So you’ve decided to put your enduring idea into life – to start a blog and jump into the world of online publishing – congrats! Before you get in, it’s a must-know that there are some certain ethics, laws and rules that concern to every single blogger. This post is going to show the ones you have to follow for staying far beyond the legal troubles. Let’s see what we can do to stay a welcome part of the blogging community. The following 3 tips will make it happen effortlessly and easily.
#1 Write Unique Content
When you’re writing a new blog post grounding on the information found or mentioned in another web source – make sure to attribute it with a link.
Publishing content on the Internet is always bounded by copyright laws.
Your source reputation value is irreplaceable. Protect it! Strong and clear brand reputation equals greater profits. Don’t be accused by plagiarizing someone’s work – instead publish original content, cite your sources properly and the success is on your way.
In case you’re eager to use a single borrowed fragment, add your personal opinion so that mainly the content on the site be original.
Follow this simple line and forget about legal troubles, negatively affected search engine rankings, penalizations, or bannings forever.
#2 Use Images Correctly
Bloggers often wonder about using images in their posts. Copyright laws concern this aspect as much as the publishing one. They protect the original owner in every way.
For using any image on your personal blog with no violation – request for owner’s permission. Otherwise, find sources providing the copyrights (this allows republishing them on your posts).
Basically, there are 3 most common copyright-licenses you need to know about:
- Rights-managed copyright-licenses (demand either paying the owner for the images usage rights on your blog or getting permission to post them);
- Royalty-free copyrighted images (come either with a restriction requiring to credit the source or with a price tag);
- Creative commons (an organization allowing to share the original images in a less-restrictive way than the copyright laws do).
#3 Create Policies Wittily
Your blog is a private net house. Holding it’s keys, it’s only up to you to decide which type of content to publish and which stay away from. Here’re blog policies that come into action.
- Comment Policy
With blog popularity come unwanted comments (the hateful / obscene / offensive / spam ones you don’t want to publish or the requiring minor editing). Comment policy helps to forget about this problem. It aims to protect your blog by indicating what types of comments to delete, what to edit and to post.
- Privacy Policy
When launching a blog, everyone wants to cover himself from all the possible impacting angles. To do it legally, you need to create a Privacy Policy in order to let your readers or users know exactly what you do with their data. If you don’t plan to do anything with it, it is good for your readers to know that.
- Terms and Conditions of Use Policy
When going through majority of web horizons, one inevitably will meet a link to the Terms and Conditions of Use Policy. It shows people what do visitors agree by visiting your blog. No matter whether the terms defined specifically and clear, or they are short and more generic ones – it’s primarily assignment is to protect the site owner.
Keep in mind that blog policies are meant to accomplish two primary goals: establish visitor expectations and defend you. Take your time to read policies on other blogs, create your own that meet your needs, and provide the full disclosures and protection you require.
Final Etiquette Words
Normally, blogging is a wonderful tool to share thoughts, ideas and any other type of information. Though, sometimes, despite of alike-minder’s proves and praise, one may face rude comments and the whole piece of naughty “blogging drama”. How not to turn into a victim of manipulations? Just keep in mind our small pieces of advice to hold your blog the best version it could ever be.
- Leave friendly comments (make a response habit on a regular basis, do not ignore your readers, no matter whether they’re nice and clever, or do lack tact).
- Share everything you like (if there’s a blog, or video, or post in any other server and it’s relevant to link it in your personal community – just go ahead. When readers share your preferences, they will return the blog you lead a thousand times, regardless the comparison).
- Be honest yourself (above everything and all – be truthful. When reviewing, don’t feel obliged to like the product of the offer, your professionalism is defined by constructive criticism and truth).
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