#avoidfailure

What plagiarism is about, how it impacts your personal brand and reputation, and how to avoid having your content plagiarized.

Plagiarism is an ugly word, with an even worst connotation, but a very common behaviour in our society. But what is it exactly? To easily explain it, it can be said that plagiarism is to use and present someone else’s work or ideas as your own (“Plagiarism”). It may occur that someone does not assume ownership over someone else’s job intentionally; however, in order to avoid any penalty it is necessary to always give credit to the creator or generator of the work or ideas.

Now, you may think, that plagiarism is a generalized issue in the Internet, and you are right. All types of contents are plagiarised everyday, and even more in Social Media. A clear and easy example for this is when someone posts a quote from a journal, book, or blog, without given credit to the writer.

Source: http://www.plagiarismchecker.net/social-media-plagiarism.php 

Building a brand in Social Media is about generating content and gaining trust for the chosen community, and the way to do it is to become trustworthy. All Social Media users are like salespeople, communicating their followers, contacts, friends, etc., who they are, what they do, how they do it, what are their beliefs and values. They are selling themselves to a certain group they are trying to attract. However, if a user decides to share content, which is not his own work and does not give credit to the author, he is risking not only his reputation but becomes subject to being penalized or even prosecuted.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsheehy/2200324778

On the other hand, when a job is plagiarized, it can mean the following for the author (Gomez):

The content is interesting

The content is useful

The content is better than the ones that the plagiarist creates

Contrary to this, is the reputation that the ones who commit plagiarism build. They become like a parrot, just repeating someone else’s ideas, and maybe they don't even copy them correctly.

To go into more detail, I can make an example using one of my own Social Media accounts. I regularly use Instagram, and if you check my biography (@annitachavez) it clearly states what I post about in there. Most of the pictures are mine; I took them with my phone or tablet. But, recently, I learned about an app, Repostapp, that allows you to post someone else’s content and gives credit to the author. Now I can share, with my followers, photos or videos from the people I follow and allow them to know that one specific post is not from my own creation. This way I’m protecting my personal brand, because I don't want people to think that I “stole” other’s ideas or content. I want them to get to know me based on what I post and what I like from other Instagram users.

So, how is content plagiarised on Social Media? First, let’s look at some numbers that can properly explain how plagiarism has grown in the Internet since a few years ago. I found this infographic from PlagTracker, which is a site who offers a service to track plagiarism.

Source: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/is-social-media-creating-a-plagiarism-problem-infographic/

It is pretty alarming that experts estimated that by 2014 plagiarism would be of 63%. Not some many honest people out there, right? Well, they may or may not have the intention to cheat, but if someone knows how to Google a quote, photo, chart, file, etc., they might as well know how to Google the author or source. It is common knowledge that stealing is a crime, whether we think it is a small thing or not, stealing is stealing. Furthermore, as you can see in the infographic, as growth of Internet traffic has increased also plagiarism, almost indicating a proportional relationship between the two.

There are many ways in which content is plagiarised on Social Media; I’ve listed some for you:

Using another person’s visuals, like photos, videos or graphics without giving credit (Comcovich)

Writing a blog post and taking ideas from other bloggers or concepts from other websites without proper citation.

Coping a tweet from someone else without giving credit to the twitter user

Uploading a video on YouTube without disclaiming ownership over a song, picture or video that belong to someone else or was released by a singer or filmmaker.

Re-creating a visual work in the same medium. This means that you shoot a photograph with the same composition and subject matter as someone else’s photograph (Plagiarism.org)

I found a real life example of plagiarism. It is even more shocking how the author found out his creation being plagiarized. This is the case of Philip Bloom, who is a British photographer and filmmaker. He created a video called Abraj: The two towers of Dubai in 2012. However, in September 2013 he got a copyright infringement claim, because the video was used in a tune performed by Max Solar & Next Beat (Plus).

Preventing others from plagiarising your content on Social Media

Now you may say, ok Ana, now what? Do I have to rely on other people’s values and pretend that everybody is honest? Well, that would not be very wise to do, but there are ways that can help you prevent others from plagiarising your own content on social media.

There are some ways to do that. I found some advises from blogger Ginny Soskey (@gsosk) which are:

Copyright: you can include a copyright banner at the end of your post, so your readers or followers know that they shouldn't just “steal” your content. You can add banners from Copyscape and DMCA to your site (Soskey).

Make usage guidelines for your content: Since Social Media is about sharing and you want people to get to know you and talk about you, you can explain to them how to legitimately share your content without committing plagiarism. This should cover how people can share, quote or make a reference to your content (Soskey).

Incorporate your logo: this means that if you post pictures or videos that you have created, be sure to add your logo or signature to them, hence, who ever sees your content in another site would know who the author is (Soskey). If you don't know how to create one, take a look at this websites who offer to create your visual brand; some are free like Logo Garden, and some can charge you a fee for the service, like DesginMantic and LogoMaker.

Moreover, Nichola Stott, Managing Director of theMediaFlow explains in the following video how to identify a plagiarist. Her advice not only ends there, but also explains what to do after having identified the “thief”.

And that’s why I’m citing where I get the pictures from using MLA, because, how could I write a blog post about plagiarism and not properly cite, right? The great part about this is that besides building my personal brand and showing others, included you, that I’m honest, I can create my own content, share with others what I like and keep learning about all the things that I like without feeling guilty.

Furthermore, if a plagiarize content on my Social Media accounts, it would affect my professional career, because if any companies decides to look for my profiles and see what I post and find that I don't give credit in a proper way to the an author, they probably will not contact me.

Building a personal brand takes time and for that one has to learn to create content for the platform that its being used, not to only share, re-tweet or repost videos, photos or any other content that you like.

When I was writing this post, I came across a very interesting term that has been around in the Internet for a few years and seemed legit to me to share it with you. You might have heard the word Curating in a museum or art gallery context. However, you can also curate content on Social Media. Curating online means that someone carefully selected content to be shown together in their own site or Social Media accounts, but clearly states where the content was taken from. It also includes italicizing or quoting anything that is copied directly, and a link to the source of the information (Sharkov).

So, in order to keep your brand clean and clear, just avoid plagiarism and give credit to the author whenever you use other people’s content. It is easy to copy, but it’s more rewarding to create something and watch it become valuable for others. Just like Aristotle once said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” (qtd. in brainyquote.com). And that is what honesty is about.

Works Cited

Calvin Ayre. " Content Marketing Tip: How to Identify Plagiarism." YouTube. CalvinAyre.come: 23 Dec. 2014. Online video. 26 Jan. 2015.

Baldwin, Mike. It's Hard To Defend Plagiarism. 2015. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.

Comcowich, William. 'Emerging Plagiarism Cases Should Remind Brands Of Its Reputational Threats'. CyberAlert Blog. N.p., 2014. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Gomez, David. "How to respond to plagiarism on Internet." David Gomez, 15 July. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2015.

Melville, Herman. 'Herman Melville Profile'. Goodreads. N.p., 2015. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Plagiarism.org. “What Is Plagiarism?” N.p., 2015. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

"Plagiarism." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 30 Jan. 2015.

Plus, Steve. 'What To Do When Social Media Turns Against You'. Business 2 Community. N.p., 2015. Web. 30 Jan. 2015

Soskey, Ginny. “Are People Stealing Your Content? How (and When) to Fight Back.” Hubspot. 21 May. 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2015