A client of mine informed me today he had received a letter from Getty Images claiming he had violated their copyright on two images used on his website. Along with the claim was a request for over $1000 in "damages".

This is a potential challenge for anyone with a website, because as my client noted, he had no idea where the images on his website came from. He had his site built years ago by a designer who is no longer in business who subcontracted the work to another developer in another country. Being able to find out whether the images were licensed or not is virtually impossible.

So, what to do?

Unfortunately, in cases like this, if you are the owner of a website you are liable for the images on your site. You can ask your designer where they got the images and if they can't tell you, then you'd likely be able to pass along anything you pay to your designer as they're the one who got you into the mess in the first place.

Otherwise, you could be stuck with the bill.

Some of the arguments I have read about alleged copyright infringement discuss how people downloaded images from websites offering "free" pictures. Rarely is anything truly free when it comes to images, so tread cautiously if you're going to do this. I have read some stories about "free" image websites where the images were stolen from another website and then offered as free. If you use one of those images and get a copyright infringement letter, you'd better be able to prove you got the image from a free website, along with the exact URL(s) and the date of download.

At The Web For Business.com, we use only use licensed images from stock photography sites for our clients' websites unless they provide us with images to use. We also ask our clients to sign a waiver that acknowledges any images they provide to us are free of copyright and are properly licensed. If they don't sign the waiver, we don't use the images which protects us both.

Copyright infringement is widespread online. Avoid it by purchasing licensed images for your site. There's a cost, but it's worth it to avoid the stress and possible financial penalties when the copyright lawyers come calling.

Addictions Ontario in partnership with The Niagara Addiction Treatment System held their Recovery Awareness Breakfast on September 8 at the St. Catharines Golf & Country Club, as part of their provincial Recovery Campaign.

Kathie Scott, Executive Director of Community Addiction Services of Niagara welcomed an enthusiastic crowd to enjoy food and fellowship and to celebrate addiction recovery. Diane Doneff, founding Director of Women’s Addiction Recovery Mediation, shared her own personal recovery journey.

Diane’s personal journey started 30 years ago when she found a program and people who believed in her until she could trust herself to live a sober life, one day at a time.  Diane was given the tools and processes by which to heal her past wounds. For the past 20 years, Diane has felt privileged to share these tools and processes while supporting other women and their families in their journeys of recovery through WARM.

Norma Medulun, President of Addictions Ontario presented Diane with the 2010 Community Achievement Award in recognition of Diane’s commitment and outstanding service to the field of addiction recovery.

For more information call Claire Duthie at 905-871-9195 – extension 822 or claire.d@warmniagara.org

Congratulations Diane!!! We're proud of the accomplishments of our clients!!!

So I just added my Twitter feed to my Facebook profile and fan page and my website. Big whoopee, right? I mean, what's the point of all this "social media" crap?

That's a great question because it's not like we don't have better things to do with our time as business people. There are a couple of benefits to all this integration.

1. You look like you know what you're doing. That is, if you keep up with it. Having a blog that's been abandoned for a year isn't helping your cause much. Same with a dormant Twitter feed. Or a Facebook fan page. Congratulations - you've hopped on the bandwagon. Now you have to feed the monster.
2. Integration saves you time. Feeds are broadcasts of content added to services like Twitter and blogs. That broadcast can be received by other services like Facebook or websites and displayed there. So, you can update one service which will update one or two or more others. Not a bad deal.
   
   
3. Social media can help engage and retain prospects. I'm going to pick on Facebook for a moment because it's the one social media platform most people seem to think is the latest-greatest thing for business. The same reality holds true on Facebook as it does on the rest of the internet: if people aren't interested in you, they won't pay attention to you. It doesn't matter how many times you interrupt them - they're still not interested. Unless you work on building a fan page or group around a shared interest (i.e. your industry, product or service), you're still marketing with a shotgun instead of a rifle.
   
   If you're choosy, your Facebook "friends" are really friends. For many though, a "friend" is just someone they are mildly acquainted with and not a true friend. I got a "friend" request from someone who had 2,199 people listed as friends on Facebook. I know full well those people aren't friends, and the reality is they're probably not very engaged with that person or his brand.
   
   The same is true for "fans". If you're ASKING people to be fans, then they're not really going to do you much good, or at least, they won't do you much more good than they would have done for you otherwise. If 20 friends become fans it looks like you're popular but those friends aren't going to refer you more business than they would have without Facebook. When you can attract fans through your own merits and non-solicited word-of-mouth marketing, you know you're dealing with people who really appreciate you and are more likely to become customers.

Okay - enough of the rant. IF you've done a good job of engaging people on Facebook who are truly interested in your business, then there's value in using Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Otherwise, you should face the facts that your efforts are primarily just to wave the flag and let people know you exist. Awareness is good, and over time, the awareness you generate can lead to engagement with prospects. Just remember it will take time and effort get get to that stage where you reach enough people generally to make people with a specific need take more interest in what you're offering.

The title tag is one of the most important bits of information on your webpage. Chances are you've never thought about it. Here's an explanation of what it is and why it's important.

Look at the top of this page. Right up at the top of the screen - above the browser's toolbar. If you're on the main page of the blog, you'll see the title: "The Internet Marketing Passioneer's Blog". There it is. Nothing special, right?

Wrong. Search engines love titles. If you look at the code of a webpage, the title will be right near the top, between the <title> and </title> tags. Search engines use the text in the title tag to determine the subject of a webpage. It's one of the most important things you can change on your website, aside from the obvious of having quality content.

I met with a client today whose website's homepage had a title of "index". No keywords. Just "index". When you consider the homepage is the main page of the website and is usually the page you want to show up in the search engines, it's important to have keywords in the title.

Make sure your website developer puts relevant keywords in your page title. Every page of your site should have a unique title. EVERY page.

If you need any assistance with adding titles to your website, I'm happy to help. Just contact me at your earliest convenience.

It is unusual to find a site that is invisible in the search engines. I mean, you have to do so little to get a website into Google, yet I found one. Actually, I didn't find it - a client presented it to me and asked what could be done. He said it couldn't be found in the search engines. I didn't believe him, but after a quick check, I found that the website wasn't even indexed in Google despite having been online for more than a year.

Let me explain for a moment why this is so jaw-dropping. Most web developers will submit the work they do to the major search engines as part of their service. They'll either do a direct submission or let the engines crawl the site through links. I link to many of my clients' websites through my portfolio page and that's one simple way to set up an inbound link to a site. So imagine how much effort was involved to have the website NOT be picked up by any of the major search engines. You couldn't even find the website under a specific search for the company's name. That's how bad it was.

Fortunately, with a few changes to the site (there weren't even titles!) and the addition of a few inbound links the site was quickly spidered. It is now found on page one in Google when you search for the company name - which is where it should be. As for other SEO, well, that's for the client to decide.

Search engines owe you nothing. You owe it to your business to ensure your site appears in the major engines. At a minimum, if someone just types in your company name they should find you on the first page of results unless you have an exceptionally common corporate name. (If that's the case, you should really think about talking to a branding expert.)

Leaky faucets are bad, right? After all, drip, drip, drip, right down the drain.

That's how most people feel about their marketing budgets. Drip, drip, drip - money right down the drain. So what do they do? They stop marketing, and that's bad.

Don't worry about making a big splash - be a drip. Every day, you should be marketing. There needs to be a constant effort - even a small one - but you need to expend some energy to market your business.

Drip, drip, drip.

Those small efforts represent a bucketload of marketing over time. Those small efforts build mindshare in your prospects and existing customers so when they're ready to buy, your name is overflowing in their mind. Yours will be the first company they call and the one they trust because of your consistent marketing messages.

Remember: thousands of drops of water over time will wear away the stone but if they arrive all at once they'll just make a splash and the stone will remain unchanged.

I am always happy when new websites get launched because I enjoy helping clients on their internet marketing journeys. The website is just the start. The real work is getting people to visit.

So, I'm pleased to announce the launch of the new website for UBU Video Productions at http://www.ubuvideo.ca.

This is the site of my friend and colleague Mervin Wrighton. He has opened a business to pursue his passion of movie and video production and from what I see, he's off to a running start.

Merv has done two videos for me to date. The first was for Craig Bowman of Road to Recovery Natural Health and the second was for Catherine King, candidate for town council in Pelham. I'm happy with the process we went through to make them and my clients are happy with the videos that resulted.

Congratulations on your new site Merv!

Today is the "official" launch of a new website for Craig Bowman. Craig's a Registered Holistic Nutritionist who is on a mission to guide people to better health through changes in diet and nutrition. He's a hall-of-fame weightlifter, husband, father and now, he's online.

Introducing: www.RoadToRecoveryNutrition.com

Ta da!!

Welcome online Craig!

Now, of course, the fun stuff begins. As I tell all my clients, getting online is the first step. Figuring out what to do online is where it gets interesting. We will be marketing Craig's guaranteed customized nutritional support programs throughout the GTA. In particular, Craig has developed a special cancer support program that has produced some spectacular results in some clients.

If you need some help getting your diet sorted out, give Craig a call.

On another note, the video on Craig's website marks the first collaboration between me and Merv Wrighton of UBU Video Productions. Merv's a long-time acquaintance and has gone into business to pursue his passion for making movies.  I'm sure you'll be seeing more of Merv's work on our websites in future.

Just wanted to note that a new website for Catherine King is now online.

www.VoteKingWard2.ca

Catherine is running for town council in Pelham (Ward 2) and we're happy to be assisting her attain elected office. Catherine's one of those people who knows how to make a difference and we wish her the best in her campaign.

Just remember - municipal elections are coming up on October 25th so get out there and make your voices heard!

Since our first foray into online video things haven't really changed all that much. I mean, YouTube is still a great way to market - it's just gotten bigger. Image quality has been improved, but that was to be expected.

One thing that hasn't changed much is the cost of getting a video produced. I personally think videos offer great value on websites, but the cost of development can be a barrier. On a client's behalf, I did some calling around to several video production companies. The cost to produce a 20 second spot to use online (with some green screen background manipulation) was anywhere between $500 to $1100 - and one company wanted more details before providing an estimate which to me suggests they would have been on the high side of the range.

What does this mean for our customs? It means we've gone out and come up with a lower-cost option for you to peruse. These days even cell phones have HD capability, so you know the cost of equipment has come down. The cost of software for video editing has come down as well. We've made an investment in both equipment and software and can now produce short slideshow-type videos starting at $150.

A long-time acquaintance recently opened his own business doing video shooting, editing and production. For companies that are looking for videos with higher production values than I can offer I highly recommend him. His name is Merv Wrighton and his company name is UBU Video Productions. UBU is pronounced "You Be You". You can reach him at 905-651-2728 or at merv@ubuvideo.ca. His website will be online soon so you can view his portfolio. He has produced videos for two of my clients and both are quite happy with his work, as am I.