Episode 357: Protecting Your Brand: Legal Tips for Social Selling Success

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

0:00:47 – (Stan Robinson): Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Making Sales Social Podcast. I’m Stan Robinson, chief coaching Officer here at Social Sales Link, and today we’re thrilled to have attorney Anna Juneja here with us. Anna, how are you today?

0:01:08 – (Ana Juneja): I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

0:01:12 – (Stan Robinson): Yep, our pleasure. Let me give everyone a little bit of your background just by way of a brief introduction. So Anna is a distinguished IP or intellectual property attorney based in Washington, D.C., and the founder of Anna Media in New York. And Anna specializes in trademark and patent law, managing a substantial global IP portfolio for top brands in a number of different industries. Her firm, Anna Law, offers comprehensive services from patent filings to global portfolio management.

0:01:56 – (Stan Robinson): Anna’s approach basically integrates traditional legal practices with modern digital strategies, making her a pioneer in leveraging digital platforms for intellectual property law. So, again, thanks. And the question that we ask each one of our guests is what does Making Sales Social mean to you in your context?

0:02:24 – (Ana Juneja): So I’ve never actually had this question before and I thought it was really interesting, just the wording of it. And off the top of my head, as a business owner, I want to say that social selling, so to speak, is really just not selling at all. For me, it’s more about providing value and building a community building a network, and just doing it online or even in person. But for me, I’ve found that doing it online and doing it through social media has been really beneficial because you can’t, you can provide value in a way on social media that you cannot, you know, person to person all the time unless you are maybe a professor or a teacher or have some sort of designated forum where you are providing value. But social media allows business owners anywhere they are, in any industry to be able to provide value and therefore socially sell themselves, and brand themselves without Actually having to sell.

0:03:25 – (Stan Robinson): Yes. I love the way you’ve defined it. Even though your background is legal rather than professional sales, like a lot of, the organizations that we work with, what you mentioned in terms of value is something that we come back to all the time because for us, social selling starts and ends with building relationships and building trusted relationships without being salesy. As you said, social selling is a bit of a misnomer because we’re really using these platforms to build relationships and earn the right for people to turn to us to buy from us when the time is right for them.

0:04:15 – (Stan Robinson): So I, I really appreciate, appreciate the way you put that in the context of your business since you are an owner of multiple businesses. So I did want to. Let’s jump into intellectual property since that’s your area of expertise. Can you describe these days? We’ll come to AI a little bit later, but just how intellectual property strategies are crucial for businesses. In our context, it’s those involved in social selling, but just businesses in general.

0:04:50 – (Ana Juneja): So I guess before I answer that, just so I can give the best answer, who is the primary listener group? Is it service-based businesses, product-based businesses, or corporate C suite? What’s the general guideline for me? And I’ll give a good answer then.

0:05:08 – (Stan Robinson): Great. It’s all those who are responsible for generating revenue. Now that can include sales leaders, sales teams, entrepreneurs, business leaders in small to medium-sized businesses who are wearing multiple hats and they’re running the business, but they’re also responsible for selling. So those are the primary listeners.

0:05:34 – (Ana Juneja): Okay, so that’s helpful. So I will say I think everybody in every business should have sales skills because I would never hire someone who doesn’t have sales skills or who doesn’t want to do sales because that just means they don’t really believe in your vision and your business. At least small business owners should have that mindset, at least. But so generally, where does intellectual property intersect with sales and social selling?

0:05:59 – (Ana Juneja): You know, I’m assuming that a lot of these people are doing some form of content marketing or they are online. Maybe they’re doing email newsletters, maybe they’re doing social media, maybe they are, you know, hosting events and online, things of that nature. So any time that you are involved in that, as somebody who is presenting something to the public, right? You may run into intellectual property issues, maybe defensively in this case, where you want to be sure that you are not infringing on other people’s intellectual property, you’re not using their copyrighted content, you are not using their trademarked brands in a way you shouldn’t be.

0:06:41 – (Ana Juneja): There’s a lot of exceptions to all of this and being just really aware of what you’re actually putting out, who owns the right to it, if you have permission, or if there’s some exception that would potentially save you if you got caught. Those are all things that, you know, people who are on the forefront of content creation really need to think about, which is pretty much, you know, all businesses and salespeople these days.

0:07:03 – (Stan Robinson): Exactly, exactly. Because most of our audience, as you described, is using content as one of the primary ways that they deliver value over social media. For example, in LinkedIn training, we always talk about posting content and engaging with other people’s content as a way of demonstrating their expertise, bringing value to any conversations that they become part of, and also just bringing value to their audience based on what they post.

0:07:38 – (Stan Robinson): So what you said is just exactly right about our audience is using content all the time to position themselves as a resource to their potential clients, demonstrate their expertise and make sure that they stay visible without selling all the time.

0:08:01 – (Ana Juneja): Right, Yep.

0:08:03 – (Stan Robinson): So what you said is exactly right. Now you alluded to the risk side of things, which is why we’re delighted to be talking with you today, because a lot of times that’s not an area that most of us think about. What are some of the common challenges that say, you see businesses face? Particularly say the smaller to medium-sized ones, maybe not those that have large corporate legal teams?

0:08:30 – (Ana Juneja): Well, even the large corporate legal teams, can run into issues too. It the good thing about the law, at least allegedly the good thing about the law is that it applies to everybody the same. Right. But maybe corporate legal teams, have a lot more red tape and clearance before their marketing teams post things. So that deters some, quote-unquote, bad behavior that might result in consequences. Right. Whereas smaller businesses or individual salespeople, they might not have that guidance. So some of the big risk factors that come into play is during that content creation process, not necessarily engagement. I think people tend to go onto other people’s posts and give their own thoughts or give some sort of commentary on that. And that has very little risk because it’s unlikely that you are, you know, using other people’s thoughts to go and engage. Maybe you are, don’t do that then, you know, Right. Like use your own thoughts to engage. But when it comes to creating content itself, especially in today’s day and age where you, depending on what type of business or salesperson you are, you might be creating mass amounts of content.

0:09:36 – (Ana Juneja): And, you know, you may be tempted to take the easy way out, maybe copy someone else’s, maybe use their name in a defamatory way that will cause potential trademark defamation issues. You may be wanting to use somebody else’s photos or a photo from Google, or you’re trying to use a lot of AI content. And AI content doesn’t necessarily have the risk where you’ll get sued back. But you know, you can’t protect AI content.

0:10:04 – (Ana Juneja): So when you create using AI content, someone else can copy you and, you know, you don’t have any recourse. So there’s risks where you copy someone else and then there’s risks of someone else copying you. Neither of which are good. Right. You don’t want to get in trouble for doing something wrong, and you don’t want somebody to do something wrong for you. When you’re investing all this time, money, energy into creating content, you want to be able to at least own it, protect it, all of that. So those are kind of the big risk factors.

0:10:34 – (Ana Juneja): Defamation is another risk factor where with content as well. So you can’t say untrue things or even inflamed things that are defamatory. There’s, there’s certain guidelines of what would be considered defamation and what would not. You’re not allowed to do that and get away with it, Especially if the other person is, you know, large brand or even if they’re a small business, they’re not really going to like that. And so you have to be careful with that because you’re not just now infringing on IP rights. Sometimes you are personally going after people and they will personally go after you.

0:11:08 – (Stan Robinson): Okay. Okay. Yeah. The defamation side, especially in the world of social media, guess you could do a whole podcast episode just on that.

0:11:19 – (Ana Juneja): Yeah.

0:11:19 – (Stan Robinson): But there, there are seem to be two sides. One is making sure that you don’t expose yourself to legal liability in the sense of stepping on someone else’s toes, so to speak. And then the other is protecting yourself.

0:11:39 – (Ana Juneja): Yes. Protecting your own, you know, creations and content that you are investing into.

0:11:46 – (Stan Robinson): Okay, can we talk a little bit about each of those first? Just, are there any tips that you have for businesses in terms of protecting themselves, things that maybe they need to be aware of when creating content?

0:12:01 – (Ana Juneja): Yeah. So I guess we’ll start with how to reduce the liability when you’re creating content, of stepping on other people’s toes. So the best way to do this is to create original content. So this means use your own photos, use your own videos, come up with Your own video scripts, come up with your own posts and content yourself. So keep it original. That is the best and only way to 100% be sure that it’s yours, right?

0:12:31 – (Ana Juneja): Alternatively, you can, you know, go use agencies or you can use companies that provide you with royalty free music, photos, things of that nature. And you can use some of that. You can also use AI to do some of this. There’s a lot of gray area with AI though, so I don’t want to give too much that yes, if you use AI AI, it’s no liability. We don’t know necessarily yet that it’s no liability. But nobody owns AI created content.

0:12:58 – (Ana Juneja): So you know, there’s maybe potentially reduced risk there. But the best thing to do is to create original content. I also just as a business owner, as a media company owner, I and a business owner myself who’s used, you know, content marketing for a couple of years now, you know, you’re always going to get the best results. Even if it’s more difficult, more time-consuming, more energy, you’re going to get the best results when you are original and authentic.

0:13:27 – (Ana Juneja): So that is not only the best and safest way to avoid stepping on other people’s toes, but it’s also the best way to just sell, provide value, get, let people get to know you. Build your personal brand. There’s actually two components to growing on social media, I think one is providing value, and the other is kind of selling your personality, which is not really selling value, or showcasing value, but it is a very important element of social selling, so to speak.

0:13:56 – (Ana Juneja): So you know, I always say if there’s two companies or two offers that are exactly the same, there’s a reason that somebody picks one over the other and that goes more into the personal brand personality type of thing versus just having a really good offer or product or service. So, you know, there’s value that’s being provided with whatever the offer is and whatever potential information or sales pitch is being given to get people to buy that offer. But there’s a human element to that as well.

0:14:27 – (Ana Juneja): So just creating original content is beneficial on all of those friends. And that is the foolproof way, you know, to, to not be infringing on other people’s intellectual property.

0:14:38 – (Stan Robinson): Yes, yes, good boy. There. There are so many different directions. One thing that you did mention was personal brand and that is definitely one way to distinguish yourself from everybody else with sales professionals when they’re selling against competition that has products that are similarly priced to theirs, offer similar features, capabilities. A lot of times the distinguishing feature is going to be the sales professionals themselves, right? It’s what do they bring to the whole process for an individual. Since we mentioned personal brand, other than producing original content, is there anything else they need to think about in terms of say, protecting their personal brand, so to speak?

0:15:35 – (Ana Juneja): You know, if somebody is really serious about what they do and they’re really serious about their professional brand, Whether you are a sales professional or whether you, because a sales professional, you know, that’s a stepping stone. You might be working for a corporate company or you might be working for, as an extension, maybe a contractor of other smaller companies. Whatever your situation is with your role as a salesperson, you know that sales skills is transferable. So if you ever decide to launch your own business or go to a different business business, you’re taking that skill set with you.

0:16:08 – (Ana Juneja): And so you yourself as a salesperson, you know, it’s very valuable to of course, grow your expertise in an industry, right? If you are selling mortgages, then maybe you’re going to go from one mortgage company to the other. It’s very unlikely, you know, that you’re going to be this amazing expert in mortgage and lending. And then you go and you decide that you are, you know, going to wake up the next day and you’re going to say, oh, I’m going to start selling, you know, shampoo. Now, you know, that’s, that’s obviously you have the sales skills, but a lot of those skills are not transferable. So just as a general career.

0:16:42 – (Ana Juneja): Tip. Common sense tip. You know, people tend to stick within their industry. When you do that, you’re, you are establishing yourself as an expert in that industry then, right? So you’re going to be creating content about the economy, and interest rates. You know, I’m really limited, honestly, on my knowledge of mortgages, so I’m going to stop there. But I should have used that as an example. But you, you know, you get it. You’re going to be talking about the topics that are relevant to your industry that might be relevant. Your ideal customer, your company’s ideal customer. You are going to really be keeping up to date with that news, writing content on it, making content, giving your thoughts, engaging with other people maybe in that industry or related industries.

0:17:23 – (Ana Juneja): So you’re building a very significant personal brand. If you’re taking yourself, you know, yourself as a sales professional seriously, that personal brand should really be something that you identify with above being identifying with other companies. So you know, when you are working for another company, you, a lot of people tend to rely on that company’s. Name. You know, they’re, they’re with a big brokerage or something like that and they rely on that and they wear the brokerage’s merch. They really focus that, oh, you know, giving a lot of content and value about that brokerage. But I think that’s the wrong path to go. I think people should invest into building themselves their own personal brand.

0:18:06 – (Ana Juneja): And when you do so, and if you choose to go that route, you become a Persona that becomes a Persona itself that needs to be protected. So just protecting the basic things like your name and you know, with trademarking, making sure that you’re monitoring the content that you’re creating, making sure it’s not getting copied, things of that nature, the basic things that you’re doing that should all be protected. Making sure that when you sign up to work with another company that you are not giving away your intellectual property rights to that company. This happens a lot, especially in the real estate industry. I found especially in the tech industry, they have these boilerplate clauses in their contracts. Even if they have zero salary and high commission, they still, sometimes those companies will put in that we own all of your intellectual property. That means they own your content, your technically name, image, likeness, any brands that you create and file during that time. You want to be very careful and negotiate some of that out prior to signing it.

0:19:06 – (Ana Juneja): When you’re, you know, building your personal brand, you do not want your company, you, you leave your company and they come after you for any of that stuff. A lot of people who create personal brands, they tend to find a lot of success and be able to launch their own thing after they leave their company. And when that happens, you are now at risk of being successful. And the more successful you are, your company or prior company is going to want to stake a claim in that. And if you’ve signed away some of those rights, that, hey, I don’t, you know, own my name, I don’t own the content I created, I don’t own potentially my social media accounts that I’ve built up and worked hard to create. You know, they can claim back, claw back all of that.

0:19:45 – (Ana Juneja): There was a very famous fashion designer. She was on the show say yes to the Dress. Her name was Hailey Page. And she lost her Instagram account due to a IP dispute due to a contract she signed when she was 25 years old, several, many, many years before the dispute started. And she lost the right to use her name in public and she lost her Instagram account. And it took her, I think, five, six years.

0:20:10 – (Ana Juneja): Hundreds of thousands of Dollars to get her Instagram account back. So, I mean, that, that was how she was, of course, a wedding dress designer, fashion designer, but she was also an influencer and she was using her Instagram account, you know, to generate revenue for herself in other ways. So losing your rights to your intellectual property, is devastating to you. And so it’s very important to know what you’re signing and what rights you’re giving away.

0:20:36 – (Ana Juneja): And many people, they sign those type of contracts without thinking about it. Yeah, without even reading it. So you, if you agree to sell away your rights, that’s fine. But you need to at least be aware of that. You need to be aware that if, you know, you want to start even a side hustle, your employer might, or main contractor, contracting company might want to stake a claim in that. So you need to be very aware of your social media policy, the intellectual policy, and your moonlighting policy.

0:21:07 – (Ana Juneja): Those are the three big ones that, you know, we really tell people to review. And those are the ones we review as the attorneys a lot when people have questions about what does this mean and what does it mean for their intellectual property rights.

0:21:20 – (Stan Robinson): Great, that is super helpful. So even though, as you said, some things seem to be common sense, like reading what you’re going to sign before signing, as you said, so many people just don’t think about it particularly it’s if it’s an employment contract, they’re not thinking that far down the road. One thing that you mentioned was monitoring.

0:21:44 – (Ana Juneja): This is very difficult to do because there is a mass amount of content being put out, mass amount of website stores being popped up every day. It is very difficult to monitor with a fine tooth comb everything that everybody is doing. You will also drive yourself crazy doing that. So many of these situations, a lot of larger corporations, they monitor, but still there’s just a mass amount of content being put out that nobody can truly monitor. Every single little thing that gets put out, where this comes up a lot is, you know, people get caught and they send other people the videos or, you know, somebody takes your photo and they start running ads with it and then you see it. You know, those are kind of the situations where that pops up. When that happens, you want to address it immediately.

0:22:33 – (Ana Juneja): And that usually involves getting a lawyer to send a cease and desist and doing potentially a takedown claim, things like that. So there’s legal remedies you have when that happens. And it’s just not letting anything sit. Do not think you can handle it on your own. Do not let things sit. You know, you do not want those situations to get out of hand because the longer you wait to deal with it, the more problematic it’s going to be. And then the other party, they have this excuse that it’s a legal excuse and it’s basically that you didn’t take, take care of this in time.

0:23:02 – (Ana Juneja): Therefore you consented to it and you agreed to it. So you don’t want to be in that situation where you’ve now created issues for yourself. So take care of any infringement that you see on your content right away. If you can’t handle it yourself, which is always the first step is reach out, tell the other person to stop. And if you, if that does not solve it within, I would say 48 to 72 hours, you need to immediately get a lawyer to send a cease and desist and get that nipped in the bud.

0:23:30 – (Ana Juneja): Buy all that, you know, take down on social media, get whatever protection you need. Because, you know, the longer you let that stuff get out of hand and the more and more you allow people to do that to you, the more difficult it is for you to ever enforce your rights.

0:23:45 – (Stan Robinson): Okay, that is extremely helpful to know.

0:23:49 – (Ana Juneja): So, and you know, lots of these sales professionals, you may have protection with your, I’m just going to add this. You may have protection with your employer or main contractor contractors that you work with, and they may assist you in doing that too. But that’s another fine line, is that if your employer is now helping you protect your intellectual property, you’re blurring those lines. So lots of considerations there. You want to really understand what’s going on, understand the situation, discuss with a lawyer if needed. You know how to fix all of these problems and you know how to protect yourself. And like I said, though, to prevent a lot of this stuff proactively, what you should be doing is protecting your brand.

0:24:32 – (Ana Juneja): You know, we do a lot of copyright filing. You know, we do a lot of trademarks on names and if people have a stage name, so to speak, or a pseudonym they use online, we do a lot of trademark filings for that for sales professionals and business owners themselves when they’re creating personal brands. We also do a lot of copyright filings on profile photos because there are lots of fake accounts that can come up. And you know, from there we kind of just assist people as situations come up and as are needed.

0:24:57 – (Ana Juneja): But you know, it’s really good to be proactive in those ways. The trademarking of the name, pseudo name, that type of thing, the copywriting of your profile photo and, and website, those are those are kind of main bare bones, minimum. Having a really good privacy policy on your website that really alludes to all of this and very specifically says that other people are not allowed to copy. Keeping up with, you know, doing a website audit every year, it’s not very expensive. You know, lawyers, they only, you know, most lawyers will only charge a few hundred dollars for it. And it really protects you if you do that IP audit and just know that you are proactive about it. That will save you a lot of headache in the long run.

0:25:36 – (Stan Robinson): Great. Okay. Because frankly I didn’t even know that you could have a lawyer do an IP audit. This would be primarily be your website and any other public facing. Would it also include company pages on LinkedIn or.

0:25:52 – (Ana Juneja): Yes. So social media accounts, website. A lot of people have courses, a lot of people have free guides and downloads, things of that nature. Just anything that you know, might have been something they created and are giving to other people.

0:26:08 – (Stan Robinson): Good deal. Okay, last two questions and this has been awesome as always. The time flies. You mentioned both copyright, trademark. In simple terms, can you explain the difference between copyright, trademark and if there’s any other common term that, that people hear all the time?

0:26:31 – (Ana Juneja): Yes. So trademarks protect brands. So trademark is going to be your name, logo, and slogan for the most part. So like the McDonald’s arches, the Nike swoosh, those are all trademarks. And then copyright protects art. So it’s going to be, I think of copyright as content. So for a lot of people, they’re creating videos, photos, blog posts, so poems also like movies, videos, books, software, architecture, that all gets. Anything that is considered an original work of authorship or art is going to be copyright. And then patents, which is another term that people conflate with the others.

0:27:07 – (Ana Juneja): Patents protect inventions. So tools, chemicals, things of that nature. Technology, trademarks, brands, copyrights, content, art, patents, inventions, those are kind of the big ones.

0:27:20 – (Stan Robinson): Yep. Thank you. The patents was the other one that I could not think of. And that’s exactly, that’s exactly what it was. Lastly, you touched on AI. I realized that we only have a couple of minutes. But you did mention, at least in the US you can’t protect AI created content.

0:27:43 – (Ana Juneja): Right.

0:27:44 – (Stan Robinson): Do you have any other thoughts just around where things are going and what people need to be aware of because.

0:27:49 – (Ana Juneja): Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to change. Yeah, I don’t think that that will change though. So I think if you are choosing to use AI in your content, which you probably should, it’s. There’s a lot of ways you can use it. To assist you, be really careful how much it is assisting you and if you really are retaining authorship of what you’re doing or if AI is just doing it completely for you. So there’s a difference between saying, hey ChatGPT, give me 30 topics about patents that, you know, people in the pharmacy industry would be interested in.

0:28:27 – (Ana Juneja): There’s a difference between doing that and taking 30 topics and making 30 pieces of content yourself from it versus saying hey chat, GPT, give me 30 pieces of content that people about patents that people in the pharmaceutical industry would be interested in and make sure that you give me a script for all of them and then give me a full direction of each script and then also write the caption for me and the hashtag for each post and also give me a corresponding picture and create a corresponding picture for it. There’s a difference between those two ways you use ChatGPT. Right.

0:28:59 – (Ana Juneja): So when you go up in court and the court asks who made this, you’re gonna have a lot easier time saying that. Oh yeah, I just got some ideas from it versus oh, it did everything for me and I just basically posted it.

0:29:12 – (Stan Robinson): Exactly, exactly. Yes, it is a moving target. It’s interesting to see where things are going to go. So yeah, I will not go any further down that rabbit hole. I appreciate you, your sharing what you have. Is there anything, Leslie, that I should have asked you about as it relates to intellectual property, the issues that you deal with that I didn’t ask?

0:29:42 – (Ana Juneja): No, we covered a lot of them and you know, issues come up all the time. So people, you know, those are kind of the big ones that we covered, but they might, you know, other issues might come up and people will have to see what happens when that.

0:29:54 – (Stan Robinson): Fantastic. Great. And Anna, if people want to learn more about you, about your business, about how they can take advantage of your services, how is best for them to find you, connect with you, and contact you?

0:30:10 – (Ana Juneja): Yeah, so I am pretty easy to find. You can contact me on any of my socials, which is just my name, A N A J U N E J A. Or you can just go to my law firm website, which is just a N a L a w dot com, just annalaw dot com and I’m pretty easy to find and my whole team is very responsive. So if you have any further questions, that’s the place to find me.

0:30:36 – (Stan Robinson): Awesome, awesome. And I remember from our prior conversation that not only you were an attorney, but you’ve been involved with a number of different businesses. So you also have a business owner hat that you bring to these discussions. If I’m remembering right, I. I would.

0:30:54 – (Ana Juneja): Say that’s my main hat. My attorney hat is second to that. Yeah.

0:30:57 – (Stan Robinson): Yep. Great. Well, Anna, thank you for making this time. It’s been such a pleasure having you with us. Yes. So I just wanted to thank you on your behalf.

0:31:10 – (Ana Juneja): Perfect. Thank you so much for having me.

0:31:13 – (Stan Robinson): All right.

0:31:13 – (Ana Juneja): Appreciate it.

0:31:14 – (Stan Robinson): Bye. Bye now.

0:31:16 – (Ana Juneja): Bye.

Outro:

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