About CAI

CAI is a national membership organization representing community association managers, homeowner volunteer leaders/board members, management companies and other professionals who serve associations. To learn more, visit www.caionline.org or call (888) 224-4321.

Readers may notice that I often 'lift' images from other sites and use them on this blog. As a publisher, I'm very aware of copyright, but also know the rules of the game are different on the Web than in print. The reason: With print, if you do something 'wrong' you are stuck with the printed copies -- it is expensive to throw away an entire print run because of a copyright violation. With the web, a quick fix is available with the "Delete" button.

The second difference is that on the web, backlinks are valuable currency, especially as this Construction Marketing Ideas blog has achieved a reasonably high search engine ranking. This means, when I link to someone else's site, their site will often increase in prominence and ranking on the search engines, attracting more traffic.

So, generally, when I write something positive about another business or organization, I lift the image, and add the hyperlink, without seeking advance permission, and then seek clarification and confirmation from the other organization that the change is appropriate.

For example, yesterday, in linking to a contractortalk.com posting about How to work with associations in marketing, I referenced a posting there describing the advantages of CAI -- Community Associations Institute:

I sent Frank Rathburn at CAI this email:

I’ve lifted your banner logo and built a link on my blog. http://constructionmarketingideas.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-work-with-associations-for.html

If you have any problems with the use of this image/link, please let me know and I will remove or change it right away as of course I respect your copyright.

He responded today:

Mark: That’s fine, and thanks for the plug. If you would, please change the following: “I believe it is nationwide.”

Here’s a more definitive statement: CAI is a national membership organization representing community association managers, homeowner volunteer leaders/board members, management companies and other professionals who serve associations. To learn more, visit www.caionline.org or call (888) 224-4321.

Unfortunately, I cannot completely comply with Frank's request. The remark: "I believe it is nationwide" is actually a quote from the contractortalk.com thread, and obviously I don't have the power to put words in someone else's mouth. And the PR tagline for CAI just doesn't belong there. So we'll publish it here.