Copyright and IP Rules to Follow in Social Media

Some rights reserved. - Horia Varlan

I just finished reading this great article by Stephen Easley, posted today on SmartBlog on Social Media: "Why IP law still matters in a social media age"

Easley outlines three key learnings from South by Southwest Interactive, one of the largest interactive marketing & technology conferences in the U.S. - which ended this past week. These are his three key tips to follow as it pertains to copyright law applied to social media:

1. Photos: "Be careful when using any picture, even one widely circulated through Twitter or Facebook.  If you use a photo, the best practice is to obtain express permission to use it, and at the very least do not use photos without proper attribution and links at a minimum."
2. Copy: "Don’t just scrape content — instead transform content with your own unique creativity, and thereby avoid unfair competition or copyright violation claims."
3. Criticism and Impersonation: "When dealing with criticism or parody of individuals, be careful not to “credibly impersonate” — so using the word “fake” offers a good deal of protection. When dealing with criticism or parody of a corporation, learn their trademarked logos and marks and try to avoid using them or at least transforming them so that you can argue that there is no consumer confusion, an element necessary under trademark law."

...and the full article provides some background on why Easley suggests you follow these tips. Read the Full Post Here. 

Helping Saint Louis Lead in Business Technology

AdSaint - a local Saint Louis ad industry site - recently interviewed my boss, Bill Davis, Director of Marketing at Perficient. This link includes the audio interview. 

I think he does a great job describing what our company does. He also talks about raising Perficient's visibility as a company based in Saint Louis with our airport ads, and social media (which I do) as a key strategy.  

3 Types of Metrics that Demonstrate Social Media Marketing Success

Recently I have been thinking a lot about how we can demonstrate positive business impact from social media or content marketing initiatives. I report on social media marketing metrics weekly to my direct manager, and I often think about them in three major groups:

1. Fans, Followers and Subscribers: People who have said they want to follow our brand. This gives you a sense of  Awareness or Brand Visibility as well as how it is impacting the brand's online reputation in its space.
2. Clicks, Traffic: People who have visited your blog or site as a result of finding you online via social channels. 
3. Leads/Sales: Actual interest in doing business with your company. I value leads coming from general inquiry forms higher than leads coming to us via incentive offers such as a white paper or webinar. 

Technically you could add a fourth category to this and actually quantify sales that started as a social media based lead. That requires adequate tracking in your CRM or analytics system, and is much easier for something like an e-commerce site selling products than it would be for a B-to-B firm. 

I also thoroughly enjoyed a recently published article by Jon Miller of Marketo called "5 CEO-Worthy Metrics for Demonstrating Inbound Marketing Success." In his post, Miller outlines the following metric types and gives detail to them:

1. Month over month growth in organic website traffic, leads, and opportunities. 
2. Social engagement, not just reach. 
3. Lead generation by content, channel, and initiative. 
4. Percent of leads with an inbound original source.
5. Forecasted conversion through the funnel.

Very similar to my line of thinking but he's talking more generally about inbound marketing and not just social media. You can read his full post here.