5 things to think about before using an online image

#1: Do you understand the term fair use? 

Just because you provide attribution and/or a link back to the original doesn’t mean you’re free and clear. Fair use has nothing to do with attribution. That’s an issue related to plagiarism, which is different from copyright.

Fair use basically means you’re allowed to infringe on someone’s copyright and they can’t do anything about it. If your use is covered by fair use, you don’t have to provide attribution anyway (although it would be nice).

#2: Why are you using the image? 

If it is “…for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research…” you’re on the right track.

If you’re just using the image to pretty up a post, then think twice; or better yet, get permission or buy a stock image.

#3: Have you transformed the image? 

If the new work which incorporates the copyrighted image is a “transformative work”—what you created no longer resembles the original—there is a greater likelihood of finding an exception to copyright infringement.

Are you taking an image and incorporating it into an infographic? Is the image now part of a video used for one of the reasons set forth in the Copyright Act?

#4: How much of the image are you using? 

If you’re using a thumbnail and linking to the original location, there is greater likelihood of finding fair use than if you just post the original image. If you’re doing a post about facial features and are just using a portion of the face from an image, you stand a better chance of arguing fair use than if you used the entire image.

#5: Are you willing to risk your site being taken down, getting a cease and desist/bill/DMCA or being sued? 

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides very powerful options for a copyright owner to protect his or her works in the digital space. By hitting “publish,” you may be opening a can of worms.

Quote from "http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/

3 Things about Email Marketing

Email Marketing was a very common way of sending information to customer, and get customer's attention. However, due to the increase amount of spam, there are less people pay much attention to commercial emails. Also, there are more and more blocking tools makes even harder for Internet marketer to get their information delivered by email. 

But there are still good commercial that a lot of people willing to open. Here are some important feature for a successful commercial email:

1) Sending to the right people and don't be annoying. There is nothing ruins a company's impression more than spam email everyday. I remember I registered for a website just to look at what kind of service they provide. But it turn out they not the website I'm looking for, so I stop using their service anymore. That's when the nightmare star. I got email from them every day, and I can't "unsubscribe" them. And I tried to block those emails, but the email address seems to changing frequently. It's so annoying till now, and I told everyone not even to register for their service.

2) Looks professional. there are some email looks really good that you can't resist to open it. a well designed email can also increase the customer perspective of a company

3) Be relevant. Provide relevant information is very important. Marketer should look deeper into their data to find out what's the customer want and then provide them with relevant information. However, this task can be extremely hard, because sometimes customers himself don't even know what they want. But at least don't email someone who is apparently just mistakenly registered for the website.

Cross_Channel Marketing, What should Marketer notice

Cross-channel marketing or multi-channel marketing or omni-channel marketing or whatever term you prefer is all about engaging with your customer or prospect across every digital channel and any device.

From the inbox to social networks to the web, and across laptops, tablets, and smartphones, today’s consumer moves seamlessly and fully expects you to be there with them, providing a true integrated experience.

However there are 2 things I believe that marketers should be aware of.

1)       Privacy

Privacy is the most important thing for marketers to make customer feel. For some organization we just feel like we can trust them, but for some organization with bad reputation, a cross channel approach with your personal information can be bad experience. I know a friend once want to buy a good looking pen from a small website that she never visited before. After she bought that pen, her credit card information is been stolen. She has to contact the back to fix the problem. After that, whenever she got the email from that pen selling website, she will complain about their past mistake, and never look into any of its promotion plans. I think such mistake for a company try to do cross channel to their customer can be vital.

2)       Convenient

The cross channel effort from an organization must be convenient itself. I know a restaurant that created an app and put their menu on it, but you can never find the right dish from the app because the data on the app is outdated but they never changed it. This is so inconvenient for a customer. This definitely can be a bad example for whoever want to do cross channel.

How to use customer data

In recent years, it’s becoming much easier to get customer data from various channel. How to use these data and how to get profit from these data are very important for all kinds of businesses. I read an good article that said there 3 ways of using customer data:

1. Offer a more personalized experience
Personal experience can make customer feel comfortable. Using relevant data to provide personal service is becoming more and more common. We all get commercial email every day but only relevant information is been read. Make your email or service more relevant is a way of providing personalized experience to your customer.


2. Give customers easy access to important information via mobile devices
Make customer feel convenient is extremely important for all kinds of businesses. Your customers want access to important information anywhere in the world and from any device. So what that means is you need to be providing information, reports, updates – whatever it is that your business does – in a way that is easily accessible via a mobile device..

3. Unify customer service channels
Since there are more and more customer service website alive, it’s extremely important for internet marketer to unify all the channels. If a customer saw a good product on your website, they should be able to send it to his/her friends, or post it to a forum to ask for advices.

Personally I totally agree with these approaches and I believe there are another way of using customer data. For some website, it’s a good idea to show customer’s data to themselves.

Eg: Comed always shows customer their own electricity usage data. It make customer feel very reliable and they can actually see what is going on with their bill.

Important Social Media-Online Gaming

    

Almost everyone played games online, it's both interesting and engaging. Unlike some people think that gaming is a total waste of time. I think online game is a very good social tool. From my personal experience, friend from online game are always very nice. Also, I think the format of online gaming is going to change due to more and more devices are invented. This is a very interesting example of new online gaming.

What’s more, I believe online gaming it’s actually a very big definition. It’s not just killing enemy or shooting monsters like someone thought. Some online competition or even earning badges can be considered gaming. There are some advantages for online gaming to be a very good social media. 

1.     Have something to share.

People play together must have same interest. They can discuss the game, share their accomplishment and everything. There won’t be any awkward situation that you can’t find a topic to talk to your friend

2.     Second Life.

The most attractive feature for online gaming is you can be whoever you want to be. You may are a shy person in real life, but online you can be a hero that everyone admire. Also, you have the ability to remake any decision online, so you won’t have anything regret.

3.     Have someone to talk to.

Online friends can be very good to talk about real life trouble. You don’t have anything to worry about and you can talk whatever you want.

So in my opinion. The future of online gaming is to build a platform for people to communicate freely. Online gaming will be more like a social media, or in another words, social media maybe become more and more like a game.

Paid Search-Conversion and ROI

Paid search marketing means you advertise within the sponsored listings of a search engine or a partner site by paying either each time your ad is clicked (pay-per-click - PPC) or less commonly, when your ad is displayed (cost-per-impression - CPM).



Paid Search is a very powerful tool for a start-up website to be recognized by search engine and see by customer. It's a very effective way for a new business to start. However, for some business, the ultimate goal is customer conversion instead of customer visit. So beyond paid search, focus on conversion rate is also very important for them.

I know a company spend a lot of their budget on paid search. The did get a relative high ranking with some good key words. But the problem is their conversion is incredibly low. I think their problem should be an alert for every website who need conversion rate as well as consumer impression.

1. Landing Page. As my teacher mention in class, landing page is very important for conversion. A bad landing page can make customer feel disappointed or confusion. The landing page should be very relevant to the search content and should be able to clearly instruct your customer to the next step. 

2. Key word. You can never say your key words are too relevant, There are always new trend and unknown relationship between key words and your website. For example, a car selling company may find customer who is selling their old car a potential customer or even some who is looking for suburban house can have a positive correlation with buying new cars. The only thing is, how much each correlation worth and set your budget based on that.

Internet Marketing: Is it for everyone?

One of the easiest, fastest and cheapest ways for businesses to reach consumers today is via the Internet. However, is internet marketing necessary for every different kind of companies? Here is a story:

I had 2 internship in 2 star-up companies. These two company both have the same concept to some degree - introducing a new solution to a problem.

The first company is trying to build an online platform for used car trading. Unlike Craigslist, this company is trying to sell user's car directly to used-car dealers. In this way, seller can get more professional service and the buyer can save some money comparing to expensive car auction. This was a pretty good idea to me, because personally I would like to trade my car for a little less money but in a much safer environment. My boss was so obsessed to internet marketing. He spend a lot on all kinds of internet marketing media. The company have all kinds of social media pages and advertisement. And we did a lot blog posting and worked a lot on internal and external links to help SEO. But it’s not working. We tried every methods on internet marketing we can think of, but the conversion rate is still awful.

The second company is building an education rating system for schools and organizations. They use badges and points to make both students and teachers involved. They don’t use any internet marketing strategy at all. They don’t post any external links and they don’t even see their Google Analytics report. However they’re doing a good job on getting schools to sign up and use the system. The method they choose is calling, meeting, chatting. These more interactive communication ways makes them easier to demonstrate their concept and understand customer needs.

These two company makes me think that internet marketing may be a very good way to gain customer, but it’s not the only way and necessary way. Internet marketing is a less selective communication tools. If a company need to explain a new concept to customer or if a company are focus on a specific category of customer. I would choose some more interactive communication tools.