As a content writer at a marketing agency, I know how important it is to properly cite sources in our client’s blogs as well as social media posts. Not only does giving credit to the original author make them look good, but it also makes you look more credible.
There are many instances where you will need to cite your sources. For example, you will need to cite when:
Basically, for anything you didn’t write yourself, you’ll want to attribute it to whoever did.
The most common way we cite our sources (whether it be an article or a website) within our blogs is by paraphrasing and hyperlinking back to the page where the information originated. You can see an example of how we did this from one of our recent blog posts below.
In this particular instance, we rewrote the information in our own words and made sure it was clear where we sourced it from. By mentioning and hyperlinking the website of the original source, we are giving them full credit and also adding validity to our statement.
When including a direct quote, you’ll want to make sure to include quotation marks, the author’s name, and a link to the article from which it was pulled.
As you can see from one of our previous blogs, we not only quoted Katie Lewis, but we also included the company she works for, her title, and linked the recent interview from which we found the quote.
If you are citing a book within your blog post, you will want to include the author, the title of the book, and their statement in quotation marks.
When in doubt, include as much information about the author as possible. It doesn’t hurt to over credit, but it does to under credit.
Giving credit on social media is fairly easy to do across all platforms. The most common way to cite your sources on social media is by reposting original content. When you repost, all of the details should carry over (including the author’s name or username), so there’s little or no additional information you’ll need to provide to give proper credit.
In order to repost on some of the major social platforms, you’ll want to follow these guidelines:
To repost content on Facebook, simply click or tap on the “share” feature at the bottom of the post. A new confirmation window will pop up where you can add your own additional caption (or not) and press “post” once you’re ready to share it to your timeline.
