What is a Disclosure Policy and why do you need one?
Definitions
noun
something that is disclosed
the act of disclosing; revelation
(taken from Collins English Dictionary)
There are approximately 73,458,702 blogs worldwide of which these are just stats from WordPress so you can imagine how many millons more there are on other platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr and all the others that are freely available.
Many blog owners will receive payment or gifts in return for their views on products and/or services which are owned by another company.
By having a disclosure policy on your blog, you are making your readers aware that there may be some content where you may/may not have been influenced in your views.
In our blog at UK Small Business Advice and Mentoring, we have disclosed that we accept payment in forms of advertising (which is always on the right hand side of our website), sponsorship or other forms of compensation.
This other form of compensation could be where we are giving a review on a product or another business would like to add a blog post to our site. In this case we will always make it clear that it is a sponsored post.
It is very easy to get your own disclosure policy. We got ours from disclosurepolicy.org and you can download an image to say that you have a disclosure policy on your site.
A disclosure policy can be generated for you from their site by answering a few short questions.
Have you got your policy yet?
by Alison Pinney – UK Small Business Advice & Mentoring
