Linking: The way to share content responsibly

Sharing content is the lifeblood of our social networks and the ability to copy and paste – that innocuous of all skills – has made it possible to  share, steal and skew a wide range of content on line.

For instance, the practice of simply listing a source for content you have copied and pasted to your facebook page is problematic for the same reason that the old parlor game of sharing a story around the room is problematic. Something gets left out, or changed, or completely rephrased. And often it is the source.

To prevent this problem and ensure the original source is properly credited, you need only to understand how to  link correctly. 

Here are the two ways to share links using an example from Globe Miami Times platforms.

1 Share The Post from Facebook: If you receive our posts in your facebook newsfeed, then sharing is simply a matter of hitting the ‘share’ button and posting to your personal or business page. Like most websites, we receive a ton of traffic to our website from facebook fans and we love it when you share our content with your friends! 

 

2Share a URL

But, what happens if you don’t discover us through your FB newsfeed?

Another common way people find our content is through google searches on something they are interested in. Here is how we come up in a google search for Rosa McKay.

To share this web content to your facebook page, you only need to follow a few simple steps:

Copy the URL at the top of the web page to a new Facebook Post on your page:

•       1: for MACs the command is:Command+C to copy, then Command+V to paste(Cntrl C)
•      2: for PCs the command is: Ctrl C  to copy, Ctrl V, to paste.

When you first do this, it will look like this, so you’ll want to clean it up before publishing by following the three steps below. 

 

*Get rid of the extra photo by clicking on the “X” in the upper right corner on one image.

*Click on HIDE the available images

*Delete the url and add your own comment for your FB friends.

Once you do all these things your post will look oh-so-professional!

Here is an example of how your post will look on your page:

 

And here is an example from my personal page following the above guidelines where I shared an  LA Times article on Edward Abbey. 

These simple practices make it possible for readers to follow the source of the content back to its origin.

And that is important for two reasons; (1) It respects the work (and investment) that goes into producing content by writers, photographers, the media, educators, etc and (2) it lessens the “fakeness” of content which has been altered through creative uses of photoshop, misuses of copy & paste and non-existent sources. 

So please share responsibly and link to your sources. 

 

*** A note about the watermarked image you see here.  Our writer reached out to the ASU Library which offers an extensive archive of historic photos, and GMT received permission to use this image in print without the watermark and on line with the watermark seen here.