Your content, especially (and mostly) on social media, should include sharing and mentioning other content and authors in your niche.
How can you successfully do this? How can you share others’ content – and most importantly, pick the right content to share, and stay away from what could hurt or deter your reader base?
Before actually getting familiar with the written and unwritten rules related to a perfectly healthy and legitimate content sharing strategy, you should focus on finding and assimilating original web content tailored to the real needs and expectations of your targeted audience. Here’s how you could narrow down your search.
A Guide to Content Sharing Done Right
A mini case study in great sharing is the TAGFEE code at Moz. It stands for Transparent & Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional. This “code” is what they stand by for everything they cultivate and create. It’s an awesome guide to live by and a wonderful route to great content.
How to Find the Right Type of Shareable Content That Works for You
- Ask Questions. Social media platforms give you the opportunity to humanize your brand and let your fans and followers realize that they’re interacting with a living, breathing individual, not a money-hungry corporation that just wants to sell anything to anyone. Post questions related to potential upcoming topics that could be introduced on your blog. This way, your readers would be more inclined to talk about their most pressing questions and the answers that they expect from you and your company.
- Read Comments. Feedback is a gift from above, allowing you to prevent or correct past mistakes and keep your content creation/sharing strategy on the right path. Read comments and assimilate the most important lessons that your readers can teach you.
- Explore the Connection with the Pop Culture. Amazing content creators know how to educate, inform and entertain their public at the same time. They aren’t afraid to explore pop culture references and turn them into real life lessons that actually are relevant for their sector. This may give you a new reason to keep up with the Kardashians or watch Dancing with the Stars without feeling guilty.
- Write about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Your Niche (and Skip the Unremarkable). In short, boost your appetence for the unconventional. Your readers definitely don’t want to waste time going through boring stuff. Maybe you’ve always wondered why Harper’s Bazaar starts almost every headline created for social media with this standard formula: “You won’t believe what X has done with her hair/wardrobe/makeup!” This is one of the oldest in the book, based on the idea that a little bit of suspense and the promise of a spectacular discovery will make readers bite their nails in anticipation and finally click on the link that you provide.
So now that you know what type of content you would like to share, how could you actually distribute it without stealing someone’s intellectual property? If this dilemma is stopping you from getting a good night’s rest, keep reading to spot 10 foolproof ways in which you can put X’s written thoughts to good use without getting in trouble.
10 Rules for Sharing Content Without Actually Stealing Other People’s Work
1. Conduct a Keyword Search and Pick Your Most Reliable Sources
According to Business2Community, keyword search represents the first step towards identifying great shareable content on the Internet. Using the keywords that make sense to you, conduct extensive searches in search engines, social networking websites (like Twitter, for instance) and Google alerts.
Afterwards, you could always turn to different RSS readers like Feedly for instance, store the most relevant content pieces in a bookmark tool such as Pocket or Readability and schedule posts revolving around the hottest web content that you can find using one of the many social media management tools, like Hootsuite or Buffer.
2. Subscribe to Different Content Aggregators to Stay in the Loop
SmartBrief aggregates great content on a daily basis and gives you the chance to check out at least 10 new articles related to topics that may interest you. According to Convince & Convert, by using content aggregators, you can save a lot of time otherwise invested in a more or less organized topic hunt.
3. Find the Best Collaborators in Your Niche and Start Building Mutually Beneficial Relationships
Talk to influencers in your industry. Refine your people skills and reach bloggers who share your interests. Mention their work in your posts and they will be inclined to return the favor. This could mark the beginning of a more than satisfactory collaboration leading to a whole bunch of premium, shareable co-authored content pieces that will allow you to expand your reader database.
4. Cite Content in Your Very Own Blog Posts & on Social Media While Complying with Internet Etiquette
As you were struggling to reinvent the wheel and come up with brand-new food for thought for your readers, someone introduced a fantastic new concept.
Instead of sweating even harder to rewrap your competitor’s ideas in a different manner and trying to convince your readers that the creative concept actually belongs to you, post the relevant quote in its original form and give credit to its author by mentioning the source and hyperlinking the blog/website in question.
Also, make sure you are familiar with the rules and guidelines related to content sharing, set in place by all sources that you plan to cite.
For instance, HubSpot lets you quote its web content, as long as the fragments that you choose do not exceed the 75-words limit (to prevent duplicate content issues that could impact their rankings- and yours as well!)
What happens when you stumble across really cool content on social media platforms? Do you rub your hands in anticipation and grab your favorite fragments when nobody’s looking?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this dubious strategy isn’t the best course of action. In most cases, you just have to mention the name of your source and include a link to the web content that you are citing in your newest update.
The procedure differs a bit from one social networking website to another, but generally speaking, proper content attribution is easy as pie. For instance, on Twitter, you would just have to add a “via @username” attribute in your tweet.
5. Give Credit to Ghost Writers and Guest Bloggers
Update your blogging policy if necessary, to give proper credit to guest bloggers and/or ghost writers who may influence your content creation efforts one way or another.
According to Hubspot, you should include a short bio of your contributors on your page, with inbound links to their sites. Also, you should mention their names and maybe even let them include one link to their page in your body copy.
6. Cite Visual Content Correctly
Basically, visual content (pictures, infographics) can be cited just like any other content piece: you mention the name of your source in the text and hyperlink to its website. However, if you are using infographics to inform and entertain your audience (and you should, because this is one of the trendiest, easiest to digest types of web content floating around the Internet these days), make sure you also name the source that you used to draw your points.
If you have utilized multiple sources, just provide the URLs and let your users dig deeper if the feel the need to.
7. Repurpose Content like a Pro
According to Quicksprout, you can and should repurpose your (or someone else’s) content to maximize the reach of your blog.
For instance, you could extract the real substance from a blog series and turn it into a slide deck that could be uploaded to SlideShare; or you could turn a slideshow into a cool-looking, informative infographic and turn this latter type of web content into an interesting animated video that will definitely take your content creation/sharing strategy to a whole new level.
8. Write and Share Original Content Built Around Your Users’ Comments
Why hire a ghost writer when your readers are your most valuable sources of inspiration? Incorporate your user comments in new content pieces and make sure you contact the visitor who inspired you, say “thank you” and include a link to your newest masterpiece.
9. Learn the Basics of Content Syndication
According to Search Engine Journal, syndicating content basically means that you’re publishing a content piece that you’ve already rolled out on your website/blog on a different site.
Content syndication is a great way to earn links and enhance your online presence. A few words of advice:
- If you want to share your own content like a pro, don’t choose to collaborate with more than a few syndication sites.
- To avoid penalties from Google and trouble from the ferocious Penguin, you should let Google know that you are the author of your content via internal links in your body copy and canonical tags.
10. Step up Your Content Curating Efforts the Easy Way
Obviously, we’ve saved the best for last. Content curation is the best way to gather, sort and publish the most prominent written gems that you could ever find online. According to Social Media Examiner, content curation keeps you in the loop, lets you share the love, and enables you to do useful recaps by summarizing information more effectively.
By using some of the most popular content curating tools, you can find, filter and promote excellent ideas that belong to others.
- Cadmus displays the most popular tweets within your network.
- PostRank lets you check the engagement score displayed by your favorite sources.
- Yahoo Pipes lets you organize RSS feeds based on your criteria.
- Curata is the ultimate curation software enabling you to find, organize and promote web content that is essential for your business.
These tools can simplify your work, but which rules should you follow to avoid upsetting Google and your fellow content creators who own the pieces you’re most interested in? According to Content Curation Marketing, you should follow a few basic tips to stay in the safe zone when it comes to curating content:
- Reproduce only small fragments of the body copy/headline that are relevant to your article
- Rather than trying to reproduce all articles available under the sun, stick to the ones that make sense to your business/audience.
- Identify and list the source of your shared material and link to the original source
- Provide commentary and a new context for the written material that you’ve just extracted.
Content Sharing is Easy (and Ethical) with the Right Strategy
At the end of the day, by following all the 10 rules for sharing content listed above, you’ll manage to make the most of brilliant ideas that do not actually belong to you — without being accused of unethical practices or jeopardizing your relationship with Google and prominent players in your industry.
