We’ve all been there. You find a really great photo online and you want to share it with your followers. You think the original owner won’t find my post, and taking someone else’s content isn’t that serious. While we understand that it can be hard to consistently create great unique content, DON’T take content without permission! Taking someone else’s work can lead to copyright infringement which is a form of theft and can have very serious consequences.  According to the United States Department of Justice (https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1852-copyright-infringement-penalties-17-usc-506a-and-18-usc-2319), using someone else's work without permission can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. (That fine is no pocket change!) Here’s a couple of tips to help avoid copyright infringement.

Ask Permission First 

Let’s say you own a restaurant and you find a great photo of a recent customer enjoying a meal at your restaurant. You may be thinking, that would make a great post on our business page! Posting about a customer’s authentic experience could create some great credibility for your business.  If you decide you would like to use someone else’s photo, reach out to the owner through messaging or commenting on the photo to ask for permission. Many people feel honored to have their content shared, so it could be a win for both parties. 

If they decline, don’t use the photo anywhere to avoid copyright infringement. If the owner allows you to use it, don’t forget to give them credit in the post by tagging them and mentioning their name, username or handle in the caption. While getting permission online does allow you to use the content, consider creating a formal agreement to further protect yourself. 

Get a Subscription

If you want to post consistently, but don’t have enough of original content to do so, considering getting a subscription to a stock photo website. These subscriptions include access to millions of downloadable professional photos. There are many package choices including: plans for individuals, businesses and prepaid image packs. If your budget doesn’t have room for a subscription plan right now, there are also stock image sites with photos that are free to download. If you decide to go down this route, be aware that this cuts down on the amount of images that are available to download. To avoid any possible copyright infringement issues, make sure that the site states that the images are copyright free and free to download.

Share Posts When Appropriate 

You may be thinking, what if I post a link back to the original post or page? Even if you include a link to the photo’s original site or post, if you don’t get their permission before, it’s still considered as copyright infringement. Your best course of action is to “Share” the content.  If you want to share someone else’s content, you can use features on the social media platforms to do so. On Facebook and LinkedIn, you can share a post and add your own commentary to the shared post. On Twitter, you can retweet and add commentary also. Unfortunately on Instagram, there is not a share feature within the app yet.  

If you want to create your own content around a blog or website that you found, you can link it in a post. Make sure that the link populates so that there is a preview of the linked site within the post. If it the link isn’t populated, you could use one of your own images and include a link to the site or blog within the text of the post. 

Create Original Content 

You don’t have to be a professional photographer or writer to create your own content! Technology is so advanced today that many people have a great camera built into their phones. If you want to amp up your social media presence, consider taking some time to shoot some photos of your business or products. Pair these photos with some information about your business and you have a post! People love to see behind the scenes in businesses, so give them a sneak peek by including photos of employees hard at work. 

If you love the idea of creating your own content, but don’t have the time or resources to do so, consider hiring a business that specializes in social media.  Doing so is a great way to save time and it is much more affordable than hiring an in-house social media specialist. Social media is a great way to reach potential clients and create an online presence for you and your business.

Stay Informed

The best way to avoid copyright infringement is to stay informed on copyright laws. You cannot use pieces of work with the copyright symbol without permission. If content has a copyright symbol, you cannot use it without permission. This isn't the only protected material though. As mentioned earlier, when someone creates content, they own it and it becomes copyrighted. Next time you see some content that you would like to use, ask yourself, who created this? Who owns the copyright? How can I get in contact with them to ask for permission? Going through this process will help prevent from copyright infringement. To stay up to date on copyright laws, visit copyright.gov for more information. 


When posting on social media, it’s very important to keep copyright rules in mind. By being aware of the copyright rules and regulations, you can protect yourself from committing copyright infringement and from people stealing your content. If you’re looking for a way to amp up your social media presence, but you don’t have the time or resources, give us a call at MSW Interactive Designs. We can help you get found online with robust social media campaigns. 

The World just celebrated Social Media Day this past week, and it got us thinking. The social media world is just over a decade old, and many businesses are still not using this valuable marketing tool. With all the noise out there on social media today, you may be wondering, what’s the point? How can I stand out from the clutter in timelines and feeds to get noticed? Is it worth it to be active on social media? If you are not on social media, check out these seven really good reasons why you and your business SHOULD be active on multiple social media platforms.

1. Stay Top of Mind

You can’t be Top of Mind if your potential customer can’t see your message. Having your business be top of mind may not lead to a sale today, but you are laying the groundwork for your potential customer to remember you when they DO need your service or product.  Having a social message that offers relevant, valuable, and interesting information will solidify you firmly as the best choice in your customers’ minds.

2. Improve Your Search Engine Optimization

You can help your company’s website rankings by using social media. Let us explain. Your website becomes more relevant in the eyes of Google every time you post on social media and link it your website, causing its ranking to rise. Engagements on posts, such as likes, comments and shares, create “social signals.” Search engines read “social signals” as trusted sources for determining the legitimacy of a business, which then also helps to raise website ranking.

3. Drive Traffic to Your Website

Attaching your website link to both your social media posts and profiles can also help drive more traffic to your website. With more traffic to your website, you may notice an uptick in business. Want to see this in action? You can view your business website data on Google Analytics. On Google Analytics, you can determine what type of audience is visiting your site, learn how users got to your site, time that is spent on page, bounce rate (how many viewers leave your site after viewing only one page) and much more using this helpful tool.

4. Educate Your Target Audience

Social media is a great place to educate your target audience about your business. If potential customers are educated about what your business does, they are more likely to develop trust in you and your company. Becoming an expert in the industry also helps with your credibility. People are more likely to view you as a credible source to help meet their needs if they are educated about your business.

5. Make Your Business an Expert Resource

You can establish yourself as the expert in your businesses industry through educating your target audience on social media. After achieving expert status, it is more likely that people will come to you (instead of your competition) when they have a question or need help with something in your field of expertise. Adding or linking a blog to your business website is a great way to expand available content. Posts on social media have a word limit, but you can go more in depth when it comes to discussing your business on a blog. If you upload blogs on an outside website, embedded links to your website can help increase search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.

6. Extend Your Reach

A new demographic of users comes with every social media platform. According to Hootsuite, 69% of adults in the U.S. have an account on at least one social media platform and 88% of 18-29 year olds in the U.S. regularly use social media. Having a business account on multiple platforms will greatly extend your reach!

Did you know that Facebook is the second most popular site in the world (behind Google)? If you want to reach a large demographic of people, Facebook is the place to be. If your business is based on visual elements, Instagram is important. LinkedIn is the platform for professional networking, especially business to business networking. Finally, Google My Business should be utilized if your business has a physical location. Being on GMB allows for people to be able to find your business. Being active on social media also allows businesses to target certain demographics through boosting posts and engaging.

Using ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is extremely important if your business is looking to reach a certain target audience or a decent amount of people. On Facebook, the average unboosted post reaches only 8% of the page’s total followers. With boosting a post or page, that small reach can increase by hundreds or even thousands of people.

7. Increase Your Sales

Lastly, but most importantly, the main goal of having a page on social media channels is to increase sales. Through following these practices, your business is likely to gain new sales and develop more connections with customers. Expanding your business network AND creating more revenue? Sounds like a win-win. Here’s a challenge for your business.  Run a robust social media campaign on multiple social platforms for 6 months.  Post at least 3 times a week and try to write a blog a week.  Compare your sales before the campaign to after the 6 months of your efforts.  We bet you will see an uptick in your sales!


Have you decided that your business wants to increase sales and website visibility through using social media? Give MSW Interactive Designs a call today for a free quote to amp up your online presence. We can help produce original, quality content for your business with consistent posting over multiple social media platforms. Our services don’t stop at social media though, we’re also here for all of your website design needs.