A Blogging Code of Ethics
The other day I followed a link in one of the many internet marketing pitches I seem to receive on a daily basis. It offered me yet another reason why I should join a “fantastic new membership site” that would show me how I could get tons of traffic to my blog.
The pitch was in the form of a blog post and the claim was that if I received less than 1000 visitors a day and 300 subscribers then I obviously needed help. One of the topics was “How to write posts that get comments.”
I had a closer look at the blog and I noticed that the very post that I was reading had only two comments.
So how could this be? If this person is using her own strategy she should be getting at least 1000 visits to her blog every day. If she is applying her own strategies for generating comments how could a post have only two comments? Shouldn’t this post have hundreds of comments? It doesn’t make sense, does it?
Well, yes it does. Because she was obviously bending the truth. The 1000 visitors a day was just another figment of the fertile imagination of a “successful” internet marketer.
That single article entirely changed my attitude to this blogger. She could no longer be trusted. She was just another exaggerating, truth-stretching internet marketer.
Rules 1 and 2 – Be Truthful
If you are considering creating a personal or corporate blog you should give some thought to developing your own “code of ethics”. I’m not big on strict formal rules, but there is definitely a place for knowing what ethical principles you think are important. Here’s a start:
Rule #1 – Always tell the truth
Rule #2 – Don’t exaggerate your product claims (See Rule #1).
These two rules are a great place to start. The fact is your blog will (or should) become your voice, your channel, and to a large degree the shaper of your identity. So it is important that you think about how you intend to conduct yourself.
As with all channels of communication your first commitment should be to honesty and sincerity. That means there is very little room for exaggeration and misrepresentation – no matter how badly you want to sell your products.
Rules 3 and 4 – Don’t Copy Material Without Permission
The third and fourth rules have to do with creating content and using material provided (or previously published) by others.
Rule #3 – Don’t Use Published Material Without Permission
Rule #4 – Give Credit to the Author when Re-Publishing Material
Generally speaking, content created by other authors should not be copied or reproduced unless it specifically says you can do so. That goes for newspaper or magazine articles, and posts from other blogs.
Two good examples where you do not have to ask for permission (because it is assumed) are the use of articles from article directories, and the embedding of videos from sites like Youtube.
In these cases the creators of this content are making it available for republishing because they want increased exposure. That means you must give them credit as the author (and not act as though you created it), you must not change the content, and you must leave embedded links in place as they were put there by the author.
Rule 5 – Spread the Links Around
When blogs first broke on the scene one of their primary purposes was for bloggers to share links to content they found interesting. That way bloggers could create a rich web of interlinked resources. So this leads us to,
Rule #5 – Link to External Sources
This practice not only honours your sources, but also is advantageous to you. When you link to other bloggers or websites, or when you link back to resources you refer to in your own posts, you are identifying yourself with a larger community of bloggers.
Not only does this help generate traffic (for the blogs you link to), but it helps to generate inbound links from other bloggers (who return the favor), and it improves your standing in Google because you become associated with the other blogs you are inter-linked with.
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