In last week's episode, we chatted about how as you become more experienced in working with brands and reading campaign briefs, you'll understand that there's an art to setting out your influencer scope of work. Especially when it comes to defining your content deliverables. It's equally important to accurately define the brand's usage rights so that you have clarity and control over your content, legal protection, and you can leverage any extra income opportunities.

And as a media or PR spokesperson. Let's get started by looking at the importance of setting out brand usage rights in your influencer scope of work. I've touched on that briefly in the introduction, but it's important that you fully understand the importance of this and then you'll be able to prioritize it with confidence, knowing that it's going to add value to the relationship you have with the brand and potentially look at other income opportunities. So it sets clarity and expectations with the brand. So clearly defined usage rights, make sure that both [00:03:00] you and the brand understand how your content will be used. It helps in setting realistic expectations and goes a long way to avoid any misunderstandings.

It also gives you control over your content so you can maintain control over where and how your content is used. Well defined usage rights can also provide legal protection. It helps in avoiding the unauthorized use of your content, which can lead to disputes or legal challenges. Setting out your content rights or your usage rights also gives you some negotiating leverages.

You can also negotiate the duration for which your content can be used by the brand. In other words, the term. Limiting the time frame can prevent content from being overused or dated. And I discussed this more in episode six, how to prepare and influence a scope of work. We're going to just gloss over some of the subjects that we've discussed in previous episodes so we can get into the meaty part of this episode.

So usage rights play an important role in managing that reputational risk that you have as well. And on the subject of reputation management, By controlling when and how your content is used, you can better manage your reputation and align with [00:06:00] brands that reflect your values and your image. So you might have done a piece of content with a brand and you think, Oh, this isn't, this isn't a brand I'd ordinarily work with, but you know what?

You've really limited the usage, right? So that's going to get pushed out of the feed pretty quickly. And you can move on and think, I've learned my lesson from that one. And you're not going to have that piece of content floating around for much longer than you would like. And finally, creative control.

All the done for you wording will be available for you to copy and paste in the expanded show notes. So there's no need for you to write them down today. You can check the link at the end of the episode for the reference material. So just settle in and listen. As we discuss the usage rights, you'll hear me refer to the term in many examples.

This is the duration of the campaign and it's important that it is included in your quote and your scope of work. Again, listen back to episode six on how to prepare and influence the scope of work. And this will help you with setting out your term for a campaign. I'll be discussing examples for organic, paid, and extended usage rights.

So it's something where you need to stay focused and thinking about what you're giving to the brand and what you're receiving in return. You'll also need to consider the brand brief to make sure your usage rights are properly defined. The suggested wording that I'm going to give you in the episode is a good start, but you'll still need to make sure it covers you for the work requested by the brand.

If you have questions or need assistance with wording your usage rights, join the Moots Facebook group for direct support from me. I'd be happy to help you out in the group and I'll link the group at The end of the episode in the show notes. Let's get in to setting out usage rights for social media posts.

You could say the term or for a maximum of four continuous weeks or whatever period is appropriate from the date of first publication by the talent and must include proper credit to the talent in each instance of use. Notice used four continuous weeks instead of four weeks. If you are not specifying the term, you only want the brand to use the content during a campaign period.

If you're giving paid rights to the brand, you're going to write the word paid and then you're going to write a couple of sentences that will go something like this. Non exclusive right for paid distribution to republish and share the content created by the talent on brand owned and third party social media platforms.

That right is limited to, and again we specify the duration from the first date of publication by the influencer, and must include proper credit to the talent in each instance of use. And our final usage rights for social media posts, you're going to write extended usage rights and extended usage rights available by separate request and quote.

We want to extend these rights. We want to do some paid distribution as well. We want to boost this content. You're opening up your quote for discussion and an upsell there. So do try to get in the habit of including that line in your quote. Still in the organic section, you're going to start a new sentence that says includes the non exclusive right to organically republish and share the content created by the talent on its social media platforms.

Uh, you might have done a listicle for your top 10 makeup finds for a cosmetic brand, whatever it is, they've published that content and it was a one off piece. But now you've grown your brand, you've secured a really great ambassador campaign with a competitor and you don't want that content popping up anymore, you can then go back to the brand and ask for it to be removed. It just gives you a nice little buffer that if something [00:14:00] happens with the brand, they might have some reputational damage as well. You can go back and say, please pull this content down. And the second point I want to make is that, You'll notice that we've given the brand the opportunity to re share the blog content on its social media channels which is usual course of business.

Naturally, if you're required to share that, that would be an upsell that I'd be negotiating with the brand. But you want to give them permission in the usage rights that they can go across and share that content organically on their social media channels. Let's look at the variation for paid usage rights for blog posts.

So quite similar to what we did in sharing for social. It's fairly consistent as we work through the different usage rights. You'll see a lot of similarities in the terms that we use. Which certainly makes it a lot easier for you to get in the habit of defining your usage rights. And the same extended usage rights for blog posts.

You can sell in newsletter inclusions in your own newsletter to your own newsletter subscribers. You can upsell sharing that content onto your own social channels, there's good easy ways for you to upsell usage rights for blog posts. And it goes back to what I said earlier, they are a great source of income and you can really set yourself apart as a creator by offering this as a content option.

You might be going to The Australian Open, somewhere fantastic, I don't know, but you're going to a PR event and there's a very good chance you are going to be having your photo taken. You want to make sure that you understand how that is going to be used and the brand understands what rights they have in relation to usage of your photo taken at the event. Might not only be a photo, you might have been caught on camera and given some box pops, some quotes and recorded. So you don't want to give too much away for free. Sometimes you just want to do it for fun and that's totally okay too. This is only to be used in the case where it's part of a commercial agreement.

This is giving the brand the opportunity to have you snap by the paparazzi and repost the photos on their socials. You might also want to put a term in there, limit the republication of that content for a certain period of time. That's something you would certainly need to use your judgement on.

Again, you can say the term or a maximum of four continuous weeks or whatever period is appropriate from the date of first publication. And you may also want to specify that it should include mention or credit of the talent in each use. What you're permitting here is for the brand to have photos taken of you at the event and then use that for advertising the event or whatever the activation is.

So there's a big difference between getting a freebie to go to a show or have some PR, going along perhaps producing a little bit of content, some stories, whatever it is that you've agreed to do and it's a leap from that to then the brand taking that content, either taken by you or a third party photographer, and leveraging that for advertising.

You might be surprised to hear that I'm often asked about pricing campaigns for Influencers, creators, talent, to act in the capacity of a media spokesperson. Usually, as a media spokesperson, you're quoting the brand to provide a selection of written quotes, so they can use that in articles or wherever.

It probably warrants its own episode because the nuances of this type of work are quite detailed. But to get the ball rolling, I'm going to get you started with usage rights wording for being a media spokesperson. And we're just going to use one line here. You're going to write usage rights and something like non exclusive right for the brand to use talent content in the campaign media releases and activity.

You don't want the brand having material that you've created and reusing that for future campaigns that are outside the scope of what you've priced for in this work. And We're stating that you need to be referred to in a particular way. So you can nominate to the brand how you would like to be referred to in a media release or an interview.

But you can in these usage rights, specify how you would like to be referred to. And that protects your brand reputation as well. Just as we did in last week's episode, we've covered off a lot of information today. I know it's a lot. Usage rights are so important though. It's integral to how you earn your money and how your content is valued.

So whilst this subject isn't as fun and as exciting as some of the other topics that we might touch on, it is something that as you build your career as a professional influencer, you want to get across. If you want to discuss wording for your usage rights with myself and perhaps some other creators, as I mentioned earlier, Join us in the Moots Facebook group.

Until then, stay creative. [00:25:00]