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I thought it might be good to refresh and re-surface my Blogging Etiquette series from early 2013. This one is especially pertinent with BlogHer 2014 less than 2 weeks away.

The world of blogging can open the door to wonderful opportunities and can create real and lasting friendships. Bloggers make up a society of sorts. Like any society, bloggers have “classes”, with some doing it for a hobby, some as a business and a ton in between. The world of blogging also has a lot of unspoken rules, aside from the spoken ones provided by the FTC. In this Blogger Etiquette Series, we’ll learn many of the unspoken rules of blogging and how to NOT break those rules.

Blogging conferences can be wonderful events. They’re great for networking, meeting new people and building your blog. They do, however, invite many situations that can be quite awkward. Knowing how to act in certain situations can be tough for first-timers. Many times, people don’t mean to break unwritten rules, it just happens. Let’s jump right in and lay down some etiquette for blog conferences.

When it comes to swag…
Boy could I go on for a long time here. Let me just say that when it comes to swag, be gracious, not greedy. Nobody owes you a dang thing. Take what they give you, but don’t bring Mrs. Grabby Hands to the conference. If a business wants you to have something, you’ll know it. They will offer it to you. Nothing makes you look worse than being greedy about swag. Would you rather have that new set of baby bottles or a lasting relationship with an awesome brand?

How to walk away…
This one can be tricky. You’ve just met a really cool blogger, or an awesome brand representative and they love to talk, but you’re here to meet hundreds of people, not to make one new friend or to connect with one company. So what do you do? Find a point of interest around that you can gesture toward and say something to the effect of “I’m going to go check out that Clorox booth”. In a real pinch? Simply just excuse yourself to the restroom – they’re not going to follow you there! It’s a tricky situation, but you can gracefully get out of it.

When it comes to speakers…
Listen. You know how in grade school, it was cool to whisper and chat when the teacher was teaching? Maybe in high school too, but the fun wore off. The in college, it was just annoying. You are trying (and paying) to learn and it is distracting. Well, at a conference, it is the most annoying thing ever. Plain and simple: shut up and listen. You’re paying to be there, more importantly, those around you are paying to be there, and paying to hear what this person has to say. So the last thing anyone wants to hear is you whispering or chatting with your buddy next to you.
Keep your questions on task and don’t ask weird questions. There isn’t much worse than one person asking a million pointless questions during a limited time Q&A session. The moral of the story here is to respect the time and money others (and you) are sacrificing to be there.

When it comes to brands…
Have your information ready. Be honest with your stats, your reach and what you can do for the company. Be sure and listen and express interest in a brand’s goals when it comes to working with bloggers. Also be honest about your expectations. If talks progress to you two working together, keep the communications two-way and honest. The point here is forming long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships, not trying to get as many sponsored post opportunities as possible in a weekend.

When it comes to parties…
That first drink? Good idea. It’ll loosen you up a bit. That 2nd one? Might be okay. The 3rd one? Pushing it. The 4th one? Bad idea. Every one after that? Very bad idea! Unless you’re promoting an alcoholic beverage review site, a hangover cure blog or a party company, you probably don’t want to be slurring words out of your whiskey-breath ridden mouth.

There are two words that you should strive to get people to use when describing you and your conference self. Class and grace. If you leave with those two things in tact, you’ve done a fine job.

See this post for Tips for Making the Most of Blog Conferences.

The world of blogging can open the door to wonderful opportunities and can create real and lasting friendships. Bloggers make up a society of sorts. Like any society, bloggers have “classes”, with some doing it for a hobby, some as a business and a ton in between. The world of blogging also has a lot of unspoken rules, aside from the spoken ones provided by the FTC. In this Blogger Etiquette Series, we’ll learn many of the unspoken rules of blogging and how to NOT break those rules.

Today’s topic is using photos from others. There are many factors to consider when using someone else’s photo online. First up, the best idea is to use your own photos. Sometimes that is not possible. Often, I compose and publish blog posts away from home and am not able to take my own pertinent photo. (See this post for an example, where somehow I didn’t have a pen/pencil and paper.) What I did do, is the next best thing. I used a public domain photo. Public domain photos are copyright free, although some sites with public domain photos ask for a link back to support their service of rounding up all of the photos. For a huge list of many public domain photo sources, visit this page. Also, any photo found on a government (.gov) site is public domain and can be used with no credit necessary. For example, the image used in this post was from a governmental police website.

Ok, so now that we’ve got the ideal ways of using photos out of the way, let’s talk about the less than ideal ways to use photos on your blog. Did you see a photo on someone else’s blog that you just have to use on your own blog? If it’s from another blog, the best thing you can do is ask the blogger to use it, and then provide a link back to their site once you do.

Are you doing a roundup post of your favorite things that you saw on Pinterest? You should include a link to the source of every image you use on your own site. It doesn’t have to be huge, but it has to be there.

One of the worst things that you can ever do with regard to using someone else’s image is to “hotlink” it. This is the act of literally copying the image as is via highlighting it and then pasting it into a blog post of your own. What that does, is it keeps the link and photo source the same, so it’s like it is still on the original person’s website. This is bad in several ways. 90% of hotlinking is not accompanied by a link back or credit of any sort. Every time an image is loaded on a website, bandwidth is used to make that image show up. The bandwidth comes from whereever that image is hosted. So if you hotlinked a photo, you are using someone else’s bandwidth to load that picture. Many hosting plans have bandwidth limits (not Blogger blogs) , so in addition to being lazy and rude, you could actually be costing another Blogger money! If a Blogger finds out their images are being hotlinked, there are a number of things that can be done. See this post for how to handle that.

Now here’s that part that can get really, really bad for the hotlinker… and really really fun for the hotlinkee. When an image is hotlinked, the image source address stays the same. If you hotlink someone’s image who is technologically savvy, they can actually change that image to whatever they want by keeping changing the image on their end. See what happened here:

Here, the owner of Frugal Finders was slightly merciful in the image he replaced. He simply decided to notify the other site’s readers that they steal images. Think about it, with a little knowledge, ANY image, again that is ANY image, can be put in the place of the one you hotlinked by the owner of that image. I know of several bloggers who have gotten so fed up with the same person hotlinking them that they put huge, expletive filled images up and images telling their readers that they hate them. Simply put, DON’T HOTLINK!!

If you must must must use someone else’s image and cannot get a hold of them for permission, take a screenshot of the image, upload it to your own site’s server and link back to the source with a “thank you” attached. Bloggers love getting links back and will probably be happy about it. If you get an email requesting that you take the image down, kindly oblige and all should be well.

So there you go. Some blogging etiquette when it comes to using photos from others.

For the legalities of blogging and content, check out the following resources:
Creative Commons
Blogger Copyright Policy
WordPress Terms of Service

I created the Blogging Etiquette Series to provide some clarity on the “industry standard” with regard to blogging practices. You may not agree with some of what I have to say and that’s fine. The main question I want you to ask yourself is, “would I do (insert action here) in real life” and if you answer “no”, you probably shouldn’t do it in the blogging world either.

This is not a useful or acceptable comment on any blog. We’ve all seen comments like this. It offers nothing constructive. It mentions no part of the content, so clearly the person didn’t even read the article. Then to top it all off, they drop a link to their own site. Why the heck would anyone want to visit your site? Because of the awesome comment you left above your link? Hmm.

Let’s talk about the right way.

How to Leave a Comment on a Website or Blog

There’s no one right way to do it, but there are a few things you can do to make sure your comments are constructive and appreciated by everyone.

• Make sure to actually read the content that you are commenting on.
• Please, for the love of God, use proper grammar and check spelling errors. Especially if you are attempting to correct someone else with your comment.
• Don’t start a comment war. If you disagree and feel like you have to say so, state your point intelligently and appropriately and walk away. Then stay away.
• If you can help it, don’t leave a link unless one is asked for.
• Don’t be weird. Don’t ask awkward questions. Don’t tell your life story.
• Do respond to other people’s comments if you have something constructive to add, or if you simply want to kindly agree.

Notes:
– I understand that everyone has to start somewhere, and that leaving links gets a few people to your site. But it’s generally regarded as tacky. Website owners like to be able to control the links that show up on their site. There’s an icky feeling that happens when you see someone else dropping their link all over your site. You’ll notice the “bigger” blogs don’t leave links with comments. That is not because they “have enough followers”, it is because they know how annoying it can be. Most often, your name will be a clickable link and that is enough.
– Give your opinion if you have to. But if you know it’s going to start a huge ordeal, think twice. Nobody wants to bear witness to a useless online blogger fight.
– By all means, practice on this post!

Hey! Leave me a comment! 🙂