? I hope in sharing these suggestions you have a better understanding of what you can do as well as what is available to you online to market your business. Do you have your own challenge with privacy and compliance? We’d love to hear from you and learn about your needs.

Alyse Mitten and the team at Interlace Communications are well versed in the does and don’t in working with businesses with challenges in marketing their business. With over 40 years of experience in marketing and advertising and business partners to help our clients market their business, we find the right marketing strategy that works. We realize every client is different. Give Interlace Communications a call at 484.709.6564 or email us at theteam@gomaava.com.