In my recent article about Seven Mistakes To Avoid When Authoring Your Business Blog, mistake number three was not adding an about page to your business blog. The reasons I noted this as a reason were:
you might not realise it but your about page on your business blog or website is the second most likely page that people will click through to. It is important to have details about you and the team authoring your business blog as people want to check out who you are – they are genuinely interested in the authors of your business blog and they are also interested in assessing your professional credibility in the areas you are writing about.
An additional reason to consider is the proliferation of “splogs” - spam blogs - which are farming your rich content in articles that you post on your website, ezine, business blog or in article directories.
The owners of these sites take your content - not always with your copyright clause - and add it to their website. Basically they are taking your content to help build content and then traffic to their blog or website.
The addition of your “About Page” on your business blog means that people will be able to differentiate you from the array of “splogs” and realise that you are a “real” company.
I predict that your “About Page” on your business blog will become increasingly important in the next few years as consumers and customers start to wake up to “splogs” and what to watch out for.
But you might be asking what can you do about protecting your content, especially if you subscribe to the position that I do that your business blog should be full of great content that your clients and readers of your business blog will find of benefit?
Well the way I usually find my content has been posted to other peoples websites is through Google Alerts, a free service I subscribe to using the key words that are included in my articles and webcopy. You can access more information and the ten ways I use Google Alerts in a recent article I wrote.
Often there is nothing you can do if your article has been posted to these sites, but one thing I did when I saw the total copy of my newsletter, including information that I only provided for my newsletter readers, was to unsubscribe the person “farming” my content so they no longer received the newsletter.
The other action you can take is to add a comment with your information about the article and the original source and copyright in the comments section of the “splog”.
I’m interested to hear what others do to overcome this issue - what actions do you take if you see someone has taken your content with out attribution?
August 28th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Great advice Krishna! That gives me some new thoughts on how to deal with the rise of splogs. I do subscribe to the position that my business blog should be full of great content that my clients and readers of will find of benefit. I think my blog and website speak for themselves. But, I do see your point about taking action to protect my content.
I have had to take increasing measures to halt comment spam on my blog. That alone is a challenge. But, I see how this harvesting of content without attribution can be a real issue. I’ll be curious to see what else you find out. Thanks.
August 28th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I work up to see my articles on yet more splogs today. I am wondering if Google takes action at all as many are Blogger blogs and it can not be good for their reputation. When I get home from vacation I might check this out with Google.
In the meantime, make sure you set up your Google Alerts!
August 29th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
I have been the victim of splogging and there is spam blog that has six of my articles that it will not remove despite many comments sent to the site - none of which have survived moderation. What was worse is that one of my articles was then sent to an array of blog carnivals and then published and I spent hours trying to find them all and contact the blog author to ask that they revise the blog carnival. Scott Allen has outed a number of these spam blogs on the blog post at the following link. http://revenueriver.com/carnival-of-the-capitalists-8-20-2007/ This list has been used by several other carnival hosts to ensure that they do not inadvertently link to these splogs.
August 30th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Hosting carnivals I always check the original articles and look to eliminate the splogs which can take some time, but then I think articles including carnivals on our business blogs reflect our reputation and personal brand.
Thanks once again.
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:13 am
[...] Why your “About” page is going to become more critical on your business blog by Krishna De [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Thanks for the About page reminder. I had created one but only put a little info, expecting I would remember to come back and complete it. Ha, well that never happened until I read this post and jogged my memory.
It’s so easy to just forget to do somethings. I have it done now though.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Like you, I have had some content “farmed”. In fact, it was preventing me from publishing the article in my favorite Article Directory since the content appeared without my name or copyright info.
I Googled the guy (yes, it was a guy) and found a way to contact him. The blog didn’t provide any links, contact info or about me page, so it took a bit of work and looking through a lot of site before I found him.
I sent a polite email asking him to remove the article in question.
I got back a nasty-gram basically telling me to prove it was my content. I sent a reply with a link to the original post on my blog and still he cried foul.
It took three more emails and one threat (I hated to resort to that but come on!) before he pulled the forum post that was a duplicate of my article.
I was able to publish the article to the directories but what should have been a 5 minute process took 7 emails (5 to and from him and 2 to and from the article directory) and 8 days to accomplish.
I wish there were a better way.
Any thoughts on embedding a hidden graphic to prove original content? Or any other suggestions? I would love to hear them.
Cenay’
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
For example you could have a link to one of your previous articles.
Therefore if someone dies take your content, there is a link back to you as the original source.
I hope this helps.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:32 pm
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