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Announcement
Deconstructing Disclosures: Do Creators Need To Say When They’re Getting Paid?
BY: Instagram Business Team
San Francisco, CA
Instagram is a vibrant community where people, businesses and creators come together to share the things they love. With such a tight-knit community, sometimes it’s hard to know when invaluable partnerships might actually land you in trouble.
Today, we’ll share best practices on the importance of transparency when posting branded content.
First up, understanding when you need to disclose that you’re getting paid or paying for for content.
What Counts As Branded Content
To play the game, you need to understand the rules.
For creators
As a creator, if your content promotes any products or services and you were paid to include them, or even if you received the product for free, that means you’re being paid to share branded content.
If there are multiple products mentioned, even if you were gifted or received payment for only some (but not all) of them, the post is still branded content.
For businesses
If you collaborate with a creator (or media partner) to make content, it’s branded content if you paid the collaborator to promote your business, product, or service.
And payment doesn’t just mean money. Giving complimentary gifts or discounts on products, services and trips can qualify as a payment.
How to Disclose Your Partnerships
Partnerships between brands and creators are important to the Instagram ecosystem, and are critical to maintaining trust with your fans and followers. Here are three ways you should disclose your partnerships clearly:
Use the Branded Content tag
The Branded Content tag clearly communicates when a commercial relationship exists between a creator and a business, and is required when posting branded content on Instagram. When a post is tagged, people will see “Paid partnership with [business partner],” in the post's header. Learn how to set up tags in your settings.
Say it was a gift
Simply say the product or service was gifted in your Stories, videos or feed text.
Mention it’s a partnership
Be upfront by saying your post is part of a partnership and mention your collaborator’s name.
When in doubt, the best thing to do is to make your content as unambiguous as possible. It’s always best to disclose the relationship using these three methods.
Refer to the Instagram Branded Content policies and to any relevant guidance issued by your local and regional regulatory bodies (like the Federal Trade Commission the US, or Competition and Markets Authority in the UK), for more information.
BY: Instagram Business Team
San Francisco, CA