There aren’t a lot of rules in social media, but we play by the ones that exist, even when they are vague.

Client Disclosure

We don’t talk much about our clients online, but when we choose to do so, we follow the FTC guidelines on client disclosure.

This means that if we are talking about any company from whom we have received money or in-kind services, (and, yes, we include “discounts on stuff” in this category) we designate that by adding the words (client) or (c) after the company’s name.

This applies only to companies referred to in a qualitative way or where an endorsement is implied. For example, “We love to eat at [restaurant]. They’re the best in the Twin Cities!” would get a (client) designation, while merely factual statements, such as “Had a staff dinner at [restaurant]” or a Four Square check-in would not.

Intellectual Property

Our blog posts fall under the Creative Commons license and we honor these parameters when referring to other people’s content as well. We try to always provide a link to any content that we quote, excerpt, or refer to in passing – save for generic statements like, “I read a blog post the other day that got me thinking…” kind of statements. (Although if we have the space, we’d likely include a link with that as well.)

The images that we use on our site and blog are either stock photos that we have purchased or photos we are using under the Creative Commons license, in which case we’d include the words “Creative Commons” and link to the source file of the image/artist (or as close to the source as we can get it).

As lovers of pop culture, we occasionally have used movie still images in our blog posts. And no, we did not get permission from the studio that made the film beforehand. We suppose this is bad and someone will eventually yell at us. However, we also know that those blog posts are free promotion for the studio’s film, so we aren’t losing any sleep over the matter.

Affiliate Marketing

If we were participating in an affiliate marketing arrangement, (currently we are not) we would designate this information or link with the words, “Affiliate Link.” Currently we have chosen to link all of our book club selections to Amazon.com, but are receiving no financial compensation when book club attendees buy their books there. We just picked that site because Amazon has extensive profiles on each of their titles.

Editorial Focus

Kane Consulting’s social media channels are not supported by any cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions, however we have been paid to have our content syndicated after it was published. If we receive any rewards, incentives, promotional items, gifts, samples, or review items in exchange for coverage in a post, tweet, etc. we disclose that information.

We do sometimes receive free registration to events in exchange for promoting them via our social channels. In these instances, we refer to ourselves publicly as a “promotional partner” for the event, but will likely not also disclose the partnership on every post we make.

Periodically we receive unsolicited books from authors, but rarely provide reviews of these works. However. we DO occasionally provide book reviews of various books we purchased, own and have read. We don’t get paid for this. We just like to read a lot. Plus, it makes us look super smart.

We do not use pseudonyms in any of our company’s social engagement. All posts on official Kane Consulting social channels are written by identified representatives of our company and reflect the views and opinions of the author. All posts on our representative’s personal social media accounts reflect their personal views and opinions. Sometimes the lines between the two get all mushy. We’re okay with that.

Google Analytics

According to Google's terms of service, as users of the company's analytics services (and use of a cookie that collects anonymous traffic data), Kane Consulting will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the service to track or collect personally identifiable information of Internet users, nor will we (or will we allow any third party to) associate any data gathered from our website (or such third parties’ website(s) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of our use (or such third parties’ use) of the service. We will comply with all applicable laws relating to the collection of information from visitors to our website.