Case Study – DS Callards Gets Results With Social Media Alignment

SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPORTS EVENT MARKETING CAMPAIGN

“Harnessing Social Media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook, with thought-leadership content in the form of videos and blogs, has helped endorse our position as leaders in the field of BI.” – Adrianne Gillies, DSCallards Marketing Manager

Key Learnings

Although familiar with the many available avenues of social media communication, SAP Partner DSCallards was using social media primarily for brand awareness and didn’t consider it a key marketing tool prior to the pilot project supported by Impact Interactions. This project taught DSCallards how it could use its existing social media accounts to promote itself as a thought leader to generate valuable sales contacts and to nurture leads. As a result of its social media campaign work, DSCallards saw a 161% increase in referrals from its social media accounts to its two websites. In fact, the number of social media referrals to DSCallards’ websites during the pilot was equivalent to the total number of referrals the company had seen during the previous ten months. All of these results were realized during a six week pilot to implement a comprehensive plan of social media curation, creation, and promotion.

Pilot Program

DSCallards is a full service business intelligence solution provider offering both consulting services and customized development.  Based out of Ashburton, UK, DSCallards has established itself as one of the best business intelligence solution providers in the UK and has a robust business surrounding its partnership with SAP. According to Adriane Gillies, DSCallards Marketing Manager:

“When combined with our fully accredited professional services and methodologies, DSCallards provides solutions that offer the most complete, open and integrated BI systems on the market today.  Our goal is to ensure that every business, regardless of size, can understand and use information without technical expertise or knowledge of underlying data sources or structure, empowering them to get answers to imperative business questions and to make more effective, better informed, decisions.”

Despite their win as the UK Champion of the SAP Social Media Program 2010 and again as UK Champion of the SAP Best Performance Challenge 2011, DSCallards continued to utilize its social media accounts as a secondary tactic for awareness. DSCallards maintained accounts with LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc. but wasn’t entirely focused on using these venues for lead generation. For the most part, DSCallards used their corporate accounts to retweet posts from the Twitter account of Lee Grogan, DSCallards Sales Manager, and to promote videos entered for the SAP Best Performance Challenge. DSCallards was utilizing social media as a way to increase brand awareness instead of relying on it as a means of building contacts and leads:

“Although happy with output from our efforts, we were not convinced that social media was an effective channel for driving forward demand generation and was more of an awareness and brand building exercise.”  – Adriane Gillies

While brand awareness is important, Philip Roylance, UK Enablement manager for SAP, saw an opportunity for its partner to look at social media as much more than an internet billboard.  Through its two SAP wins, DSCallards demonstrated it was savvy enough to take on the task of creating a social media campaign. In selecting DSCallards for this pilot, Philip stated:

“DSCallards has worked closely with SAP on projects in the past and were an excellent candidate for us to run a social media campaign with. Social media has become a very important part of SAPs marketing strategy and we need to work with partners who are able to demonstrate the agility and tenacity needed to make campaigns successful. DSCallards has shown this in abundance.”

To get DSCallards off on the right foot, Philip turned to U.S. based social media consulting firm Impact Interactions for help in assisting DSCallards with the implementation of a robust social media marketing campaign that would address the business objectives of thought leadership, contact generation, contact nurturing, brand awareness, and the promotion of SAP solutions. With over ten years of experience with SAP, Impact Interactions has a proven record of assisting companies increase their online presence. With two of DSCallards’ popular breakfast marketing meetings approaching, the time was right to launch a comprehensive campaign.

Tactical Planning for a Social Media Campaign

At the beginning of a social media campaign, both Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and initial metric benchmarks must be determined.  For DSCallards, there were several measurable KPIs:

• Increased registration for morning meetings
• Increased reach
• Increased blog visits
• Increased website visibility

The following DSCallards’ social media accounts were analyzed before the pilot kick-off to create the projects initial benchmarks:

• YouTube:
• Channel Views
• Individual video views
• Number of referrals from YouTube to website
• Twitter
• Followers
• Number of referrals from Twitter to website
• LinkedIn
• Connections
• Number of referrals from LinkedIn to website
• Blog
• Visits
• Number of referrals  from blog to website

Additionally, benchmarks were taken for the number of registrations DSCallards had acquired for their two upcoming meetings utilizing email lists, web site contact us submissions, and in-house contact lists.

Once the KPIs and benchmarks were determined, DSCallards orchestrated an effort to integrate all marketing accounts in order to meet their KPIs.  Previously, DSCallards had viewed their social media accounts as separate, stand-alone entities. Rather than each account being an item in its social media marketing menu, each was looked at as a stand-alone item in and of itself.  This approach had the unfortunate effect of fragmenting its social and online audiences.  DSCallards’ blog readers weren’t readily aware of its Twitter account.  The Twitter followers didn’t know DSCallards had valuable content on its YouTube site, etc.  In addition to these tactics, DSCallards relied heavily on email lists to send out SAP content based newsletters and to announce its popular breakfast meeting series. However, it did little to utilize social media to advertise those meetings or tie the content of the email newsletters into other interactive outlets which again left much of its online audience unaware of the benefits of attending these important meetings.

Impact Interactions introduced DSCallards to the concept of “Beacon Strategy Marketing.” Using this method, every form of social media is used to link back to the main form of communication for DSCallards, its website. YouTube videos linked back to relevant meeting registration information through descriptions and annotations. Twitter activity transitioned from being primarily retweets of Lee Grogan’s tweets to advertisements of new additions to their blog, LinkedIn groups, and upcoming meetings. LinkedIn activity increased with the initiation of more discussions and, again, consistently linked readers back to DSCallards’ website. Blog posts were skillfully mentioned across several platforms. Over the six weeks of the pilot, DSCallards learned how to tailor each message to the platform they were using.  Instead of repeating the same cookie cutter information across the different platforms, the message was finessed and adjusted for each audience. Recipients were getting the same information without seeing a copy and paste of text from one social media interaction to the next.

Challenges During The Campaign

The pilot did not come without its challenges, however.  Several events occurred that impacted the overall results of the campaign.  First, the December meeting was scheduled to take place at a location further from London and less accessible to participants than made sense for a two hour breakfast meeting. Consequently, registrations remained low for the December meeting. That said, despite the fact that its December breakfast meeting was the original focus of the pilot project, DSCallards decided to cancel the meeting and reschedule it for a time when it could be hosted at a better location.

From that point on, DSCallards decided to instead focus on a November meeting which was taking place a better location and featured a more popular subject.  Second, DSCallards had invested in an email list for sending out information regarding their monthly meetings.  Unfortunately, the list hadn’t been properly scrubbed for accuracy. DSCallards found itself relying on a list that largely consisted of invalid email addresses. The team at DSCallards had to scramble mid-pilot to try to purchase another list and send out the meeting information again.  By that point, though, DSCallards had largely missed its window for giving people enough lead time to plan for the trip to the more distant SAP location in December.

A secondary issue which impacted expected results was the implementation of a new website and blog platform. While a positive from an information standpoint as well as from an improved user experience standpoint, the new site provided new challenges in the campaign. First, new links needed to be featured for the social media promotions while the older links took visitors to the older site information. While the visitor could then click to the event registration, the dual site issue may have caused some initial confusion among visitors reducing results.

Results

For DSCallards, the company achieved great success achieving the long-­term goals of increasing in their reach, generating important business contacts, and establishing itself as a thought leader. DSCallards proved that social media could be used for far more than simply creating awareness of the date and time of its training meetings. Looking at specific Social Media Channels to develop and connect with contacts, prospects, and leads, DSCallards did very well in adapting its approach to include social media into its marketing mix. Specific channel results are given below:

Twitter: 370% increase in Twitter Followers

During the pilot, groups of potential followers were identified and followed. By reaching out first, DSCallards was effectively holding out a laurel to their audience.  Following them first would hopefully peak their interest enough that the person on the other end would return the favor. The tactic worked.  Over the six week pilot, DSCallards saw its Twitter following quadruple with significant retweeting of their information through their followers’ networks. Not only did this give DSCallards the opportunity to present itself as a thought leader but it also presented the company as another option for a business intelligence solution provider. They established both brand awareness and their reputation as an experienced and knowledgeable organization.

LinkedIn: 120% increase in site visits from LinkedIn Group posts

By utilizing LinkedIn Groups focused on Business Intelligence, Manufacturers, and Analytics, the team at DSCallards was able to guide additional traffic to its own blogs and web site. Once on the site, visitors were presented with the opportunity to learn more as well as to gain an invitation to one of the DSCallards’ breakfast meetings.

YouTube: 10% increase in video views, 6% increase in Channel Visits over 6 week campaign

During the pilot project, DSCallards took time to nurture its YouTube account.  After the Best Performance Challenge, the YouTube account was not frequently updated as an avenue to push viewers back to its website.  Additionally, several of the videos DSCallards posted were simply reposts of SAP content.  As an SAP partner this content was acceptable and may have created some needed awareness for DSCallards’ audience, but it didn’t present DSCallards as a thought leader. Once DSCallards began using the “beacon strategy” the company took greater care to ensure the content on its site was both valuable and original.  DSCallards took SAP-­supplied videos and dubbed them over with its own script which had the effect of making the videos more “personal.” It literally gave a voice to DSCallards. It also gave viewers the sense that DSCallards, every bit as much as SAP, understood the subject matter and had valuable expertise to offer.  Now, when visitors to the DSCallards’ YouTube account look at videos, they are presented with content DSCallards has customized and tailored to its audience  rather than a small number of  DSCallards videos dwarfed by a large number of SAP provided videos that have no tie to DSCallards as a company.

Blog: 20 fold increase in reads of blog content

DSCallards’ use of other social media outlets to drive readers to its blog worked phenomenally well and resulted in 20 times more visits to the blog in November as compared to October.  DSCallards made great efforts to post blog content updates more frequently than in the past and tailored each post to the subject matter of its upcoming breakfast meetings. Both of these efforts created the opportunity to passively advertise DSCallards’ meetings to its readers on their social media accounts while also promoting thought leadership in the BI area. Through these blog posts DSCallards presented themselves as thought leaders offering valuable content worth reading and training sessions worth attending.

Overall Traffic

Thanks to the many improvements to their social media communications DSCallards saw a very important improvement to quite possibly its most important customer­-facing outlet: the company website. The impact of a well coordinated social media campaign to support marketing efforts can be seen by the dramatic increase in referrals to the DSCallards’ websites from their social media accounts.

The metrics clearly demonstrated that DSCallards was now driving interested parties back to its website, where they could find a wealth of information about the company’s offerings.  Referrals increased across the board, proving that DSCallards’ tactics in all areas were working together to improve the effectiveness of DSCallards’ marketing efforts.

“Having worked with Mike and his team at Impact Interactions, we now believe that cleverly combining traditional marketing techniques with the power of Social Media and becoming thought leaders in the field of BI is a winning strategy for DSCallards as we make inroads into our chosen markets in the coming years. 

Harnessing Social Media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook, with thought-leadership content in the form of videos and blogs, has helped endorse our position as leaders in the field of BI. 

We are looking forward to transferring the skills learned throughout this pilot and putting the Social Media methodology that Mike and his team developed for us into practice during 2012.  By applying this methodology to our SAP Crystal solutions campaigns, where we believe we are already looked upon as thought-leaders, we are confident of our continued success.”

– Adrianne Gillies, DSCallards Marketing Manager

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Executive Use of Social Media – A Collection of Research (Part 2)

In part one of the presentation, we focused on looking at the research that has come out during 2011 about social media for B2B companies and how you can use that research to understand how to use social media in your organization to solve your pain points. In part two, we’re going to look at several companies who are doing just that. Through published case studies and an example from Impact Interactions itself, we’ll see how you can utilize social media in a manner which generates real economic value to your firm. So let’s get started.

As always, should you have any questions or would like to comment, please do so below in the comments section.

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Executive Use of Social Media – A Collection of Research (Part 1)

 

There’s been a shift in social media. Have you seen it? Business to business companies in industries beyond the traditional early adopters are utilizing social media more effectively today to build awareness, generate business, and nurture customers than as little as six months ago. Research that has been published over the past year shows that B2B social media is not only becoming more prevalent, but is also expected by customers, prospects, investors, and recruits.

In the video below, we’re going to interprete the relevant research from multiple sources in order to present a pretty compelling analysis for using social media in the business to business setting. In Part 2 of this topic, we’ll show you how several companies such as Cisco, Intuit, ShipServe, and Impact Interactions have used social media in the B2B setting to achieve real business results. We’ll also provide you with a measurement methodology which will help your team to quickly identify areas where action is necessary as well as where you are successful.

So in the words of the immortal Warner Wolf, let’s go to the video tape!

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Why Social Media Shouldn’t Be Treated Like a Shiny New Toy

We’ve all seen it happen. A kid begs their parents for the latest and greatest toy because ALL of their friends have it. The toy gets bought, played with in earnest for a week or two, and then is promptly set aside only to collect dust and create clutter. Then one day the child’s parent walks into the room to find something and is totally overwhelmed by the mountain of junk they have to sift through to find what they need. The same can happen to your company’s social media campaign if you aren’t careful.

Too often, companies launch Facebook and Twitter sites before fully understanding why they want them. They don’t know what it does or how to use it but they know their competitors have it and they assume they need it to give them an edge. So, they get their Facebook page going, send out a few Tweets, and make ready for the waves of new fans and maybe even some customers. Except, the fans and customers don’t come. Why? Because the company didn’t think about what they were going to do with their new toy once they got it and now it’s just another waste of money.

Social media has power; a lot of it. But you have to wield that power in the right way. We at Impact Interactions strongly believe in what we call the “Beacon Strategy.” You want to utilize certain tools in ways that will guide new users to your main repository of information (your website), not leave them lost in the sea of digital clutter. Facebook and Twitter can’t replace a robust website full of quality information, nor should it. These are simply tools, lures even, that should be used judiciously. When considering how to use these tools you must first know where you’re going, what you want to achieve, and how you can measure your success. Once you have determined those things then you can go out and make the investment in developing a social media campaign. Always understand the why of your campaign before you think about the how and then make a commitment to nurture the campaign over time rather than letting it sit and get dusty next to the last latest greatest business toy you just had to have.

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Why Blogs Work in B2B – Featured B2B Magazine Article

I was recently interviewed by Jon Vanzile for an article he wrote for B2B Magazine (6/6/11) titled “Is Blogging Over?” along with our client, Jeanette Gibson of Cisco. The article is in response to a New York Times article in February claiming that blogs are losing their marketing power, especially with younger audiences due to the growth in Twitter and Facebook. When we spoke about this, I told Jon that this isn’t the case from our experience in the B2B world. In fact, blogs are a cornerstone for B2B marketers (or should be) who are looking to develop stronger relationships with their customers, prospects, and stakeholders. Here is my quote from the article about why blogs work for B2B marketers:

“When you look at the B2B market, what’s necessary is thought leadership, and you cannot get thought leadership in 140 characters or a Facebook post.”

Think about this for a moment.

We counsel our clients that the main difference between B2B social media and B2C social media is the needs of the audience and the buying cycle timing. For B2C, social media is about building awareness and then trial. B2B is much more complex, it is about building awareness then relationships with the audience. Why? Because in general, the sales cycle for B2B is longer than B2C so more effort and information is necessary to help your prospect move to become a customer.

Blogs can play a big role in this relationship building process by highlighting your company’s thought leadership in the industry. Companies want to buy from companies that will be leading the industry and can demonstrate staying power. By providing executive views of the world to your audience, you help them to understand that your company is a leader and will be there in the long term to help your customers.

Can Twitter or Facebook do the same? No, they cannot. Here is a better way to use these tools in your B2B marketing.

We work with our clients to use B2B social media tools like Twitter, Facebook (yes, it does work in B2B), LinkedIn Groups, and YouTube in their online marketing mix. But we recommend a stronger process of using these tools as a complimentary set of tactical processes that support business objectives. We do that through our “Beacon Strategy.”

Just as a lighthouse helps ships to find safe harbors, the correct use of social media tools can help your audience find the best information you can provide quickly and efficiently on their time. Social media in a B2B setting works best when it works together with blogs and compelling content to educate and help audiences to learn more about your products, services, view of the industry, and support issues. By pointing your social media content on third party sites such as Twitter or LinkedIn Groups back to your controlled website, you have the advantage of measurement while your audience has the advantage of learning more. B2B social media requires measurement. Friends, followers, group members, etc. don’t mean anything until they are engaged in a conversation or contact process with your firm. Why? Because you cannot measure anything of real economic value until the person completes an action. Those actions should take place in your harbor, not somewhere in the vast ocean that is the internet.

Getting back to the article, B2B blogs when clearly written with compelling content are one of the best destinations in your safe harbor for people to learn about your company. In a project we did with SAP back in 2004 and 2005, we saw that one of the best indicators of whether a company was moving towards purchase was their reading of the SAP Executive Blog Series. This was a series of blogs by SAP Board Members and top executives at the time (people like Hasso Plattner, Shai Aggasi, Leo Apotheker, etc.). Why? Simple. Before a company spends thousands of dollars on your products, their executive team wants to know if you are aligned with their interests and if your company is truly customer focused. Blogs help to show this to your audience.

So, are blogs dead? For B2B marketers looking to use relationship marketing, the answer is a resounding NO!

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How SAP Partners Are Using Video to Accelerate Their Demand Generation

As part of SAP’s Best Performance Challenge 2011, competing partner teams in EMEA are tasked with developing videos to help them begin to use social media in their marketing efforts for demand generation and lead nurturing. In the our Business Catalyst Series blog posts, I wrote about how video is quickly establishing itself as a must have for business to business marketers globally. In this post, I’m going to drill down a bit into how the teams currently ranked at the top of the Challenge are using their videos.

The Elevator Pitch – Your Introduction to the Market

Traditionally, many people view the Elevator Pitch in terms from the late 1990s when management consultants told their clients to be ready to explain their company and its strengths in less than two minutes. While this was adopted at the time primarily by new stage companies looking for investments from venture capital companies, the use of elevator pitches has evolved tremendously over the past several years.

As more and more potential customer staff members search the internet for information (one of the top reasons B2B staff use the internet), your firm must not only be found but able to tell its story quickly. That’s what the elevator pitch does so well.  The key concept behind the elevator pitch for established companies using video for contact generation is that the videos reach people who you don’t know who may be looking for your solution or researching it for a decision maker in their company.

So let’s look at an example of a good elevator pitches from a member of the Best Performance Circle, SPIN Consulting of Italy.

You’ll notice immediately that this video elevator pitches is much less formal than you might expect. This video works well because it acts as an introduction, not a sales pitch. The style is conversational and inviting. But what of the results? Well so far, SPIN’s video has received close to 800 views. The majority of SPIN’s views have come from  viewers who visited the SPIN website, which is why you need to embed these videos into your site. Each of these views are an opportunity to introduce your firm to a potential customer.

Customer Success Stories

In business, recommendations and references are often used to help close a deal. What if you could change the timing to demonstrate your expertise and move ahead of your competition, would you make that change in your process? That’s exactly what good, strongly focused customer success story videos do for companies. It’s a tactic that has worked remarkably well for big global companies and for small businesses focused on a single market. Companies like SAP, Cisco, HP, IBM, Cap Gemini, Accenture, Atos Origin, and others have been using customer success whitepapers and videos to help build a faster relationship with their contacts and prospects for years.

In the Best Performance Challenge 2011, we’ve seen several examples of customer success videos. One of the better examples is from DSCallards Ltd, a partner selling Business Objects solutions in the UK. The video on SAP Crystal Reports Server is short, clear, and provides the opportunity for the customer to tell the story. That is the essence of the customer support video.

To date, this video has over 2,300 views since it was created in November of 2010. More importantly, the video has influenced visitors’ views of how the software can positively impact the business. This can be seen by reading the comments on the video on YouTube:

• Great video, good to see user experiences

Dawnlco 3 months ago

• Good video – shows how accurate reporting can impact different areas of the business. Nice to hear positive user experience from the users themselves.

DilbertDaveCarson 3 months ago

• Good to see real, like sized, customer stories, definitely helping us make our mind up

R00ddle 3 months ago

• I’ve been working on a large corporate Business Objects project and had lost sight of how MI reporting can be critical to the day-to-day running of a real life SME. It was great to see dashboard reports actually being used in an operational environment rather than being presented to management as a snapshot tool at a board meeting. Well done to the team for an excellent presentation of how the real world can see the benefits of information that they already had but didn’t know how to use.

wm419142a 3 months ago

• Very illustrative and informative video. Clear to see the business benefits to be derived from such a solution.

lizm2508 3 months ago

• Excellent video!. Really helpfull. We’re considering a similar solution in our organisation, and would like to discuss how we might use Crystal instead.

Please contact me!

businessmanup 3 months ago

• Really useful video. This will help us to move forward with our own reporting project. thanks!

zenagee 3 months ago

• Great to see real customers benefiting from meaningful dashboard reporting & positively impacting their strategy

greenrhino77 3 months ago

Look at the comments closely. See the comment asking for someone to contact the viewer? This is why allowing visitors to view video on their time is so important. As business people continue to start their search for products and solutions online using search tools like Google, Yandex, Baidu, and others, they will find your videos and web site. By combining the power of video into your web site, you present an opportunity to engage and learn more by starting the relationship early and demonstrating the power of your solution long before your competition.

One Last Point About Online Video for Business

In the Best Performance Challenge 2011, some of the feedback and questions from our competitor teams revolved around video styles and languages. Let’s look at one last research chart to answer the question of style:

In the viewers’ minds, it doesn’t really make a difference if the video is a studio produced gem or a company created offering. What does matter is that you offer video.

On languages, there is no set rule other than to meet the needs of your audience. If you are working in several markets which have different languages, you might want to consider providing videos in each distinct language. If you are focused on a single market, it is probably a better idea to utilize the local language. Remember, audience focus is the key, meet their needs and you’ll be successful.

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B2B Social Media Catalyst Series – The Elevator Pitch

Welcome to our B2B Social Media Catalyst Series session on using an online elevator pitch to introduce yourself to your audience.  Before you can launch your B2B social media efforts, you must build compelling content that will entice your audience to engage further with your company online. In our experience, the elevator pitch is an underutilized tool which when successfully created acts as your introduction and online handshake. Using a video hosted by Youtube or elsewhere, but embedded into your site can add a little visual impact to your online efforts and demonstrate the power of video for your B2B social media efforts.

So with that as our introduction, here is our series video on The Elevator Pitch.

 

To download this presentation and/or the transcript for the video, please visit our Social Media Resources document library.

If you have questions or comments, please add them below in our comments section. The team at Impact Interactions is ready to help you improve your B2B social media strategy and tactics.

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Has Viacom Gone Too Far?

Very interesting take on the recent court decision regarding Viacom’s request for user records from Google/YouTube by the District Court for Southern New York Judge Louis Stanton. In his article “Viacom Has Gone Too Far” author Lance Ulanoff gets a bit upset by what he sees are the implications for users of YouTube. Among his chief complaints? Viacom will now probably go after millions of members to try and get them to pay for the copyrighted videos they viewed on YouTube because they are greedy. Well, he says Billionaire Sumner Redstone is greedy…

Read some of these blurbs from the story:

“Once Google delivers the terabytes worth of data, you and your minions can pour over it looking for copyrighted content and those who watched it. Oh, I know you say you just want to understand if people watch more illegal content than legal—like it’s all some academic exercise—but I say there’s more to it than that. You want to go after the viewers. You want to find people who consume too much Colbert Report and MTV on YouTube and find a way to levy a fine on them. “

“With those logs in hand, though, Mr. Redstone, Viacom has the will and means to do all sorts of nasty things. It will learn what copyrighted videos still exist, whether or not people still watch them, and who the watchers are. A witch hunt could ensue.”

What a bunch of nonsense. What did Viacom get the judgement to obtain? User records which can identify which users uploaded the copyrighted videos. Google can and probably will appeal the ruling. Why? Certainly not because they are interesting in protecting their members. Rather they will appeal because once they provide that information, it will no longer be cool to upload videos on YouTube and they will lose advertising revenues. Viewers are only attracted if the content is good….lose the content and you lose the viewers, the ad clicks, and their associated revenue streams.

But the bigger question remains in the author’s mind… “When will they go after the viewers?” Answer: Probably never.

Why? It’s not going to be cost effective nor is there any legal reason to do so. The DMCA is all about those who upload or transfer copyrighted materials, not those who only watch. User data including the transactional metrics for users is very valuable information to have when pursuing a copyright infringement case using the DMCA.

But not because of the information on the viewers separated from the videos uploaded…

The reason to get this information is to isolate the members who uploaded the most copyrighted materials, then build the trail of users who viewed them in order to have metrics backing up the amount that Google/YouTube owes you for the copyrighted content. Secondary reason is that if you lose this suit and Google/YouTube is found to be protected under the Safe Harbor Provision of the DMCA, then you have the data through discovery to go after the individuals who are now responsible for the lost revenues. (Not that they will collect the money, but it will send a strong message.)

We continue to hear so many people say that there is no harm in letting the members of a social network or community upload what they want and control the norms of the site. It’s the Internet for goodness sake! But unfortunately, these folks have had a bit too much of the internet communist Kool-Aid. This case is proving that these people (and many of them are consultants in the online community/social networking world) are on the wrong side and mis-informed. We hope that this case continues to move towards a judgement rather than a settlement in order to provide clarity for any organization that offers its members the opportunity to upload content to their site.

Looking for a better way to deal with all of these issues? Contact us. We’re not lawyers, although we have slept at Holiday Inns from time to time….

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Disney, Microsoft, Viacom and Others Common Sense Approach to Copyright Violations

In several of our speaking engagements, we’ve heard the same question repeated:

“Following our lawyers’ interpretation of the DMCA, we don’t remove any content until the copyright holder contacts us. You say that is a weak defense against copyright lawsuits. Why?”

And our answers always come back the same:

“Do you make any money from ads or other offers on your site which are visible from the page showing the copyrighted materials uploaded by your members? If so, you may have a problem.”

And then we’d go round and round with each other, citing specific examples and whether they violate the act or not. The stance we’ve always taken is to be pro-active and remove it if you are making money from that page. We recommend that you remove it before someone asks because over time, you become a great target for a lawsuit.

Well, now many of the larger copyright holders are telling the world the same thing. On Thursday, October 18th a consortium including Disney, Microsoft, Fox, NBC Universal, CBS, and Viacom entered into a pact which sends a strong message to all of us who host sites that allow user generated content. In essence, this group is moving forward with clarifying the rules of engagement in the WWW war over copyrighted materials. Here is the statement from the Wall Street Journal’s article on the announcement that stands out:

” The copyright holders in the group have agreed not to pursue Internet companies for infringement claims if their sites adhere to certain principles. Those principles include eliminating copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and blocking any infringing material before it is publicly accessible.”

This group is promoting the idea that site owners have some responsibility to review what their users are uploading. The group is looking for firms to simply make their best efforts to remove the copyrighted material in a prompt manner. And from our view of the world, that make sense if you want to avoid getting tied up in court and spending a bucketload of money to defend your site…See our blog entry on the costs of getting served papers for this type of lawsuit.

But of course, we are biased. We help firms moderate their user generated content and firmly believe that the DMCA is so full of ambiguous wording that the best defense in this area is a good moderation strategy. Want to discuss this further? Post a comment or contact us.

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