Are you Violating the Privacy of One of Your Most Important Assets?: People

This is something I’ve thought about many times in the past and after a recent occurrence, it’s fresh in my mind again.

In short: Make sure you protect the privacy of your human assets – your subscribers, customers and clients, and affiliates.

The fact that someone is your subscriber, customer, client, or affiliate, doesn’t mean you then have the right to broadcast that fact.

(Side note: I’m not speaking legally. This is not legal advice. I’m just suggesting that as online business owners we respect the desire for other people’s privacy.)

Here’s what I’m talking about:

Many people will excitedly gush if someone of note signs up for their newsletter, but that’s private information and it shouldn’t be shared. Neither should you be blogging about it or posting on a forum when they buy a product or join your affiliate program.

If you want to share this information, ask permission first. You may see a high profile person purchased your product and think that could be good PR… so ask if you can share the fact with the customer.

First of all, that customer may not want those details shared. And second of all, PR attempt may backfire if she doesn’t like your product, it wasn’t what she expected or is somehow unhappy with her purchasing experience.

All these problems can be avoided with simple communication.

Here’s Another “Real Life” Example:

I recently sent out a very small promotion during a product launch. It was just a casual mention of a couple pre-launch goodies to a customer list.

Well, this affiliate manager (who means very well, I know! And I’ve talked to him about it) was running a contest on this launch. I did not expressly enter this contest, but found myself listed on the contest update page with a thanks for my efforts. This page also listed individuals who had earned prizes and other “honorable mentions”.

Now I admit, part of my annoyance for being listed is an ego thing. I wasn’t working toward a prize as I wasn’t committed to the launch, so my being listed as being in the contest makes it appear as though I can’t deliver the sales. It’s bad for my rep.

Well, guess what? We all have egos (so do your customers, affiliates and subscribers) and we all have reasons we expect privacy. It doesn’t matter what they are, those reasons should be respected. If people want to publish my involvement in something, they should ask me. If I had entered a contest and was told winners and participant names would be published, that would be one thing. This is not the case and unfortunately, this is how a lot of people approach the JV portion of their launches.

I realize it’s done to motivate and reward, but it should be handled a little more sensitively.

Look at How You Handle Sensitive Information

Are you publishing names of people whose privacy you promised to protect?

Are you tweeting to your clients that you’re working on something for them? I have coaching clients that are my friends on Twitter and I would never dream of saying anything (no matter how generic) about that relationship, unless they publicized it first.

Use your judgment of course. If you’re a VA for a client and your working for them is generally public knowledge, it’s probably no biggie.

But if you’re a ghostwriter for someone, they may not want you sharing that fact with the world.

So some may say, going back to my affiliate contest example, that my involvement in a program isn’t really a secret. The fact that I promote a product will be seen by my mailing list and anywhere else I promote the product. Sure, but the nature of our relationship should be my decision to reveal to others. Plus, in the case of this affiliate contest… I did not enter such contest, but the affiliate manager implied that I had and publicized it.

Now, do I suggest affiliates should have to specifically enter contests? Not necessarily, but be sure that at some point you receive permission to publish names.

Of course everything comes down to judgment and I think, for many of us, we need to exercise more of it. And whenever we run into a situation we aren’t sure of, just ask.