How to Protect Your Brand on Social Media

With the exponential growth of social media, protecting your intellectual property online has become both critical and challenging.

Here we’ll explore why and how to protect your brand on social media platforms. 

Social media is about providing individuals and businesses with ways to communicate, connect, and share. Instagram stories, tweets, and Facebook posts focus on communication and content-sharing.

In business, social media platforms are used for activities like brand building, marketing, and brand promotions.

Since the beginning of social media marketing, platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been a channel for brands to reach customers and utilize content to foster connection and trust.

With 90% of the US population already spending time on social media and a total of about 4.90 billion users globally, there’s no doubt your brand should be out there.

 

Why Protect Your Brand on Social Media

The virtual social media space creates opportunities for businesses of all kinds and sizes – and that’s great. But equality and simplicity give malicious actors equal, easy access to your customers. In other words, social media has made it easier to exploit your brand with counterfeit goods, malicious content, account hijacking, brand impersonations, and attacks.

Due to the growth of social media shopping, also referred to as social commerce, social media is no longer only about connection, but it has become a global hangout and shopping space.

Today, brands not only build their identity, reach audiences and do marketing on social media – they sell. Retail earnings from social commerce are predicted to reach almost $80 billion by 2025 in the US alone.

As online commerce keeps growing, we see sales shift from marketplaces and e-commerce websites to social media platforms. With new features and tools, customers have come to expect to be able to shop from anywhere, blurring the lines between physical and digital, social and commercial.

The sheer size and volume of social media users and activities mean that brands find it hard to gain an understanding of the scale of social media brand abuse hurting their business.

Brands experience more fraud and increased risks due to malicious actors taking advantage of the platforms. The thing is, your brand suffers lost sales when fraudsters impersonate it or sell counterfeit goods. But the damage goes further. When customers feel they cannot trust goods to be genuine or otherwise put their trust in your brand  – even due to no fault of your own – they may target their dissatisfaction towards you, the original brand.

Brand abuse on social media does not stop at brand impersonation and fakes and includes issues like hijacking hashtags and account hacking.

All online threats have the potential to damage brand revenue, profitability, reputation, customer service, and brand trust.

Brand damage raises the question of how to protect my business on social media. It’s a daunting task, but with the right tech and online partner, you can help your business.

 

Online Brand Protection

The scale and complexity of the digital space make it hard – and absolutely necessary – to protect brands online.

Start with a well-thought online brand protection strategy that addresses your brand’s unique business needs. Look at the technology, expertise, and time required to protect your brand against counterfeits, social media impersonations, gray market goods, trademark infringements, domain name abuse, digital piracy, patent violations, and more.

Devise and apply the strategy to your brand, or benefit from the expertise and proprietary technology of online brand protection agencies like Wiser Market to help you strategize and execute protection with proven results.

 

Types of Infringements on Social Media

1. Trademark Violations – Unauthorized use of brands by third parties, such as impersonation. It usually happens when a third party uses your brand name to refer to counterfeit products or otherwise link their products to your brand or service without your knowledge or consent.
2. Digital Piracy – Copyrights protect creative works automatically once they’re put into a medium of expression. For example, an image is protected whether registered or not. Taking an image from another company and posting it may constitute intellectual property infringement.
3. Patent Infringements – Social media sometimes offers products that infringe a design or patent, therefore creating patent infringement.

 

Common Examples of Infringement on Social Media

1. Brand Impersonation – Fake profiles impersonating a brand or an individual with the purpose of scamming customers. Scammers often misuse a brand’s copyrighted images or other intellectual property assets.
2. Marketplace Listings – Social media platforms can host their own marketplaces or groups where scammers have opportunities to sell fake branded goods.
3. Fake ads – Social media offers cheap advertising options that allow scammers to pay for sponsored advertisements of their counterfeits.
4. Posting images – Instagram, for example, allows you to post almost anything. Often, it infringes on someone else’s copyrights.
5. Fakes – Counterfeits are offered through social media platforms and sold there. Invite-only groups on platforms like Facebook are more likely to sell fakes than open groups.

 

How to Protect My Business on Social Media?

This is a question that every business needs to answer. But don’t worry, we’re here to help.

 

Steps to Online Brand Protection on Social Media:

1. Register All Names – Register your name, logo, etc. as trademarks. Your brand may have other names and URLs that can easily be associated with it, as well as name variations and transliterations in different countries. For the broadest protection, register all of them.
2. Secure Your Social Media Handles – Make sure you own all of the social media handles associated with the brand. Use your trademarked names and consider securing confusingly similar names.
3. Sign Up to Social Media – Sign up for social media channels with your brand name and URL so you own your presence and prevent others from creating an account under your name.

You can familiarize yourself with the platform’s policies, such as Twitter Trademark Policy that may suspend the infringing account.

4. Maintain Updated Social Media Accounts – Keeping updated and active social media profiles on major platforms helps to prevent others from impersonating your brand. If possible, get a “verified” label on your account, such as Instagram.
5. Always Monitor – Use technology to monitor for profiles that can use your name or otherwise misrepresent your brand on social media (such as by offering counterfeits) – either manually or with the technology and expertise of an online brand protection agency.
6. Report Infringements – Major social media platforms have reporting tools for intellectual property infringements. Intellectual property owners and their authorized representatives can utilize them to protect brands on social media.

The more accurate your reports, the more platforms are likely to accept your takedown requests.

7. Take Advantage of Technology – The number of channels and volume of traffic, together with the scale of counterfeiting and other malicious activities, requires the help of advanced tech.

 

Wiser Social Media Protection

Social media has brought new challenges and potential risks to intellectual property rights and their protection.

Wiser Market’s technology-based solutions, tailored strategies, and innovative solutions protect brands and their customers online.

Wiser Market monitors social media and other online channels 24/7, moving to efficiently enforce your rights and eliminating threats as needed. It’s a continuous effort to protect and empower your business.

Wiser Market’s superb brand protection services, from detection through analyzing to enforcing takedown actions, result in over a 90% success rate.

 

FAQs

What are the Types of Social Media Platforms?

Here are the 4 main categories of social media:

1. Social Platforms – Used to connect and share. Examples: Facebook and Linkedin.
2. Media-sharing Platforms – Focus is content. Examples: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Douyin, Sina Weibo.
3. Review Platforms – Here the focus is reviews of products or services. For example Yelp.
4. Community Platforms – Networks that focus on creating discussions and posting comments. Example: Reddit, Hive Social.

 

What is Social Commerce?

Social commerce is the use of social media platforms to sell products and services. It allows customers to make purchases without leaving social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or TikTok. For example, you scroll on Instagram and find skin care products you’re interested in. You can tap Shop Now, add to your shopping cart and check out without leaving the app.

 

What are Types of Social Commerce?

Here are some ways in which brands engage social media users through social commerce:

1. Call-To-Action – A brand features a story or post with products and a “shop now” button or any other checkout feature. For example, Pinterest users can pin products to their personal boards so they can share and shop for them. Shoppable ads enable shoppers to click on a post and order from the social platform.
2. Videos – Videos that feature products on platforms such as  Instagram and Tik Tok, encourage customers to shop.
3. Influencers – Influencers can share products on their account, driving consumers and conversion.
4. User-generated content: User content related to the brand and its products promote the brand.
5. Affiliate marketing – Here, businesses rely on third parties to advertise their products and pay them a commission for this.

 

How Can I Know My Online Brand Protection Is Working?

Online brand protection ultimately has a positive effect on the brand. Thanks to effective online brand protection, you can see changes for the better, including:

1. Fewer fakes available
2. More sales
3. Increased market share
4. Better search engine visibility
5. More social media engagement (and less interaction with impersonating profiles).

 

Can I Protect Hashtags on Social Media?

Brands may be able to use trademark protection for a hashtag that includes a registered trademark or suggest a connection or association with the trademark in a way that is likely to confuse or deceive consumers as it is seen to constitute unfair competition.

 

What are brand protection services?

Brand protection services provide intellectual property protection, from detection to enforcement of your rights on social media or any other online channels. Simply Wiser!