🧑🏻‍⚖️ Using copyrighted images will get you sued

Read time: 2 min., 30 seconds

Hi ,

If your business has ever used a meme, a photo of a celebrity, or a still shot of a movie scene in your online marketing, stop it.

A recent newsletter from Future Social inspired me to write another reminder to be aware of potential copyright infringements when using images in your social media posts, your online advertising, and on your website.

And if you think your unlicensed use of a copyrighted image will go unnoticed just because you’re a small, local business, think again. Photographers and creators are filing more and more lawsuits to protect their intellectual property.

No Defense for Commercial Use

You might think your business is innocently sharing a funny image, but if you share it on a social media account that specifically promotes the business, there’s nothing innocent about it. It’s considered “commercial use.”

Be careful even using images from stock photo websites. Always check the fine print to see whether the image you’re downloading may be used for commercial purposes.

The same rules apply to sports team logos and images of players. Even using trademarked phrases like “Super Bowl” and “Final Four” in your promotional or advertising content will result in nasty letters from the National Football League or the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Make It Yourself or Pay

In short, when promoting your business online, only use images you’ve created yourself or images for which you’ve purchased a license for commercial use. Some licenses require you to credit the photographer, so make sure you do that, too.

(By the way, I’m not a lawyer. See an attorney if you need specific legal advice about using images in your marketing.)

Free Marketing Tools

I’m assembling a list of free tools to help your business marketing. The first I want to mention is the Screamingfrog SEO spider tool.

The free version of this search optimization tool will crawl up to 500 pages of your website and show you broken pages, page titles, page meta descriptions, alternative text for images, and the text of headings on your pages.

You can download a spreadsheet of all the data the tool collects. If you want to conduct a preliminary evaluation of your website and its search optimization framework,
Screamingfrog is the place to start. I use it to evaluate the website of every new client.

If you’ve got a go-to free tool that you use for online marketing, let me know, and I’ll share it in a future email.

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Until next time

The next newsletter arrives Sept. 24. By then, we’ll have passed the equinox, and it will officially be autumn. We’re already feeling some cooler nights here in the northeastern U.S.

The last quarter of 2024 is nearly upon. Are you planning to finish the year strong?
Before the first day of fall arrives, you can celebrate National Stepfamily Day on Sept. 16, National Cheeseburger Day on Sept. 18, and National Talk Like A Pirate Day on Sept. 19.

Until next time, be grateful. Be generous. Be patient. Love.

Thanks for spending some of your time with me, . I appreciate you.

Mark

P.S. - This newsletter was 100 percent created by me, a human.

P.P.S. - Some links in this email might be affiliate links, which could generate small commissions for me at no extra cost to you.