Social media monitoring and how it can help you avoid copyright infringement

Companies create their logo and grow their brand to get good loyal customers. There are certain people and businesses out there that try to benefit from the success of other companies and steal their logo or make a knockoff of their product. Once they get caught they find themselves handed a lawsuit by the company seeking lots of monetary funds among other damages. Although the company is just protecting their assets the way they approach the case can cause greater damage than the infringement. The media can portray them as greedy and people can change their opinions of the brand. If handled correctly though the situation can turn out good publicity in the favor of the company.

The popular whiskey Jack Daniels was one company that turned copyright infringement to its favor. They had a case of copyright infringement where an author’s book cover resembled the whiskey bottle too closely. Rather than sending out their lawyers to collect damages the lawyers drafted a cease and desist letter to the author. They explained that they appreciated the cover but didn’t want their brand to get used in that manner and even offering to pay for the costs of changing the cover. By turning away from a lawsuit the Jack Daniels Company retained their fans and image. They got publicity to the brand out of the case and even the author got more attention to his book. Many businesses can follow this example and turn a situation in their favor.

Companies need to have plans on when to spin bad situations to favor the company’s publicity and brand. In the case of Jack Daniels the company was smart to develop an alternative plan to a lawsuit and in turn got to retain their image. If something negative is discovered too late it can take much more time to fix. A way to avoid the infringement in the first place is to have a social media-monitoring plan. People can post whatever they want online so it has to be monitored to avoid negativity to build. Having social media monitoring put in place can notify you on what goes on online regarding your company.

SMM tools can make it easier to monitor your brand’s online activity all from one platform. Programs like Alerti , offer great insight to online information such as social media accounts managing, Internet scanning and reports from collected data. You can save a lot of time and know where your company is being talked about. It’s easier to catch on to negative comments and be able to fix the situation. Engaging with consumers on social media is easier since you can know what posts work and what gets people talking. It’s a great way to improve your business and know your target audience. Together with a good emergency PR plan and SMM programs your business can avoid having infringement problems and know how to approach them if they occur.

In this week’s episode of “The Future of Engagement” Murray Newlands talks about copyright infringement and ways to work the publicity in your favor.

Highlights:

• Develop a plan to turn negative publicity and comments into positive ones that can make the company come off unscathed.
• Social media monitoring use can assist in keeping track of your brand online.
• An SMM tool can do the monitoring for you and provide you the results in easy to read formats.

  Click on the free white paper here to get some information on social media monitoring.