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Beauty & The Law Old Rules for New Media Find out important legal considerations for using social media. by Jean Warshaw EMPLOYEES' POSTS AT THE BUSINESS' REQUEST Social media can be quick and spontaneous, which creates a tension with the need to have well-planned business communications. The privacy rules that apply to traditional written materials also apply to social media, and are a reason to post with caution. For example, if a famous sports star uses your products or comes into your store, you should respect that person's privacy and not tweet about it without the star's permission. Some states have publicity laws that require written permission before a business can use a person's name or photo to sell products. Similarly, some states have privacy laws that prohibit publishing information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses that your business has collected. Posting information you collect on your website can also lead to liability if you violate your website's privacy policy. Your business will probably ask company employees to post photos and announcements on social media, or tweet about sales and promotions. Employees who 52 November 2013 | beautystorebusiness.com post personal testimonials about company products need to disclose that they are employed by the company. The Federal Trade Commission published Endorsement Guides that require anyone who posts ads or testimonials on any social network to disclose if they are company employees or received anything of value for posts. Employees should also say they are employed by your business if they try to correct unflattering reviews by non-employees. The concept behind the Endorsement Guides is that people rely on the truth of endorsements to make purchasing decisions, and readers will be able to evaluate the endorsement if they know if the endorser is an employee or received payment or free products in return for a review. The FTC gives an example of a person who posts messages on a message board to promote their employer's product. The Endorsement back it up. A business that asks employees to post to social-media sites could be liable for advertising violations, even if it doesn't control what's posted. Yelp recently sued a law firm for allegedly posting fake endorsements on its social-media site. Its August 2013 complaint in San Francisco Superior Court says that after one client posted a negative review about the McMillan Law Group, lawyers and staff posted falsified, glowing reviews, pretending that they had been well represented by the firm. One in particular purported to be from a Bryan Sales, who gave the firm four stars and said "They promised me a fresh start through … Bankruptcy and I got it. They got rid of all my debt and helped me find a job." These faked reviews violated Yelp's Content Guidelines and terms of service as well as false advertising laws, according to the complaint. The privacy rules that apply to traditional written materials also apply to social media, and are a reason to post with caution. Guides explain that "[k]nowledge of this poster's employment likely would affect the weight or credibility of her endorsement. Therefore, the poster should clearly and conspicuously disclose her relationship to the manufacturer to members and readers of the message board." Under the Endorsement Guides, all endorsements must be the honest opinion of the endorser and cannot be misleading. As a result, no employer can require an employee to post positive personal endorsements if the employee doesn't like the product. Any person posting an endorsement must have actually used the product and formed his or her opinion. Everything the endorser says in the posting must be true. For example, endorsers can't claim a beauty product makes 85% of all women look younger unless there is concrete substantiation to If your employees use social media for your beauty store business outside of regular business hours, they may be entitled to their hourly pay. Even if you have not asked the employees to use social media from home, if you know that they are working on company business outside of their regular hours, then they are entitled to payment. Overtime rules apply too. If you ask an employee to set up a socialmedia account, be sure that the email address associated with the account is a company email address that you can control if the employee leaves or is terminated. Many social-media sites will email a temporary password to the email address given when the account was established. If you don't control that email address, a disgruntled exemployee could change the password and keep access after he is no longer employed. Worse yet, he could freeze Image courtesy of Barry Burns SMART USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BOOST YOUR beauty store business' success, as "Building a Successful Social-Media Campaign" by Steven Austin Stovall, Ph.D. so clearly explains in the September 2013 issue of Beauty Store Business. Although social media is very user-friendly, it comes with pitfalls. Anyone who watched Anthony Weiner's 2013 New York City mayoral campaign disintegrate knows that social media has its downsides. Weiner had tweeted compromising photos of himself and continued even after the scandal forced him to resign from the House of Representatives. Many of the new media legal issues are the same as the issues presented by old media newspapers and magazines, but the enormous audience and easy access makes them more urgent. This column will explore some of those issues, including employee posts on the job, off the job, social-media policies, and using social media to screen job applicants and follow employee's activities.