Rules
Part of Network marketing social media practices for teams
A network marketing social media checklist built for real conditions
A network marketing social media checklist with usable claim, disclosure, consent, access, and record checks for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube posts.
What to take away
- Every checklist line carries one of four valuespass, fail, not applicable, or accepted exception. A blank line is not a pass.
- A mandatory line left blank blocks release. The post waits, or the reviewer signs a dated exception with a named owner.
- Change the caption, the claim, the image or the disclosure and the changed line goes back for retest. The old approval does not travel with it.
- File the completed checklist with the version that actually published, so the record matches what a customer saw.
- Keep the arithmetic in your own numbers(posts reviewed x reviewer minutes) + (posts corrected x rework minutes) is the real cost of the gate.
Run the checklist as a release gate
Most distributor social posts fail for a boring reason. Someone copied a seller's post, swapped the photo, and published without reading the income claim inside it. This network marketing social media checklist is a release gate: it checks the live platform version, not just the draft, and holds a post until each required line passes.
Release Gate Fields
- Scopeaudience, platform, purpose, exclusions
- Claimincome, health, product, source
- Disclosureincome and material connection
- Consentlikeness, testimonial, image rights
- Accessalt text, contrast, captions
- Recordreviewer, date, version, correction owner
Give every line a value. Pass, fail, not applicable, or accepted exception. Blank is not a value. A blank mandatory line holds the post.
| Field | What goes in it | What makes it pass |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Audience, platform, purpose, exclusions | Named owner approves |
| Claim | Income, health or product statement, plus its source | Source on file, wording matches |
| Disclosure | Income disclosure and material connection | Present and readable on the post |
| Consent | Likeness, testimonial and image rights | Signed release on file |
| Access | Alt text, contrast, captions, readable structure | Checked on the live post |
| Record | Reviewer, date, version, correction owner | Signed and dated |
Use these pass-or-hold checks for each post:
- Scope:Record the platform, account, audience, format, and intended purpose. Identify the seller's and audience's states, the applicable state direct-selling or consumer-protection requirements, and who verified them. Hold the post if the platform or jurisdiction is unresolved.
- Claim:List every express or implied earnings and product claim, including claims conveyed by photos, captions, and testimonials. Record the evidence supporting each claim and confirm it supports the wording and impression a viewer will get. Hold unsupported claims.
- Disclosure:Identify any material connection, such as the distributor's relationship with the company, and put a clear disclosure with the endorsement where viewers will see it without extra effort. Check it in the live post, including before a “more” tap and in video. A platform label does not replace a clear disclosure in the post.
- Platform setting:Check the platform's current branded-content or paid-promotion setting when applicable. Examples include Meta's Paid partnership label on Instagram or Facebook, TikTok's content disclosure setting, and YouTube's “Includes paid promotion” declaration. Confirm the setting appears on the published version.
- Consent:Confirm the person shown or quoted gave permission for this content and its intended use. Record who approved it and the scope of that permission; hold content whose use falls outside the permission.
- Access:Check the published version for meaningful image descriptions, captions where needed, and readable disclosures. Review the post on the platform itself, not only in the editing view.
- Record:Save the approved copy, final live version or screenshot, claim evidence, disclosure, consent record, reviewer, decision, and correction history together. Follow a written retention schedule that accounts for applicable requirements.
The W3C guidance on information and relationships asks that visual structure also exist in code. Test the actual post, not the draft in the editor. Platform rendering changes alt text, crops images and hides disclosure lines behind a "more" tap, so check the published version.
Where the gate usually breaks
Three failures show up again and again in distributor content. An income claim with no disclosure. A testimonial reused past its consent. A health or product statement that belongs with the FDA or a clinician, not with a recruiter. For a walk through the posts that get this right, see network marketing social media examples.
The W3C privacy principles warn against pushing privacy work onto the individual. In practice that means the company owns the consent record, not the distributor. If a post needs a signed release, someone at the company holds it before the post goes live.
None of this is legal advice. Income claims, disclosures and testimonial rules are addressed in the FTC's Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, .com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising, and Business Guidance Concerning Multi-Level Marketing. State requirements vary; there is no single state statute or form for every U.S. campaign. Confirm applicable state requirements with your state attorney general or a licensed attorney before you publish a claim.
Build the evidence file
A reviewer who cannot show their work is guessing. Keep the source, the date and the limit beside every decision, in the same folder as the released version.
The GAO data reliability guide treats data quality as a function of intended use. A screenshot that proves a claim is fine for one purpose and useless for another. Write down which purpose you are using it for.
The NIST guidance on choosing an experimental design starts with the objective and the practical constraint, not the method. That split matters here. Reporting what happened on your page is description. Claiming your post caused the signups is an effect estimate, and it needs a comparison you probably do not have.
A worked example
Take a distributor post claiming a monthly income figure with a photo of a check.
Post Retest by Line
Before
- Claim
- Fail
- Disclosure
- Fail
- Consent
- Pass
- Access
- Fail
- Record
- Held
After
- Claim
- Pass
- Disclosure
- Pass
- Consent
- Pass
- Access
- Pass
- Record
- Held
- Claim linefail. No source, no disclosure.
- Disclosure linefail. Nothing on the post.
- Consent linepass. The distributor signed a release for their own image.
- Access linefail. Alt text reads "image1."
- Record lineheld. Reviewer, date and correction owner entered.
The post does not release. The distributor removes the monthly income figure from the caption, adds the applicable disclosure for the earnings representation still made by the check image, and the reviewer sets alt text. Before release, the reviewer verifies that the remaining claim has support; if it does not, the check image and claim must be removed and the consent line retested. When the claim is supported, lines 1, 2, and 4 pass; line 3 stays valid only if the image use and release are unchanged.
Common questions
Who owns the checklist?
The company owns the standard and the consent records. The distributor owns the accuracy of what they post. When one person holds both roles, a second reviewer signs the release line.
How long do we keep the record?
There is no single retention period that fits every record and jurisdiction. Set a written company schedule against applicable requirements, keep the checklist with the released version for that period, and pause deletion when a complaint, platform takedown, or regulator inquiry is pending.
What happens when a post slips out unreleased?
Correct the live post first, then log the gap with a correction owner and a date. A pattern of slips means the gate is too slow, not that the team is careless.
Does this apply to stories and reels?
Yes. Disclosures must survive the format. If a disclosure cannot fit legibly in the format, the claim does not belong in that format.
For the questions distributors ask most, see common network marketing social media questions. For fixes to a gate that keeps stalling, see how to improve network marketing social media. To set the numbers your gate should hold to, see network marketing social media benchmarks. For the underlying discipline, see network marketing social media.
