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@themaria (1)

In the spirit of correct attribution, the above title is my cheeky take on Naughty By Nature’s OPP – if you don’t know what this song is, I can’t help you. An unpleasant event happened to me very recently that made this post a necessity. Someone ripped off my content, to pass it off as his own. It wasn’t borrowed or repurposed; it was blatantly copied and pasted, passed off as someone else’s and even shared across Twitter as someone else’s creation. Now don’t get me wrong; this is not the first or the only, or even the last, time this has happened. But this was one of the more offensive examples. Following it, I had several conversations with various folks on Twitter, sharing similar stories. I think there’s a need to talk about proper etiquette when repurposing and attributing, as well as how to protect yourself from stuff like this. I’m going to attack part 1 in this post, and part 2 in a later post. I wrote an article about 12 steps to finding a top-notch social media person, which became a solid hit on the Attensity blog, as well as on SocialMediaToday, where it was syndicated. It was picked as a leading story of the day, and even became the title of the daily content email that it sends to its subscribers (which is not a big deal to some, but I consider it an honor). It is still one of the more commented articles in SocialMediaToday. For a social media content producer, this level of engagement is a compliment of the highest order. While I was on my blogger high, I noticed that there was an article circulated around Twitter, which looked eerily similar. I clicked the link and saw the following (see below): My heart sank. There it was, the article I worked so hard on, lifted word for word, with no commentary, nothing that says: “Hey, I found this great article Maria wrote. I agree with A, B, C, which I’m posting below. I would also like to add X, Y and Z”. With Jeremy’s picture and name prominently featured at the bottom (see below) and with my article starting with the word “I thought,” it basically looked like Jeremy thought what I had written. There was a tiny attribution link at the bottom, which appeared as a meager attempt to cover one’s behind (CYA) in regards to attribution. I just don’t buy that as attribution, and it appears intentionally misleading. On further examination, the site was full of “repurposed” content. To make matters worse, all of this content was duplicated across two sites, both of which has been taken down. The site owner defended himself, saying that that his goal was to “repost gems” found around the Internet. In my opinion, there are enough quality aggregators and syndicates like SocialMediaToday, and they do a pretty bang-up job. So unless that’s your stated purpose, I’ll just assume you are ripping off content. I found it purposefully misleading when Jeremy tweeted this article, retweeted himself, and said nothing when others tweeted it as if it came from him (i.e. “Great article, Jeremy). See below: In my opinion, if you perpetuate wrong attribution, you are complicit in IP theft. Instead, you should correct and say: “Actually this article was written by so-and-so.” This was probably on of the most severe recent example of IP theft; unfortunately, it’s not the only one. I monitor social media for a living, so I have my ear to the ground, and find a lot of my content stolen. Sometimes it’s cut and pasted to look like the author of the blog wrote it, sometimes it’s presented as if I guest posted there, which I didn’t. I’m very deliberate about where I post, and I will always tweet links to such work. I should probably create a page on this blog linking to my work around the WWW. Yes, there are examples like this, of people outright stealing content. But there are also some people who are just bad at social media, or new at it, and clumsily do a bad job of attribution. So I figured I’d write the following 9 steps to ensure that these “mistakes” don’t happen again. First time around they are negligent; second time, they are pre-meditated intellectual property crimes. So here we go; don’t say I didn’t warn you: 1.Ask for permission: Duh! I’m sad to even have to write this point. You should always, always ask someone for permission to repurpose, if you are using more than just a simple quote. You should always link to the original site as well. Creative commons is there to protect creators and consumers of content alike. When deciding whether or not you can repurpose something someone else has written, make sure that it belongs in the category that’s OK to modify and build upon. 2.Add commentary: It’s OK to quote and post passages written by others. We, content creators, want people to use what we create; we want people to find value in it. We want our content to be discussed and debated, so please do use parts of an article, as long as you put your own thoughts around it. Don’t have time to provide your own viewpoint? Don’t have a viewpoint? Hmmm, perhaps blogging isn’t for you. Just sayin’… 3.Clearly quote: You must clearly demark the beginning and the end of the quote and say either before in the text “According to Mr. Smith, [insert quote]”. Remember how we learned to quote correctly in high school; nothing has changed. Plagiarism is still plagiarism. 4.Don’t start with “I” if it’s not you: Never start a quote with “I” or “Mine”, unless you clearly mark who is talking before the quote. Otherwise, it makes it appear that you did something and not the original blogger. Always put a lead in before a sentence that starts with “I” or “Mine”. 5.Use passages, not the whole thing: You should never post the whole post word for word. Borrow a section and put your own commentary around it (see #1). 6.Unless I wrote it for you, it’s not a guest post: It’s not OK to introduce the cut and pasted content as if this author guest-posted on your site. Unless you had a formal arrangement that this person was guest posting, it is NOT a guest post. 7.Give credit in your tweet: If you tweet or share an article that’s inspired by someone else, you should always mark it in a tweet (ht @name is a good approach; “ht” stands for “hat tip”). If someone retweets or shares an article you repurposed and credits you entirely, it your responsibility to point out that it was inspired or based on someone else’s. If someone tweets “hey check out this great article by @xyz”, and you are @xyz you should say “Hey, it was actually @abc’s”. 8.Attribute at the top: Always attribute at the top of the post, most people don’t read to the bottom. Having a little hidden link at the bottom doesn’t count as attribution; it counts as “CYA”. 9.Recognize the purpose of blogging: The purpose of blogging, is to share your unique viewpoint, synthesize the world through your own lens of experience. The purpose is not to collect keywords to drive traffic to your site, so that you can sell your social media “guru” services. By practicing best practices of attribution and preserving others’ intellectual property, you will come across as a thoughtful person. Instead of making bloggers mad, you will build relationships and alliances. In the end, this is what social media is about.
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