The expansion of digital media and social media has given appropriate exposure to many aspirant writers. Primarily, people with a passion for writing have found the ideal platform through blog writing.
Blogs are an informative piece of writing which resembles informative paragraph. Typically these are published on websites. Blogs are written on various topics, including food, travel, personal experience, significant events, and more. Companies hire professionals to write web page blogs for product reviews, marketing, and such things.
Bloggers should know about plagiarism and how to avoid it.
However, with time the popularity of blogs has increased significantly. Now there are thousands of independent bloggers who share their personal experiences, views, and opinions with their audience on the topic of their preference.
Video blogs, popularly known as VLOGS, are trending nowadays and have a big following. From a mere hobby, blog writing has become a meaningful profession for many writers.
There are no doubt online tools to take plagiarism tests, but apart from those paid and free tools, several other tips can help a freelance writer be a successful blogger.
Challenges faced by bloggers:
What engages the audience is a blog that is entertaining and, at the same time, informative. Thus bloggers need to make use of their creativity.
On the contrary, upon finding, it has become evident that in the digital platform, many blogs are almost identical with minimal or no difference between each other at all.
The case of plagiarism is one issue that gravely concerns bloggers. They face challenges like blind copying of themes, images, format, and even the entire content.
The viewers are the best judge in this case. They can identify plagiarized content quicker than the content creator as they can easily monitor new updates and compare them with original ones. Other than that, plagiarism detector tools or online plagiarism scanners can quickly check for plagiarism.
Tips on Preventing Plagiarism in Blog Writing
Channelizing creativity:
The rule of blog writing is simple, providing the audience with helpful information. Viewers value an original and informative written piece over a copy on any given day.
Especially when the blogs are available under a single keyword, copied blogs do nothing other than spoil the writer’s image for the audience. The challenge then becomes gaining back the trust and loyalty of the audience once more.
Instead of being dependent on others, the writer should brainstorm and develop a novel idea for blog writing. Channelize one’s creativity to create unique yet straightforward content for blogs.
Grasp over language:
Writing blogs is two-way: reaching out to people with helpful information and urging people to read the content. It depends on the readability of the content.
The writer himself or herself must have a good grasp of the language. Even when they take inspiration from others’ content, they do not indulge in blind copying and instead try to rephrase and construct their sentences.
The blogger must be confident about the chosen language to make the blog understandable to the readers. Bloggers may use their regional language or mother tongue to connect better to the local crowd.
The language in which a blog is written becomes a mode of expression and not a tool for publicity. It also allows writers to express themselves freely, thus reducing the chances of plagiarism.
Copyright:
Many schemes have been adopted to protect bloggers’ interests and their creations from unauthorized access. Using copyright over content is one such. It restricts the entry of outsiders over the creators’ original content, shedding chances of content theft.
Having copyright over content enables bloggers to have legal rights over their creations. It empowers them to take legal action against the offenders. In the case of copyright infringement, the offender may encounter face loss and monetary loss.
Freelance writers should also be cautious not to use copyrighted content, leading them to face legal consequences.
Citation:
The best way to safely use other writers’ content is to give due credit to the original creator. It can be done with proper citation and acknowledgment – whether printed or digital content, citation plays a vital part in preventing plagiarism in blog writing.
Even beginners must know the citation style to avoid plagiarism accusations of using images, lines, quotes, or ideas that initially belonged to someone else.
Being up-to-date:
Knowing about the competitor’s content serves two purposes; firstly, it informs the blogger which topics should be avoided for their upcoming blog to reduce the possibilities of repetition of content. Repetitive content is much less likely to reach the target audience and not-to-mention
impresses them.
Secondly, it keeps the blogger updated on which areas are less explored by others so that they can delve deeper into that area.
Plagiarism detector:
For proofreading, bloggers may use different text comparison tools readily available online. They work as excellent plagiarism detectors, highlighting similar words, phrases, and sentences within a few minutes, thus ruling out the duplicated written piece.
However, instead of choosing any cheap anti-plagiarism checker, one should choose the best in the market, a plagiarism detection tool that can provide an almost accurate result in real-time. A software application often fails in front of the human mind.
Hence, a plagiarism checker tool that is AI-based can be an apt solution for anyone because artificial intelligence is very humane to a great extent. Thus, it can identify those mistakes that human intelligence can determine and even those that a software plagiarism checker for students can evaluate.
Knowing one’s strength:
All professions demand some expertise from the person engaged in them. In blog writing, expertise is that it requires in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. If the blogger knows the matter they are dealing with, it is possible that they are not likely to plagiarize.
The secret of being a successful blogger lies in choosing one’s area of interest. Bloggers deliver relevant information to the audience, which demands they have gathered knowledge about the subject matter.
They are responsible for providing authentic information to the mass for that purpose. Also, one must know about one’s strengths and work on them rather than imitating what others have already done and achieved considerable recognition.
Conclusion
There is no denying that plagiarism is not always intentional. Writers may develop a similar theme, but the two writers’ approaches are still different even towards the same theme. The bloggers may be deeply influenced by each other, but they should also have mutual understanding and respect towards each other’s work and not indulge in plagiarism.
