Harness the Power of Social Media to Promote Without the Downsides

It’s difficult to imagine launching a marketing campaign in any business, let alone in the fashion industry, without using social media.  These tools can introduce more would-be customers to your product and do it faster than ever imaginable, and they do it in a way that blurs the line between business and personal communication.  Where’s the downside there?  There needn’t be any downside, as long as you live by certain social media rules and principles to avoid trouble. Here are some basic guidelines:

No Unsubstantiated Claims

Be prepared to defend any claims with the same sort of substantiating documentation that you would any claims made using “traditional” advertising and marketing.  Just because your message has been distilled to a 140 character tweet, doesn’t mean that it won’t be scrutinized by competitors or consumers.  Monitor your pages on social media sites for contributions from third-party contributors, as this content is your responsibility, too.

What’s Yours and What’s not

The same intellectual property rules that apply to traditional media apply to social media.  This is important to keep in mind whether it’s a question of verbal content or images.  “Sharing” can easily turn into infringing on intellectual property rights if content such as photographs, video or any other original art work is appropriated without permission.  Trademark is a similarly tricky area, and you should seek legal advice if you have any doubt whether your use of another company’s trademark could confuse consumers as to the origin of its products or services.

For more information about how CASTAYBERT PLLC can help you with social media issues, explore our social media page.

To learn about how CASTAYBERT PLLC can assist you in matters of intellectual property law, explore our intellectual property law practice area, and related topics on that page.

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.