As an iGaming affiliate, you should be well-versed in issues of compliance. However, knowing what you can and can’t offer customers through your links and other measures is not the end of compliance. Ensuring that your affiliate social media posts are compliant is incredibly important too, and full disclosure is a must.
Why is social media important?
Social media is one of the most important tools at the disposal of an affiliate manager, so you need to make sure that you are taking the fullest advantage of it. No matter the platform that you are using, be it Twitter, Facebook, or even LinkedIn, there will be a different audience on each one. Having a cross-platform approach will be important as it means that you can appeal to as many different customers as possible.
Making affiliate social media posts is also a great way for you interact with your audience and gain feedback from them about your campaigns. This is a valuable resource that must be mastered for those who wish to become successful affiliate managers.
ASA guidelines
However, any posts that you make on social media need to be compliant with some of the various governing bodies that you answer to. Any links to iGaming sites, for example, will need to be for sites that are compliant with organisations such as the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC).
The content of your posts also needs to be compliant with rules from the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA). Amongst their guidelines are rules that state that affiliate social media posts need to be clearly outlined as such so affiliates or influencers are always properly disclosing when an affiliate link is present.
They are known for their spot checks and sudden crack-downs, so it is vital that anyone promoting any products through affiliate practices – whether they are through iGaming or for some other product – is making sure that they are familiar with the latest guidelines.
Staying compliant
The ASA monitored 122 Instagram accounts in September. Of the stories these accounts posted, a quarter of them were advertising products in some way, but only 35% of those posts were labelled correctly.
If you have an affiliate brand that you wish to push through social media, you always need to make sure that you are compliant across the jurisdictions you are promoting in. With the UK, this means that your affiliate social media posts need to be compliant with both UKGC and ASA regulations.
Failure to comply means that you can run into fines and other issues. Compliance can be a complicated issue to work out at first, but it is one that you need to make sure that you master, no matter what. Take the time to learn about some of the compliance issues that could affect your affiliate social media posts, and then ensure you are taking steps to avoid them.
Your aim should be to create a trustworthy and informative brand that your customers always feel safe turning to.
