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Storing Documents

This a new one. So we get to have a lot of fun with this one. These public facing disclosures & storage sounds like the most boring topic, but it's all the rage right now with all the new European Union regulations and rules that are coming into effect as of May 25th and so what you need to know here is a couple of key things. Privacy policies have always been something that you have probably enjoyed in your life or that you've seen at least at the bottom of somebody's website as a footer. And these privacy policies have before the history of the internet, since the late 90's when these started to pop up on people's websites, they have told us essentially what's happening with the data collection on that website. So before you tune out and glaze over because I just said the words data collection I wanna talk to you about why this is important for you as a small business owner just getting started. If you are collecting any kind of information from somebody which all of us are. I th...

ink you guys have all seen the ads that follow you around the internet. And you're like wow. I talked about shoes yesterday and my phone is showing me ads for shoes. And my news is showing me ads for shoes. And my Instagram is showing me ads for shoes. What is happening here? So if that's what's happening to you it's because a cookie has been placed on to your IP address and you are seeing all these ads for shoes because you've indicated an interest in that product and the advertisers are very good at using these cookies to follow you around until you make a purchase. We are doing the same exact thing whether we know it or not with our websites. Most of our websites are accepting cookies from IP addresses and please forgive me I'm not super techie. So if I get the tech part of this incorrect please forgive me, but essentially from a legal perspective what matters is that if you are or if you're not sure that your website is accepting cookies form the visitors then you need to at least disclose that that's a possibility. And what I mean by that is in your privacy policy where you are accepting certain information, so for example, if you use Squarespace or Google Analytics then you're looking at where people are coming from, how long they're on your site, what the bounce rate is. There is a very, very high chance that with those analytics you are putting yourself at risk if you do not disclose whatever kind of activities you're doing with that information. And so that's where the privacy policy comes in. And it's never been more relevant with this new general data protection regulation, that's coming out of the EU right now. So, the privacy policy is just simply a document, housed somewhere on your website that's public where people can see exactly what information you're collecting and what you're doing with that information, at least in a general sense. We move on. Usually connected to the privacy policy is your terms and conditions. And this is where you get to be the king or the queen of your own domain literally. Pun intended. And you get to say what happens on that website. So whether somebody can use your photos or link to your website or if they have to use your trademark with a registration symbol or whatever the rules are on your website, you get to make those up and those are the terms and conditions that the end user, the person on the other side of the screen must agree to if they continue to browse on your website, enjoy your content, buy your products, engage with your services. And then finally, if you have not heard of the general data protection regulation. I'm just going to all it the GDPR from here on out, then there are a lot of changes coming our way and the important thing to know about the GDPR if you haven't heard of it yet is that we, the European Union is looking at online service providers and especially marketers, which a lot of us are doing, a lot of us are using social media to promote our businesses or we are using different tools maybe advertising, maybe organic traffic to promote our businesses. And with all of that, with these new regulations, they are looking and saying, what are you actually doing with the people that are coming to your website. You have to tell us this is no longer a optional disclosure. This is something mandatory that we are going to be looking at as of May 25th, 2018. So if there is a significant amount of traffic or if you are selling to people that are in the European Union and the UK is a part of the European Union until March 29th of 2019. So if that's the situation for you then it's worth looking into what the GDPR is and how much you need to pay attention to it. Now, if it is important to you to pay attention to it, there is really three things you need to know about the GDPR. First is the privacy policy which I feel like we have nailed into the ground. The second is consent at the point of opt-in. So this is the biggest change in my opinion because no longer is it enough just to have a pop up that has an email address and a name and they click submit and they get your freebie or your content upgrade or whatever it is on the other side. Now, we have to tell them exactly if they are a user form the EU, we have to tell them what your doing with their information. So for example, if they are opting into some kind of marketing sequence, or if we're going to be using that information that they are supplying us with for future marketing communications, aka like a newsletter which most of you guys are hopefully sending, then we have to disclose that at the point where they are opting in to receive that freebie form us. It can't just be buried in our privacy policy in a footer that they're never going to look at in a million years. So with that I want to show you how you can do this really, really simply and this is something that I have just come up with. I'm sure there is going to be new apps and new technology that's developed in the coming months to deal with this problem because it is such a critical change to the internet. But until that happens we as marketers on the internet are faced with a decision, do we scare off our U.S., Canadian and Australian based audiences who this doesn't necessarily apply to at the risk of putting ourselves in danger if we do have lots of EU visitors? Or do we only show this to EU visitors and how do we make that happen? Here is how. Alright so this is my cookie consent hack. You have to, for a long time the EU's already had laws that say that you need to inform visitors to your website that you accept cookies, that they are entering into that. You've probably seen that when you go to read the news or somebody is, they have this enabled on their website already. Now the cool thing about the cookie pop up that you're seeing, is that typically it's a plug in. So if you're familiar with Word Press or Shopify. Shopify calls them apps. So if you have a plug in on WordPress an app on Shopify or even if you're using Squarespace, they usually have this as a built in feature. So you don't even need an external app or code or anything. If you're using one of those things you can install the app or the plug in or the, use the default wording in Squarespace and with that you can add your GDPR language so the language that tells them that what they are consenting to. That they're getting marketing communications. That they are going to be sold to. That they are going to be accepting future emails form you based on their visit to your website potentially. Those are things that you can add to the default language that's already there. And most of these things, I'm not sure about all of them. But at least the ones that I have seen they have the option where you do not have to show it to U.S. or Canadian based IP addresses. So it's only going to pop up if someone is coming from the EU and it's going to pop up right when they get to your landing page or your site if it's properly installed. So that's pretty cool because you can continue to market to U.S., Canadian, Australian other world market audiences, in the same exact way that you have been doing without falling out of compliance with this new regulation. So I like a couple of different plug ins I personally have mine on Shopify. WordPress has a lot of these different apps most of them are free. And then Squarespace like I said, this is an internal feature I believe under the advanced tabs. So it's something super easy and simple to set up. It should take you less than five minutes. And with your privacy policy you are now mostly GDPR compliant. So that's pretty cool. So in summarization, if you are interested in learning more, you can head to the contract shop or please share this class with at least two people who could use a little extra leg up. We want to make sure that they have the understanding and knowledge and mostly confidence that they need to get their business in order and legally legit so that they can go out there and serve the people that need their product, that need their service. So if you know one person or two people, please share this class with them and as homework I want you to download the resources that you see somewhere on this page and make sure that you are choosing the right entity for you. So whatever that looks like, whether you are just choosing based on this presentation you're using the resources to help you form that entity or maybe you're doing a little bit of homework and finding out what kind of bookkeeper or accountant could best serve you as your business is growing. And then finally, your last bit of homework, a little bonus for you extra seekers out there. Make sure that you are getting your contracts in order. That you have clients that are so excited to work with you and that that client relationship is so clearly defined that you know exactly what you are providing to them and they know exactly what and when that they are getting things from you. What those deliverables are and how they are coming to them. And then finally if you are super ambitious you can look into business insurance for yourself. So you might be looking at general liability insurance or if you're doing something a little bit more technical it's something called errors & omissions insurance so make sure you look at both of those things. Talk to whatever insurance company you are familiar with that you trust, that you know, that you like and ask them what kind of options are available to you and get their information on what they believe you should have in your business based on what you are telling them. If you have any questions my name is christinascalera. This is where you can find us. And make sure that you are consulting the resources on this page for any further information about what was discussed here.