Perilous Promotions

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Authors and aspiring authors are not necessarily marketing or legal experts. There's a lot to learn. For instance, swap a good review of a friendly colleague's book with a good review from your colleague for your own book and you might see reviews deleted by Amazon. Even the suspicion that you might have gamed the unsolicited review system might result in backlash.

Trusting a beginner to Tweet for you might also backfire if they damn your work or product or service with exceptionally faint praise.

Experienced legal blogger Jeff Greenbaum, writing for the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC analyses the disastrous (well, not really dis-aster because misaligned stars had nothing to do with the self-inflicted damage provoked by some ill-advised Tweets) social media honesty about flying with KLM India.

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c1cd68eb-7ac8-45ec-9b94-f96ecf19fa06

Original article link:
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102fo6e/klm-and-its-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day-on-social-media

Jeff Greenbaum's social media advice should be well-taken. Authors could learn from his top 5 tips.

What else *not* to do.

There's the matter of bribery, and illegal sweepstakes and "contests" to persuade people to provide something of value to the person running the contest.  An illegal sweepstakes might be designed to induce "Likes" on a friendship-related social network, or reviews on a book-selling site, or a surge of book purchases during a specific timeframe.

There's a lot to know, and an exponential amount of legal paperwork if the prize value is in excess of $600.
The more a would-be contest organizer knows, the better the chances of staying out of trouble.

Legal blogger Philip K. Rebentisch ACP, blogging for Manhattan Advertising & Media Law Inc. offers some tried and true advice about the difference between a sweepstakes and a contest..

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b65aa2cc-2485-4de4-be25-501ca0d75fd3

Original link:
https://admedialaw.com/sweepstakes-and-contests-not-knowing-the-difference-may-cost-you/
On the same topic, but geared towards healthcare organizations (but one can easily extrapolate), bloggers Randi Seigel and Po Yi for Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP define raffles, games of chance and games of skill and share a very good checklist (or to do list) for organizations that wish to increase outreach, brand awareness and/or raise funds.

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9e2030a9-9ed3-45ab-b0b4-e9e9cf887bd4

Original link:
https://www.manatt.com/Insights/Newsletters/Health-Update/Sweepstakes-and-Contests-What-Healthcare

There's also a webinar mentioned in the latter blogs, for those who have the time.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry