How to Make your Content Marketing More Shareable

Amanda Maksymiw

January 25, 2011

Using Creative Commons in your Content Marketing Programs

Do we need to protect our content? Should we copyright it? What is the new best practices process for content marketing?

A while back I blogged about the legal implications of using a Creative Commons license to protect your work. I recently had Creative Commons on the brain again because we are releasing a new eBook. Creative Commons is a great way to quickly show the world you want everyone to share your content development efforts. There are a few different licenses that allow you to display the fact that your “content can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law”. Best of all, Creative Commons licenses are FREE and easily understood by non-lawyer types like me.

There are 6 license types:

  1. Attribution: Allows for maximum distribution. Others can share, remix, alter, and add to your work as long as they give you credit.
  2. Attribution-ShareAlike: Others can share, remix, alter, and add to your work as long as they license the new work under equal terms.
  3. Attribution-NoDerivatives: This license protects your work so that it remains unchanged while it is being shared.
  4. Attribution-NonCommercial: This license indicates that others can make changes to your work as long as it is not for commercial purposes.
  5. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: Others can share, remix, and alter your work as long as it is not used for commercial purposes and they license the new work under the same restrictions.
  6. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives: This is the most restrictive CC license. This license allows others to view and share your work as long as they give you credit and avoid using the content for commercial purposes.

Setting up a Creative Commons license is really easy. The site has a step by step webform to guide you through the process. So you know what to expect, here are the steps:

  1. Choose the license you want from the list above and fill in some qualifying information
  2. Include the Creative Commons graphic on your content if it will only live on the web
  3. Link the graphic back to the License Deed (also found on the Creative Commons website)
  4. Include the written information (from the website) on your content if it will not live on the web

Have you used Creative Commons in your content marketing programs yet?

Content Marketing Director

<strong>Amanda Maksymiw</strong> worked at OpenView from 2008 until 2012, where she focused on developing marketing and PR strategies for both OpenView and its portfolio companies. Today she is the Content Marketing Director at <a href="https://www.fuze.com/">Fuze</a>.