The expansion of digital media and social media has given appropriate exposure to many aspirant writers. Primarily people who have a passion for writing have found the ideal platform through blog writing.
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Blogs are an informative piece of writing which resembles an 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 review, marketing, and such things.
Bloggers should know about the importance of plagiarism and the ways to avoid them.
However, with time the popularity of blogs has increased significantly. Now there are thousands of independent bloggers who share their personal experiences, views, opinions with their audience on the topic of their preference.
Video blogs or popularly known as VLOGS are also trending nowadays and have a big following. Gradually from a mere hobby, blog writing has evolved as 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 theme, 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 scanner can also quickly check for plagiarism.
Tips on Preventing Plagiarism in Blog Writing
Channelizing creativity:
The rule of blog writing is simple, providing the audience with useful information. On any given day, viewers value an original and informative written piece over a copy.
Especially when the blogs are available under a single keyword, copied blogs do nothing other than spoiling 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 sentences of their own.
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 provides writers the liberty to express themselves freely, thus reducing the chances of plagiarism.
Copyright:
There has been the adoption of many schemes to protect the bloggers’ interest and protect their creation from unauthorized access. Using copyright over content is one such. It restricts the entry of outsiders over the original content of the creators shedding chances of content theft.
Having copyright over content enables bloggers to have legal rights over their creation. 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.
The 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 the beginners must be aware of the citation style to avoid plagiarism accusations using images, lines, quotes, or ideas that initially belong 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 as to which areas are less explored by others so that they can delve deeper into that area.
Plagiarism detector:
For proofreading, bloggers may make use of 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 realtime. 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 it. In blog writing, the expertise is that it requires in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. If the blogger knows that 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 always not intentional. Writers may develop a similar theme, but 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.
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