Things I do so you don't have to

Update: Pinterest’s Acceptable Use Policy and Brand Pins/Pinboards

February 23, 2014 by Susan Getgood

Disclosure: I am Vice President, Influencer Marketing at BlogHer. Advertising and social media marketing programs are a significant source of revenue for my company and for the bloggers in our advertising network.

It’s not a secret that I am something of an ethics/best practices aficionado. As a result, I pay particular attention to the terms of service and acceptable use policies of the social platforms commonly used in sponsored programs. The good news is: I love it so you don’t have to 🙂

Recently (1/31/2014), Pinterest changed its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to explicitly prohibit both compensated pins and ads that could be confused with Pinterest content.

Specifically prohibited per the AUP :

“Create or show ads that look like or could be confused with Pinterest content (for example, embedding Pinterest actions like Pin, follow or unfollow in your ads)
Directly compensate users for Pinning, following or unfollowing”

However:

“a business can pay someone to help them put together a board that represents their brand. For example, it’s okay for a guest blogger to curate a board for a local boutique’s profile. We don’t allow that boutique to pay the blogger to Pin products to her own boards.”

How does this impact brands that want to use Pinterest in their promotional efforts? Here’s my take.

Not Allowed:

Brands CANNOT compensate influencers to pin brand content on their own Pinterest boards. This includes asking them to curate from a pre-defined pool of content or Pinterest boards.

Allowed:

Influencers can create boards for brands on the brand Pinterest. Because the brand’s Pinterest is understood to be commercial, the board can include branded pins, and no further FTC disclosure is necessary.

Brands can license previously published blog content to populate the brand Pinterest boards. These licensed pins can include branding.

Finally, influencers can create sponsored boards on their own Pinterest account using a theme that aligns with the brand messaging but does not specify content sources or include any paid branded pins. The board sponsorship would require disclosure per FTC requirements, as it is a compensated activity, but one that is more akin to an editorial sponsorship than sponsored advertorial.

Pinterest does not include an example of this type of board in the AUP update but I am confident that this is well within the policy. Here’s an example, built around the theme of beautiful things:

That said, Pinterest can always change its mind about this, or any other policy in its Terms of Service or AUP, so it is wise to check the company’s blog for updates before finalizing any program.

In particular, if you want to do a contest or sweeps using Pinterest, something I generally do not recommend, the service regularly refines its policy on sweeps and contests. The current policy is much in line with the new position on compensated pinning. It states: “please don’t:

Suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses you or the promotion
Require people to Pin from a selection
Make people Pin your contest rules
Run a sweepstakes where each Pin, board, like or follow represents an entry
Encourage spammy behavior, such as asking participants to comment
Ask Pinners to vote with Pins, boards or likes
Require a minimum number of Pins”

What do these changes mean for brands over the long term?

Pinterest is still feeling its way around commercial use of the platform, and is simultaneously trying to maintain the authenticity of the experience that caused such dynamic growth while evaluating and building its own monetization models. Right now, it is being very restrictive on commercial use of the core functionality of the platform, much as Facebook did a few years ago.

Facebook has since loosened some (but not all) the restrictions it placed, particularly with regard to Pages (versus personal Profiles). I expect Pinterest will do the same: reserve some capabilities to itself while lightly loosening the restrictions in areas where it is not building its own solutions.

More to come, I am sure!

My Facebook Page Experiment, initial results

June 17, 2009 by Susan Getgood

With all the hullaballoo about Facebook Pages, I thought it was time I experimented with one for myself. As I wrote in yesterday’s post, there are a few instances where it may make sense for a blogger to have a Facebook Page. One is for a multi-author blog such as Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip, the family travel blog I launched about eight weeks ago. Each author can be an admin, use his/her own Facebook following to help build the brand and share the load of adding unique content — beyond just the blog posts that get fed automatically.

I’m still experimenting but I want to warn readers to be very very careful when selecting the initial category for their page. There are three basic categories, each with sub options, and once you’ve selected your choice, there is no going back. The only way to change once you’ve created a page is to START OVER. If you’ve actually published the page and started publicizing it, this means losing those fans, and hoping they follow you.

Why is this so important?
Two reasons. First, discoverability. Facebook uses the categories in search, and if you are in the wrong one, fewer people will find you in general searches, versus specific ones based on your blog or brand name.

Second is that the options under the Info tab are different for each basic category. Local Business allows you to list your physical address, hours of operation, website address and information about parking and public transit. No free-form fields. For a Brand Product or Organization, you can list typical business information, including company overview and products in free-form fields. Artists, Bands & Public Figures are presented with options very similar to the ones in the personal profile. These cannot be changed or added to.

The Facebook Page for Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip ended up in the wrong category – Local Other Business. Not because I didn’t pick the one I wanted (Brand, Travel). I did. However, I initially typed my electronic signature with my middle initial; Facebook wanted my Facebook name exactly, without the initial, so it posted an error message. I realized the error, fixed it, and saved.

What I didn’t realize was that in the refresh Facebook had also reset the category to Local Other Business. I pulled a similar sequence of screens to illustrate this for you.

Initial Screen:

Signature Error:

Refresh:

The good news? I mostly did the fan page to find out what might go wrong when creating one, and lo and behold I was not disappointed. Not having the right options on the Info tab is not a big deal for my family travel blog, but it might be for your company or brand.

What should you do?

Take a look at the three types of pages and pick the right one for your brand, blog or business.
When you are filling out the initial creation screen, check the box, type in your profile name correctly and carefully review the selection of category before you hit Create Page.
If you get the error message, check twice.

You can start over at any time until you actually publish your page, but in my case, I just didn’t notice that the category had defaulted to something else until I started trying to customize the info page much, much later in my process.

I’ll just chalk it up to one of those things I do, so you don’t have to, and hope that my experience helps at least one other person avoid the same mistake. I do know I am not the only one who has run into the problem, as there is a support topic in the Facebook FAQs.

So pick carefully!

Some additional nits:
I wish you could have a different image for the thumbnail and the main graphic. Unlike headshots, which most people use on their personal Facebook profiles, logos don’t always size down to something acceptable in a teeny thumbnail square, and certainly not when the same image is used for both with no resizing possible.

I have a devil of a time getting back to my page to edit it. I hope I am just missing something obvious, but the only way I’ve found so far is to navigate to all the pages I follow and then pick mine. There has to be an easier way….