Social media release.
Social media releases, what are they? And do you need one? Well, it’s more important
if you’re running a face to face workshop to be honest, then if you’re doing stuff online. Mostly webinars don’t really need a social media release, but there’s no harm in having one. So what is it?
It’s a permission slip that people sign if they’re attending your workshop, which just says that you are permitted to use their image on social media. So you can take images and videos at your workshop that you run, and you are permitted to use them on social media to promote the event or future events. It’s normally referred to as a social media release, but it can be more general, it can relate to using your image on a website, not necessarily social media, it could also relate to using any information or stories that you’ve shared in a broader context. Usually though when you run a workshop, you wouldn’t really use that in any information revealed in that forum publicly. So there’s a bit of a dichotomy on the one hand, you have the social media release which allows you to use the images and videos of the event on social media. On the other hand, many people who run courses will also say as part of the intro, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Basically what happens on the course should be kept confidential and people should be aware of not revealing it outside of the outside of the room.
If you’re going to have that kind of a confidentiality request or requirement on your attendees, that should be on any terms and conditions they have when they go into the room. But also then you would need to tell people not to take videos not to take photos for the purpose of social media. I certainly know that I attended an event once where people were live streaming on Facebook. So they were taking video as the presenter was speaking. It was a bit of a shock to everybody when the presenter came out with a story about an abused childhood that she had never shared with anybody before. Her intention was only to reveal it within the room, she didn’t have any desire for this private information to be made public. Unfortunately, at that event, no boundaries were set and there was no guidance to the attendees that Facebook live was not permitted.
So part of your media release should be including what your social media expectations are of attendees. So for example, if you are doing a webinar, for most webinars only the organizer can record and that’s fine. But if you’re on a webinar platform that an attendee can also record you need to make sure to tell them whether you want that to happen. So tell them where the recording is not permitted or is permitted or whether you’re recording it, but you will have control over that recording and how it’s used. The last thing you want is for somebody else to record you and then put that recording on the internet and have your whole workshop on the internet. So set some boundaries in the social media release.
For example, short Facebook lives are fine but don’t make them more than 5 or 10 minutes because you don’t want the entire presentation streamed live. Or if you do want it streamed live, then let your people know that as well. So the social media release just sets the boundaries for social media and for your own use of the images that you and your team are gonna take during the day. It is better to cover it off in writing when they sign in, it is also a good idea to explain it to them in the housekeeping part, right at the beginning of the workshop so that they know what is expected.
So, no rocket science in social media releases. It just needs to say what it is that you expect of them and what you’re going to be doing with them, from the perspective of social media. In my package there’s bulletproof your workshop materials which is an add on package to this workshop. It’s a bulletproof your workshop advanced, in that package I include wording of a social media release that you can use at your own events and you can modify and play around with that wording. So enjoy your social media and enjoy your workshops, Cathryn Warburton the Legal Lioness signing off.
