Protecting Your Social Media Investment

Almost everything in social media pushes the limit of existing intellectual property law. Be sure not to copy anything if you have doubt. Use quote marks, citations, and links to original source. Remember, you cant legally use extended content from somone else’s web site, social media page or blog on your own site. If you do, make sure you send a permission request form to use their content. This will protect you from future legal trouble if the person/company’s content you used permits you from using it. Trademarks and logos usually require permission to use, though the logos that social media companies provide for Share This or Follow Us On functionality are fine to use without permission. If you find something in the Press or Media section of a company’s website, you can assume that you can reproduce that image. For instance, I use freedigitalphotos.net and always make sure I provide my source for images.

A disclaimer stating that user info is private is very important nowadays. Privacy online has become a critical subject today with the Google’s and Facebook’s of the world scrambling to fully explain and simplify their agreements. Especially if your site connects to third party sites or is a third party site. Respect a person’s space and don’t use public viewable photos of peoples faces on your social media page unless you have their permission. A simple photo waiver will take care of this.

A few legal sites that will help you are:

• http://www.abanet.org/intelprop/home.html
• http://www.copyright.gov
• http://www.eff.org
• http://www.ilrg.com
• http://www.womma.org/ethics/disclosure

Three important aspects come to mind for protecting your brand online. They are copyright, trademark and brand rep.

When it comes to copyright, you work becomes your intellectual property once its created in a fixed form. Protect your own work and dont use other work without permission. If you decide to subcontract your social media work, be sure to know who owns the work being on the site. Your company agreement should also state that anything an employee creates for you is retained by the company. The last thing is to put a copyright sign on your website that clearly states your intentions for people visiting.

Trademarks or service marks give you an exclusive right to use a name or logo within a specific commercial category. Provide a notice of trademark somewhere on your social media site.  For more info on trademarks go to http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks.

Brand reputation starts with registering your name for social media accounts. Use a handle that will work across multiple accounts and sites. Even if you dont attend to use all social media sites for your company or brand, register the name on all so no one could use your brand maliciously later on or if you decide to use that site in the future. There are sites today that measure the quality of your brand online and assess engagement with your brand from various sites. This can be helpful when evaluating your brand presence online.

Till Next Time,

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Randall J

Target, Acquired

Identifying and understanding your target market is one of the most important things to do in marketing. Once you have described your customers’ and potential customers’ characteristics such as demo, geo and life stages you can focus your social marketing efforts on those people most likely to buy your product and services.

There is a saying, fish where the fish are. If your a band whose fans are mainly on Myspace, it wouldnt make since to gain more popularity on Linkedin or target people there.  Find out where your customer’s are and market to those areas.  Guerilla marketing tactics are perfect for this approach because social media focuses on inexpensive ways to reach niche markets with specific messages. Target your resources one niche at a time. After success, move on to the next one. This will help in understanding your strengths and how analyzing your weaknesses.

Market Segmentation

Using market segmentation, your can narrow multiple niches by where they go online or where they spend their money. Typical segments are

• Geo-graphics
• Demographics
• Lifestyle
• Life stages

Remember the message needs to be specific enough to appease the wants and needs of subgroups you are going after.

Geo-graphics-Marketing by location whether country, region, state, city, zip code or neighborhood. Foursquare and GoWalla would be perfect for this as they are location-based social media outlets. Brick and mortar stores can target a specific area to get customers on twitter, facebook, and google+ by searching for them within a certain radius.

Demographics- Gender, age, social class, marital status, education, occupation, income, etc. Knowing these categories of your target market will help define a plan to attract them and discover their interest. For instance, lately Ive seen ads for Indochino, a custom suit company, pop up on sites such as Gilt, Linkedin, CNN, AskMen, and Menshealth. Indochino is most likely for professional men with white collar jobs who value fashion and custom clothes. These sites are perfect for them. Myspace would probably not be the best site to advertise on. Be sure to look for a match between your target audience and the social media service your thinking about using.

Lifestyle-Shared activities, interest, opinion and perspectives can shape a target market. Linkedin itself is a social media tool but also a segmented market as it is a network for professionals. Lifetsyle segmentation helps you craft your message in addition to finding where to promote your company.

Lifestages-Looks at what people in certain demographics are doing with their lives. For instance, social media use varies by the stage of life the person is in. Teenagers and college students are twice as likely to use the internet then retirees. Single people with no kids tend to purchase more fashionable items and spend on recreation and vacation versus someone married with small children who spend on kid’s items, activities and education. Be sure to find out and know what products your targeted lifestage purchases and their use of the internet.

Tips to help in targeting and acquiring your market

• Check competitor’s sites for inbound links from other sites and their outbound links and see how they communicate with their customers.
• Do a small test to see the results of integrating social media into your marketing plan.
• Understand why people use social media and match the patterns to your goals.

Hasta La Bye Bye,

Randall

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net