{Bloggers Gonna Blog} The Do’s & Don’ts of Finding Inspiration Online

A good blogger has to stay constantly inspired in order to keep a steady stream of posts and content up on their blog. So, it’s important to take in a lot of various content, much of which comes in via the web and other blogs and bloggers! It is my firm belief that a majority of content when it comes to online and offline sources isn’t wholly original. It really isn’t uncommon for bloggers to get inspiration from each other and from other sources around the web or things they have seen or experienced in real life. That being said, it is important to properly credit sources and give credit where credit is due if you are borrowing ideas from other people or drawing significant inspiration from another source. Why is it important to credit? Well, honestly it’s important for a few reasons.

First of all you cannot expect to grow and develop your own brand based on the work of others, especially if you are consistently borrowing from the same or similar sources and not giving credit. I’l discuss more about consistent borrowing later on, but when it comes to the act of borrowing an idea from another online source, the web is a large place, but it can also be extremely small, and people will come to recognize if you are taking things constantly from one place or another and avoid your site. Secondly, if you become a blogger that borrows too heavily from one or more places, you will get a negative reputation, specifically if you are “ripping off” ideas. Now, I want to emphasize some delicacy when I say “ripping off” because there are definitely people on the internet that straight up take full blog posts and images from sites and repost them without permission and that is totally not okay, but there are also a lot of places where you see someone taking something seemingly innocent like the title or concept for a blog post and then writing their own version without asking the permission of the blogger who originally created the content or even linking back to the original post, and there is a real difference between the two situations. In the first example, it is full on plagiarism, but the second can seem almost innocent and can sometimes be done without even the blogger realizing what they are doing. The problem is, whether you are doing it consciously or unconsciously, borrowing without sourcing creates a bad reputation for your blog. Finally, when you borrow ideas from other sites and blogs without sourcing or asking permission, other bloggers and especially brands and companies, will start to avoid you, and blogging is all about community building. So without that lifeline, your blog could just die off!

Now, the interesting thing is, that if you actually do source your blog posts properly, you will actually find that you will get many benefits you may not have expected. When you properly link to a blog post and give credit where it’s due, you will find that other blogs and bloggers will be excited that you shared their content, more than happy that you borrowed an idea and it will cause a community to build around you where bloggers and brands will want to seek you out! So remember, borrowing ideas isn’t a bad thing, but there is a right and wrong way to do it and I am going to explain some of those differences to you today!

Photography

When it comes to photography for your blog, images are very important but using other peoples images is risky business. I always suggest using your own original photography whenever possible! Of course, sometimes it’s not possible for you to get a certain shot, and it becomes necessary for you to go to the internet to find an image. When this happens you do have a few solid options. First of all I suggest using creative commons images whenever you can so that you don’t get yourself or your blog into trouble! Photosharing sites like Flickr actually have dedicated sections for creative commons images that makes it easy for bloggers to find an image that is up for grabs. Now there are some rules associated with creative commons images sometimes, and those will be outlined at the image source so make sure to pay attention for those guides to know when and how you need to cite the image, and also whether or not you can use them for commercial, non-commercial or derivative purposes! Now, what happens if you find an image online that you want to use that may belong to a photographer or blogger on another site? Well, first and foremost, if you want to use an image that is not yours, I highly suggest contacting the owner of the image to ask permission to use the picture. If an image is on a blog, message the blogger and ask if you can use the image and make sure they have the right to give you permission. Just because the image is on someone’s website doesn’t mean they took it or have permission to use it or share it with you, so make sure to do your due diligence! If you find an image on a site like Pinterest and aren’t sure who it belongs to, you can do a reverse image search in Google to try to track it down and contact the copyright holder for permission to use it. Finally, if you really need images for your blog posts consistently and you want a quick and easy way to find them legally, try signing up for stock image sites that give you access to thousands of high quality images, but of course, this is at a price!

Design Elements

As a blogger, it seems that trends with website design are ever changing and we often want to make sure our blog is keeping up with the Jones’ in a matter of speaking. It’s definitely okay for you to look around the blogging neighborhood and see what your peers are doing design wise on their sites and draw some inspiration from different design and structural elements you see on their site. However, you need to make sure you are not borrowing too heavily from a sites design when applying new features to your own, after all you don’t want your blog to look like a carbon copy of someone else’s (it’s just not going to make your blog unique and stand out)! So when gathering inspiration from other sites and their designs, there is an unofficial rule of thumb you can use to make sure you are taking the essence of the design you like, while also making it your own and that is to change the design up 80% from the original. Now, that means you should make changes to align the design to your own branding so that only a small essence of the original remains, just about 20%. I know this may seem difficult to gauge, but think of things like font, color schemes, sizes, shapes, textures, alignment and spacing. If you change most of those items up, you will come out with something that is your own creation instead of a copy of another persons design! Remember, good artists copy, great artists steal (Picasso), which means to be great you need to find what is at the heart of the design, keep that true to form and then change all the rest until it becomes something completely new and all yours!

Now, that being said, if you do happen to find a design element from another site that is totally unique and you want to use it as is, you need to get in touch with the designer and get their permission. Don’t be surprised if they ask you to pay for use of the design, that is not uncommon, but if you are really interested in it and want to use it as is, you need to have their permission. Some designers may let you borrow one small element without charge, but then may ask to be credited, it really just depends on the person and the element in question, but you need to ask before you take it so that you don’t get yourself into legal trouble!

Content

Content is obviously one of the most important parts of a blog and as a blogger it is important that although you may find inspiration for yours around the web, that you aren’t taking people’s ideas without permission or reference. For the most part I believe this has a lot to do with common sense and the Golden Rule, which states to treat others how you would like to be treated. If you read a blog post on someone’s site and then decide to write the same post in your own point of view, always source the original post that gave you the inspiration. You don’t necessarily need to ask permission to use someone’s blog post if you are just writing your own version, however, I do think it is polite to give the original author a heads up and share the link to the post with them. A simple email that states something like “I read x post and I was so inspired I wanted to share my own ideas about it on my blog but I made sure to mention and link to your original post as my source” can go a long way. You may even find that the original blogger will want to share or even link to your blog post as well, which will help you get more views! If you do happen to write your own version of someone else’s post, one thing you want to watch out for is to make sure you are of course making different points and using your own point of view. It is not okay to write the same post just in your own words, using the same or very similar points as per the original. Even if you link back and ask permission, this is still a shady practice! Also, at all costs, avoid borrowing content or finding too much inspiration from one specific source. Even if you are properly sourcing, if you find that many of your posts are inspired by the same blogs and bloggers, it may be time for an intervention. You really don’t want anymore than 20% of your content to be directly inspired by other bloggers because you need to come up with your own unique content in order to help build your blogs brand!

Now, if you are reading a blog post and you see a line or point in the post that gives you inspiration for a completely different type of post on that one little topic, this is one of those examples where you don’t necessarily have to give credit, but if you do, I bet it would be appreciated. In truth, I think this is the best way to find inspiration and borrow ideas online, where you are finding something small that resonates with you and extrapolating on it in your own post. Taking this very post for example, you could read the passage above relating to the Golden Rule and decide that you would like to write an entire post about how to apply the Golden Rule to your interactions online with blogs and social media and call it “The Golden Rule 2.0”! That post would be a completely unique offshoot of this one that really wouldn’t require a link back to mine unless you just wanted to give credit and build a relationship. Also that blog post would be awesome and now I think I am going to add that to my TBW (to be written) list! Feel free to email me if you would also like to try your hand at writing that post and maybe we can do a little link up!

Proper linking and sourcing doesn’t just have positive karmic benefits, but it also has real SEO benefits as well. SEO meaning Search Engine Optimization, which is basically the method by which you can positively affect your rankings in search results by creating good content (aka get more views on your blog)! When you link and credit an alternate source like a blog that may be more popular than yours, when people go to search for that topic, your post may rank higher in search results because you are affiliating your blog post with someone else’s! So really, it just benefits you and your blog to create interesting content and to source whenever you find inspiration elsewhere on the blogosphere!

So what do you do if you’re a blogger and you believe that your content is being borrowed without your permission or a link back to your original content? Well the long and the short of it is that if a single blog happens to be taking ideas, content or other intellectual property (photographs or design) from you and you are seeing a pattern enough to be asking yourself this question, the best thing to do is to politely contact the blog author and let them know you came across their blog and you have found a number of similarities between your posts and let them know that if they have been borrowing, you would truly appreciate a link back to your original post. Also, feel free to reference or even link them to this blog post of mine that explains the do’s and don’ts for them because they may not have been informed enough to know how or when to cite an outside source for their content! Of course, if someone is blatantly plagiarizing or using copyrighted images of yours, you do have legal options available to you, however, I would strongly council that unless the wrong doer is using your work for obvious monetary gain, to simply send them an email and let them know they didn’t have permission to use it and ask that it be removed if that is what you want them to do! Talk softly and carry a big stick is a great motto to use in these situations because I find that you can often resolve these issues simply by asking nicely and being reasonable first. If that doesn’t work, call in the big dogs!

Now, if you would like to get a little more perspective on dealing with someone who may be copying your work or content, I absolutely love this post and video from the incomparable Marie Forleo! It’s called How to Deal with Copycats and Marie brings up a few more points that I absolutely agree with so head on over to her site to find out more about those!

I sincerely hope this post has been helpful for you if you are a blogger looking for the best way to find inspiration online or if you are someone who is dealing with content klepto’s! Let me know your thoughts on this subject down in the comments and if this post was helpful I would love it if you tweeted it out or posted it to your Facebook feed! 

Hope you all are staying productive and inspired!

xoxo,