NU Online News Service, June 13, 2:42 p.m.EST

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.—In today's environment, agents needto have a social networking site, but the challenge is tounderstand the risks and to do it properly, says an insuranceconsultant.

During a continuing education session at the annual conferenceof the Professional Insurance Agents of New York and New Jerseyheld here, Chris Amrhein, of Amrhein and Associates, Inc. in Lorton, Va.,offered his take on social networking and the errors and omissionsexposures that may result for independent agents.

What is placed on the Internet is public, Amrhein cautions, andif individuals do not want information made public they shouldn'tput it in a public place.

For agents, he says, what they need to decide first is when itcomes to social networking who the people are that they are tryingto reach. “Wherever they are that is where you need to be,” hesays.

However, in building their social network, agents need to bemindful of certain potential exposures that could cause themtrouble.

He suggests that agents first build a blog of informationpostings and then build their networking site around that. But inposting a blog, the first E&O concern is to make sure that theinformation they post is correct for the audience they areaddressing, Amrhein notes.

“What is right in one state may be wrong in another,” he pointsout. “You can't just unleash this stuff.”

Among some of his E&O tips:

• Know the rules of advertising and dissemination of information.Consult with an expert, either an attorney or an association tomake certain it is permitted. “You don't have to reinvent thewheel, but you have to know what the wheel was before you started,”says Amrhein.
• Be cautious about what you want the world to know beforeposting. If you don't want everyone to know it, don't post it.
• Put up privacy declarations on any page where the agency canmake customer contacts telling clients not to transmit personalinformation over their Internet correspondence.
• Agents should use their own voice in whatever they post online.But where they use others' material they need to get permission andget it in writing to avoid copyright infringement. A simple e-mailwill do the trick. Make authorship clear to the reader.
• In sharing information, look for link-share buttons—Facebookand Twitter, for example—that say the owner of the informationwants it shared; if it is not there, get permission from the owner.“Just don't grab it,” Amrhein says.
• Personally Identifiable Information (PII) should always besecure, whether it is online or in the office setting. Nevertransmit personal information over an unsecure site. A secure sitealways has an “s” at the end of HTTP.