You work hard to project the right image for your brand–right down to the digital assets you own. In this article we take a look at How to Protect Your Brand and Its Digital Assets.
Whether you have a blog, create infographics for others to utilize or run social media pages, the content you create belongs to you. Making sure others don’t abuse your image or steal your hard work requires a bit of vigilance and understanding of rules and regulations.
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What Are Digital Brand Assets?
Statista forecast the amount of data created digitally would increase 19.2% each year between 2020 and 2025. In 2020, the amount of data stood at 64.2 zettabytes, with the projections putting it over 180 zettabytes by 2025.
Not all of the data is digital brand assets. Such items include things like media, images, logo design, documents, videos, presentations and anything else digital and of value to your company.
Protecting them can keep unscrupulous competitors from stealing your hard work. However, there are also other threats, such as a server crashing. Here are the steps you can take to ensure your work stays safe no matter what risks you’re trying to mitigate.
1. Do an Audit
Start by making a list of your digital brand assets. You can’t protect what you have if you don’t know what it is. Go through everything you’ve created for your website, for email marketing and even on social media.
Social can be a gray area, as you want people to share your posts and take your marketing viral. However, if someone takes your images and tries to use them to promote their own business, you need to shut down those types of occurrences. Talk to your intellectual property attorney about creating a standard cease and desist statement.
2. Research Digital Asset Rights
Understanding how domain names, trademarks and copyrights all function together in relation to brand protection is vital if you want to keep your digital assets safe. When United States’ copyright laws were written, the internet was not yet in existence. Some rules don’t translate as easily as others.
Make sure you understand what is and isn’t a right as a brand. You do have the right to protect a trademarked logo from being used in ways you don’t deem fit, for example. It’s always best to consult both an attorney and the platform the asset is used on, such as Facebook or Instagram to learn their terms of service and such.
3. Ramp Up Security
Keep digital assets secure through security measures. Hackers can gain access to private customer information and other sensitive data. However, if you take a few steps to avoid hacking, you can also protect your business.
For example, install firewalls on your website. Ask employees to choose complicated passwords and change them frequently. Be aware of former employees and potential threats if they can still access the databases.
4. File DMCA Complaints
Be vigilant about following up when people steal your digital assets. If you send a cease and desist and the person ignores it, you can go to Google and file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint against the offending site. Google can take additional steps to have offending material removed.
5. Backup Files
One simple way of protecting your digital assets is making sure they aren’t lost if your server melts down or your computer fries. Solopreneurs sometimes don’t think to backup files and then lose them and have to start over.
Instead, invest in a cloud backup service. Should your servers get hacked or your computer crash, you’ll have all the data for download without missing a beat.
Check Insurance
In addition to taking steps to protect your brand, double-check with your insurance company about how they cover digital assets. What happens if someone damages your company because they stole and sold your customer data? If a tornado hits and wipes out your database, will they cover damages, including the cost to restore everything?
For most businesses, their digital assets took time and money to develop. Ensure they stay safe so if the unthinkable happens, you can hit the ground running and your business will continue to grow instead of floundering.
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We hope this article has given you a better understanding of How to Protect Your Brand and Its Digital Assets. If you would like more personal tips, advice, insights, and access to our community threads and other goodies, join me in our community. You can comment directly on posts and have a discussion.
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Author Bio
Eleanor Hecks is editor-in-chief at Designerly Magazine. She was the creative director at a prominent digital marketing agency prior to becoming a full-time freelance designer. Eleanor lives in Philadelphia with her husband and pup, Bear.