blogs

Starting a craft blog can be a fun but also daunting prospect. If you are a blog lurker and eager to start your own blog but not quite sure what to write or if you already have a craft blog and would like to build your audience and participate more fully in the craft blog community – then tune in over the coming weeks for tips and ideas on how to build a better craft blog.

1. Be polite:
Craft blogging is about building communities and ‘meeting’ people of like interests, sharing ideas and being inspired. Craft blogs are places where people are expressing and sharing their ideas, and these ideas should be respected. Its ok to not like other peoples stuff and its ok to say so – but rudeness and meanness is never ok. So whether you are commenting on someones elses blog or writing about something on your own blog – try your best to not be nasty.

2. Link your sources:
When you mention someone else on your blog, a quote, an image or a post – always link the source. A simple [via] is sufficient, if it is a new idea/new thing that you found while surfing the web, it is not only respectful and polite to mention where you found the idea, but its in the web spirit to share the love around.

If you do post and link, don’t expect a reciprocal link just for the hell of it – these will come but are certainly not mandatory – generosity tends to be catching.

Don’t repost the whole of someone else’s post – reposting a quote is fine – but not the whole thing.

3. Sourcing images:
Do you have to ask permission before reposting an image? This is a tricky area and I don’t have a definitive answer, on whipup we simply don’t have time to ask everyone for permission and we feel that it is good publicity for the image owner, we use images in the spirit of sharing news and information.

However if you are a new blog then it might be wise to begin by asking for permission before reposting images. If you don’t ask permission before using an image then you must:

Remove the image if the owner does not want it used. If you have posted an image to your website and the author of the image contacts you to ask for it to be removed then you must do this immediately.

Give full credit for every image and link back to the author of the image. This is absolutely essential – to note where you found the image, who the author of the image is and link back to their website. If you have forgotten or can’t find it again – then don’t use it.

Do not use the image if the blog or website specifically requests that images not be used without permission. Some blogs will have a little section in their sidebar that says please don’t use my images without permission – you must respect this.

Never hotlink an image. Hotlinking or stealing of bandwidth is considered very bad manners – if you want to repost an image you saw somewhere then download it and upload it to your server.

Do not use an image if it will damage or diminish the value of the work in any way. This means using an image in a derogatory way – making fun of it or being mean about it or the creator.

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