If you haven’t heard the FTC Endorsement Guidelines (Federal Trade Commission) is focusing more on influencers and disclosures for sponsored and affiliate content.

My partners at ShopStyle Collective put together a guide of best practices to follow when promoting any of its affiliate content as well as sponsored content. The guide could is useful to anyone who promotes affiliate products.

Per our Terms & Conditions, you must adhere to FTC Endorsement Guides and disclose any time you use our tools, as failure to do so may result in termination of your ShopStyle Collective account and you may forfeit your earnings. 

By following these guidelines and disclosing the relationship between ShopStyle, Merchant (or any other broker or merchant), and you, a viewer of your posts can decide how much weight to give your endorsement.

Sharing affiliate links? Widgets? Links? Use the examples below as a baseline for how to craft clear messaging.

Types of Disclosures for paid/sponsored campaigns:

• Facebook: #Sponsored, #Promotion, #PaidAd, #ad, #CommissionLink
• Instagram: #Sponsored, #Promotion, #PaidAd, #ad, #CommissionLink ** Please note the disclosure is recommended to be placed before the “more” link to open up and see more hashtags. Please note, when posting to Instagram, even if you utilize the “Paid partnership with [sponsor name]” tool, ShopStyle requires our influencers to also use #sponsored or #ad.
• Blog post: “I get commission for purchases or clicks made through links in this post.”, and Sponsored by [sponsor name]
• Pinterest: #Sponsored, #Promotion, #PaidAd, #ad, #CommissionLink
• Video: Clearly state in the video that it’s sponsored by [sponsor name], that the content in this video has affiliate links you can make money off of when clicked on (if it does), and add in disclosure (#CommissionLink) under description in video.

Thank you very much to the guys at Top Tier Style for sending me one of their Cool retro Steampunk shades!! Love it! #ad

A post shared by IamAWAHM (@wahmstyle) on Sep 29, 2017 at 7:19am PDT

Types of Disclosures for affiliate links used in blog and social posts:

• Facebook: #ad, #CommissionLink
• Instagram: #ad, #CommissionLink
• Blog post: “I get commission for purchases or clicks made through links in this post.”
• Pinterest: #ad, #CommissionLink
• Video: Clearly state in the video that it’s sponsored by [sponsor name], that the content in this video has affiliate links you can make money off of when clicked on, and add in disclosure (#CommissionLink) under description in video.

Best practices to follow for your disclosures:

• Disclosures must be next to the content to which it relates to; a viewer should not need to scroll to view the disclosure
• Disclosures must be in a font of the same size as the rest of your post
• Disclosures must be obvious, not buried in a long paragraph of unrelated text or hashtags
• Disclosures should be visible every place the post appears, not only be accessible by clicking a hyperlink such as your Bio or About Me page
• Always disclose if a brand sent you product for free. e.g: Jumpsuit ℅ Revolve, etc…

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