You are proud of what you write, you worked hard at writing the content for your blog, worked hard at cropping and editing your photos and spent hours editing your videos. You don't want anyone stealing your work so you decide you want to make it very clear that your work is hands off! Do not touch! You add Copyscape to your posts, your blog, your website and your photos. 

But is this really the message you want to send out to the entire world in cyberspace?

I am one of those writers that adds that copyright at the bottom of my posts and all my writing and photos. Being protective over my writing exhibits a resolve in what is right and what is wrong. This is the line, do not cross it, don't steal my copy, don't steal my photos, don't steal my writing! 

While the object of our behavior is a response to those thieves who like to copy and paste, those lazy bloggers who want to plagiarize and those dirty spammers who want to steal our good name and have traffic kidnapped to bring over to their spammy, crappy sites full of scum.

In order to learn more about Copyrights you should find out the truth, sort through the rumors and get the facts with the Active Rain Radio show hosted by Brad Andersohn with guest speaker Lenn Harley and her Copyright attorney. He will certainly dispel all the myths.

While at NAR I went to an awesome session by David Meerman Scott of Web Inc Now.
I highly recommend you subscribe to David's blog.

David had me take a second look at how we are marketing online. Like I have said many times in our articles about your online strategy you need to figure out what your goal is online. What is it that you want to accomplish? Where do you want your online marketing to lead you?  Are you here to become a famous author or are you here to make money? Either is just fine, but know which one it is.

I really had an AHAH moment listening and internalizing what David Scott was presenting as a shift in how we protect our online information that we create.

Are we going to allow the scumbags of the world to keep us in the fear box? Protecting our data and our articles, blogs and photos close to us so that the only business we will ever get is the direct business, that direct phone call? Are we actually blocking the very thing we wish to evolve and attain online?

Viral marketing is the most impacting and effective way in which to market and brand yourself and your business online. Throughout the coming weeks I will be sharing some of the most insightful paradigms that David brought into to focus.  Consider subscribing to my blog in order to make sure you don't miss any of these posts that are in creation.  As a sidebar: SEO Session IV will be up this weekend.

When you allow viral marketing you purposely and with intention lose control of your information.  Why  would you do that?  To get your video, photos, articles circulating all over the internet, being shared by friends and so on and so forth, that's why!  I got it! The light bulb went off! I want people to share my work, spread it around so that it all points back to me. Wow! What a powerful concept.

But how do you do this without compromising all of your work?  This is not permission to copy and paste and it is not permission to steal your work. This is permission based marketing by stating very clearly what you permit for your work. You can do this through the Creative Commons License. This is a great tool  because you control the use of this license. You can say that this photo may be shared by all as long as you get a link back, you can state that someone can reprint your articles on their  facebook page as long as you get a link to your face book page. There are all sorts of ways to create your Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons is free to all to use.

Jeff Turner was sharing with me that his link is embedded in his photos and he allows anyone to use his photos that he took. His original photos, getting spread all over the internet and even on the Wall Street Journal with links all pointing back to him. He has this one photo that he took of a FSBO sign that has been used by the news media and agents all over the country. Hmmm, I wonder if any of those people would want to find out more about Jeff and discover he is the owner and genius behind the Real Estate Shows! Could that result in any sales? Of course it does! Far better use of his time to make his photos viral in order to get people to come to him that he would not ever have met if he had to do just direct marketing online.

I write a lot of blogs about how the most important SEO tool besides keywords and titles are links back to you.

The Internet is in its infancy. We have not yet scratched the surface of what we can do with online marketing and social networking. Far be it that we should be embracing the evolution of the future of how humans will do business. We will begin a discussion on how to make your photos, videos and articles go wild viral!

Katerina Gasset, CIPS, Realtor ®, Business and Life Coach, Speaker and Author. Reach Katerina at: 561-753-0135

Disclaimer:The information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. Wellington Homes Blog does not guarantee or is any way responsible for its accuracy, and provides said information without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Entries on Wellington Homes Blog represent the opinions and ideas of the author(s). Wellington Homes Blog does not express the views of International Properties and Investments, Inc or those of the broker.

Lose Control Of Your Information by Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

*Lose Control Of Your Information! Are You Sabotaging Your Online Viral Ability?* Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching