Welcome to the second part of my little Why I Blog & How You Can Share it posts. Last week, I shared with you all Why I Blog & What it Takes to give you all a little insight into how much work and time goes into this blog. Now that you all (hopefully) have an idea of why I blog and just how much work goes into this blog, let’s talk about how you can share it with others. As I mentioned, the whole POINT of my blog is to help others understand speech and language development. The whole point of my blog is to help others. So of course I’d love for you all to share my content! But there are some rules to this. And the reason I am bringing this up, is because I recently have been contacted by several SLPs, those who work in EI, and other bloggers & publishers asking to use my content for different things like newsletters and such, and I wanted to be clear how you may (and may not) share my content.
My Work is Copyrighted
Everything on my blog is copyrighted, just like if I were to have published this whole blog in a book form (which I didn’t do because..I wanted to provide information at no cost to the reader, remember?) We all know that it isn’t ok to just copy and paste parts of books wherever you want, even when you site them. This is the same with any blog. Any blog. In fact, as a blogger I have to be careful of other blogs/sites doing something called scrapping. This is when they copy some or all of my content and post in on their own site without permission. This is illegal and it can have negative effects on my blog, which I will explain later.
How You May Share My Content Without Permissions
The following are ways that you may share my content anytime, anywhere without getting personal permission from me. You not only have my permission to share these ways, but IÂ encourage you to share these ways!
Sharing Direct Links
The cool thing about blogs, it the way you can easily share content online by sharing direct links! You can’t do that with a book! 😉 You may share direct links to posts you want to share in emails, in an online newsletter, on any social media platform (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Sulia, etc). You may also “share” pictures and posts that I post on my Facebook page on your own personal or business pages by simply hitting the “share” button. EASY!
Pinning my Posts to Pinterest (And other similar sites)
This is pretty similar to sharing direct links. You have my permission to “pin” one image that links back to the specific post on sites like Pinterest (and similar sites as well). You have my permission to pin! 🙂
Sharing a Snippet on Your Own Blog
I get a lot of requests to reprint a post of mine on another blog. I used to do this sometimes, but no longer am (I will explain further down in the How you may NOT share section). However, if you have a post you like of mine and would to share a little more than the link, here is how you may share it. You may use one picture from the post in question (if you want) and the first 50-75 or so words of the post (as a teaser) or a short intro and then you may THEN link to the post. Simple! Curious how this works? You can see how I did this share my guest posts on other blogs HERE and HERE. Though I will not require permission ahead of time to do this, I would appreciate a heads-up either before or right after you do this 🙂 I love to publicly thank people for sharing my content on Facebook when I can!
Printing out Content and Distributing to Individuals.Â
When I started this blog, I wanted fellow SLPs (and others) to be able to share my blog with the parents of the children they work with. I have had this covered in my Terms of Use page since I first started this blog. On my Terms of Use Page it says the following:
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:
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you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only
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you may copy, print and distribute the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material.
This means, that you may download any of the items I have in PDF (like on the FREEBIES page) on your computer and use them yourself. This also means, if you are an SLP, early childhood educator, EI provider, (or even a parent) you may print out any of my posts and hand them out to an individual (not to GROUPS) that you feel may benefit from the post, being sure that my blog address is included on the printout. So let’s say you are in EI and you want to share my Importance of Pointing post and you have a couple individual parents you think will benefit from the post. Feel free to print out a few copies and give them to the families individually. Please be sure my blog address is easily viewable on the print out.
How You May Share my Content With Permissions
Newsletters
The biggest request I have been getting lately is “Can I use your posts in my newsletters I give out to my parents?” I have thought long and hard about this and have also talked to other bloggers about this. Here is my News Letter Policy:
Online and EMailed Newsletters: If your newsletters are online (like on a website) or are sent in an email form, you may share my content as I have explained above: You may either just provide a link to the post or you may use one picture from the post and the first 50-75 or so words as a teaser, and then link to the post. Again, simple!  You may NOT copy/paste my entire post into your online newsletter without my written permission. If you would like permission to use a full post in a newsletter, you will need to contact me. I’d love for you to also send me a link to the newsletter so I can read too! :)Â
Paper/Printed Newsletters: If your newsletter is in the paper form and you would like to use a post of mine in its entirety in your newsletter, you will need to contact me to get written permission. This is easy: email me at Katie@playingwithwords365.com and in the subject line write PERMISSION FOR NEWSLETTER. If you do not hear from me in three days, email me again. I get behind on emails (because when I am not blogging I try to stay off the computer).
I want to be able to keep track, as best I can, of where my content is being used an by whom.
Other Publications, Presentations & Other Use
If you are interested in using one of my posts in another fashion other than a newsletter that has not been covered, you need to contact me at Katie@playingwithwords365.com and in the subject line write PERMISSION TO USE POST. If you do not hear from me in three days, email me again. For example, I had an SLP contact me regarding my post on Bilingualism and wanted to use it to help prove a case for the need for therapy. Special requests like this will be considered on a case-by-case basis depending on how the post will be used.
I mentioned earlier that it is not OK to print out my content and distribute it to groups. This includes presentations. You will need to contact me if there is something you would like to use in some sort of presentation, and we can discuss my presentation policies.
How you may NOT Share my Content
In my terms of use, it says the following:
You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.
Unauthorized use of this website or its content may give to a claim for damages and/or be a criminal offense.
What this means, is that unless you get my written consent, you may not distribute the content (other than individually, as I already mentioned), you may not use it commercially, nor may you use my content on another website.
So you may NOT:
- Copy and paste my entire content onto any other blog or website (or even a partial post, other than how I outlined it above). This is because it is bad for my blog’s ranking. Google doesn’t like when content is in many places.Â
- Use any of my pictures without permission except as I’ve outlined above (one picture in a teaser post)
- Use full content in an email/online newsletter without written permission.
- Distribute my content to groups, including workshops or presentations, without my written permission.
Questions? JUST ASK!
I can get wordy (big surprise, eh?) so if you have any questions about any of this, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email!
Happy Thursday! It is almost the WEEKEND!!!!
Julie says
Ha! I’m the one that you mentioned in this post that contacted you about trying to prove a need for therapy. 🙂 You were awesomely, shockingly fast in getting back in touch with me via email. Thank you so much for your help in getting a little girl what she needs and making her world of communication even better.
Julie recently posted..Five Lessons I am Learning as a Homeschooling Mama -OR- How I ROCK My Denim Jumper
Katie says
Oh Julie I hope the post helped!!! And this made me tear up..THANK YOU. I really do try to get back to people quickly and I want to help as much as I can! 😀
Heather says
This is very helpful information for non – bloggers. As with paying taxes, ignorance of the law is no excuse! I appreciate this post.
Katie says
Thanks so much Heather! I am so glad you find it helpful! 😀
Nikki Heyman says
Hi Katie
I did drop you an email last week and I really hope I haven’t “tread on toes”. With your current guidelines, I will use your “baby sign language” post on my blog and will let you know when.
Thank you again for a fantastic resource.
Libby Hill says
Hi, that all sounds really sensible but the reality I have found is that if it’s in the public domain, it’s out of your control. The internet is not subject to the same copyright rules as elsewhere. I had a complete blog post about language development on a russian porn site!! Nothing I could do as they’d given me credit for the article. I suppose it’s still spreading the word!
Katie says
Libby, I am so sorry to hear of what happened to your blog. There are risks to blogging, I am aware, and there are also correct and incorrect ways to share content on the internet, which is why I wrote this post. There are ways to have your content removed from sites, regardless if they sited you as a source, however it can be difficult. Going to the host and the advertisers care often the first place to go. Good luck in the future! Thanks for your insight.
Mandy says
Hi Katie,
Our school system has started using a new online educational management system. It is called a moodle and requires a user name and password. This system may eventually be available to parents and I would love to use links to some areas of your blog. Would this be considered an acceptable use or would I need to contact you for permission for each one?
Thanks,
Mandy Mizenis
SLP serving preschool and elementary school students
Katie says
Mandy if it is just links to content, that is TOTALLY fine! You just cannot copy and paste my content somewhere, but links are GREAT! you can even provide a shory=t summary of the post so they get an idea of what it is about. I think that is a FANTASTIC way to share with parents. 🙂
CindyCSpeech says
Katie,
Once again, I am thrilled with your common sense and knowledge and passion for helping parents. Thank you for allowing me to give copy of your posts to parents who are really too crazed to go to the computer and sit down and navigate sites. Many of them take my weekly handouts and scan them during therapy. I am so happy to share your work–with complete credit and many accolades for it. This makes my job easier and some of these parents will log in and continue learning. Thanks again!!
Katie says
You are very welcome Cindy!
Martha Dunkelberger says
HI Katie,
I’m a professor in COMD in Houston. A bunch of my students have used your site as a reference for a paper for me and I’m trying to help them understand how best to cite your work. Can I recommend that you include APA6 citation formats in your “how you can use my content” section? The last couple have cited you as “(Katie, 2011)…which, you know, isn’t terribly helpful or accurate.
Dr. Dunkelberger
Katie says
Hi Martha, thank you- I’ll try to add this soon!