Protecting Multimedia: The Rising Importance of Metadata

Multimedia is content: So it makes sense you would protect it like you would any article or publication. But when you want people to share your images or video, it’s hard to know how to protect your rights as creator.

This brings up the issue of permanent metadata.

Metadata is data about data, or more comprehensively, data within an image or video that tells you about it: who the author is, where is originated, etc. You can find this data by looking at a video or image’s properties and looking into its advanced settings. It’s really not as complicated as it sounds. This information is also used by search engines to know exactly what an image or video is about (because search engines don’t have eyes or ears). SEOs call these alt tags and use them frequently to improve search engine’s understanding of a website, and in turn, search rankings.

The issue is this metadata isn’t permanent. It can be altered by anyone at anytime, making protection nonexistent if anyone had the inclination to eliminate your digital affiliation with your work. It is for this reason hardly anyone even uses them.

What is needed is software to make this metadata permanent: a digital thumbprint that would be irremovable from the multimedia. This thumbprint could then be read by search engines and knowing the originator’s site (which would be embedded in the metadata), could boost their rankings, making sharing seamless and responsible. This eliminates the idea of “orphaned” multimedia and protects creator copyright.

Here’s an example. Say you’re a photographer and you post a really cool image of a Starbucks coffee cup. You then share than image and it goes viral, until eventually Starbucks sponsors it in a paid social-ad campaign. Search engines value shares and recognize them as proof that content is valuable. Your website then, which you linked into the Starbuck image metadata, would then get boosted to the top of the search result for whatever keywords were discerned as significant in the meta description.

Cool, huh? There's even more.

While also protecting the creator's work from being used in other campaigns as it no longer being categorized as "orphaned" or unclaimed, permanent metadata could result in further business for the creator as their contact information would be easy to find if a business were so inclined as to contact you to purchase it.

The hurdle is that many businesses like the idea of free "orphaned" images that they can use for marketing purposes. And these business have clout. The hope is that in the future, businesses see that this protection not only protects the Instagrammers but extends to big business as well. That if this metadata became permanent, and a significant piece of that digital Internet structure, they would no longer need their high-power legal teams to protect their assets; they would protect themselves. An innovative idea we should all be able to get behind.

Content Marketing: The Evangelism of Brand Journalism

Every year businesses spend millions of dollars trying to get on the front page of high profile publications, websites and news stories. They throw themselves at media outlets with time consuming projects, expensive galas and off-brand publicity stunts--all for what? To get ignored, because journalists have a nose for when they are being sold and an even keener sense for what the public is interested in.

But how do you not get ignored? The answer is simple: hire them.

By hiring a journalist you hire an insider to write for your brand. A savant-of-the-printed-word that not only has consumer instincts and writing talent but better methods to keep from being ignored.

One example of a company excelling in branded journalism, highlighted in David Meerman Scott's WebInkNow, is Raytheon. Raytheon is an aerospace systems company specializing in defense, security and civil markets throughout the world. In 2011, Raytheon brought on ex-TV producer Corinne Kovalsky as Director of Digital and Social Media. Kovalsky then picked up Stephanie Schierholz, social media manager from NASA, and Chris Hawley from the Associated Press. Together they have put together a editorial operation to rival a news publication.

"I'm helping to build a news operation," said Chris in WebInkNow. "We are working at Raytheon just like an AP beat to find interesting stories and tell the world about them in a way that engages. We have bureau chiefs in all of our four divisions. They have certain products that they want to talk about so we try to find new and interesting ways of exploring those stories. And we refine the story ideas, assign writers and we're doing a lot of training on editing and getting those stories out."

As far as success, Raytheon has seen a 451% web traffic increase over the year before and is frequently featured in articles from publications like Gizmodo and other tech outlets.

Know of other companies hiring brand journalists to write or run their content strategy? I'd love to hear about them below.

The Death of SEO and the Rise of Quality Content

While an important component of any marketing campaign, Search Engine Optimization has long felt like catching bees with honey.

As the initial step in a growth cycle it makes sense that search engines assumed keywords linked to relevant content. Unfortunately this idea has become saturated with advertisers using black-hat techniques to cloak their lack of content with repetitive phrasing and blatant link schemes. In the past Google has taken a hole-patching approach with updates called Panda to down-rank websites that downgraded user experience. If this doesn't sound innovative enough to be Google, you'd be correct because it turns out they were just buying time.

The Google Penguin Release

With the Google Penguin release announced in April 2012, the concept of SEO as becoming obsolete was confirmed. Search engines are getting smarter and their algorithms more complex. Keywords will no doubt remain an important asset but the Penguin release marks an important shift in perspective marketers from cheating the system to producing quality content.
So how does this new algorithm work? In Forbes, Ken Krogue puts it best.

"Google used to think if you linked to someone on the Internet they must have valuable content. Now Google seems to believe that if you promote content with social media it is more indicative of relevant content and less likely to be faked."

While this may simply lead may SEO specialists to become social media strategists it shifts new importance on social media platforms. And with social media platforms users are given more opportunity to filter and react to marketing strategies. So what is a marketer to do? Engage with quality content.

Content is King and the Metrics of Engagement

You may be able to fake content but you can't fake shares (at least not easily). Twitter and Facebook may have their fair share of fake accounts but like Google, their digital czars are getting better and better at zapping them out of existence.

And to get shared you have to be relevant, or at least interesting. In the same article by Krogue in Forbes he gives an excellent list of "14 Approaches for Generating Real Content."

1) Research important questions.
2) List good/bad examples.
3) Passionately tell a story.
4) Highlight recent trends.
5) Survey best practices.
6) Compile prove tips.
7) Point out a problem.
8) Recognize who.
9) List what.
10) Warn when.
11) Show where.
12) Debate why.
13) Demonstrate how.
14) State the so what.

In conclusion, the death of gaming the system has been marked. So choose your writers carefully, it's time to get real.