I recently did a creative project for a non-profit that was posted on their website. Through the years I have often worked as a “gun for hire” and understand that sometimes you do work and should only expect a paycheck. However in many creative fields, such as photography, art or video attributions along with a fee are often common for anything that is not purely a commercial product. In other words if I made a commercial for a client I would not expect a credit but if I made a documentary then I would often get a credit. For this particular project I was paid for expenses and about ¾ of the cost of the project was donated to the nonprofit.
Getting credit is nice. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy but in the online world proper credit and attribution can be vitally important to your inbound marketing efforts, link building and SEO. It may seem obvious why the contributor wants the credit and attribution. They get publicity for their work and a link back to their website builds their linking SEO and can drive web traffic back. But why would the posting website care about giving credit and attribution? When you use a photo from Creative Commons, post a guest blog to your website or post a speaker profile to your site’s event page why should you care if you give proper online credit or attribution? The obvious answer is it is just the polite thing to do but it will also help you in the long run. Here are my top five attribution etiquette tips on what you should do and why you should do it.
Giving proper attribution is not only good etiquette it is good online promotion. It will help promote your content through link building, SEO and social media and it increases that intangible online MOJO JUICE. When you promote others they will promote you. You should always give propter attribution when you use someone else’s photos or artwork; you quote them or use an excerpts from their blog or website; they have contributed content to your website such as a blog or a video; they are participating in an event you are sponsoring such as a conference, workshop or webinar; you are linking or mentioning a resource they own.
Have you ever had an experience where you felt you were not given proper attribution? How did you feel? How about when you were given proper attribution? What other things can you do to help others when you use their work?
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