Please Don’t Feed the Writer

If you’ve ever wondered how some sites get to the front page of social media sites like Digg or Stumbleupon and wondered how you can get your content placed there as well then Dustin Brewer might have the answers you’re looking for.  Dustin just penned a post on his blog titled Top 5 ways to create interesting content for social networks which details the methods that he feels will get your content moved from social networking obscurity to current buzz of the day.

While social networking sites will never get you the kind of traffic that good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will garner over time, they can be great for spikes in traffic of anywhere from 20 or 30 visitors to well over 1,000 in a single day. The hope with this surge in attention is that at least some of the people that stop by will sign up for your site feed or bookmark your blog for a later visit, but regardless of the long term results it is an exhilarating feeling to see your page views jump by hundreds or thousands for a day.

The chatter in the writing world is still focused on the issue of plagiarism.  The issue currently revolves around authors in the world of fiction, but the truth of the matter is, it’s a real problem for you if you’re writing for the web as well.

I’ve heard some people grousing that no one should care.  I don’t know where they get their idea of fairness , or of ethic, but to me the thought of citing another author that has taken the time to put down original information is more than a little appalling. Weren’t we taught not to do this in grade school?  It is not only inconsiderate but rude, and leads to substandard work on our part, therefore it should never be done.

The simple way to give credit if you are writing fiction is to acknowledge the source of your research in the opening credits of the book.  A line as simple as “I could not have accurately recreated Paris in the 1900’s without the brilliant work of Steven Zdatny from his book “Hairstyles and Fashion, A Hairdresser’s History of Paris, 1910-1920″ is usually enough to stoke another author’s ego and to properly credit your research…  But was it research or plagiarism?

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