Polite Content Sharing Tips: Blog Posts - Facebook - Twitter - Social Media 101 Artizon Digital

What is the difference between polite content sharing and rude content stealing? A proper citation to the source of the content! We all find content that we want to share via our blogs and social media, but there was no “Miss Manners Guide to Citing Content” until this great blog post How Not to Steal People’s Content on the Web by Corey Eridon, HubSpot Inbound Marketing Manager.

Ms. Eridon doesn’t start her post “Gentle Reader…” , but she begins with this great internet etiquette advice:

“You’re supposed to share content, but you’re also supposed to give credit where credit is due… proper internet etiquette…proper methods of source attribution on the internet to guarantee the right people get credit for their hard work and ideas. It’s just the polite way to do business on the internet!”

Here are some key points I learned from Ms. Eridon about content citing internet etiquette and a few of my own:

Basic Manners When Citing Content in a Blog Post

Polish your content-sharing manners by adopting these excellent suggestions:

The Polite Way to Give Credit Where Credit is Due

When quoting another author in your post, polite behavior includes listing the author’s name, link to their website or to their source article. Not only is this polite behavior, but you have given the author some Google love with an inbound link. Add a social media link if available as an extra tip of the hat.

Facts and figures need the company who provided the data credited and a link to the page where that data is drawn from.

Respect Website Usages Guides

Look at the website usage guidelines. HubSpot has a great content usage page, that could also been seen as a general common sense guideline for sites that do not have a usage page. For example, their 75 word quoted content limit protects against being seen as publishing duplicate content that could affect your site and their website’s organic search results.

Proper Newsjacking Etiquette

Newsjacking from today’s headlines? Be sure to give the original source or author proper credit. Need advice on proper newsjacking methods? Ms. Eridon also has written a guide to that : The Inbound Marketer’s Complete Guide to Newsjacking.

Good Form in Social Media Content Citing

Most of us are familiar with using @ tags on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to create a link to a person or business. But you can go beyond tagging and the share button with these tips:

Facebook:

When posting a link to a web article Ms. Eridon suggests that if, “you can find that person/company on Facebook and link to their Facebook Timeline in the status update.” Ms. Eridon gives persons or companies without a Facebook page a “tsk, tsk”.

Twitter:

When retweeting if you have edited the content; change RT to MT – modified tweet.

If you have created a tweet that was inspired by another tweet give the original source a HT (tip of the hat) in addition to @ tagging them.

Pinterest:

When repinning do not remove any authorship source data the original pinner has added.

Be a Patron of the Arts when Citing Images or Visual Content

Don’t be an art thief when using infographics, visualization, and images you have found on the web in your posts.

Infographics and visualizations:

It’s easy to be a patron of the arts by citing the original sources link and name.
Respect the source by keeping the image high quality. You can resize for your site and include a “click to enlarge” link to the full size image. Or even better yet, if the site has provided an embed code use that.

Photographs and other images:

Stock images you have purchased do not require citation.
For images you have found on the web, please don’t be an art thief. Images are copyrighted as soon as they are created. Either contact the creator for permission to use the image or limit your image use to Creative Commons images. Most CC images either require or would love a link to the creator.
No amount of citing can cure the rude practice of copying a photo’s address (URL) from another website and pasting it directly into your post editor. In addition to violating copyright laws, you become guilty of stealing bandwidth from the original post site by hot-linking .

What to know more about content sharing and images sharing sources? Check out these articles:

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