Social Networking also known as "Social Media" has become a popular way for businesses and organizations to communicate and interact with customers and prospects who are global Internet users. Social networking websites provide a forum to grow their brand awareness and promote their products. With social networking sites such as Facebook that have over 400 million users and Twitter subscribers publishing over 50 million “tweets” a day, it is clear that businesses must use social networking sites to widen their circle of customers, enhance their online reputation and presence and market their brands ultimately driving sales at a fraction of the cost of more traditional marketing methods.
Social Media Cyber-squatting: “Are you at risk?”
The traditional forms of cyber-squatting on domain names can be addressed through formal dispute resolution procedures available to trademark owners, but with the emergence in Social Networking sites and their increased popularity, many cyber-squatters have drifted away from the traditional domain squatting methods, creating a new threat to your brand. Social networking websites provide a new avenue for unauthorized third parties to create profiles and blogs falsely claiming to be your brand. Competitors or even employees may also create profiles on these social network sites reflecting your brand, defaming your name and engaging your customers directly through blogs.
“How can you avoid being a victim?”
Safenames offers a solution to address this threat to your brand. We combine all our IT, Legal and marketing resources to provide a unified strategy to tackle the evolution of cyber-squatting in the social media space.
If you are a trademark/brand owner seeking to increase your social media presence, then it is vitally important that you protect your brand on these sites or risk diminishing your rights altogether.
Safenames currently offers the following services for Social Media:
Account Registration - Proactive registration is more effective than trying to address the problem re-actively. To prevent third parties from creating accounts reflecting your brand name Safenames will register them on the top 5 social networking sites including, but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Blogger and BeBo. Your Username and Password for these sites will also be available to you from within your IDP which will allow you to manage your profiles and blogs on these sites.
User Name Retrieval - If you find that someone else has already created a profile on a social networking for your brand without permission, Safenames Legal department can provide you with an appraisal into the infringing profile and the best course of action to take in retrieving ownership of it. The legal department works with the legal departments of the social networking sites to make sure your brand is protected and that infringing profiles are shut down or transferred over to you, the rightful owner.
Social Network Account Content - The thought of maintaining a social network profile or blog can be an overwhelming task where some businesses simply lack the time and resources to devote time to it. Safenames provides the solution with our new Social Network Management service that deals with the day to day running of your accounts. One of our social media professionals will update your blog, provide broadcasts based on your business activities and provide instantaneous up to date information for your customers in one place unique to you, quickly and easily; not only that but these updates can be provided in a variety of languages relevant to your global marketing audience.
Content Security - The ability scan and monitor Web content will soon be released as an add-on service that will enable companies to remove infringing content from Youtube and other video-sharing websites. The service will also allow users to identify infringing or profane material on general Web sites which may damage your reputation. The service will allow you to identify those websites where you need to focus on removing content, track changes in the content and provide you with information on sites that use content with your brands by placing pay-per-click ads in connection with it.
If you would like to find out more about the services that we offer protecting your brand(s) in the social media space, please contact us.
We can customise a solution to fit your business needs.