How to Protect Your Brand Online

With social media, businesses can't be too careful how they are perceived online. It takes mere moments for information about you or your business to travel around the web. I will show you steps to monitor your brand online while also furthering your brand.

Identify your intellectual property

This seems obvious, but there is so much more than your name or logo. Are you using particular catchphrases. Clever slogans? How about the color and feel of your website, is it something that is unique to your brand? How about your articles, blogs, etc. are you sure that people are not copying and pasting for their own sites?

Register your intellectual property

If trademark registration is too costly for you, at this time, perhaps register only the word mark for broader protection. Copyright registration is a mere $45 and the ROI potential well exceeds that. You can rely on common law protection, but having your trademark registration avoids any questions of ownership. Copyright registration will give you statutory damages, otherwise you have to prove actual damages.

Set up alerts

Using the list of your intellectual property, utilize search engines by setting up alerts. Once a day, you will get a list of searches based on the alerts you set up. Also, another great way to monitor the 'chatter' about your business is to set up searches on Twitter and Yelp. There are applications out there that will search Twitter and alert you when your name or product is mentioned. Yelp will allow you to claim your business so you can see what your customers are saying.

Monitor

Now that you have outsourced your brand monitoring to technology, sit back and watch the alerts pour in. Most important, read them.

Join in the conversation

Reinforce the positive feedback by retweeting, thanking, etc. Address the negative feedback by talking to the unhappy customer. Sometimes, it's merely a misunderstanding and hopefully, it's something you can rectify. Now you righted a wrong and let other potential customers know that you care.