Marketing experts say that as long as you’re promoting someone else’s work, it’s not considered plagiarism to quote their materials.
But what about when you write your own stuff?
Is it legal to use snippets from other people’s works in your own blog posts, tweets, or other social media content?
Marketers worry that coming up with original content can be difficult, especially if they aren’t very familiar with the field.
And since there are few laws protecting creative rights, only those who produce content like music or movies have formal protection for their creations.
For example, singers and musicians can register their songs with offices that protect copyright. Actors must file films under government protections to show them on television.
Programmers also need to keep files private to secure their hard drives and prevent others from accessing them. Otherwise, their work may already be open source, which means anyone is free to copy and distribute it without needing to ask permission.
Even if copywritten materials are not legally copyrightable, that does not mean they cannot be copyrighted. The only way to guarantee something is not subject to copyright protection is by having no intention to enforce your intellectual property rights.
By writing down your ideas in a written form (which may include screenshots of web pages), you’re making them available for anyone to use or replicate. You should also keep copies of anything you create.
If someone else uses it, claims it as their own work, or copies it, then you will have difficulty enforcing your legal rights. Also, many people don’t know how to enforce legal rights; therefore, documenting what you wrote can help others assert ownership.
Finally, knowing how to enforce legal rights doesn’t just help when it comes to personal content. It also helps when it comes to branding and marketing products. For example, if I promote my brand well and bring awareness to it, other companies might pick up on our trademark or logo and use it themselves.
In this case, I could get letters from lawyers representing me saying that they have our permission to use our name or whatever.
Although you may be tempted to use your own writing, it is not necessary. Your first line should always read “Written by (name)"
After you have completed your writing, you will need to find people to review it. There are two ways that this can be done:
1. Through networks like social media or through clubs dedicated to helping writers
2. By going to websites like freelancewriternetwork.com and via other methods detailed below
You will then send away samples of your written work with each job offer.
By doing this, you will prove to them that you can write well and professionally. You will also have an introduction to some more opportunities in publishing.
In order to start getting readings and reviews, you will need to build up a portfolio of works. Here are lists of resources as well as blogs you can follow to help you develop your own voice as a writer.
Once you have a portfolio full of reads and reviews, then you can move onto being a publisher. Until then, you will still need to get employers to pay for their advertising costs from the sales of your book.
If you are doing other things related to content marketing, such as social media management or writing basic articles, then you will need to know how to organize your documents in word.
It is important to understand that all of these different ways of organization have advantages. With some words, like “substeps” or “points,’ there are only one or two options for organizing the text. For a copywriter, though, knowing what styles work best when it comes to writing blogs and reports can make all the difference between a good article or presentation.
This way, you will always find yourself organized without having to think too much, which allows you to focus on the task at hand.
Even if you’re not sure, telling your readers something like “This article copyright © 2017 Yola Inc.. It may also be protected under certain trademark laws, depending on the type of content you are writing,” will help secure your legal rights
Under law, when you write an article for publication, there’s usually a clause at the bottom that says something along these lines:
“Article: (Name of article) is written by (author). All rights reserved.”
Even if you’re not going to use it, any registered copyright is legal for your use in the future.
This means that you can give it to others (for example, if you want to work as a freelance copywriter, you could grant them a copyright in this filing). Or they could register their own copyright after 2018 comes to take advantage of what will probably be a growing market.
Both parties could then enforce their copyrights through litigation, which is covered below.
If you don’t have a copyright, you’ll need to file form 17109 with the secretary of state’s office within 60 days from the date you actually created the content in question.
Even if you are an expert in your field, saying that you wrote something is still stretching the truth. You either authored it or edited someone else’s work.
Don’t claim to have written articles when they were actually written by another author/writer. It makes you look bad and the other writer looks less confident than they really are.
You may think that you can write an article using just your knowledge and skillset, but you’d be mistaken. You need to understand how the subject matter (or subjects) in the article(s) relates to each other, and why this (these) topic(s) is (are) relevant to their audience.
This means that you should also read related topics and find more articles like the one you’re writing, which increases your odds of getting credit for them.
That said, if you do write an original piece, put some effort into making sure it gets found. The internet is filled with good ways to measure this.
Put in time to learn about your topic and make sure people know there’s a new article here. That way people will come back to see what you've got.
While you might be very proud of your writing, do not assume that you have rights to an idea. If you ever want to turn something into money, copyright or patent it. You will also need to register the design with the government in order to protect yourself against other developers who may also copy your idea.
However, if you just want to write about another author’s work for research purposes, there is no legal right to be had. There are two reasons why. First, regardless of what type of license you choose for the material, once you publish information, it becomes common knowledge. Secondly, people can still take inspiration from things you've written and create their own works, which is what authors do every day!
If you have questions regarding how much control you would have over someone else's work, then contact a lawyer- specifically, an intellectual property lawyer. They'll help you determine how much protection you actually have over another person's work.
There are several reasons why copywriting is considered to be an ethical business practice. First, you should always give credit when you use someone else’s work. If you do not, they can take legal action.
Second, by using another author's work, you make it more likely that your own work will be viewed by others as good enough to publish. And finally, if you need help with copywriting, for example, you could create some freelance work writing introductions or sections of pages to sell later.
You would also benefit from having this in your repertoire of skills. Many successful businesses have their webpages designed, so if you want to charge money for Webpage Designers there isn't much choice.
If you've got experience in design, development and software engineering then these may all seem like second nature to you. You might even think that you could write something simply because you know how to fix it if you find it needs improvement.
But learning how to develop content means you understand what writes well and what doesn't. You'll also learn how people process information, which is important for blogging.
Furthermore, you can translate that knowledge into words on paper and identify where there is a gap in terms of content. Closing that gap = better writing.
