Mitch Bartlett

Tech and Life

Blogging

Is it Legal to Use Another Company’s Logo In Your Post or Publication?

by Leave a Comment

My websites have never been too decorated with graphics. I mainly focus on writing good content. But as I look around the web, I see many other websites using logos from other companies on many of their pages. For example, sites like TechCrunch or Mashable may have a picture of an Apple or Android logo when talking about smartphones.

It made me wonder about the legality of using these logos. After all, company logos are often registered trademarks. Were all of these websites asking for permission to use these logos? Probably not, since it would take a lot of resources to ask for permission to use company logos in every post.

So how are these websites able to use the logos of other companies in their posts? The answer actually differs with each company. When looking to use a logo for a certain company, what you’ll want to look for is web page on their site that details the legal uses for company trademarks. Apple has a page where they say their logo can be used by authorized dealers, but not by websites or other publication without permission. While Pinterest seems to allow almost any usage of their logo as long as you “don’t manipulate it”.

Another question might be “Do these companies actually enforce the legal rules they set?” My guess is, not likely. These legal pages are really designed to protect companies in the event that somebody is abusing the use of their logo. Using an Apple logo on your personal blog for an iPhone review post probably won’t raise any eyebrows over at Apple. They may be concerned if you featured the Apple logo on every page in a manner that makes your site look as though it’s affiliated with Apple though.

3 Website Tweaks To Get More Pageviews

by Leave a Comment

Lately I’ve been tweaking a lot of things on my sites to try to make the sites more ‘sticky’. I want people to stay around a bit longer and view a few more pages before they leave. Here are 3 things that have made a difference.

Changed Related Posts Section

I moved my Related Posts section to a higher position on the page, made the font for the title larger in size and made them more relevant. Using the YARPP plugin for WordPress, I was able to tweak the related posts section for each article and make them more attractive for visitors.

Changed Sidebar Titles

This tip I got from Tim Ferriss. I suggest you watch his presentation below. It makes it clear that little changes such as sidebar titles can increase clicks on the links below them. For example, I used to have a column in the sidebar labeled “Categories”. After changing it “Topics”, my click-rate on the section increased nearly 2%. I never believed such little changes could make such a difference, but they really do.

Increased Speed

I didn’t think much about making my website fast. I have a fast Internet connection and pretty much thought everybody did. That’s totally not the case. Many people use DSL and dial-up still. Those people leave if your site takes 20 seconds to load a page. I use the PageSpeed FireBug add-on to check what scripts are loading on my pages and to find out what I need to optimize.

With these 3 things alone, I was able to increase my pageviews from 1.2 per person, to 2.2. I’ll keep searching for more tweaks that work. Feel free to share your own in the comments section below.

Tweeting For Your Business

by Leave a Comment

I’m not really big on people telling me what to do with my Twitter account, but when it comes to tweeting for your business, it’s a whole different animal. They say you’re supposed to engage 80% of the time and advertise 20% of the time on Twitter. I would agree with that, but many businesses seem to think it should be 100% advertising and no engagement with followers whatsoever.

From what I’ve seen, tweeps will flock to the business that manage to get it right. The ones who don’t end up annoying followers and chasing customers away. Here are some examples of both instances:

Note: I had the official accounts and images of tweets posted originally, but some people get a little crazy when they see anything negative about their business. I have decided to remove the names and tweets of the businesses I refer to negatively and replace them with similar examples.

Local Pawn Shop (name removed) – We have local pawn business that uses their Twitter account to just blab about the price of random items. There is no engagement with followers. They never throw a mention in the direction of anybody. It’s all ads. Who would follow this? FAIL

Examples:

  • Motorola Droid only $59.99. We only have one, so get here now!
  • We have a great selection of old video games! Stop in now and get some!
  • We got a load of new jewelry in. Stop on in and check out what’s new!

@picklebarrelsf – This local sandwich shop owner has it right. She uses her company name and logo as well as her real name on the account. She engages with followers regularly and when she’s promoting her business, she provides an incentive for the customer. WIN

Examples:

@cmsreport – Owner of the CMSReport website. He engages with his followers on a personal level and tweets useful CMS related links to them. Some of the links are to his website, but most are to other resources his audience may find useful. He also sprinkles in just a bit of what he’s doing personally. This is the method I’ve chosen for my own Twitter account. WIN

Examples:

Local Band (name removed) – I see a ton of band accounts on Twitter. Most of them just tweet where they will be playing over and over. This account is like many band accounts and never gives a shoutout to fans. Aren’t the fans the ones who matter the most when you’re in a band? FAIL

Examples:

  • Come see us play at The Battle of the Bands!
  • T-shirts now for sale on our website. Only $19 each!
  • Visit our website and buy our CD. Available Tuesday!

@NickMcD – Nick from McDonald’s usually appears whenever somebody has tweeted about McDonald’s. Always searching for McDonald’s mentions, he’s there for support and tries to rectify negative situations with customers. WIN

Examples:

To sum up, here are the rules any business on Twitter should follow:

Dos

  • Engage with customers by throwing out a mention.
  • Promote yourself no more than 20% of the time.
  • Give followers a reason to see what you have to say.
  • Search for your business name to see who mentioned you. Try to connect with them good or bad.

Don’ts

  • Use your account as a sounding board.
  • Be robotic and without a personality or identity.
  • Tweet only offers, ads and coupons.

Don’t Let Jerks Control What You Post

by 2 Comments

Recently, Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media wrote a wonderful post about Internet trolls. You know? Those fools who waste their lives trying to make others feel bad so they can feel better about themselves.

Since my websites have grown, I have had an increasing number of jealous trolls posting things in the comments sections of my posts. I’ve also had a few hateful tweets directed my way. They vary from “I can’t believe how you contradict yourself…” to “You are stupid…”

Over time, I have learned to ignore all these. In fact, now I get a huge kick out of deleting or blocking these fools. That’s step 1. Step 2 has been a bit more difficult for me. See, even though I don’t ever respond to these creeps, there is something about their words that stick somewhere in the back of my brain. It then festers there and starts influencing my actions.

A recent example of this happened when I wrote a Lockergnome post titled 10 Awesome Android Apps You Don’t Know About. I knew when I wrote that title that I would get at least one jerk writing me about how they’ve heard about those apps. Still, the post was supposed to be for the non-powerusers who use Android, not the people who load their phone up with 500 apps. With that in mind, I finished the post with the original title and sent it out.

As expected, after an hour I had a few comments where people told me “Idiot! I have 8 out of those 10 apps!” and “Dude, you’re a fag if you think anybody can get anything from this piece of garbage article!”.

These comments, though nasty and came from jerkwads, caused me to second guess myself. I thought, maybe at least there was some truth to what they were saying. Everybody has seen probably seen these apps. I then changed the title to say “10 Awesome Android Apps” then went on about my day. What I didn’t know at the time was the article had already gained quite a bit of popularity on StumbleUpon during the period I had the original title. People were thumbing it up! Since I changed the title though, the permalink for the article got changed as well, and the StumbleUpon users who arrived after the change received a 404 error instead of my glorious words.

Had I stuck with my original gut feeling about the title and not let anybody influence me, many more people would’ve seen and appreciated my post. By the time I changed the title back, StumbleUpon had decided my page didn’t exist anymore.

Once you make up your mind about a post, stick with it, and don’t let the jerks change anything about it. I’m gonna do that from now on and you should too!

See also: Facebook Trolls Are The New /B/TARDS

SEO Isn’t Only About the Keywords You Use

by Leave a Comment

People spend a lot of time trying to figure out different combinations of keywords to use in their posts. There’s so much focus on using certain keywords that sometimes writers don’t pay attention to the keywords that shouldn’t be included in their posts.

I recently wrote a post about how to make it through a Nintendo DS video game called Diabolical Box. I was aiming to make the post turn up in search engines when they search for tips about this game. Instead, I was turning up in searches with keyword combinations that included the word “tap”. This was because I used the word “tap” (on Nintendo DS, every motion is done with the tap of the pen on the screen) several hundred times in my post. Because of this, Google came to the conclusion that my post was about tapping something apparently.

So in this post, it would’ve been a good idea to mix the words “touch”, “choose” or “select” throughout my post instead of “tap” or “tap screen” 100% of the time.

Google is smart, but it’s still really just a computer that is trying to judge what your page is about based on keywords. Keep the repetitive junk out of your posts and reap SEO rewards.