Creating engaging, informative online content is a fantastic way to not only get your ideas out into the world, but can also be a powerful marketing strategy to lead people to your offers. There are so many different kinds of blogging techniques ranging from promoting products and services, sharing information about a business, providing expert advice on a subject, to simply connecting with your audience.
But whether you are blogging on your own website or blogging on someone else’s, how can you guarantee your ideas and blogging “voice” are protected in such a fast-moving virtual world?
Here are some essential tips for protecting your blogs:
Have a permissions policy on your website that is easy to read and easy to understand.
It is a good idea to get some legal advice on drafting a republication policy to ensure people don’t take it upon themselves to circulate your content without your consent – or even worse yet, outright steal your blogs and pass them off as their own.
Copyright your website and blogs with the U.S. Copyright office.
Although many may believe that websites and the content on websites are already protected by copyright (because of course we’ve got the © 2020 Your Name in the footer of the website), if your website is valuable to you and you’ve spent a lot of time and money developing it, definitely consider filing for copyright registration. The same goes for any blog articles that appear on your website, or that you submit as guest posts. Copyrighting is an easy process that usually takes no time at all and is well worth the added protection!
Use Google Alerts & Copyscape to catch copycats.
Monitor the Internet for anyone trying to steal your content. Online tools like Google Alerts and Copyscape make it super simple to search for duplicate content and plagiarism.
Send a DMCA takedown notice when you catch a copycat.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was designed to protect digital content. If you are really serious about protecting your work, you should exercise your right to have your copyrighted content removed from websites that have stolen from you. Check out more on DMCA’s website.