Protect Your Brand: Stop Intellectual Property Thieves on Etsy

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

10-Minute Branding Refresher: How do you build your brand 10 minutes at a time? You start small, and you simply begin. An excellent way to convince yourself to get going is to plan your ending. You can even set a timer. Then, be sure to bask in the success of your huge accomplishment of actually beginning and also appreciate the amount of work that got done. Then, repeat the process tomorrow. And the next day. And so on. You will be amazed at your branding progress . . . 10 minutes at a time.

As I previously noted in my article, Check for Copyright Infringement, if you create something of value, someone, at some point, is going to try to steal it from you.

Image by Freepik

That article explained that you need to stay vigilant and detailed how to regularly and easily check for copyright infringement. This article is one part of ‘what’s next?’ when you find a copycat and don’t have a lawyer to deal with the situation on your behalf. Since Etsy hosts approximately 5.3 million small business owners and entrepreneurs worldwide (source), AND I just happen to be one of them, this venue seemed like a good place to start.

Often times, people think that if they haven’t registered their intellectual property that they can’t protect it. While it’s certainly easier to protect your work with a trademark or patent, it’s not absolutely necessary. According to the US Copyright Office, “copyright exists from the moment the work is created” (source). So . . . how do you protect your copyright on Etsy?

Etsy launched a new Intellectual Property Portal in April of 2022. However, the launch was a soft one, and Etsy’s YouTube announcement of the portal has only 4,800 views as of this writing. As a result, you may very well be one of the many, many people who haven’t heard about this portal yet. If that’s the case, read on, because the answer to ‘what’s next’ is literally a 10-minute process!

HOW TO USE ETSY’S IP PORTAL:

Go to the web site – https://www.etsy.com/ipreporting.
Log into your Etsy account.
Answer the basic questions about your brand/business.
Go to the Intellectual Properties tab and “add a property” for the intellectual property that has been copied. You’ll need to: specify the type (copyright, trademark, patent, or other) and the property owner (i.e., you); include a link to the property being used online, the name of the work (which you can name on the fly), a description of the work (an item or design; an image, audio, video, or other media; writing or other text; a name, title, slogan, or other short phrase), a link describing the work in detail (which can be the same link used earlier), and whether the copyright is registered.
Go to the Reports tab and “create a report.” You’ll need to name it, specify the property owner and the property type (copyright, trademark, patent, or other); select/check the intellectual property you just created; search for and select the listing(s) that infringes your work and then submit the report. That’s it!

You’ll then get an e-mail from Etsy within the next day or two with the results of the report. Each time I have found and submitted a report for a copyright thief, Etsy has removed the listing. I hope you find this tool as useful as I have. My ongoing quest for easy (10 minute) ways to accomplish challenging branding tasks was completely fulfilled with this tool.

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Today’s Tip: ABN?

Basic SEO: Link Building

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

BACKGROUND

SEO or Search Engine Optimization, in a nutshell, helps your web site be found online.

If you haven’t already made sure search engines know your web site exists, click on over to this article (Make Sure Your Web Site is Included in Search Engines’ Index). Then, review your web pages’ meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords.

Our current installment on 10 minute SEO is . . .

LINK BUILDING

Every now and again, Google gives us a look behind the curtain and tells us exactly what they want when scanning a web site. Now, they’ve given us that information on links in a recently released document on best practices.

The guide is chock-full of dos and don’ts and background explanatory information. It’s a must read. For tomorrow. And then spend some time reviewing your links, little by little, to see if any tweaks should be made.

QUESTIONS?

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Make Google Alerts Work for Your Business

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

While you need to know where your business stands in the world according to google, because that is how most prospective customers will try to get to know you, the process doesn’t need to be work intensive (even for 10-minute branding standards). With google alerts, you designate how often you would like google to send you an email with a summary of new search results for your selected keywords. That leaves you with the not-so-lofty challenge of quickly skimming the email upon receipt. However, you do have to go through the process of setting up the alerts. Since our philosophy is think small in order to achieve big, we would recommend breaking up the tasks into a couple of days since the process overall is probably more than 10 minutes. . . .

Day 1: Finish reading this post. 😉

Day 2: Decide on the keywords for your alerts. At a most basic level, you would want your name (because to some degree, you are your business); your business name; and possibly your business name followed by the word ‘review’. Beyond that, would some other topics be useful to track for the sake of your business? Maybe you want to keep an eye on the competition. Maybe a particular current event is relevant to your business. Make a list for yourself.

Day 3: Set up the alerts. (You’ll need to have a google account for the task, so if you don’t have one, know that you’ll be prompted to create one before your alerts go live.)

Go to google.com/alerts and enter your first set of keywords along with your email address. Consider entering quotes around your keywords to limit your results and click “show options” to set the parameters for your search (like frequency, language, etc.). Click “create alert” once done and repeat the process as many times as needed.

Easy Peasy!

Then, you’ll see what the world sees, and you can proactively address issues as they arise.

Note that google does not track social media references unfortunately. Those need to be addressed separately.

Let me know of any questions or comments below. Till next time!

When was the last time you googled yourself?

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

When was the last time you googled yourself (or rather, your business)?

(If the answer is today, that’s either an extraordinary coincidence, or you might actually do this exercise too often. This article isn’t for you.) More likely, you’re in the majority and don’t perform this quick task often enough.

You need to know where you stand in the world, according to google, because that is how your prospective customers will try to get to know you.

I recommend three regular searches: your name (because to some degree, you are your business); your business name, and your business name followed by the word ‘reviews’.

This way, you see what the world sees, and you can proactively address issues as they arise (keyword being when not if).

A more streamlined approach to this process involves setting up a few alerts. You will also want to register your business on a few review web sites if you’re not already on them. I’ll discuss these topics one by one in the near future. Till then!

Always Have a Back-up on Hand

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

Disclaimer: While we only recommend products we know and love, we want to note we use affiliate links and may earn a commission for purchases made through those links.

I recently wrote a piece about making your brand a consistent statement throughout your business by reviewing all the physical documents your customers see, your advertising, your web presence, and signage to make sure each piece fits your brand — logo, company colors, tag line, etc. Doing this audit from time to time and addressing issues by revising, reprinting, and/or repackaging is the ideal way to go. And yet, sometimes, a last-minute stamp right before a piece goes out the door is the best we can possibly do. In those instances, it’s good to be prepared.

This week’s 10-minute branding recommendation is to buy your business a logo stamp for those eventualities in which you have no other way to make your brand known. Maybe you run out of a certain size box and need a short-term fix until you get a new batch. Maybe you need to use an envelope size that you’ve never needed to use before and therefore don’t have anything pre-printed. Maybe you have a print job go wrong. Thankfully, a good stamp goes a long way and will still look professional in such instances.

If you don’t already have one, here are a couple options for you from Zazzle:

A round or square logo:
https://www.zazzle.com/
your_logo_rubber_stamp-256591105496181633?rf=238905376834006182

A wide or long logo:
https://www.zazzle.com/
your_logo_rubber_stamp-256983210512542367?rf=238905376834006182

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Basic SEO: Meta Keywords

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

SEO or Search Engine Optimization, in a nutshell, helps your web site be found online.

Before you get started with meta tags, I would recommend you make sure search engines know your web site exists. Or, more specifically . . . check whether your web site is indexed. If you haven’t already done that, click on over to this article (Make Sure Your Web Site is Included in Search Engines’ Index). Then, review your web pages’ meta titles (read that story here) and descriptions (read that story here).

Our current installment in our SEO meta series is . . .

META KEYWORDS

This component is the easiest one yet. You just want to make sure you don’t use this particular tag.

In old-school web design, meta keywords were important in communicating the content of your web site to browsers. However, they were abused by developers, who often stacked desired keywords that weren’t even present in their content. As a result, google now ignores the tag entirely for standard searches, and bing actually uses the tag as a signal for spam. If you have a long laundry list of keywords or your keywords aren’t relevant to your content, you could be getting an SEO ding. As a result, we recommend reviewing your keywords to make sure they don’t raise any red flags. Or, you can err on the safe side and simply remove them altogether.

Below is an example of what keywords might look like in your code:

<html>
<head>
<title>Brand Building for Small Business</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”A Blog for Entrepreneurs Looking to Create and Develop their Corporate Identity.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”branding, small business, entrepreneurs, DIY, how tos, quick, easy, 10 minute branding”>
</head>

You can delete the entire bracketed component for the meta name “keywords.”

Once removed, the header above would look like this:

<html>
<head>
<title>Brand Building for Small Business</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”A Blog for Entrepreneurs Looking to Create and Develop their Corporate Identity.”>
</head>

Easy peasy!

QUESTION?

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Protect Your Brand: Check for Copyright Infringement

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

If you create something of value, someone, at some point, is going to try to steal it from you.

Image by Freepik

You’ll most likely encounter such a culprit even if you don’t go looking. However, if you stay vigilant and catch copyright infringement quickly, you don’t risk losing too much ground. I recommend performing this check once per month. (If you never see any copycats, you can extend the task to once every three or six months.)

SEARCH FOR TEXT

Use a search engine to search for your company name, company slogan, product name, product slogan, etc. I usually go about five pages deep. If you don’t see any infringement by that point, chances are you’re good.

SEARCH FOR YOUR GRAPHICS

Using google’s reverse image search, I would search for the portion of your logos (company and products) without the text, so you’re searching for any graphical components individually. To do so . . .

1. Go to google.com and click the camera icon at the far right of the search box.

2. Click the ‘upload a file’ link and follow the prompts to select your image.

3. Google may automatically crop the searchable area of your image as was done for mine below. If so, you can simply drag the corners of the outline outward to extend the highlighted area of the picture.

4. Scan the “visual matches” for any copycats.

ISSUES

If you find any copycats, bookmark the web site(s) containing the infringement as you go. If you have a lawyer, forward your results. If not, stay tuned. We’ll elaborate on ‘next steps’ in a future post.

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Basic SEO: Review Your Web Pages’ Descriptions

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

SEO or Search Engine Optimization, in a nutshell, helps your web site be found online.

The very first step is to make sure search engines know your web site exists. Or, more specifically . . . check whether your web site is indexed. If you haven’t already done that, click on over to this article (Make Sure Your Web Site is Included in Search Engines’ Index) and put aside this post for now.

A great second step is to review your web pages’ titles. (Read that story here.)

Next up . . .

META DESCRIPTIONS

The web page description is another component of “meta tags” that can communicate important information about the page to your visitors.

If you’ve done a good job writing your “meta description,” that content will be displayed when your page is listed in a search engine’s results underneath the title. For example . . .

This “snippet” (as google refers to this text) can determine whether a visitor clicks through to your page. However, google will automatically generate a snippet from your page’s content and virtually ignore your description if it doesn’t meet google’s criteria, bringing us to . . .

BEST PRACTICES FOR “SNIPPETS,” ACCORDING TO GOOGLE

Create a unique description for each page of your web site.
Include important information from your page, even if not in sentence format.
Some do’s and don’t of quality descriptions:
- Don’t just list keywords; a home page should explain what your business does and include details (such as hours and location).
- If the page is selling a product or service, do provide specific information.
- Do summarize the content of the page.
- Don’t be too short or generalize.
Use the meta description tag (see below).

An Example of the Meta Description Tag in Action in Your HTML:

<html>
<head>
<title>Brand Building for Small Business</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”A Blog for Entrepreneurs Looking to Create and Develop their Corporate Identity.”>
</head>

OPTIMAL DESCRIPTION LENGTH

While all of google’s best practices may suggest a weighty description, google will actually only display 155-160 characters on search results. Therefore, you have the lofty goal of incorporating a wealth of specific information in as few words as possible.

ONLY 10 MINUTES A DAY

You might be questioning this approach at this point, thinking, I already spent 10 minutes just reading this article! If so, you’re done with your 10-minute branding exercise for the day! Come back tomorrow prepared to get started on executing the task. Once you reach 10 minutes, save your work and come back the next day!

QUESTION?

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Make Your Brand a Consistent Statement Throughout Your Business

Welcome to another installment of 10-minute branding!

So how do you make your brand a consistent statement throughout your business . . . in 10 minutes a day no less?!

The endeavor sounds so much harder and more intimidating than the actuality.

ENSURING BRAND CONSISTENCY: THE PROCESS

Day 1: Collect all the physical documents that your customers see.

(Remember that any task taking more than 10 minutes gets paused to continue the next day.)

Day 2: Make sure each collected piece fits your brand — logo, company colors, tag line, etc. Put any off-brand item aside.

Day 3: Repeat the process for all current advertising.

Day 4: Go through your website and any other online materials. You can bookmark any item needing to be addressed.

Day 5: Repeat the process for any signage, noting items in need of change.

Day 6: Fix identified issues. One piece per day is probably a reasonable goal, though more complicated items may need to be spread across multiple days.

And then you’re done! The process may takes weeks to complete, but if you approach it in a organized manner and commit to 10 minutes per day (no more or no less), your brand will be consistent in no time . . . without having to take away from the business of actually running your business!

GOING FORWARD

Having this process fresh in your mind will help you be attentive to branding your materials in the future. Still, you may want to put a reminder in your calendar for one or two years ahead (whichever seems more reasonable based on the quantity of materials you have) to repeat this process.

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