Blogging is an amazing tool to help promote your business online, build brand recognition, and boost your SEO. However, depending on your industry, if you are not careful, it can also be a surefire way to make sure you end up with fines, dealing with compliance issues, in court, or even losing your license to practice your business. Therefore, when choosing to educate your customer base about new ideas and tolls that you can offer to help them either personally or in business, make sure you (or your marketing company) know the rules affecting your business industry and use those rules when creating your content.
The Rules
First, take a look at the rules. Many industries only have rules affecting stolen content. In other words, most industries are not regulated by government entities, and therefore can discuss anything and offer all types of tips and advice while only needing to ensure the content is original and the ideas and wording have not been stolen from others. For instance, a baker cannot publish a recipe as his or her own when he or she found that exact recipe, verbatim, on the Betty Crocker website.
There are, however, the elite industries that must follow compliance issues. Attorneys, doctors, financial advisors, and insurance brokers, dealers, or agents are some of the best known industries in which compliance issues play a part in every last aspect of business. One rule each of these industries have in common is understanding the fine line between offering ideas that can be seen as common knowledge versus offering advice in a blog that can be misconstrued as specific professional advice. This may seem like a bit of an abstract idea, so we will dissect it. Using an attorney as an example, a marketing piece for an attorney located in New Jersey (for instance) may discuss the general issues surrounding a high profile case (like the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) and how these issues would be seen in the courts in New Jersey. What they may not do is provide specific legal advice, such as what they believe a party in this situation should do legally (Aside from contact an attorney with questions). Financial advisors may discuss some general guidelines of types of investments that are available for people in similar situations as the above case, but may not provide specific investment portfolio ideas. And doctors may discuss the issues surrounding substance abuse or mental health issues, but may not diagnose the parties with this issue or provide a specific treatment regimen.
In addition to what they may and may not discuss, some industries have words they may or may not use. For instance, many industries must stay away from the word "free" but can use the word "complimentary." All of these rules play a part in developing written content that keeps companies in these fields in business and out of court, yet in the public eye.
To learn more about keeping your company compliant when writing content for your blog, website, advertising material, or social media posts, contact the experts at The Mighty Pen. With many years of experience in the legal and insurance fields, The Mighty Pen writers have learned about the importance of compliance in regulated industries and work diligently to keep their clients int he scope of compliance with all of their written content.