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Social Media Best Practices (and some other good ones, too)

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Poster with a womans cleavage and a padlock holding her shirt closed and the caption says NSFW modeThe ASACP just released their Social Media Best Practices to help guide those of us in adult entertainment to make sure that children are not accessing unsuitable material. It is not just children we are protecting.  If someone accesses inappropriate material at work, they could get fired.

A friend of mine once bought a DVD boxed set of B movies from the 60’s and 70’s.  During holiday celebrations, he popped in the first disc to sit down and watch one with his entire family. His parents, brother and sister-in-law, nieces, nephews and daughter were all there.  When the movie came on, he realized that this was an old porn.  Whoops.

Social media is trying to help insure that you know what you are about to see, so you can make sure that you are in the right place at the right time, and not “accidentally” stumbling across anything inappropriate.

Listen to Joan Irvine talk about Social Media Best Practices in her blog radio interview on Sin 2.0.

Social Media Best Practices

  • Label all sexually explicit ‘social media content postings’, including but not limited to: text, video, audio, images or widgets enabling any software functionality.
  • All social media content postings should indicate “Age-Restricted” or “Sexually Explicit” based on the content.
  • When you direct people to age-restricted content or commerce on or from online social networks & mobile devices, ensure that all of your social media and mobile pages from blogs, ads and e-commerce tools to videos, fan pages, apps and widgets are labeled with the Restricted to Adults – RTA website label (http://rtalabel.org).

Additional Good Practices

  • label your tweets or posts with #nsfw (not safe for work)
  • Make sure that you have a landing page that is not explicit, that lets people know they are about to enter an explicit website.
  • Set an age limit of 18+ on your Facebook fan page
  • If you have a Facebook profile, create a group for your explicit postings and restrict all explicit talk and postings to the group. Make sure to make your group private.

Let us know if you have any other good practices to add to the list!

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Sex and Facebook Ads

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scantily clad girl in a christian singles ad on facebookIf you thought having an adult Facebook page was hard to accomplish, try running an adult ad. It is almost impossible. Even running content that is considered family friendly can be really hard to maintain due to the strict rules set forth by Facebook.

To run a successful ad campaign on Facebook you have to start with the content of your page. Your content has to be deemed acceptable, and Facebook has some pretty strict guidelines. Many of these seem pretty simple and straightforward. But the reality is, when you are on the network and doing your thing, it can be pretty hard to color within the lines.

Facebook Rules for Advertising:

General Rules:

  1. Ads must directly relate to the content on the landing page.
  2. Ads must clearly represent the company, product or brand that is being advertised. Products or services promoted in the ad must be directly available on the landing page.
  3. Ads cannot insult, harass or threaten a user.

Translation:

  1. You cannot have an ad that is advertising something different than the page it is linked to.
  2. You cannot pretend you are a different company or a different person than you actually are.
  3. You cannot tease or taunt people in your ad to get them to click on the ad.

Landing Pages:

  1. Ads that contain a URL or domain in the body must link to that same URL or domain.
  2. Landing pages cannot generate a pop-up (including “pop-overs” and “pop-unders”) when a user enters or leaves the page.

Translation:

  1. If you show a web address in your ad, the ad must link to that web address. So you cannot have a web address but have the link go somewhere else.
  2. When you click on the ad it cannot take you to a page that has pop-up ads or pop-up pages.

Targeting:

  1. Any targeting of ads based on a user attribute, such as age, gender, location or interest must be directly relevant to the offer, and cannot be done by a method inconsistent with privacy and data policies.
  2. Ads with adult themes, including contraception, sex education and health conditions must be targeted to individuals at least 18 years old. Platform ads should do this via Demographic Restrictions, not by obtaining user data.

Translation:

  1. When you target an ad to your audience, it has to be directly related to the content you are advertising. So if you are advertising a dating site, it has to be directed to singles.
  2. Any ad with adult content can only be directed to people 18 and older.

Prohibited Content:

  1. Adult content, including nudity, sexual terms and/or images of people in positions or activities that are excessively suggestive or sexual, or provocative images in violation of community standards;
  2. Adult friend finders or dating sites with a sexual emphasis;
  3. Adult toys, videos or other adult products;
  4. Ads must not be false, misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive.
  5. Ads will not be permitted in cases where a business model or practice is deemed unacceptable or contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising philosophy.

Translation:

  1. Porn. Naked pictures. Sexual pictures. Naughty words. Violence…in a nut shell. Nope, probably no nut-shells either.
  2. Dildos, vibrators, strap-ons, lube, and pretty much anything you would find in a sex shop.
  3. You cannot lie in your ad.
  4. You can’t go against the code of ethics in the Facebook Terms of Service.

Most people in the adult industry will find advertising on Facebook pretty difficult. Some of you will be able to do it, depending on what your website or content is, some might not. Learning the rules are the only way to know if you can.

Stay tuned for the next post on porn stars advertising on Facebook and learn some tips and trick on how to run a Facebook ad if you are in porn.

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Does Facebook own my photos?

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girl wearing a plaid skirt, with no top on and a banner going over her breasts that says "Facebook is hotter than me."Facebook owning the rights to our photos is something most of us never think about when we use it. But if your photos are part of your business or professional image, then this might be a big concern for you.
The Facebook Terms of Service state:

  1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

What this means is that when you post photos on Facebook you give permission to Facebook to use that content, however they only have the right to use your photos in connection with Facebook or Facebook promotions, like television or internet ads.

The exception to this is if you have your privacy settings to only show your photos to your friends list. Facebook will respect your privacy settings.

When you delete your account, Facebook no longer has rights to use your photos. But there is a catch. This is only true if you have all your photos set to be visible only to your friends. If they are visible to friends-of-friends, networks or the public, then Facebook has rights to use them whether you have an account or not. Also, if you post a picture on a friend’s wall, and they do not have their profile set to private, then Facebook has the rights to those pictures too.

The likelihood that Facebook is going to use your photo is pretty slim. And if they do use it, it will only be used on Facebook or for Facebook promotions.

If this is a concern for you, there are a few ways you can help prevent unwanted distribution of your photos.

  1. Put a watermark on your photo, or put a line of text on it that says “this photo is the property of…”

This will also help prevent people from snagging your images.

A watermark or line of text won’t technically prevent Facebook from using your photo, but it does greatly reduce the possibility.
  2. Change your privacy settings to “Friends Only”. 
This will only allow your friends to see your photos.  However, public figures like porn stars, dancers or prominent business people, most likely want their images available to everybody.
  3. As an adult star or dancer, you can use your publicity shots or teaser pictures exclusively in your profile, since you probably don’t mind if people share them.

Read about how not to get deleted from Facebook! More information on Facebook practices for Adult Entertainment.

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Nice Form Baby! Too bad I can’t read your blog.

bedazzled pubic area and it spells <hr/>

Sexy HTML code: <hr/>

Form over function?  This is an essential life question.  But let’s just look at this question in relation to your blog or website.  A website is a balance between form and function. You want it to look beautiful but you want it to be usable. If you cannot read it, can’t navigate it or can’t understand it, then what is the point?

Navigation is a key issue everyone talks about.  People have to be able to move easily around your site. They have to be able to find where they are supposed to go.  Selling products? They must be able to figure out how to buy.

Ads can clutter up a page.  We have all seen sites where there are so many ads we cannot distinguish the site content from the advertising content. 10 years ago that might have worked – to get people to randomly click ads as they were trying to find their way to the content they were looking for – it doesn’t really work now.  We are all much smarter than that. Most of us know not to indiscriminately click on ads in a web page and if we see a page that is so overrun with ads as to be confusing, we just leave.

Content is King. Ultimately, once people have figured out how to move around your site without being bombarded with ads, then your ability to convert your people into readers, subscribers, followers, fans, clients, sales, customers and colleagues is the quality of your content.  It must be relevant to your topic, informative and interesting. It must be written well and checked for grammar and spelling.

If you are an adult star you might be thinking, my content is primarily video and images.  The same rules apply.  The parts of your site that include text must have good text.  The part of your site that has images must have good images.

Images. Your images must come through. They need to be sized properly for fast loading and if they link, the link must be good.  A bonus you could add would be to write good alt tags, so that screen readers can read  a good description of your image to a blind viewer.

Frequency. Quantity is almost as important as quality. If your site is based on communicating information and you update sporadically you will not build a solid audience.  You need to be regular with your updates, even if the information is pictures or video.  Set a schedule.  If people know that you update weekly, three times a week, daily, twice a day, then they are more likely to come back to see your updates (here is where quality comes into play). This will build a loyal audience which can translate into a loyal customer base.  But they have to be able to rely on you before you can rely on them.

Though form is important, function will ultimately prevail.  Your audience will stay longer and come back more often if you provide them with quality content. If your site only has a pretty face then you might get someone who comes once, but they won’t come back.  A pretty face will get people to the door; it won’t deliver the sale.

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Is your name too porno for Facebook?

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Naked Man holding a sign that says Facebook in front of his groin

Many porn stars are on Facebook.  There are lots of people in adult entertainment that have profiles and pages.  One of the big issues with being in adult entertainment and being on Facebook is promoting yourself without getting your account deleted. One of the first things you have to ask yourself is, is your name too porno for Facebook?

To make sure that you are within Facebooks terms of service, the content of your posting has to be chosen wisely.  Keeping that in mind, the name of your Facebook Page also has to be chosen wisely.  So what happens if you didn’t?  Until very recently you would have been stuck with it.  Even worse, you might have to delete your page or have your account deleted.  If you have built up a following, then deleting your page is probably the last thing you want to do.

So what are some reasons you might want to change your page name?

  1. You notice a grammatical error
  2. You thought you were being clever and realized later that you weren’t
  3. Your company changed its name
  4. You had your agency in your name and you left your agency
  5. Your name is location-based and you move
  6. You think that you must have a location in your name, and then figure out that you don’t
  7. You have a date in the name and it expired, but your page didn’t
  8. You realized that you used a foreign swear word
  9. You realize that having F*$% in the title of you page is not the best idea ever
  10. It is clearly pornographic

Facebook is testing a new feature in Facebook Pages that will actually allow you to change your page name.  The catch is, you can’t have too many likes on your page.  What they are not telling us is how many is too many.  So if you have thousands of people who like your page, it is most likely too late to change the name. But if it is a newer page, you should still have time.

So consider the “porn quotient” of your Facebook page name. You may now be able to change it.

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Porn not Verified on Twitter?

Are you verified on Twitter? Does it matter? Is it important?

For some people getting verified on Twitter is extremely important. Twitter verification is essentially a big blue check mark that says you are the real deal! It is Twitter’s way of establishing authenticity behind a well know and public persona. It is used for public figures, ie. politicians, celebrities, rock stars, etc.

Jenna Jameson verified on Twitter

One issue that a lot of adult stars face is the inability to get verified. Maybe someone already claimed your name and won’t give it up, not doing anything with it, just cyber-squatting.  Maybe they claimed your name to spam.  Maybe they are just posing as you.

Your name is a brand. You have worked hard at getting name recognition and you should be able to reap the rewards, not some random person in cyber-space who doesn’t know you from Adam. What is even worse than someone squatting on your name is if they are spamming or misrepresenting you.  Are they damaging the good name you have built?  This is, of course, why Twitter started verifying to begin with.  But many people in the adult industry have had great difficulty getting verified, or getting Twitter to help them resolve issues of cyber-squatting or spam/misrepresentation.  And yes we speculate discrimination.

Pornstar Tweet felt strong about this issue as well and created their own verification system for the stars they list. They vet the stars on their list and with any they can without a doubt authenticate, the readily offer their own check mark. Though unfortunately their check mark only appears on the list on their site and doesn’t translate to the Twitter avatar.

However, Twitter not verifying is quickly becoming a mute point because they are no longer verifying accounts. Since the change to New Twitter, many verified accounts have even lost their prized check mark.  Though support@twitter does say they are restoring them to their rightful owners.

The change to new twitter seems to come with the promise of a change to the verification system.  Apparently the verification system was in its beta form and Twitter will be rolling out a new and improved system.  Maybe this new verification system will be more open to verifying adult stars who have worked hard for name recognition and deserve to have that little blue check mark!

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Hypocrisy & Sex in Advertising, more from Blogworld

Hypocrisy riddles advertising when it comes to sex. Some interesting dichotomies were discussed at Blogworld Expo 2010 such as the portrayal of acceptable sex in the media. The delineating line in advertising being romantic sex is ok to use for sales but sex for the sake of sex is not. For example, KY Jelly ads always portrays married couples having sex. The message being, recreational sex is OK if you are married.

Of course this is not a new message or a new issue.  In the United States married sex is truly the only kind of sex that is OK to promote, whether it be recreational or procreational.  Sex between unmarried people for pure pleasure is frowned upon, at least in advertising.

Now outright sex might be frowned upon but implied sex, ie. provocative imagery, is not.  At least it is not frowned on for everyone.

The ability to utilize provocative imagery in advertising is inherently tied to the purveyor of the imagery. The brand is the ambassador not their image. So if the brand is respectable then sexually provocative imagery will be accepted, but if the brand is not considered mainstream acceptable then even conservatively provocative imagery will be viewed as innappropriate. This of course is a generalization. We do see backlash when even respectable brands push the envelope too far.  But they can still push the envelope much farther than so-called not respectable brands.

picture of a highway billboard for Adultcon

The image to the left is a Calvin Klein ad that is featured in mainstream magazines. Similar ads are on billboards in major cities, off highways and scattered across the country. The image to the left is a billboard for Adultcon, an adult entertainment convention. The Adultcon billboard was asked to be taken down because of its proximity to a school despite there being nothing provocative about the billboard. The only questionable thing it says is “Adult” and that word is not that questionable, though many would consider the inferred industry to be questionable.

Interestingly though, if you search “Porn Billboard Ad” in Google images, the first image you see is not some big breasted heaving porn star.  Nope Jenna Jameson was the third image! An ad by Calvin Klein is the first.

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Social Media & Sex: Adult Entertainment at Blogworld

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Pete Housley, Kelly Shibari, Nina Hartley and Jamye Waxman at BlogworldIt is safe to say that adult entertainment is under represented in social media.  However, that is better than not represented.  At Blogworld Expo 2010 among all the wonderful and informative panels on social media, blogging, public speaking, brand building and PR was an adult entertainment gem tucked away.

The seminar was NSFW: Exploring Porn and Social Media, with speakers Adria Richards, Jamye Waxman, Kelly Shibari, Nina Hartley and Pete Housley. Though most of you probably know, this panel made up a power house of social media in adult entertainment.

This should come as no surprise, but many traditional SM strategies were discussed as being the same in adult entertainment as they are in mainstream media.

  • Make sure you have a point of view you are always promoting, this helps establish a voice.
  • 80% conversation and 20% call to action
  • It is all about engagement

Adult entertainers are more discriminated against in social media than other public figures.  Pete Housley told a story of an adult star whose name was taken by someone else on Twitter.  The person who claimed the name was squatting with it and refused to give it up. The star had to assume a different twitter handle. Of course this means that the benefit of her brand recognition for her name is received by someone else.  She also tried to get her account verified by Twitter, so that her non-branded twitter handle would be acknowledged as the real adult star.  But because she is an adult star, Twitter did not address her issue.

Though Twitter does not specifically prevent adult entertainment from networking on their service, they won’t really go out of their way to help anyone out either.

What this means is that adult entertainers have to work harder and smarter to maneuver the social media sphere. Of course, if you have to think about and plan out a social media strategy then it is far more likely to be successful then they people who just wing it.

So maybe the inherent disadvantage will prove to be a marketing advantage in the long run? What do you think?

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