Using online influencers can be a compelling marketing strategy for many companies. However, social posts contain product or services endorsements fall squarely within the endorsement guidelines issued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Canadian Competition Bureau, which require the relationship between the influence and the company to be clearly disclosed. Those endorsement guidelines place the risk of non-compliance squarely on the company whose products or services are being endorsed. Recently, Instagram announced a new tool to make compliance easier. Influencer posts on Instgram will be tagged “Paid partnership with”. Instragam states that when the influencer and the company use this tag “they will both have access to Insights to track exactly how their branded content posts and stories are performing.”
Check out the Instagram announcement here.