Last Updated on February 10, 2023 by itworldofi
There are multiple mechanisms bloggers can use to legally protect their blogs. Some of these blog legal requirements are standard notices, documents, and policies. They can be found anywhere online, and website builders or blogging platforms often provide templates to use.
Privacy Policies
Explains what you do with user data & info | Often required by law | Protects: User information
Bloggers need user data to market their blogs, engage with people, transact, and understand their audiences better. This information can be anything from a simple email address to a name, telephone number, payment info, and physical location.
Privacy policies explain precisely what you’re going to do with this data and how you’ll use it to track user behavior during their visit and afterward. Most privacy policies are compulsory blog legal requirements and should be linked in the footer of your blog. You can create your own, or use tools to generate one for you.
Disclosures
For affiliate marketing & sponsored posts | Also required by law | Protects: Visitors from unwittingly making decisions they usually wouldn’t
Disclosures are legally required when someone is paying you to write about a topic, promote a product or earn commissions for helping somebody to sell something. Bloggers who monetize with affiliate marketing and sponsored posts must indicate that they’re earning revenue through this content – even if they got something for free in return for publishing content.
Disclosures should be written at the top or bottom of a post and must be on the same page as the post itself. This means no links to separate disclaimers, and the same goes for social media posts. Here are some great examples of affiliate disclosures for blog posts.
Disclaimers
Stops you being held responsible for a negative outcome | Optional, used for high-impact content | Protects: The blogger from liability
If you’re writing about something, like, for example, the legal impact of not protecting your blog, you’ll need to remind people that you’re not a fully qualified expert in the field. This relates especially to medical, legal, and financial content. If someone makes a big decision based on your advice, they can’t hold you legally responsible if something goes wrong.
Blog disclaimers protect you from liability and can save you from being sued or even going to jail. They aren’t mandatory but are a powerful ally if you need to protect yourself from someone who suffered a bad outcome.
Terms and Conditions
Lists your blog’s rules and regulations | Optional, but highly recommended | Protects: Blogger rights, content rights, and blog copyrights
Terms and conditions give bloggers the opportunity to list their website rules, claim copyrights on intellectual property, and outline the action they can take against someone who breaks them. These ‘T’s & C’s’ are very helpful when you have a dispute with someone or are holding a person accountable for plagiarism under various blogging laws.
Terms and conditions are easy to draw up and should be saved on their own page, with a link on your blog. Most T’s & C’s usually include comments policies, sharing rules, and user behavior guidelines.
These pages and statements are intended to cover you and your blog if something goes wrong. If someone comes after you to sue or claim damages, you can refer to these documents and policies to defend yourself.
But these protections also ensure that you, as a blogger, are sticking to the laws and blog legal requirements governing publishing content on the internet. Think carefully about your blog’s impact on readers and consider the laws and regulations you’re expected to abide by.
