Is Your Business Blog Brand Secure?
Business and Blogging: If you’re not careful, someone else might be able to use a variation of business name, blog URL, or other identifiable phrase and have access to the benefits that your brand has built up.
A post from Eliza Feree at the Babylune blog about a (possibly accidental) mixup between two mommy blog names and URLs got me thinking about how potentially serious a problem this problem could be for business bloggers. If your business doesn’t take steps to adequately protect your online identity, then your business could be vulnerable to a legal tug-of-war should some other entity adopt a similar name, URL, or phrase.
In the case reported at Babylune, an issue arose when two bloggers (both in a similar niche) discovered that they had similar URLs and blog names (Momologue vs. Mamalogues).
The mom blog incident was notable because it came from the world of mom blogs, which usually doesn’t have such disputes. Any personal or business blogger could face the same situation if they don’t take adequate steps to protect themselves.
Consider this post from Jacqui Cheng at ars technica about the current blog/domain name conflict between Craigslist and unaffiliated Craigslist Blog.
Such cases generally fall under the scope of intellectual property infringement. However, in some cases the law has not caught up with the online world of the web. Ars technica reports that Lowes recently lost a similar legal battle.
At best, defending your good name online is bound to be time-consuming and expensive.…
About this entry
- Published:
- 27 Apr 2008 / 10:00 AM
- Category:
- Problogging
Twitter Less, Blog More!
Daily Blog Tips:
Given the religious following that Twitter is gaining these days, I am sure that this will be a polemic topic.
Still here it goes: Twitter less and blog more!.
Now let me draw my argument.
I do think that Twitter is a very useful online application, for several purposes. It allows people that work from home or alone in front of a computer all day to socialize. It allows bloggers and website owners to interact with their readers on another level. It should even allow one to make new friends and to get in touch with people that would be unreachable otherwise.
The problem I am seeing lately, though, is that many people are giving Twitter priority even when they have something interesting, useful or funny to say; or when they have some resources to share. In those situations, I think it would be a better idea to develop your thoughts and ideas a bit further, and post it on your blog instead.
Why? Because your blog is your property. It should be the single most important location for you on the Internet. It should be the place where people go to when they think about you. Your blog, not Twitter (unless you only Twitter obviously).
Even if you don’t like to think in abstract terms, there are material reasons to opt to blog something instead of Twittering it. In the long run every backlink and every visitor count. Guess what, every time you Twitter instead of…