In our previous LicenseStream Insight Blog posts, we’ve talked a lot about keywording and SEO.  Now seems like a good time to talk about tying your keyword strategy into your social media activities.   Why? Because after you’ve selected keywords to generate search results and drive customer traffic to your website and/or LicenseStream gallery, those targeted keywords can serve as the critical threads that tie together all of your social media marketing activities. Over time, this concerted effort will help move your images or other content and your websites or galleries near the top of search results.

Our goal with this post, and with the series of posts on social media that follow, is to help you maximize the promotional work that you do elsewhere on the Web, including on your own website and third-party sites that host your work, to build your LicenseStream business.

Leveraging your Keyword Strategy to Understand Where Your Audience Lives Online

Your keyword strategy should focus on applying to your images or other content those words or phrases that are relevant and most likely to be used by potential buyers searching online for you, your work, your style or your type of work across a range of social media outlets. Put yourself in the mindset of the target market for your images or other content, and ask plenty of questions of current and prospective customers to find out what terms and techniques they use as well as what sites they frequent when they search online for the types of images, video clips or other content you offer. The better you understand your market and how buyers search for images or other content, the better for developing a keyword strategy and for understanding where your audience spends its time online. You may discover that the best prospects for your work may be spending their time on sites other than where you’ve been trying to reach them. To learn more, see our previous post on Keywording for Search Results

Using LicenseStream to Bolster Your Social Media Outreach

Once you’ve selected and applied keywords to your images or other content, LicenseStream provides you with a tremendous head start to bolstering your social media outreach. With LicenseStream, you can attach keywords to your images and other content and then publish them directly to your own or other Web sites, such as Flickr, and major search engines so that anyone, anywhere can find your content and license it with a mouse click. To learn more about linking your online images on other Web sites, including Flickr, to a LicenseStream licensing page, visit our previous post on Using HTML to Market Your Content.

Keep Keywords Consistent Across Social Media Channels

In addition to leveraging LicenseStream to publish to major search engines and other Web sites such as Flickr, there are plenty of other social media channels to leverage, including a blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Whatever social media channels you choose, it helps to reiterate the most effective keywords you assign to your images or other content across all of your marketing and communication efforts – online and off. For example, if you specialize in images of Labrador puppies, it may help to include the words "Labrador photos" or “puppy pictures” in all of your print as well as your online advertising, client presentations, blog posts, Tweets or articles you might write to promote your animal photography business, as well as in your website copy, your page meta-titles, meta-descriptions and meta-keywords. Simply keeping your keywords in mind and using them where appropriate will do the trick. Learn more about keywording and search engine optimization strategies by checking out 10 Dos of SEO Practices, and 10 Don’ts of SEO Practices.

If you're going to spend time creating and building a LicenseStream business, it only makes sense to focus on promotional activities that will show a good return on your investment.  Social media channels provide excellent and inexpensive promotional tools. In upcoming LicenseStream Insights blogs, we’ll share information about some of our favorite social media tools and how to best leverage them to build your business. 

We’re pleased to announce several new features now available!  We’ve received a lot of great feedback from many you over the last couple months and the LicenseStream team has been hard at work developing some of your requested features. There are 6 new features we‘ve highlighted in our newsletter and that we’d like to highlight in our LicenseStream Insight blog as well.

1. Customize your LicenseStream Store:  You can now customize the look of your store by including your logo in the top-left corner.  With this new feature,  you can keep the continuity of your brand throughout your LicenseStream store.  Simply go into your “Store Manager” and click on the “Logo” tab to upload your own business logo.
   

   



2. Showcase Your Galleries:  This addition lets you display Galleries as the top level of content within a store.  It’s a great way to showcase your galleries so buyers can instantly see a wider sampling of your work.  Be sure to sort your content in the order that you want it displayed.   You can easily refer back to our blog on how to easily sort and display your images in your galleries.


3. Give Your Gallery a Unique URL:  Give your Gallery a unique URL so that you can promote it via your website, blog, or e-mail to your clients.  We’ve made it easy to add one. Simply click on the Manage Gallery link inside of your Gallery and start promoting your Galleries now!  Stay tuned -- soon we’ll post information on this blog about promoting your work through social media outlets.


4. Link to you Store from Google Search:  We’ve also added a link to your store from the Licensing page.  Now when a buyer finds your image, video, or other digital content via Google Search, your LicenseStream store or published elsewhere on the Web, they will be directed to the Licensing page and will see a link to your store, where they can view your other works as well.  With this addition, LicenseStream offers buyers another way to discover more of your work!
   

   



5. Improve Your Metadata:  We think keywording and other search engine optimization (SEO) practices are very important for promoting your images and video content.  After all, if you put content onto the Web without good keywording, potential customers are less likely to find your content.  As you may have read in our previous blog posts, we have some great tips about the Dos and Don’ts of SEO Practices, including keywording.  When adding or updating metadata from your ‘Prepare’ page or the ‘Edit’ option on your thumbnails, you can now opt to have your updated metadata embedded in your content.  What this means is that changes made to your keywords and metadata to refine and improve your search results will be attached to your image. Follow as many of the SEO tips as you can and make a practice of implementing them in your LicenseStream Store.


6. Delete a Pending Invoice:  Before we added this feature, if you had a pending invoice for a specific image, and you wanted to delete the image from your gallery or store, you wouldn’t be able to delete it.  Now you can delete a pending invoice and then delete the image from your gallery or store.

We’d love to hear your ideas for new features to help your LicenseStream business. Click here to send us your ideas.

Implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices is critical to maximizing the potential of your business. We want to continue the conversation begun two weeks ago about SEO practices. In our previous blog post, we focused on the “Don’ts” of SEO. In this post, we want to point out the steps you can take to improve your SEO. The goal is to ensure your website remains listed on any search index and that – most importantly – buyers can easily find your images, video clips, and other digital content. We also call out a few other SEO practices designed to help you convert visitors to your site into customers.

1. Know your Keywords: If you want to see what keywords people are using in their search queries check out Wordtracker’s free keyword suggestion tool.  Once you see where the keywords you use rank, determine whether they’re paying off for you.  Keywords used in only one search query, may not be offering you the best return.  However, for as much as you’d like to use broad keywords that are queried more frequently, balance that approach with specific keywords that describe your image.  For example:  “Labrador dog yellow, show dog, local dog show 2009, champion first place Labrador winner, Champion Fido the First.”  Such a set of keywords covers the broad category of Labrador dog, details about the dog’s name, information on the show that you photographed, and indicates that this is an image of the first-place winner.
   
   
2. Keep Keywords in focus:  When you’re writing content for your Web pages, be sure that you are incorporating the keywords used in your title and in your metadata to keep your keyword strategy focused and on target.  You may want to refer to this article from SEOmoz.org about how many keywords to use.  Depending on your keywords and your target market, the number of keywords you use could range from one to 15.  This article also provides good examples of how to write your Title, Meta Descriptions, and Headers so that they incorporate the keywords, make sense to anyone searching, and resist the trap of keyword stuffing.
   
   
3. Create Unique Page Titles: For every page you create, add a unique page title that clearly and accurately describes the content on that page.  Construct the page title by taking two to three of the keywords that bring you good keyword results and that target your audience. For example:
   
               www.somerandomwebsite.com/labrador_best_in_show_2009_pictures
   
               vs. 
   
               www.somerandomwebsite.com/123ABC
   
   
4. Construct a Search Engine-friendly Site:  Use HTML and include a Sitemap.  Flash is a gorgeous and safe way for you to display your photos, but may make your pages all but invisible to major search engines.  So build your gorgeous and safe Flash site, but also create an alternative HTML version that you can link to from the Flash section. That way, the search engines can easily crawl and index it.  A LicenseStream Creator account will give you that option and the buyer can license your content directly from your HTML site.  A sitemap also provides a clear and easy path for the search engines to index your website.
   
   
5. Build Links:  Creating relationships that foster links back to your site is a good thing and helps raise your ranking in the search index.  When you foster link backs to your site, the search engines view the links as nods that your site has good and relevant content, resulting in a higher search index ranking.   Engaging in social networking contributes to these efforts.  For example, if you post to a blog about how the License Management features within LicenseStream help you price your images at a level that drives sales, and then someone picks up a link to that post and uses it as a reference in their blog, you’re generating nods of approval by a search engine.  Alternatively, if your colleague writes about you and links to your LicenseStream Store to show his audience how LicenseStream is helping you build a successful business,  the search engines are likely to recognize such affirmations.  Slowly but surely you will rise in the ranking index.
   
   
6. Provide Beneficial Content: Create content that is beneficial to your online audiences and communities.  While plugging your business and work is important, so is building credibility with your audience by providing information that may be helpful to them.  For example, if you’re a photographer, you might want to share the newest tricks that you’ve learned from shooting with your favorite Nikon camera.  Of course you can use examples from your shoot that will promote your work, but be sure to focus on how you can help your followers on Facebook, Twitter, or blog with information that will benefit them instead of focusing solely on how you’re looking for work or on your deep interest in licensing your work. By providing such helpful information, you’re more likely to generate links to your site from members of other sites whose editors and contributors find your content useful and potentially valuable to their audiences.
   
   
7. Engage in Social Networking:  You can engage in social networking on multiple platforms.  You might be Twitterific or a Facebook Fanatic.  You might find the professional network on LinkedIn, or any of a number of photography, videography, music or other content forums helpful to building your business.  Or you might just find that blogging about your passion and your work is enough to keep you busy.  Whatever outlet you choose, social networking can help generate links back to your site and your images. Stay tuned for a separate blog post about great ways to leverage various social networks.
   
   
8. Keep Your Sitemap As Shallow As Possible:  The deeper your website and Web pages go, the more difficult for the search engines to index the pages. When you’re building your website, use the same rationale for search engines as you would for customers coming to your website: enable key pages to be found easily from your main homepage.  Once a potential buyer visits your main page, he or she may be willing to click a layer and maybe even two layers down into your site. However, forcing a visitor to click any further may result in a potential buyer abandoning your site.
   
   
9. Stay Current with Your Keyword Research:  Review and refine your keywords on a regular basis.  Strive to review your keywords at least once every couple of months.  If you find your time pinched on other projects and tasks, then at least schedule a review of your keywords each quarter.  Part of the review should include a look at how your page rankings are doing.  Many people use the free Google Analytics service to see which keywords are generating traffic to their sites or to specific pages.  You’ll find knowing what works and what doesn’t to be helpful in revising your keywords. Couple that exercise with using the free Wordtracker service to determine which keywords are most popular.  Together, these services offer some of the best free tools available to sharpen your keyword strategy.
   
   
10. Ask For Help:  There is nothing wrong with asking for help, and there are many services out there to help you with SEO.  To take full advantage of such a service, make sure to engage actively in the SEO process so that it serves as an educational tool for you.  Ask plenty of questions, such as "Will you need me to make changes to my Web site content?" If your SEO partner says no, you may want to shop for another SEO agency that will make the changes you need to drive Web traffic and online sales. You should also ask about the tactics the SEO agency uses, to avoid the use of unethical SEO techniques that could get your site kicked off a major search index.  You may want to refer to our previous blog entry about SEO Don’ts to learn more about unethical behaviors that will hurt your search rankings. Track what the SEO agency is doing and what is  – and isn't – working.  Always benchmark your starting point. For example, start with determining the current number of visitors and page views per month and track these metrics each month over time. A good rule of thumb is to give your SEO partner 6-8 months to produce results and measure those results against your starting point. If the results promised fail to materialize in that timeframe, then you need to find another company to handle your SEO.

Now that you’ve reviewed the Dos and Don’ts of SEO, get started!  Begin by conducting your keyword research and building your keyword strategy.  Do as much as you can on your own to build links, engage in social networking and build communities around your work. Measure and see what results these efforts bring.  If you need to improve your SEO ranking further and/or you can’t manage the tasks, bring in an SEO consultant or company to help you.  Building a strong SEO ranking is a cost effective way to drive traffic and critical for your online business to thrive.

We wanted to continue the conversation about keywording and segue into Search Engine Optimization best-practices for your website.  The following are ten things “not” to do to ensure your website remains listed on any search index and most importantly, to ensure that people can find your work through the  search engines.

1.    Keyword Stuffing:  If you use the same keyword repeatedly within your website’s text or in your keyword tags, you’ll find yourself penalized and likely removed from the search results index.  How much repetition is too much?  Use a keyword density checker to make sure that you’re not over the legal limit.  Experts say 3-7% for your major keywords and 1-2% for your minor keywords. We touched on this in our last blog post about keywording, Licensing Fundamentals: Keywording for Search Results. 

2.    Duplicate Content:  Duplicate content deliberately tries to trick search engines into improving a website’s ranking.  Search Engines have built-in algorithms that analyze pages with similar content.  How much similarity are they looking for?  Use this duplicate content tool to see if you’re pages duplicate too much information. If so, the search engines may omit your web pages or site from the search index.  A good place to read more on duplicate content is the Google Webmaster Central Blog.  If you need to see a more visual presentation on the subject, check out the blog posted by SEOMOZ.org.

3.    Free-For All Link Exchange Programs:  There is a difference between natural link building and free-for-all link exchange programs.  With natural link building, you’re linking to relevant sites or reciprocating links with partners or associations.  Free-for-all linking occurs when you use software to put your links out to hundreds of thousands of sites.  Free-for-all programs are essentially spam and if a search engine discovers this practice they will likely penalize your website and lower your ranking (if not blacklist you).  Stay honest, start a link-building program by establishing reciprocal links with relevant, reputable websites. It really is that simple.  If you’d like a good online resource to learn more about  this, check out this blog by SEOMOZ.org on link building.

4.    Robots:  Do not use a robot to rewrite your content. Such robots alter it just enough to generate a set of new, duplicate pages for search engine indexing and with the ultimate goal of increasing your search engine ranking.  You may be seduced by the offer of having your website rewritten for you.  Don’t fall for it.  Such robots, or programs, typically rewrite your content with very few changes.  If you’re caught with duplicate content, your search ranking is likely to plummet so far that no one will ever find it.  Needless to say, if you use the LicenseStream HTML code to publicize your store on your blog or personal website, don’t submit it for a robot to rewrite --not only will it affect search engine rankings for your personal website, but it could also affect rankings for your LicenseStream store.

5.    Keyword Dilution: Focus on the main keywords that pay off for your online content.  To get an idea of what keywords people are looking for, use the free service from Wordtracker.  Plug in your keywords and see how many searches they have initiated. Focus the copy on your website and each page on a specific theme. This will naturally ensure your keywords are specific as to the types of content and images that someone can find at your website.  You may want to refer to our previous LicenseStream Insight Blog post about keywording practices.

6.    Difficult to Crawl Website:  An all-Flash site is nice, but is difficult for the search engines to crawl and index.  So if you’re going to use Flash to create a site, include an HTML option and an easily navigable site map.  liveBooks is a great resource for putting together a fantastic Flash site for your work, and its Flash sites automatically generate an HTML version for SEO purposes. You can also link the Flash site you create with liveBooks directly to a LicenseStream account, so that visitors easily and seamlessly can license your work.  With these services, you’ll have both the HTML needed for good SEO and the keywording and direct licensing features that can help your business succeed.

7.    Hidden Text: Hidden text is computer text set in the same font color as the background so as not to be easily read by anyone viewing the page, but that a search engine will recognize. Usually it is used to camouflage keyword stuffing. If you think that it will generate a higher search result ranking, think again.  If you are caught doing this, your pages will be removed and banned from participation in search engine rankings.

8.    Bad Redirects: Don’t create pages with keywords with the sole purpose of getting a high search engine ranking only to redirect visitors to another page that is totally unrelated to the focus of a search. For example, say you do a search for “blue egrets” and you’re directed to a page that says, “One Moment While We Redirect You.” The next thing you know you’re on a page about candy bird eggs.  This practice is unlikely to win you any fans and instead may result in the removal of your site from search engine indices.  There are instances in which redirecting is appropriate.  But the deliberate and malicious misuse of keywords is a practice that is likely to backfire.

9.    Same Title on Every Page: Don’t use the same title on every page of your website.  While you may think that by using the same words over and over again you’ll achieve a higher search engine ranking, think again.  Instead, use titles relevant to the content on each page to increase the chance it’ll be found via a variety of search terms. For example, if your website is about birds in nature, don’t title every page: “Birds in Nature.” Instead, be specific.  If you have three pages within a LicenseStream store website and one is dedicated to Blue Egrets, then name that page, “Birds in Nature: Blue Egrets.”  Similarly, be specific in your captions or keywords.

10.    Misspelled Words:   Don’t use misspelled words anywhere other than in your META tags.  Yes -- you may want to incorporate common misspellings of words, but keep them hidden in your META tags, not in your copy.  Obviously incorporating misspelled words reduces your credibility, and such damage can’t be offset by any incremental gain in site ranking. 

These are just a few tips to get started; there are many others and we’ll offer related tips in future posts.  Optimizing your website for search engine ranking requires patience and diligent work.  Our advice is to stay honest.  Don’t try to game the system, it just isn’t worth it -- especially when your reputation and ranking of pages that represent your work are on the line.

This will be the first in an occasional series of blog posts that will explore how to use an array of tools and tactics within your LicenseStream stores and galleries – as well as outside of them – to grow your photography, videography or other creative content business.  In this series, we'll look at keyword strategies, search engine optimization, content descriptions, group naming structures, social media tools and how these all tie together.

The first step is to develop a keyword strategy.  What is a keyword strategy?  It is a plan or an outline for applying those keywords to your images, video, or other content that are accurate enough to help buyers easily find the image they need. Keywords play a critical role in elevating your search engine rankings, so choosing those keywords that are most relevant and targeted is the goal.  Moreover, the discipline of developing a keyword strategy leaves you with a clear outline of who your audience is and how they search, so you can leverage that knowledge to improve your search engine rankings for your images, blog, Tweets, or interactions with Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media

As we’ve mentioned in previous LicenseStream blogs, using LicenseStream's Keyword Generator is a good way to jumpstart your keyword strategy. Within the “Manage Content” area, you can apply keywords to the “Keywords,”  “Name” (also known as the title), and “Caption” fields designed to describe the image, video or other content in a way that is readily understandable. In each instance, the goal is to leverage keywords that deliver strong search results, and that enhance your ability to turn those results into transactions.

The better you understand how your audience searches for your work, the more likely you’ll use keywords that will improve your search engine rankings. To gain a better understanding of your market, it pays to ask a few current or potential customers what terms and techniques they use most often when they search online for the types of images and video clips you offer.  You may find that image buyers for nature magazines typically do a literal search by species name, location, and approximate age of the animal or the plant that they’re featuring in the article.  Alternatively, an advertising agency using nature photography may take a more conceptual approach, and search by color of bird, type, time of day, horizontal or vertical image. You may find additional differences, depending on the industry or individual user. 

Once you've determined the types of keywords to apply, research all of the different ways that people may search for these items.   For example, you may find that some people call a beverage “soda” while others who refer to it as “pop.”  Your U.S. customers may refer to “fries” while U.K. customers use the word “chips.” For a specific genre of images, such as those related to an egret, you might want to include “nature,” “birds,” “fowl,” and “shorebirds.”  You should also consider including common misspellings, synonyms and plurals.

Some keyword experts suggest that it’s good to take into account keyword density, and that the optimal percentage of keywords should be between three percent and five percent of all content on a site. To see whether your site measures up, check out one of the free online tools that will help you calculate the density of each keyword on your site: http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

At the same time, it’s best to avoid a practice known as “keyword stuffing” which is considered an unethical form of SEO and may result in the removal of your site from a search index altogether. Keyword stuffing is the repetition of keywords within a keyword tag or in a site’s content. For example, if on the Metadata tab that is part of the editing function within the “Manage Content” section of LicenseStream your caption reads: ”bird, blue egret bird, blue bird, egret bird, bird in nature,” the word “bird” may appear too often. Moreover, this string of words fails to include a call to action.  You probably can spur better traffic to your site with a caption such as “License a high res image of a blue egret bird located in Everglades City, Florida.  Find additional high res images of egrets and other shorebirds in the wild at …” and include the URL for your LicenseStream store. What you’ve done here is provided a call to action by recommending the licensing of a specific type of image, and included keywords likely to generate search results for your site.  In addition, you’ve offered a way for potential customers to find and view more of your portfolio.

While keywording may seem like a time-consuming, labor-intensive exercise, it plays a critical role in ensuring your work is found via the Web's many search engines, particularly its most popular, Google.  To see some of our previous tips for keywording, look back at some of our blog posts about SEO and keywording.

ImageSpan has just launched the LicenseStream Creator Member Directory so that those looking for a photographer or videographer with a specialty can quickly find your portfolio or engage you for work.  This is just another way LicenseStream can promote your work, help you find collaborators, and empower you to network with fellow LicenseStream Creator members.  Our LicenseStream Creator service includes a wide variety of subscribers and you never know when you might have a job for them, or need to tap someone with expertise for a specific type of project.  Buyers can easily come to our LicenseStream Creator Member Directory and search for a specific subscriber, type or style of work.

To participate in the Member Directory, you’ll need a LicenseStream Creator PRO account.  Once you're logged in as a LicenseStream PRO subscriber, you can then go into “Market Content” and “Publicize Your Store.”  Since this feature is available only for our LicenseStream Creator PRO subscribers, this may be a good time to upgrade your account!

If you’d like to see a walk-through of the new LicenseStream Creator 2.0, watch Pam Fischer, Community Agent/Strategic Relations Director, on The DV Show.  Pam addresses the need to sell your pictures, videos or other digital content online and explains how LicenseStream Creator works for those who are not ready to open an online store or get a credit card merchant account.  LicenseStream Creator can help you with the licensing, distribution, delivery, pricing, payment and royalty processing so you can do what you do best: create innovative, powerful content and get that content to market fast to drive revenues and profit from your work.

One of the new features most requested by our users is a way to display content in the order they choose, not in the order that it was uploaded.  We understand that your storefront is the most visible outward-facing part of your LicenseStream account.  With this in mind, we added new features that allow you to determine how your content is displayed so you can turn your storefront into a showcase.

The way you display your online store’s content is very important.  You’ll want to ensure buyers see the most relevant and compelling work first.  To do this:

1.      Go to ‘Business/Store Manager > Store Manager.’

2.      Select your store and click the tab on the far left, ‘Sort.’  Here you can select and set the default sort order for your store content.

3.      The sort order options are:

a.      User Sort:  Sort your store content in any order that you wish.

b.      Upload Date:  Sort your store content by the date in which it was uploaded with the newest items appearing at the end of your store.

c.      Content Name: Sort your content in alphabetical or numerical order.

d.      Copyright: Sort your content by the name of the copyright holder and in alphabetical order.

4.    Once you have set your default sort order, go into your ‘Manage Content’ and select your store.  Click on ‘View/Sort Set Store Content.’  If you select ‘User Sort’ hover over your thumbnails to access the cursor arrow. This cursor arrow will allow you to move content around your store.

An additional word about naming your content: it’s important to name your content in a way that makes it easily identifiable and easy to find via major search engines. The thing to remember is that you want to drive potential buyers to your site – even if they don’t know who you are. To that end, it’s a good idea to give some thought to the types of buyers who will be searching through your store. For example, an art director at an agency may use different terms than an independent Web designer. (For more information on keywording, click here.)

We’ve designed LicenseStream to offer the flexibility you need to organize the content in it both for optimal display and optimal discovery.  It is critical that you jump into your LicenseStream account to name and organize your content to drive traffic to your store and to ensure your best work greets customers at the front door.

Once you have optimized your stores to drive traffic, you’ll want to come back to see how you can organize separate galleries within your stores, making it even easier for buyers to find the specific content they want. Stay tuned for more on that topic.

Our support desk has been getting many requests for help around Content Restrictions. So a quick post about Content Restrictions may help. Content Restrictions are meant to control the use of your content. For example, if you want that perfect image of a blue heron used only in wildlife magazines in North America, you can set up your restrictions to limit the use of your image in that way. In fact, LicenseStream offers flexibility to set up your restrictions in a number of ways.

The first is through the Business/Store Manager. You can select Manage Restrictions.’

On the right hand tool bar you will see ‘Restrictions.’ Click on ‘New Global Restrictions,’ Enter your restriction information and click ‘Create Restriction.’ That will be applied to all of your existing content and all new content added to your LicenseStream account.

If you ever want to remove a Global Restriction go back to Manage Restrictions. You’ll see your Global Restrictions listed. Simply click on the one that you want to delete and the bar will expand. Click the text link: ‘Delete Restriction.’

Using the Global Restriction feature makes it quick and simple to add restrictions to your entire collection.

In cases where you’d like to add more restrictions or remove the global restriction on a particular piece of content, click ‘Manage Content’ on the top navigation. Hover over the image that you’d like to add or remove restrictions from and click ‘Edit.’ Then select the tab ‘Restrictions.’ Here you can add new restrictions to the content or delete restrictions.

The same can also be done in the Business/Store Manager->Manage Restrictions by using the ‘New Content Restriction’ button.

If you add a restriction to an individual piece of content, you will then be able to find it in the Business/Store Manger ->Manage Restrictions directly below the Global Restrictions in the right hand toolbar. The restrictions listed are text links. So if you click on the text link, it will expand in the toolbar. If you click on ‘Select Restriction Content’ it will show you the content that particular restriction has been applied to. If you’d like to add the same restriction to more content, then simply select the content and click on ‘Add Selected Content.’ An easy way to remove a restriction from some but not all of your content is to click on ‘Select Restriction Content’ and deselect the pieces of content that you do not want to remove the restriction from. When you are satisfied click on ‘Remove Selected Content’ and it will remove the restriction from the content that you had selected.

If you’d like to delete any of the restrictions on the content, simply follow the above steps and click on the ‘delete’ button for the particular restriction that you want to remove from the content.

No matter what, restrictions can have end dates or have no end date. However, each restriction must have a start date. You can create as many or as few restrictions as you’d like for your content.

ImageSpan CEO Iain Scholnick Speaks at Digital Hollywood Today!

Following up on last Friday’s post, we wanted to remind you that ImageSpan’s CEO, Iain Scholnick, is speaking this morning at Digital Hollywood Spring 2009 (at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Santa Monica May 4-7)

He’s speaking there on the following panel:
9 a.m. – 10:15 a.m., Wednesday, May 6
Track III: Content Rights - Digital Rights - Entertainment & Technology Track
Digital Choice and Access to Digital Content - Balancing Consumer Rights with Technology, Regulation and Legal Principles
Speakers:
Arnaud Robert, Corporate Vice President, Emerging Technology Strategy, The Walt Disney Company
Michael Alexander, Strategy & Growth Initiatives, IBM Global Telecommunications Industry
Stuart Rosove, VP, Media & Entertainment, Digimarc Corporation
Laurin H. Mills, Managing Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP
Iain Scholnick, CEO and President, ImageSpan
Ann Chaitovitz, consultant, former Executive Director at Future of Music Coalition, copyright attorney-advisor, USPTO
Moderator:
James M. Burger, Attorney at Law, Dow Lohnes, Moderator

For more information, view the full session description and speaker information by clicking here.

Hope we see you there!

Making the most of LicenseStream's watermarking feature means understanding how you can benefit from it, then applying it to both new and existing content.

Visual watermarks can serve many purposes. The idea behind using a visible watermark is to visually define ownership and prevent theft. You can also use a watermark like a calling card. As long as the watermark is clearly identifiable as yours, the more times people see it, the more apt them are to remember and associate it with your creative work. So make it unique and informative. Be sure to include your business name and LicenseStream Store URL.

 A quick mote on watermark parameters: Your watermark will work best in LicenseStream if it is no more than 500 pixels wide or tall.

Once you create your watermark, upload it to LicenseStream using these steps:

1. Log into your account
2. Go to "Business/Store Manager"
3. Select "Set Default Watermark"
4. In the first box: Watermark Source, select "Add/Delete Watermark"
5. Browse your files and upload the watermark

In a previous blog, we discussed setting the default watermark for new content. Now we'll address the challenge of updating all of your existing content with your new watermark.

1. Go to "Manage My Content"
2. Select All
3. Under "Actions" select "Batch Watermark Manager"
4. Select your watermark source, blend mode, position, and size.
5. Set the watermark
6. You've now added the watermark to all of your existing content

As many of you know, you’ve been able to watermark your content in LicenseStream for some time now.  Until recently, watermarks could be applied to just one piece of content at a time.  To speed things up, we’ve added a new feature: Set Default Watermark.  This new setting allows you to watermark your entire store inventory with a couple of mouse clicks. 

Here’s a quick how to:

1. Log in to your account and go to Business/Store Manager.
2. Scroll down and you’ll find “Set Default Watermark.”
3. If you have a watermark that you want to use, you can click on Add/Delete watermark and upload your watermark here.
4. Once you’ve settled on your watermark, select the blend mode.  Blend mode dictates how the watermark will be integrated into your image. We recommend alpha, but play around with it.  You might find one that better suits your work.
5. Pick your position.  We like the bottom left.
6. Pick the size.  We like standard.  But if you want to pump it up, use 2xs.
7. To see how various types of watermarks look before applying to all your images, set the watermark on the preview page and refresh the page. If you want to change the watermark, select a new one, set it and refresh the page to view it before proceeding. However, if you like what you see, you’re done!

Any new content that you upload will now be watermarked for you.   Let us know what you think of this new feature.