Citation for bloggers: this is how you prevent fake news and "we from WC-duck"

More and more organizations are choosing to keep track of one business blog on their website. That way you get new visitors to your website via Google, keep your customers involved in your company and position yourself as a knowledge specialist. By adding a new post every week, visitors will return to you faster. Writing blog posts is unfortunately not always easy. It is about finding topics that suit your company and that your target group also wants to read. You must be able to find the right writing style, be able to write error-free and what you tell must also be correct. After all, you don't want to get caught up in your story. Mentioning the source can be quite a thing, here you can read how you deal with this as a blogger. Main tip: mention your sources. Information wants to be shared.

The need for a reference to your blogs

There are four reasons to use a citation:

1. You are required by law to state the source of a quote. A quote is when your text literally takes over. Because when checking for plagiarism (copying someone else's information without reference), defamation (tarnishing someone's honor) and defamation (blackening someone), a reference to the source ensures that it is clear who has written or said what. Source? Article 15a Copyright.
2. Make your story more credible. Consider, for example, the studies you quote in a blog post. When these studies have been conducted by a well-known research institute or researcher, this makes your blog more valuable to readers. This way you prevent visitors from viewing your blog posts as fake news.
3. Better inform your reader. Blog posts must have a high informative value. After all, a visitor wants to learn something or increase his knowledge while reading your blog post. By adding a source reference you prevent a message from getting a high "We from WC-duck" content. After all, it is not bad to admit that other parties, such as research institutes, have a greater knowledge of certain subjects. The reader can find more background information there.
4. Google likes authority. You also blog to be found well in Google? Google appreciates (according to many SEO specialists) in addition to incoming links, including outgoing links. Especially if they go to pages with a lot of authority, such as a frequently-mentioned research.

This is how you list sources on your blogs

When you have found a good source, you can mention it in your blog post in different ways:

1. Entry. Many people choose to use a number after the sentence in which the source is quoted. For example, think of '[1]', which you will also find a lot in scientific literature. At the bottom of the blog post, a list of references used for writing the article is placed in this case. A good one for this is Google Scholar, this is a public database, in which you will find a large number of scientific articles. With every article you will find a 'Quote' button, with which you can copy the reference in one go. That way you know for sure that your reference is correct! Multiple styles are possible, of which the APA style (American Psychology Aassociation) and the Harvard style the most famous ones.
2. Deep link. You can also directly refer to the underlying source on a word or sentence. Ideally, you link to the agency or researcher, such as Forrester, or to the statement that you set as a basis. You can also link to the bottom of the source list. Tip: state the date of consultation. So that when the link suddenly falls dead, you will in any case refer you correctly.

Images work differently

Note: you may not use every image as long as you have a source reference. The maxim is that you have an image not may use until you are sure that you can use it. Otherwise you can expect a peppery bill from the photographer. There are all kinds of programs available that can detect an image for free. Such as Google Images with image search.

Use royalty free images. Pixabay.com for example, offers free photos without any rights; for example, the images in this blog come there from. You can use and adjust it commercially. Find a nice photo on it Flickr.com? Rights always apply to this, also under common creatives. At the very least you will have to make a source reference, often you can only use the image in its entirety without modification.

Another solution is the redemption of rights. You can be a professional photographer for example, give the order to shoot a series of photos at your office.