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WritersNotes.Net: Helping Writers Follow Their Dreams Through Information, Inspiration, and Encouragement!
Mining the Archival Abyss
With the speed at which new content is posted to many blogs today--including this one--older (though equally valuable) posts quickly become buried in the deep, dark recesses of the archival abyss, where they can do absolutely no good. So, in the interest of fairness to those who may not have read some of these earlier pieces, I've decided to resurrect those that I believe to be the most helpful, by linking to the original posts, here. (In fact, you'll find quite a few more links than might at first appear, since the first post on the list which follows is itself a list of links to other great articles on writing.)
Tips, Techniques, and Tools to Help Writers Succeed
Add Color, Clarity, and Style to Your Writing: A Linkfest
Failure-Tolerant Leadership for Writers and Others
Magnetize Your Blog: Always Reply to Comments!
Write Engaging Headlines: Use the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
Need Ideas? Let the New York Times Help!
Google Alerts Can Help You Detect Misuse Or Abuse of Your Writing
More About Google Alerts and Your Blog
Keyword Density: Your Key to Better Search Engine Ranking
One Look Dictionary Search: Your One-Stop Word Shop
Hopefully, you've found some information here that's helped bring you closer to meeting your writing/publishing goals!
Much luck to you in all your endeavors!
Jeanne
Did you enjoy this post? Was it at all helpful? Have any questions? Please feel free to comment!
I visited my friend Laura Spencer's Writing Thoughts blog again today and decided to check out her new blog, OpinionMom, which she launched recently.
While I was there, I came across a post describing a handy blog rating tool that can be used to determine what sort of rating your blog would receive based on its content. Since I am very interested in producing a family-friendly blog, I decided to give it a try.
My blog came back with a G-rating, which is exactly what I'd hoped! (I couldn't be totally positive what my blog's rating would be, since the titles and posts of other Orble blogs are listed in the sidebar next to my own posts; so, needless to say, I was relieved to see that my blog had passed muster.)
Despite the fact that other bloggers' material does appear in my blog's sidebar, I do my very best to keep all other blog and post titles in an unobtrusive part of my blog, for the simple reason that any questionable material will be less likely to be noticed by those who visit my blog. I'm a firm believer that people should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they are interested in reading such content--before they are faced with it--rather than being accosted by it at every turn.
Orble has also recently asked its bloggers to use the "Mature Content" flag on any posts with titles that contain profanity, in order to prevent those titles from appearing in the "Popular Posts" list in the sidebar of all Orble blogs. (Thanks, Orble!) So this should help with some of the more blatant occurrences of profanity that had previously found their way into our blogs' sidebars.
Still, though, as I previously mentioned, I am not taking any chances. I have relegated the lists of other Orble blogs, as well as the "Popular Posts" and "Breaking Posts" lists, into the deepest reaches of my blog's sidebar, at the very end of a number of rather lengthy lists of other, more acceptable, material, to keep them well-hidden from casual and unintentional public view.
Here's the blog rating tool. Feel free to use it to check the rating of your own blog!
Thanks, Laura, for letting us know about this great tool!
Please be sure to visit Laura Spencer's Writing Thoughts blog for some great info and resources on the writing craft; and, if you're a mom, as well as a writer, you might just enjoy checking out her Opinion Mom blog, as well. (Links to both of Laura's blogs can be found in the opening paragraph of this post.)
Happy rating!
Jeanne
P.S. I hope it isn't infelicitous of me to use the above blog rating tool in this post--since it's offered by an online dating website! That does seem rather ironic. But, be that as it may, I felt the tool itself was valuable.
Note: Infelicitous was the Word of the Day for June 3rd on Melissa Garrett's blog, The Silver Tongue. Melissa challenges other bloggers to use her Words of the Day in their own blog posts; and, to be honest, I have been planning for quite a while to use this one. I love this word!
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In a recent post, Google Alerts Can Help You Detect Misuse or Abuse of Your Work, I wrote about the way Google Alerts can help you maintain the integrity of your work by finding and alerting you to the existence of any websites that may have made unauthorized changes to your content in violation of their purchase agreements (either intentionally or in ignorance). There are also those instances where a site might be (again, either maliciously or ignorantly) hosting your work entirely without your knowledge or permission, which led me to speculate about the possibility that Google Alerts might also be able to protect our blog posts from unauthorized use in the same way they would for an article, poem, story, or other piece of writing.
With this question in mind, I penned the post, Can Google Alerts Protect Your Blog Posts? At that time, I had begun conducting a little experiment to see whether Google's search engine would find my blog posts if I set up alerts using unique phrases from my posts or entire titles from a few of them--in addition to the original alert I'd set up using my byline (my only Google Alert up to that time.) I'd mentioned, in that post, that, within about five minutes, Google had found one of my posts (on my own blog), so things looked promising. This was about a week ago.
Over the past week, numerous alerts have come in, notifying me of my work found in various corners of the internet, including quite a few of my blog posts here at WritersNotes.Net. What does all this prove? I believe it shows that, if you are able to put in a unique enough string of search terms, when creating a Google Alert, Google can find your work no matter where it may be posted on the internet. I used such search strings as "crucify my content," "surviving and thriving in the freelance writing world," "some are thought-provoking, some brutally honest," and two of my post titles, "More Great Sites for Writing Moms" and "Cleverly Contemporary Quotes on Motherhood." (Of course, I placed quotation marks around these strings of search terms.) Each of these proved sufficiently unique for Google's search engine to be able to find them.
The next question is, do you care if someone takes your blog posts and puts them on their own website or blog, or on a public journal page? Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. It could, of course, depend on whether they leave your byline intact or dishonestly remove it, claiming your work as their own. But there are those who are not happy to have their work used, even when they are given credit, and they have every right to feel that way.
Recently, Deborah Ng, whose well-known writing market blog, Freelance Writing Jobs, is a godsend to starving writers everywhere, and who also pens the insightful Finding the Right Words blog, recently learned that some of her own content had been placed on a live journal site without her knowledge or permission. So this does happen. And if it can happen to someone as widely known and well-regarded as Deborah Ng, how much more likely is it that it would happen to you or me? I'm certainly not attempting to create an atmosphere of paranoia or suspicion by relating this tale and discussing what might happen; but I do believe the old adage "Forewarned is forearmed."
It may not really bother you to have someone post your work on a public live journal page, as long as they give you credit for your work, but isn't that just the point? It should be up to the writer who created the original work to decide whether or not it's OK for his or her work to be used that way. If the prospect of this happening does bother you and you care enough about the issue to take preventive measures, go to Google Alerts and set up a few.
All the instructions and info you'll need to set up your alerts can be found on the site. You can set up your alerts to search blogs, news, the Web, or groups, or they can be comprehensive; and you can set them up so you'll be notified of search results once a day, once a week, or "as it happens." (And by the way, you can have up to 1,000 active Google Alerts at one time--though I can hardly even imagine what a positive nightmare it would be to deal with that many!)
When Google's search engine detects one of your search terms or search strings in any of the places you have instructed it to look, you are sent an e-mail within the time frame you've chosen for that particular alert. What could be easier?
Of course, what you do after you've found that your work is being used without your permission or that it's been altered against your wishes or without your authorization is another story entirely.
That part might not be so easy.
Good luck!
Jeanne
P.S. Since writing this post, I've come across a blog entry,called ContentJacking: It's an Epidemic, written by Deborah Ng, in which she further discusses content theft and offers a few ideas on how to correct the problem, once it's been discovered. Check it out.
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I'm in the process of conducting an experiment to see whether Google Alerts can help us bloggers detect unauthorized use of our blog posts--and, so far, it seems to be working. No, I haven't found someone using one of my blog posts without my permission; but Google did find one of my posts (on my own blog), after I'd entered an identifying phrase from the post into the "Search Terms" field. [I'd entered the search string (in quotation marks): "surviving and thriving in the freelance writing world," from my May 14th post, "More Great Sites for Writing Moms"--and Google Alerts found the string inside of about five minutes! (Of course, I had set up an "as-it-happens" alert.)]
Obviously, for this to work, you would need to use a very unique phrase--one which isn't likely to be used by other (or many other) writers. Otherwise, you would defeat your purpose, ending up with a bunch of alerts that have nothing to do with your own writing! I've also tried using titles of a few of my posts, but haven't gotten any results, yet; though I'm not sure how helpful that would be, anyway, since someone who wanted to steal your post, would likely remove the title.
I figure that, at the very least, this will encourage us to be creative in our phraseology, to avoid using too many time-worn cliches, to come up with new and unique ways of saying things, and to wax eloquent through using language in ways that are uniquely our own--all of which can only improve our writing! And after all, isn't that what being a writer is all about?
I'm still in the middle of this experiment, so haven't got any conclusive results yet; but I figure that anything we can do to protect our work--even if it doesn't work perfectly 100% of the time--will be helpful in those instances where it does work. Don't you agree?
More on this later!
Jeanne
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I realized just today what often motivates site owners, editors, or managers to alter web content--even in violation of clearly stated clauses which they agree to when purchasing a particular type of license for that content: SEO makes them do it!
Search Engine Optimization apparently reigns supreme in the world of internet publishing today. In many--if not the majority of--cases, it matters not to the individuals who run these websites whether or not the writing they post is particularly good. It generally need only be competent. And that's fine with me, if this is what they want or need for their websites. I have no quarrel with that. Why, I might even be willing to consider writing SEO articles myself at some point--and actually I have considered it--though not very seriously, since it doesn't tend to pay very well, and I'd much rather do more inspired writing, writing where I have the freedom to say what I want to say the way I want to say it.
While SEO writing may not be my favorite kind, I do recognize that there are many individuals who are very good at it and who can actually create quality articles while seamlessly incorporating the prescribed number of keywords and keyword phrases into their articles in all the right places. And I applaud them. They are filling a need, and they are doing it well.
The real problem is when the two worlds collide. When an article which is written for the express purpose of saying something and saying it well is offered for posting to a buyer's website through the purchase of a "usage" license by a site such as Constant Content, that article is sold "as is." The buyer is not authorized to change the work in any way. This presents a dilemma for the buyer whose site uses SEO articles. Since the article wasn't originally written with SEO in mind, it generally doesn't contain quite enough key words or key word phrases in its present form. It would only take a few changes here and there to make it work...
But this is precisely where the integrity of the original article is compromised. It's just too easy to do--and entirely too tempting for many buyers to resist.
It became clear to me just this evening, as I looked over the criteria for submitting articles to a particular SEO site--which just happens to be the same site that purchased the usage license for one of my altered articles (as I learned through a Google Alert)--that this was the reason for the changes they made. No sooner had this site made the purchase, then their content editors went right to work. They immediately proceeded to add an entirely new introductory paragraph to the beginning of the article in direct violation of their usage license. And SEO was the reason for the change. They needed to have enough repetitions of the keyword phrase in the article's first paragraph. SEO made them do it!
I hadn't realized it until that moment. Here I'd been furiously typing up a message earlier this afternoon, indignantly proclaiming to C-C how this site had lowered the quality of my article, and on and on and on, without having the slightest inkling what was really going on. I understand now.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that this website violated its usage license, and only time will tell what will happen. I am not really certain precisely how C-C will handle the issue.* But I do know one thing: At Constant Content, they don't like it when clients violate the limitations of their usage licenses. And I must admit that, as a writer who works very hard to produce high quality content, I don't like it either. I don't like the integrity of my work to be compromised.
Where do we go from here? I admit that I really don't know. There's little question that SEO is here to stay. There's even less question that it's in very high demand. Yet I truly hope this doesn't mean that literary integrity will not be able to peacefully co-exist with it.
Till next time,
Jeanne
*UPDATE: Since this post was written, Constant Content has notified the offending website, the site's administrator was very apologetic, and he has since changed the article back to its original form. This is good news for all of us writers who care very much about the integrity of our work! Bravo for C-C and for this site, which, unfortunately, must remain nameless!
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The Google Alert can be a very valuable tool for today's writer, whose work can show up in so many different corners of the internet that it might be impossible to keep track of otherwise. Google's search engine continually crawls the Web, seeking content. This is why a Google Alert can find your work wherever it may appear on various parts of the Web, as long as you create an effective alert by entering the most appropriate search terms for the item or items in question.
Why might you want to create a Google Alert? While there are a number of reasons for the average person to use them--such as keeping up-to-date on news stories, business developments, people, or events--for the writer, they can prove especially significant--if not crucial.
For example, if you create a Google Alert using your name, or byline, as your search criterion, you will be notified, via e-mail, when Google detects sites where your name appears. If you sell your work on the internet through a site such as Constant Content,* which acts as a middleman for your work, selling it on your behalf to various buyers who visit the site, it can be difficult for you to be certain that the buyers who purchase your work are abiding by the terms of the sale, since you generally don't know who the buyers are or which website or websites your work will be posted to. If you sell your work yourself, you would be more likely to have access to such information--though there is still a possibility that the buyer might use your work in a way that hasn't been authorized by you.
If you sell "all rights" to your piece--whether through a literary agent, a website such as Constant Content, or on your own--you have forfeited any say over what is done to or with it. In such a case, the buyer may freely revise, rewrite, and even remove your byline and replace it with his or her own. However, if you sell only "usage," or "one-time use" rights, there are limits on what the buyer may do with or to your work.
If you sell it yourself, you may give the buyer, editor, or publisher permission to make changes to your manuscript or online content or you may agree to make the changes they desire yourself. But, on a site such as Constant Content, "usage" rights do not include the right to alter purchased content in any way. This means that the buyer may not add or delete anything from your piece, may not change its title, and--perhaps most importantly--may not remove your byline.
This is where Google Alerts can be very useful. I, personally, have found two instances of unauthorized changes that had been made to my work after usage rights had been purchased--or I should say, Google found two instances of unauthorized changes to my work for me via my one single Google Alert, set up using my name as my search criterion. (I found a third instance myself, in which my byline had been completely removed from the piece, though the article itself had not been altered.)
In one of the two cases found via a Google Alert, my original title had been removed and replaced with a poorly written and grammatically incorrect one, making me look somewhat less literate than I like to look. In addition, a two-word phrase was removed from the piece, which I understood and would have been willing to OK, had they asked. (In fact, I would have even been willing to OK a title change for their particular site, as long as it was grammatically correct.)
In the second case found by Google, the buyer had inserted a decidedly mediocre introductory paragraph before my own initial paragraph--one which did not flow smoothly into my opening paragraph, creating a clumsy transition which, again, made me appear to be a less capable writer than I like to think I am. (The tone and style of my first sentence had been intentional and were perfectly fitting as an opening to the piece, whereas the tone and style of the new opening paragraph were entirely inappropriate to the piece and lowered its quality tremendously.) In addition, this third buyer removed the entire final sentence of the piece, though retaining my byline.
While two of the above issues have not yet been resolved** (though I only found out about one of them yesterday and haven't yet reported it to C-C), I am glad that I'm able to find these breaches of the purchase agreement that each buyer enters into with Constant Content when they purchase content from the site. (Apparently they can't read any better than they can write! The rules of purchase are prominently posted in the appropriate section of the C-C website.)
I, for one, certainly want to know about any and all instances where buyers of my work "murder my manuscripts," "crucify my content," or "butcher my byline"--even if it does take a little time to get the issues resolved. It is, after all, my work; and if I'm going to be a ghostwriter, it will be because I, myself, have agreed to be one--and I have agreed to do so in the recent past, after determining that it was the right thing to do in that particular instance. However, when I'm not functioning in the role of ghostwriter, my work represents me before the world in a way that it never could were my name not on it, and therefore it is even more critical that it present me and my abilities as a writer in a positive light.
They say that knowledge is power. And that's exactly what a Google Alert can give to a writer: the knowledge of just exactly what is being done with his or her literary masterpieces out in the farthest reaches of the World Wide Web--and the power to take action to rectify any breach of business or personal ethics that may be occurring in the handling of those works, which are uniquely his or her own.
So, if you are consistently selling your work on the internet, I would highly recommend that you consider setting up a Google Alert, or multiple alerts, using either your name or other search criteria that are appropriate to your material--or even creating both. You might just be surprised what you find. (Sometimes, what you find will actually be positive, rather than negative, which is always nice!)
A properly executed Google Alert might even help you detect unauthorized use of your work by unscrupulous individuals to whom you have neither sold nor given the right to use it. It could prove an excellent anti-plagiarism tool if you are able to come up with sufficiently specific search criteria to identify your work when it doesn’t contain your byline. (I, personally, have not used it this way, myself yet, however.)
You can learn everything you need to know to get started with Google Alerts by reading the info on their site. It's one great way of protecting the integrity of your work.
Till next time,
Jeanne
*To find out more about Constant Content, see my earlier blog post about this helpful site.
**One of these two issues has since been resolved.
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