273: Protecting Your Content - Policies and Trademarks and Disclaimers...oh my! with Danielle Liss

Foreign.

Hello.

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Alexa and I'm the general manager here at Food Blogger Pro, and I just wanted to take a second to welcome you to the show today because this one's a very good one. And that's because this episode actually focuses on some questions that center around the idea of protecting your content. You work hard to produce the content that you produce for your blog or on social media, so how can you be sure that the content that you're producing is protected? It's a good and important question. Right? And that's why we are so excited to have Danielle Liss from Businesses and Liss Legal back on the podcast today. Danielle is actually one of our Food Blogger Pro experts, which means that she, as well as a handful of other industry experts who focus on topics like SEO and Pinterest and email marketing, she volunteers our time to the Food Blogger Pro community to help our members with some of their toughest questions. And in this episode, we're tackling some of those questions as they pertain to protecting your content. So what's copyrighted? What are DMCA takedown notices? Do you need a disclaimer? How often should you update your terms of Service and privacy policies? It's a good one, and we're really excited to jump in today. So without any further ado, Arc, take it away.

Danielle, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.

Yeah, we're going to be talking all about, Believe it or not, websites and websites as it relates to legal matters and the I say believe it or not because for those who have followed the podcast who are Food Blogger Pro members, they know your story and they know that this is really the sweet spot for you. But for those who aren't familiar with your story, Danielle, can you give a little background of who you are and what you're about and maybe a little bit about Les Legal?

Sure. Well, I am a lawyer and I work primarily with small business owners who have a digital presence, so websites. I've done a lot of work in the past with bloggers. I used to be general counsel and CMO of an influencer network and then was also in house for a digital fitness company. And one of my goals is, I know in that space, legal is something that might be a little bit daunting for people and particularly if you are coming at this from that creative side. So my goal is really to help people feel a little bit more ease and simplicity on the legal side. So that it's not something that you want to avoid, because I think that's the worst thing that you can do.

Yeah, I think that that's so relatable for a lot of people. They think of things like legal and the legal work that goes into building a business or running a website, and it can seem so intimidating and like so much work that you just don't do it right. It's like, I remember in college I had a friend who said, I have so much to do today that I just took a nap. Like, I just feel so overwhelmed that I'm just not going to do any of it. And I think legal can potentially be that. But what I hear you saying is it doesn't have to be. There can be a simplicity to it and there's a balance between doing the right thing and being intentional about it and going overboard and doing everything just because it's recommended. And we're going to be talking about some of that today as it relates to things that you can do to protect your website and also the content that you're sharing, whether it be on social or other places. So can you talk about, you know, we had been talking about this. We've kind of been going through the process with you for each of our sites and making updates. Is this something that you've been thinking about? Have you heard content creators, bloggers, publishers talking about this? Or is it just like, hey, this is best practice. We need to be talking about this all the time?

I think it's a lot of best practice. But I think one of the things that really sparked this for me is I have a lot of clients who are service based business owners who have a really significant online presence and many of them are marketing on Instagram. And so it used to be that you were primarily pushing sales into your website. So everything kind of lived there and people knew, I need to have website terms, I need to have this, this or this. But what really started this conversation and this line of thinking for me was, okay, I have these clients who are essentially skipping over that piece of the puzzle that used to be there. So what can I do to help them protect their business and protect their content? Because the last thing anyone wants is to put like this really long disclaimer every time they post something on Instagram. Right?

Yeah.

That just kind of kills the mood. Right. So it became part of that and then it really was looking at it and saying, okay, we can help you protect yourself on Instagram. What are the other things that are the most common? Right. Now and especially in the food blogger pro community, I've seen a lot of questions that came up about ebooks and lead magnets and things like that. So it was like, okay, what can we do to take a look at how to best protect yourself when you are putting that information out there? And then really it was a refresher for websites because I think that sometimes people think about, you know, that website fine print and they're like eh, I can either copy it from somewhere else or I did it like in whenever I started my blog and now I don't need to update or refresh that. And I think that it's really just part of having something solid website policies and then knowing what else you can do to protect your content as you are leveling up your business.

Yeah, it's interesting that you, you say that. You know, I think that it's, you can kind of see that shift where it's about having a blog, it's about building that blog and then the there, there becomes a significance on these other social platforms, whether that be YouTube, Instagram, obviously really important. What I hear you saying is you started to see a lot of people were actually using Instagram as their primary platform and then were they using that to sell services, whether that be coaching, maybe it would be some type of program, whether it be exercise or nutrition. And the only way that people, they were transacting with people was on Instagram, is that right?

Primarily, yeah. And it was a lot of, you know, DM me get more information and they're doing more or less, they're booking their sales calls out of the DMs and when that happens, I mean it's great because the type of products that a lot of people were selling were more group program or coaching, things like that. So there's still going to be a contract at the end of the day for most of those programs. But how do you make sure that that marketing that you're doing on the front end is protected? So that's really where a lot of these conversations came out of. And I know a ton of people who are doing that. And depending on what your business looks like, like for some people it's all happening on LinkedIn. So it may just depend on your business, but it really is about taking a look at, okay, here's where I'm doing my business. Here is how I can make sure that I am just putting the foundation in place. Because for a lot of these things it is really just have a couple foundational documents or a couple things that you know, you're doing, and then it flows from there.

Yeah, that's great. And it's interesting. You know, you think about that you have like a terms page on your website, but you don't really have that on Instagram or YouTube. And maybe they have Terms page, but you want to make one specific for you. So we'll talk about that a little bit. But let's just cover the basics on the website side of things. So for somebody who has a blog, has a website, even if it's not the primary place that they're communicating or transacting, what are some of the core foundational things that creators need to be thinking about when they're publishing to their site? And maybe let's start with making sure that you aren't doing something wrong by using somebody else's content. What are some of the basics there that we need to consider?

I think that that is one of the most important things. So when we talk about protecting yourself, you also want to protect yourself from claims that you're infringing. Right? And I think that those. I feel like it's gotten better. Maybe this is, you know, an optimistic attitude, but I do feel like this has improved for a long time. When I would say speak or I'd be at conferences, I had to have a lot of conversations like, please do not right click and copy images from Google and put them on your blog. So I feel like we're moving past that. But what I do want to stress here is just make sure that you are not using someone else's content. You don't want to get a cease and desist letter or a takedown notice. It's simple, just use your content or use content that you know you have permission to use. Whether it's. I always tell people I prefer to purchase stock photography because I know exactly what that license was. So keep track of what you've got. That way you can avoid future issues. And at the same time that you're protecting and making sure that that content is protected, you can also protect your own content with monitoring to make sure other people aren't using it, sending out takedown requests if you find that someone has. And I think that for a lot of bloggers, I hear the question, should I register my copyrights? And I want to throw out there that the copyright office made a change recently and they have a new application where you can do groupings for short form content, a group registration. So basically you pay one time for up to 50 submissions, and it's basically just them making it A little bit easier to register. So in that case, I think it's a great idea because if something ever really did happen with your content and you need to sue, you have to have that registration in place. So that's a good option for people as well.

A few things to dive in on with those that you mentioned. One of the things was monitoring. We use a service called Pixi, which we upload our photos and it essentially searches through the Internet and pulls up any use of those images and then we're able to move forward on it. Are there other monitoring services that you know of that you like or have seen other people be using?

That's the primary one that I know of and have recommended to people. I think sometimes it can get a little bit confusing because you're like, oh no, I gave permission for that one. And it's just making sure that you know where that usage is coming from, but monitor it. And I think that it's a great thing to do. Or if somebody says, you know, I think I saw this come through. I, I had somebody recently email me who said, a friend of mine saw this and knew it was my house because it was like an interior design shot. And so at that point she did a lot of reverse Google Image searching and found that it had been a syndicated article in a whole bunch of different places. And in that circumstance, it ended up being a lot of takedown requests from her. But if you think that something is going on, follow up on it, like really look and see if you can find other places where it is. But I do, like, it's Pixie, right?

Yep. Yeah. P I, X S, Y dot com.

I like them. That's the one that I tend to recommend for people as well.

Yeah. So one of the things, you know, our process for that, we're just in the middle of kind of building that out and essentially what it does is it pulls all, all of the uses that it has found around the web and then it asks you, is this, is this something you are approve of? And if, if you say yes, it will move it out of, you know, kind of the bin of content for you to review. So an example would be, hey, we found this on Pinterest.com do you approve of it? Yes. Maybe we could check and say like, is it actually directing to our site, like not somebody else that's using it and directing it to their site, but approve of that? And then, but inevitably there will be uses that weren't approved. An example was, there's, there was the. I think it was like the, I won't say the name because I don't remember it, but it was the cookie. It was like a cookie business, the one in the, in the, in malls and I think that's what it was. But they had used a pinch of yum chocolate chip cookie photo as like their checkout photo for if you wanted to buy some of their pre made cookies. It's like, oh, that's an obvious copyright infringement on an image in a like commercial setting. So when that comes up, what are your options as a creator?

I think as a creator one of the things that you have to weigh is how much does this damage you. Because it can be an investment to have things taken down, especially if you need to have a lawyer get involved with it. So if it's something where you're looking at it and you don't want them to use it, obviously because it's not their content, then it may be fine to do a takedown request, which a lot of companies will have a DMCA policy on their website where it will show you exactly what you need to do to contact and submit a takedown request.

If not, what DMCA is, for those.

Who aren't familiar, it's the Digital Millennial Copyright act. And it essentially provides.

It's, it's, it's impressive to me that you could remember one of those like. Because to me it's one of those things, I know dmca. But then when you expand it out it's like what are the words and what do they mean? Like millennium. Like.

Essentially what it is, it's there to protect. It came in, I want to say the mid 2000s and it was really there because of music piracy and it was there to provide a safe harbor for people who were posting this or who were hosting that content.

An example being like Napster or Limewire or any of these kind of music hosting.

Those are the days, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, it was really kind of created in response to that. But I think it has become very frequently used now for those who are more in an image driven space. So like bloggers and website owners. And essentially what it is is I think an easy example to use and someone easy to pick on because everyone knows them is BuzzFeed. So if BuzzFeed did one of their list posts and they had pulled an image from the site, even if they gave credit, you can still reach out to them and say, hey, I'd like to have this removed. So if you go to the BuzzFeed site and you scroll down to where all their legal print is. There is a DMCA policy link and it gives you very specific instructions of how to submit a takedown request. So that's usually the simplest way to get things taken down. If it doesn't work, then you can always move to a cease and desist letter from a lawyer. But that's where I tell people you really need to weigh what the damage level is, because it can get expensive to go through that process. So if it's something where you know it really is harming your business to the tune of thousands of dollars, yes, go that route. But if not, just kind of weigh what that is and just do your best to try to get it taken down.

Yeah, it really is an interesting analysis of effort and time. And I think for some people there's kind of a moral obligation to not let people copy content. And that's a consideration as well. For Pinch of Yum, where we land on it is if it's a BuzzFeed, if it's another website, if it's, you know, just a random WordPress site, we say, hey, you can use a photo of a recipe, but what we ask is that you link back to Pinch of Yum, the homepage and then the recipe itself. So we kind of have guidelines on how people can use the photos that we have, and then we don't allow people to use them in a commerce setting. So like if you're selling cookies, you can't use a Pinch of Yum cookie photo to help you sell those photos. It has to be like, hey, we like this recipe. Here's the link to it, but not including the full recipe itself. And do end up doing a decent amount of the takedowns. But worth mentioning, we have a team. And so for creators, for people who have a limited amount of time in their day, if you are one of those people listening to the podcast, that's a consideration you have to make. Is this something that is I have time for and that I can move forward on? Can you talk a little bit about the copyright side of things? So in a dmca you can say, hey, I own this, here's my website, you can take it down. In what instance would a copyright come in handy? And why do you need an official copyright versus the really loose copyright of hey, I created this and I can prove it, therefore I have a copyright. I don't know what the legal term for that type of copyright is, but.

It'S still a copyright as the creator of a piece of content. So an original Piece of content that is, and this is where it gets nice and legal published in a fixed, tangible medium, which essentially means it lives somewhere. It's not just a temporary thing, it's not an idea, it's not something you're just kind of having a chat about in your brain.

It was like on a piece of paper on a website.

Exactly.

Painted on a wall. Sure.

So as long as you have put that out into the world, you as the creator have copyright rights. And that essentially means that you have all of the exclusive rights in how that content is used, published, displayed, etc. Where a copyright registration comes into play, if you ever needed to enter a lawsuit and, or if you needed to send a demand, that's basically like I'm about to sue you kind of thing, you need to have the copyright registered. I think that when it comes to copyright registration, it's one of those things that as your business is growing and as your content is really becoming more notable and in that, I mean, where it might be more likely to be copied, I think it's a good investment to make. Because the application is not incredibly expensive. It's usually about $55. And with the way that they have it now with this grouping, you can do up to 50 articles essentially as long as they were grouped together in the same three month time period. And you can put it all together and get that just additional layer of protection so that if something happens, it can also give you some statutory benefits in terms of, if you win the lawsuit, you can have certain specified damages and you may be eligible for attorney's fees, which is a big help. Um, so that if you've got that registration, you're in, you should be in pretty good shape if, if it came to that point. Now, of course, our big hope is that it doesn't get to that point for anybody because that is, that's expensive.

Would there ever be a point where you would, if you knew that you were going to go into the process of suing somebody, that you'd retroactively go back and say, now I'm going to go through this official copyright process?

Yes, that happened. That has definitely happened. I think that if you do it closer to the publication date, you are going to qualify for the attorney's fees award. Whereas if it's something that is done at a later point, you may not get the full damages that you could get otherwise.

So it sounds like they have to be in a three month period of time. So essentially it'd be like 240, $, 220 a year to every quarter copyright the content that you've done for the past three months, which seems like relatively low cost, but what is the process for that? Is it time intensive and how do you go about submitting it?

It's a government website, so.

So there's that.

Let's face it, they're never as easy as you'd like. It sometimes feels like, oh, wow, this was definitely designed in 1998. Cool. It's not that bad. It can get a little bit trickier if you are someone who has a team of people or who has contributors, because then you might need to parse out those items that were done by a contributor. But really it's just about having samples of what that content is. But you can file online. So I mean, again, it's a government website, so there's that, but you can file online. And I don't think that it's. I don't view it as terribly tedious. I have clients who I file copyrights for, but usually it's something that I tell people they can diy. And a lot of people I know, they'll go through the process, they'll teach a VA and their VA handles it for them. And that's if somebody is, you know, really processing them on a regular basis. Or like one of my clients has a VA that she has trained to do it, who does? Because she does a lot of handouts and lead magnets and things like that and she wants to make sure that those are protected. So it can really depend on what the inside of your business looks like. Again, does everyone need to do it? No. But is it a nice to have. Absolutely.

Great. What's the situation where you'd sue somebody for, like they're using your content and they refuse to take it down, or like they used it and sold it in some way? There's probably a thousand examples, but can you think of a few that are common?

I think the most common is, and I think probably the easiest one that you can find a lot online is like Getty Images and those professional type photographers who, if you want to get one of those images. I don't know what I was doing yesterday, but I was actually on the Getty Images website and to buy a small sample of this one film premiere, it was like $200 for the one image. So obviously that can be a much more significant amount of income if someone is using that image without permission. So it really can be. What money would you have made from having this content? Are they taking money out of your pocket? So let's say with that, the chocolate chip cookie, let's say that they took that and it wasn't just marketing to drive sales for them. Let's say they somehow turned that into a piece of merchandise. Right. Like a cookie. I am the kind of girl who would have a print of a cookie in her office, so it's fine. So it, like, let's say they did that or they had T shirts or I love the idea of the cookie mask quite a bit. So anything like that, if they had used your image and they were making money on it, you're damaged by that because that's money that they really shouldn't have been making. So those are the more likely situations. I think that for many bloggers, if it's someone who is using the image without authorization, it may not get to that point. It really is more about when it moves into that commercial setting where it can really make a big difference is for artists, like, I don't. I follow all of these Enneagram Instagram accounts. Yeah. That have all of like the images and like these beautiful illustrations and things like that. So I think for them it's likely if their stuff were to get taken, it's much more likely to possibly be used somewhere like, let's say somebody puts it on a mug or whatever. So those are the types of situations that I think are really important to look out for.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think of. I think I've told this story in the podcast before, but there's a time when Lindsay and I were doing a travel survey of like, hey, where do you want to. If you were to like, go anywhere, where would it be? Where's your best travel destination? It was through some, like, travel site, you know, comparable to an Expedia. I don't think it was Expedia, but so we went through and it was like, you know, which one of these. If you could eat at any one of these restaurants, which would it be? And it was like, if. What's your favorite dog? Like one of those surveys. And then it got to what would be your favorite dessert? And it was in. On that page was one of. It was a pinch of yum photo of a fruit pizza. And we're like, oh, wow, that's weird. So at that point, I actually just followed up with. I don't know where I found the information, but I was like, hey, here's the deal. Like, if ever we license our photo, here's what we would charge. And we'd ask, because you're using this on Your site in a way that you're licensing it. This is, you know, I think it was like $500 or something like that. And they're like, oh, sorry about that. Can totally understand where that would be, and cut a check for $500. But like, that would have been an example of if that was done right on their end, they would have paid to license that photo to use it. They didn't. So it was like, hey, we could go to them. We didn't have to go through any formal legal process because they just, you know, it's kind of like a handshake exchange. But I can see in an instance like that, similar to what you're saying, like the Getty images or, you know, some artistic thing that you've created that's used somewhere else, how that would would make sense that you would have some dollar amounts attached to that.

And I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Go into it knowing or having an idea at least of what would you have charged them to use that picture? Because I think that's a really important guide for you in terms of, okay, if you know, it's not lawsuit territory, right. Does it merit getting an attorney involved or is it something that you just say, as long as it gets taken down, I'm good with that. So just kind of have an idea, you know, because if they are doing something pretty big with it or they're really. If it's something that you would have charged a good amount of money for, send them something and say, here's what it would have cost. It may not go anywhere, but you can absolutely send it and make a request and a demand.

Yeah, that's great. Third alternative that I would throw out that we sometimes do is just say, hey, I see you're using this. Can you provide a link back to our site? And sometimes depending on what site is using it, that link can be really valuable. I think all of us have received emails from people who are like, hey, can we put a link on your site for $500? The reason is because links carry authority and pass authority, and it's one of the measures of how high your content shows up on Google is the number of quality links pointing back to your content. So there is kind of a monetary value that could be associated with that. And sometimes it's the easiest because it doesn't cost the other owner of the website anything, but you get some significant gains from it. How about on the terms side of things? So obviously there's a lot that goes into your Website terms, how should you be going about creating those? To start, you had talked about kind of the idea of like, hey, I'm gonna look at this blog, copy it and put it on my site, which I'm guessing isn't the right answer. So how should you go about creating those and how often should you update them?

When it comes to website terms, your website terms are your contract with your audience. So they should include all of the things that you really think probably you shouldn't have to say like, you can't hack my website, you can't use my website for spam. So that usually comes under the prohibited uses of a website. I also tell people use a. Put a copyright notice in there because of course most websites are going to have some type of social sharing plugin. So you're giving somebody permission to share content with that. Right. So you're essentially giving them a license. Or what if it's a situation, like you said, where you're good with them using one image as long as they don't copy the recipe in full and they give you a link back, you can include that as part of your copyright notice and say you can do the following, but if it goes past that, you can't do it because it's all copyrighted. And just get really specific as to what you. How you want people to use your site. I definitely recommend use templates for it if you can. Shameless. Plug for businesses. We do sell one that has a lot of content that we made specifically for bloggers and influencers. Just for the type of content that you have on your site.

Can you say businesses?

Yeah, sure.

Just in mentioning that. And then also just a quick plug for anybody who's a food blogger pro member. If you go to the deal section, we have a deal for businesses as well. But what is. What is it and how does that work?

Sure. Businesses is. It's the second business that I own in addition to my law firm, and it is DIY legal templates. Because you don't always want to have to hire a lawyer directly. There are definitely things that you can do on your own. So we have a website terms of use that is a template and it's. That one's relatively. I'm picturing it in my head right now, and it's a relatively easy one to customize and put those things that you most need in there. So it can be relatively simple. It's just making sure that you've got the right information in there. And if you take things like comments or submissions from your Readers, you also need to make sure that you are getting their permission to do certain things with it because those are things that they own. So you would also have something in there. And then there's always, you know, the standard legal stuff that's like if you go to a third party website by clicking on a link, it's not our fault what happens. Like things along those lines in terms of how often to update, it all depends on how often you change your site. If you add a paid component to your site, that's definitely a time to make a change because you want to have purchase policies and things like that. But otherwise, as long as your general website stays the same, there's not a ton of changes that you have to make to them once you have them published.

Why do you have a terms page? That might seem like a basic question, but what is that doing to actually help you as a publisher?

I think it's protecting your rights and making sure that you are being very clear as to what the audience can and can't do and making sure that they are on notice. And I think that's really what it is. Obviously we can't have somebody sign a contract when they come to our website saying like, I'll be good. So it really is the closest thing that we have to make sure that people are using the website appropriately or if there's questions. I always tell people who are like, I'm really looking for a picture, this can I copy an image that I have found? I'm always like, no, please get permission. But I will also say to them, go to the terms and see if they have something in there in terms of how that content can be shared. And so it can be a really good driver.

Can you talk about the difference between terms and a privacy policy?

So your privacy policy, that one you're going to update more frequently. I usually tell people, if you start using a new plugin or something that's collecting information, definitely make updates there. Or if you are, I tell people just to do it once a year, just as an audit type of thing. But a privacy policy talks about what information you collect, why you collect it, how you use it, and who you share it with. So your website terms, think of that as how people can use your site and interact with your content, whereas your privacy policy is about the information that belongs to the user that you're collecting.

Got it? Yeah. And we're going through the process for updating some of those across all the different businesses. One of the things that we realize is like, hey, for all of our transactional businesses in the sense of like Food Blogger Pro, you sign up for a membership site, NutriFox, you sign up for a subscription. WPTasty, you download software. We had Terms, but we had this realization of like, oh, we don't have a terms page for a pinch of yum. We should probably do that. So it's interesting to point that out in my mind for a period of time I thought like, oh, terms are for kind of sites that transact in a business way. Whereas privacy policy, like you have to have that everywhere. But learning from you and from the reading that we're doing, hey, you know what, we got to have this as like across the board. Any site needs to have terms. So what I hear from you is you could use a service like businesses could kind of have a templated version. You could reach out with some. Reach out to an attorney, somebody who practices and does this to kind of spin that up for you and to really customize it and have it exactly as you should have it. And then at that point is it simply uploading it as a page on your website like pinchofyum.com terms?

Yep, put it as a page in the website and then just put a footer link. If you do happen to be a company that sells a product, then most of the time, like I'm a woocommerce person, so I don't really know any of the other options. But there's usually going to be a box where it says you agree to the terms of service. So you want to make sure that anything regarding that transaction is also covered. So if you are making purchases, then I think it's really clear to make sure that it's absolutely well stated what your refund policy is like, what they're able to do with that content, et cetera. So just make sure that those terms cover those general items, especially if they are going to be clicking a box that says, yes, I agree to the terms of service. It's a best place where you can put something.

Yeah, that's great, great, great advice. So let's switch over here and look at the idea of a disclaimer. So we've talked about privacy policy. We talked about terms. How is a disclaimer different than those things? And does that live in its own place? Place, or do you include that in the terms?

I think that can depend on your business. I have some professionals that I work with that absolutely have it on a separate page because it needs to be front and center for what they're doing. My Disclaimer lives on a separate page. Mine lives like as a statement in the footer of my website, but for other people, depending upon what your business is, it can live within the actual terms themselves. And when you think of a disclaimer, I think the easiest way to think of it is to give an example. And that is every single time you have googled a symptom and ended up on WebMD, which I'm speaking from experience here, let's just say, yeah, yeah, it's never happened. And so when you get there, it says this is for informational purposes only.

Sure.

It is not medical advice. Danielle, call your doctor. Do not diagnose yourself because of what you have seen here. Don't make changes to your diet, et cetera. Where I think it can come in really handy for food bloggers is if you talk about specific types of diets or different types of eating habits. Right? So it might be that you talk about a vegan lifestyle or sugar free, gluten free, whatever the case might be. A lot of times there might be backstory in your post that talks about why you adopted certain eating habits. So you may want to make it really clear in your disclaimer that you're not there giving them medical advice or nutrition advice, that you are just sharing information. It's up to them how they use it. And most importantly, you're not liable if something happens. That's the whole point of the disclaimer, is to say I'm not liable if you make changes as a result of the information presented on the website and.

How much it sounds like what you're saying is the significance in terms of the quote unquote, real estate. Like the location of that depends on the significance of the information that you're talking about as it relates to health or nutrition or maybe like finance. If you're talking about a lot of these things, then maybe you want to have a disclaimer a little bit more obvious in terms of its location. Yep, got it. And. What does that look like? Like, how long does it have to be? How in depth does it have to be? You know, I'm just curious to know what that looks like or is that at the point where it's like there are so many. It depends on that that it. That you need to talk to somebody to figure that out.

But generally speaking, it's a few paragraphs. It doesn't have to. If you do a standalone, it can be a little bit longer because it's going to have some additional kind of legal term language in it but I usually say depending upon what areas you are talking about. So we also have a business ease template for disclaimers and there's like a paragraph that you can use. If you are talking about recipes, there is a section that's maybe two to three paragraphs. If you talk about nutrition information, there's also if you are a licensed professional, I always recommend having it so that it says so for mine it says Danielle Liss is an attorney. And however, just because you see this, that doesn't create any type of attorney client relationship between you. This is not personalized advice. So I think that it all depends on how many areas you're talking about. So like if you have a website, like what's something super generic that talks about everything like Huffington Post or whatever, they could potentially cover all the things on that website.

Health, finance, everything.

And so in that case your disclaimer is going to get a little bit longer because you're talking about so many different topics. But if you are really just if you're very focused and for food bloggers, I think it would probably be nutrition and the recipes, I always say throw something in there that's like, look, I'm giving you the recipe. If it doesn't come out, it's not my fault because I'm thinking of myself there because I can't make anything. So like if that happens, you know, it's, it's not. And you might recommend using certain tools. You don't have liability there as well. If someone were to like cut their finger off because they're watching you do a demonstration on cutting knife techniques, I'm sure there's words that I should know about what that's called. I don't know.

Yeah, great. That makes a lot of sense. One of the questions that I have was on something you had talked about earlier was including some type of disclaimer when you are publishing to Instagram or any social platform for that matter. But we can use Instagram as kind of the most relevant platform. How do you go about doing that knowing that you can't put a link in the footer? So what does that look like to have a disclaimer? Or even things that are a little bit more encompassing like terms of service or privacy policy.

I put them in the highlights on your stories. So particularly for my clients who do selling directly through Instagram, we will work on creating. Okay, here are. It's not going to be the whole thing because the last thing you want is pages upon pages of legalese showing up in your stories and People are like, so we usually come up with the most relevant bullet points and it ends up being one to two images. Add that to your disclaimer and then depending upon what your follower count. So if you've got swipe up or if you're using a link in bio, then say go to my link in bio or swipe up and go to my full disclaimer or my full terms. And that's the way that I have been handling it because it gives them a place that they can go and see the general information. Particularly if someone is selling through DMs. I think it can be so important because there you need to say, you know, look, I'm not giving you customized advice just because you're sending me a dm. You don't have an expectation of confidentiality just because it's a dm. So just making sure that those pieces are clear and then put it in your stories. I know some people are like, I don't want that showing up in my stories for a couple of days. It's like it's 24 hours. Like just add it and then put a highlight that's called disclaimer and you can go from there.

So essentially it will, for a period of time it'll be there, people can see it, but after a while it'll move and you can kind of put it off to the side essentially like an Instagram footer in that. In that regard. Or one of the things that I heard you talk about, if you have a kind of a link in bio, link within Instagram, link in profile, you can click on that. That can also have a link to your longer germs and privacy policy and those other areas. So exactly a connection there. That's great. So how about you'd reference this a couple different times and we actually have a mini course that you'll be recording for Food Blogger Pro coming kind of mid October on some of this stuff, which we're excited about. But what about the considerations around kind of digital products and ebooks and things like that? How do we go about making sure that these pieces of content, which are still just as significant as a physical book, but oftentimes don't go through the process of the same type of kind of copyright or protection process that we would just because they're digital? How do we go about including all of the appropriate considerations around disclaimers and licensing and appropriate use for the digital products we're creating?

It really doesn't have to be that long. And I think that some people think I don't want to have to put like my entire website disclaimer into my ebook because that's just. It's not a great experience as a reader. Right. But think about most of the books that you read. If you actually get into the title page information, a lot of times it will have exactly what we're talking about here, where it will have just a line that's a copyright line. I always say include the copyright symbol, your year and your company name so that it's very clear that you are claiming the copyright for that. Then I include a license, so how can they use it? And typically what you're going to say is this is for personal use only. It is not something that you can sell or distribute or any of those other things and reserving the rights for yourself as the copyright owner. So all rights reserved. Three words, not that complicated for that one. And then depending upon the content that you are including in that digital product, then put in a shorter disclaimer. So that may be if it's recipes, if it is talking about nutrition. Again, this is really common for changes, either whether it's nutrition and diet or fitness, because you want to make sure that it's very clear, you know, informational purposes only. Please talk to your doctor before beginning any type of making any changes to your exercise or nutrition regimens, et cetera. So it doesn't have to be long. I usually tell people it's probably about. About four paragraphs and then just put that in. If you've got like a short introductory paragraph, you can put it in the fine print below that. Or you can always do it like right after your title page is fine too. Or if you're somebody who at the end of it says you have questions, reach out that type of thing, put it there. It really is just to put people on notice and to. As we will deal with in the mini course. There's. We do have a template for that and it really is just kind of basing it off of whatever topic you are covering in that particular piece of content. Because if you talk about all the things on your website, but that lead magnet is only dealing with nutrition, you don't have to cover as many different things. You can just cover the specific topic for whatever that piece of content is.

Yeah, and I think that ties back to that conversation that we had, the beginning, which is that balance between making sure that you're being diligent, methodical and intentional with including these things without being so overblown that it feels like it's, you know, Like a run on three paragraph, three sentence or three page disclaimer about everything that comes along with it. But it's that right balance, protecting yourself, protecting the content, making sure that it's laid out in a clear, concise way, which it feels like that's a great example of that. It's there, it's included, you can understand it and it's probably realistically helpful for both sides. So we covered a lot and there's some awesome stuff coming up. We have that mini course that you talked about and that we mentioned coming up in mid October for Food Blogger Pro. I don't know when this episode will actually go out. It might already be out if the episode is coming out after that. So if you're a Food Blogger Pro member, check that out. You talked about businesses for people who want kind of the template option for creating some of these terms and privacy policy disclaimers. And then also you have your practice if somebody wants kind of more of a custom solution to work with you individually, how can they reach out to Danielle if they want to connect with you and have that conversation?

Sure, you can reach out to me. Email is usually the best Danielle istlegal and I'm listleal on all the things social wise, so it's usually pretty easy to find me.

Awesome. Great. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Danielle. Thanks for your leadership and insight on the Food Blogger Pro forums. As an expert, it's so great to have you around there and thanks as always for being so willing to share your wealth of knowledge. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

And that's a wrap on this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks again for us joining tuning in today. If you have any questions from this episode and if you're a Food Blogger Pro member, be sure to drop them in the community forum. Danielle is there answering questions, you know, nearly every week, so that's really the best place you can go to drop your questions and get them answered. You know, like I mentioned before, Danielle is in the forum because she's actually a Food Blogger Pro expert. And our Food Blogger Pro experts are a group of incredible people who volunteer their time to the Food Blogger Pro community in the forum or on live Q&As or in podcast episodes like these to help our members with their toughest questions and to help them grow their blogs. So if you want to learn more about just our amazing group of Food Blogger Pro experts, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com experts and just a reminder that Bjork and Danielle actually talked about this in today's episode, but we actually have a mini course which is just a one video long course about ebook disclaimers coming for members later this month. It'll be available on October 15th and all members will get access to it, and a free copy of the ebook and lead magnet disclaimer template that Danielle actually made and sells on her site. It'll be a good one and I'm really excited about it. So if you're not already a member and you want to learn more about what you can get as a Food Blogger Pro member and get access to this mini course, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com membership and that does it for us this week, my friend. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next time. And until then, make it a great week.