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May 6, 2023
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How to Protect My Digital Content As a Content Creator
Introduction
Having a strong digital presence is essential for branding. However, there is also a chance of someone copying your content and even using it against you.
It is essential that you take every precaution to guard your creativity and hard work. Below are a few steps to ensure that others don’t steal your online content or, at the very least, they borrow it correctly.
1. Use a Copyright Notice
While the exact legal requirements depend on the sort of campaign it is, there are some basics that every brand should make sure they’re familiar with.
2. Produce Unique Content for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
If you own a business and are looking to improve your clientele and revenue, you should be utilising Search Engine Optimisation by ensuring that you are strategically structuring your content to boost more traffic to your site.
Having original and unique material on a website is an approach that enhances the chances of your work showing up when people search for related queries. Your content needs to be distinctive for search engines to rank it high in the relevant search results. Although this demands extra work and time, the long-term results will be worthwhile.
3. Know When to Allow a Theft
There is no way to prevent anyone from stealing your content.
Prohibit users from stealing your work by ensuring that your website contains a copyright mark at the bottom of every single page. You can appeal to their common decency and dignity with a website terms of use, however, this may not be sufficient in every situation.
Since it is likely that by posting your content in the online sphere, IP theft may occur, you might as well make use of it. There may be an opportunity to gain more widespread attention by allowing people to republish your work rather than deterring them. Although, it would be a good idea to create a clause in your terms of use, or even create a separate document to specify how individuals should credit you as the original source when repurposing your content.
You could also place an integrated code after every piece of content you upload to your website so that other people may use it to ease the process of redistributing your work.
Furthermore, it is also helpful to implement procedures that require users to request your permission before using your work. By taking these steps, you have sole discretion in determining who can use your content, and for what purpose. This can further expand your content’s audience and increase traffic to your website by compelling copiers to reference your original site when they post your work and ultimately, improve your SEO.
This is one of the simplest and most cost-efficient approaches to publicising and advertising your website.
4. Check Whether Your Content Has Been Stolen
There are several routes that you can take to determine whether your digital content is being stolen, and you can do so without physically conducting a search of the Internet.
Your first option is to use Google Alerts to search the web by setting up precise parameters. Languages, alert frequency, and sources are just a few of the settings you can alter for search engine results. You can get alerts from Google Alerts when content has been copied by simply pasting the text into the search box to start getting notifications anytime it is used. This will enable you to spot plagiarism and determine the best course of action to take, particularly if copyright laws cover your digital content.
In addition, you can manually examine articles from your blog for plagiarism using Article Checker, a free online service. Duplichecker allows you to enter text or just a URL, while Plagiarisma accepts a range of file types like.docx and.pdf, and supports more than 190 languages.
5. Be Very Clear!
Being explicit about what users may do with your digital content by having a website terms and conditions in place is imperative to eliminate any potential doubt surrounding your copyright boundaries.
In doing so, you can customise the terms on which people can utilise your content, which might result in less copyright infringement. You can also create a specific page with further information on how they may partner with the other sites and individuals if you also wish to do that. It will help you network for new opportunities and improve your SEO.
Although they are not guaranteed to completely stop copyright violations, using the techniques outlined above to identify content stealing will assist you in determining the best way to take down the IP thieves.
6. Use Watermarks
Do you have any unique photographs on the website? These pictures need to be protected because they can be easily stolen and used anywhere online by anyone.
A picture’s watermark’s a transparent mark that is commonly a logo or brand name. This means that since the watermark’s integrated into the photo, it gets easier to identify the owner of the content in the instance that your image is copied.
CONTACT IMMERSE
As a content creator, you must be sure that you have the knowledge required to safeguard yourself against digital theft before publishing a website. Additionally, please seek the advice of a specialist in digital law because they may be able to better assist you in protecting yourself and operating lawfully online.
If you find yourself stuck in such a situation, Immerse’s knowledgeable team is here to help you out. Immerse specialises in helping influencers and online brands with their legal needs. So, for any legal problem you may have within the digital and social media space, rest assured that with Immerse, you will get the best service available.
Mark Lazarus
I am not your typical suit and tie lawyer. As you will note from my LinkedIn Profile, I was the Legal Director of the famous energy drink brand, Monster Energy for almost 6 years (based in London), and currently an Australian and UK qualified lawyer with experience across APAC, EMEA and the US.
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