The Marketing Value of Creative Commons

A few months ago I wrote a post outlining what Creative Commons (CC) Licenses are and have a brief explanation of why they are useful. In today’s post I would like to take a more in-depth look at exactly why these licenses are important for your overall we marketing strategy and how they can help you with both lead generation and brand promotion.

At the most basic level, a CC License is a way to encourage internet users to share your content and disseminate it widely across the web. If you’re an organization (whether B2C or B2B) that is producing compelling content for the web, then using these licenses is a good way to promote the spread of your content to a wider audience than your organization alone may be able to reach effectively.  For smaller organizations that don’t have the reach that larger ones do, creative commons can be a blessing because it allows companies (and content creators)who aren’t as well known to increase their reach exponentially without the need for a large company behind them.

For some organizations the concept of “free” content can be terrifying, but, that doesn’t have to be the case. When you use a CC License you’re not giving up all rights to the content, you’re just modifying them from traditional copyright to allow users to share and utilize your content with varying degrees of attribution (as specified by you).
In terms of search engine optimization, cc licenses allow you to choose how your content is attributed back to you and this requires a link. That means that anyone who finds your content and wants to use it can, they just have to link back to you. Not only does this spread your content to wider audience, increasing brand recognition and hopefully driving traffic to your site, it also helps you build links, a foundational element of a strong SEO strategy.

Another factor that it’s important to keep in mind when it comes to CC licenses and content is that because so much of the content available on the web today is free, often if a user can’t access your content without paying they will simply click away to a website where they can get the content they want. In today’s web marketing environment, “free” is becoming the necessary standard to remain competitive.

Image by TilarX on Flickr.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at February 17, 2011 8:00 AM

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