Why Should You Add Watermarks to Your Instagram Photos to Protect Your Brand
Social media marketing has become one of the pillars for granting a brand’s steady growth in a short time-span. However, with massive media services, we are also exposed to plagiarism, not to mention the unauthorized use of our content as the saying goes, once you upload something to the Internet, it’s no longer your content.
Hence, what should we do as brand owners to protect the interests of our company in social media networks like Instagram? Let’s review the importance of this procedure plus some interesting strategies to follow.
Why do you need to protect your work?
As silly as it may sound, there are several users on the Internet playing to be someone they are not. It was quite the lousy story when a recognized Instagram Travel Blogger found a copycat of her profile; and though you can say there might be a slim chance that some photos were just a coincidence and created through inspiration, there’s a very thin line in what becomes copying a pose and moving towards harassment – even if the images had subtle differences as it could be the model’s body, the camera angle, or tiny details in the scenario.
Despite acknowledging the possibility of these events to happen, it goes way beyond simply noticing what’s going on and stopping our copycats or thefts – the damage is already done. Whereas this content is done all in good fun, they are also monetizing that same exposure.
Are your images truly yours?
Like we said above, once content gets uploaded to the Internet, you cannot claim the copyrighted content unless you traced a proper strategy to protect your work. Professional photographers who don’t desire their images to be streamed anywhere over the Internet follow two simple strategies:
- Watermark placement
- Download restriction for the content uploaded
Now, you can say that since Instagram doesn’t natively allow users to download the content uploaded; however, it’s better to be safe than sorry and put in practice the first strategy.
What are watermarks?
As you may have seen in several images uploaded around the Internet, there are tiny (and in some cases not so little) areas covered in a transparent white text or logo. Those happen to be watermarked, the signature the photographer uses to protect their work from unrequested usage.
Watermarks not only protect our work but also give us room to promote our portfolio, as anyone who comes across those images can look at our brand or name, thus searching it via Google if they liked it, all thanks to a properly placed watermark.
How should we apply our watermarks?
The first step is to craft a professional-looking watermark for your brand or job. Like photographers, it’s easy to craft a beautiful signature that can be easily applied to any photo; but for brands, it’s an entirely different story.
Brands cannot afford to lose the interest of their clients due to a bad advertisement move; moreover, they need to promote their name in any chance they’ve got, so our advice would be to maximize the exposure of your brand’s logo by adding a tiny version of it through all images shared via Instagram or any other socially active platform.
Creativity does take a huge part of the success equation, so do not limit your work. Design different versions of your logo that can be used for different sites and media.
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