Nov 04 2008
Protect Your Brand a.k.a. CYA
Don’t know what CYA is? Keep reading!
This month I had the unpleasant task of wrestling with MySpace to recover a trademarked name that was being used on their network. MS was good about the whole process, and returned the account to its rightful owner – the registered owner of the trademark. A lot of valuable time could have been saved if the registered owner had performed a CYA maneuver two years ago when we discussed it.
Here are two CYA procedures that I highly recommend your organization perform immediately.
This Needs to be Done by Your Organization
1. Register your domain name in all the important extension formats. This includes .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, .US, and .INFO In addition, I am going to suggest covering the .MOBI and if you are a travel organization, you might consider the .TRAVEL. The reason for registering these is primarily to protect your brand from abuse. There may be some very good reasons for developing these into assets, now or in the future. Better “safe than sorry!”
Netrafic Clients can Receive Assistance With This Task
2. Register your trademarked brand or business name in all the popular social networks. If you are not using these now, you will be in the future. Here is a partial list of the top social networks to cover.Flickr, Youtube, Squidoo, Hubpages, Wordpress, Typepad, Blogspot, Myspace, Technorati, Delicious, Digg, Linkedin, Picasa, StumbleUpon, Twitter
You might also consider registering your brand name at Ebay, to prevent people from associating your brand with an Ebay seller.
Netrafic Tip: You can check your brand name vs. registration username for most top social networks on one website with the click of your mouse, visit usernamecheck.com – thanks to Scott Fish for that little nugget!
Still confused about CYA? Just Google it!
