?Bonjour!?
Welcome to the Internet in 2012, where everything your read online is true, because they can?t write things that aren?t true online, right? Isn?t it wonderful?
Fantasy worlds and State Farm commercials aside, unfortunately this isn?t the reality we face each time we connect to the web. Instead we face an environment where we must be ever cognizant of the credibility of information we consume online. But we also need to be more aware of our own credibility online, and what it means for our companies and organizations.
Last week on this blog, our CEO Bill Shander wrote about the perceived information overload and the importance of quality content. The credibility of your content is key because even the best produced content cannot overcome a fundamental lack of credibility from the source.
Unfortunately, the net isn?t exactly a place that supports credibility.
Just the other day I read a blog post about tagging taxonomies; it made a few interesting points, so I ran a Google search with some of the phrases the blog post used and found three similar blog posts, all using the same phrasing.
As it turns out, the phrasing was taken from a PBS style guide. Each of these three blog posts I found used the exact phrasing from the PBS document? but never linked back to or cited PBS. What?s more, each of the blog posts used the PBS document as the basis for their own guidelines, each of which were vastly different, and often contradictory. Immediately the credibility of all three sets of guidelines were thrown into question.
All those things you learned in school about writing? They still apply.
Remember playing the telephone game as a kid, where you?d get into a circle and someone would whisper a message to the person to their right and you tried to pass the message around the circle? Remember laughing at what came out at the end of the circle?
That?s what the web is like. People are repeating what they hear and building a chain. Eventually, twenty degrees of separation from the original source, the content has been disfigured and turned into something completely different than originally intended.
With that in mind, there are four very simple things to do to build out, and maintain your credibility online.
1) Link to other credible sources
If any of the posts I read had simply linked to the original PBS document, I could have seen where the idea came from, and seen the differences and disparities between them. Instead, I found myself comparing three similar but altogether different documents and wondering which to trust. In the end, I didn?t trust any of them.
By citing credible organizations you establish credibility in your own content and the information contained therein. Not to mention you avoid the legal issues associated with plagiarism.
2) Make clear what is a quote and what is paraphrase? and what is interpretation
Any time you are analyzing someone else?s work or using it as the basis or inspiration for your own interpretation, you need to make sure the audience clearly knows where the information is coming from. If it is a direct quote, put it in quotation marks. If it is paraphrasing, frame it as such by attributing the information (i.e. ?According to the report??).
This is also where writing for credibility and good writing overlap. In writing for the web, you should always use short paragraphs. This helps break up the wall of text, gives readers place markers, and keeps the message succinct. It also helps in keeping attribution clear. While you will often be using quotes to set up your analysis, keeping those quotes clearly separated from your own contribution will help maintain credibility and clarity in the mind of the reader. If you?re keeping paragraphs short, there is no reason not to separate the quote from your interpretation.
3) Sell to your audience, don?t sell your audience
While a large portion of the web is funded by advertising, and in some cases it is a necessary evil of doing business online, selling ad space or sponsored links on your website can compromise your credibility.
Personally I can say that any time I?m reading an article, and an ad pops up when I hover over an in-text link, I cringe and question the credibility of the source. You may be selling something to your audience, but don?t sell your audience out.
If you must have sponsored links, avoid the kind that appear in the text of your content itself and favor the more common right-side bar type. Also, it can help if you explain the presence of such ads? much like PBS did for their website.
4) Your content is just as important as your functionality
This may seem obvious to some, but it is important to apply the same standard of quality assurance to your content as you do to the functionality on your website. This goes beyond proofreading for spelling and grammar, although those are absolutely essential. You need to ensure that the reader has absolute confidence in your credibility.
Check your content to ensure the messaging is correct, fact-check for accuracy and make sure any external information is properly cited. In short, all those things you learned in school about writing? They still apply.
Whenever you publish something online, you face the same scrutiny as all other web content, and unfortunately that means having to hold up to a constant examination of credibility. Not everything on the web is true, and not everyone is a French model. Take care to maintain your organization?s credibility online.
Source: http://beehivemedia.com/think-it-do-it/everything-on-the-internet-is-true-credibility-online-in-2012
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