Pinning from the original source is vitally important to artists and bloggers. It generates traffic for us. A wrongly pinned project diverts traffic from your own original post and all the hard work it represents.
Apart from the recent "scraper scandals" you may be hearing about {stealing bloggers' content}, some of our very own are using the pin button in dubious ways ~putting it right next to or on top of your featured project photo. This hurts all of us.
I am VERY picky about pinning. You'll see language and/or these signs plastered on my linky parties and features. I want you to get credit when it comes to YOUR work.
Receiving lots of traffic from Pinterest, I value it. But like any artist, I want it done properly.
And legally.
I've left comments asking for a pin to be edited on the few occasions when, despite my pleas on my posts, your work has been pinned from my blog:
Alas, after making 3 of these comments in a row, Pinterest barred me from commenting. Arrgh! I've emailed Pinterest but it took several months to have my commenting ability restored.
So.... when I received a FANTASTIC Pinterest tip from Kirstin over at Craftiments to help encourage pinning from the original post, I put it to use immediately! She showed how to make a message like this pop up for any image on your blog that is not your own:
Actually, I started having fun with the messages I embedded to discourage pinning linky party features or the amazing projects from my Inspiring Creative Women series:
But THEN, Kirstin discovered another tip that will make a photo un-pinnable from your blog. Even if you don't host a linky party or feature other people's work on your blog, many folks would want to use this tip to prevent family photographs from being pinned.
Go check out Kirstin's blogging tip on Encouraging the Pinner to Go to the Original Source for the 411 on how to do this. I had been using the original tip on all recent features because: YOU are WORTH it! Now, I'm applying this new and improved tip.
And here's my pledge to you: When you party with me or are featured here at I Gotta Create!, I will not steal your traffic by encouraging pins of your work from my blog. I value our relationship. I value your hard work and your ideas. And I value my own integrity. I always ask that visitors click on the link to your blog before pinning. In the past, if they chose to violate pinning policy and copyright law, they received a funny pin description that has a link to your post so they can edit the pin for proper attribution. Often people don't know better, so this grabs their attention and educates. From here on out, I will use Kirstin's tip so that your work cannot be erroneously pinned from my blog.
Remember Your Power! You vote with your clicks and your links. You make a blog or a party popular with your support. Link up and browse at parties that respect you and your work.
Leave me a comment and share what's on your mind about this.
You can browse more tips at the Blog Tips Cafe by clicking *here.*
Link up your DiY, Crafts, and more
at the Wildly Original Linky Party !
{I host a weekly linky party. Come find out more here! I'm sharing this Pinterest Woes, Scrapers & Your Power with...Monday: Craftomaniac, Making The World Cuter, Alderberry Hill, Skip to My Lou, Cherished Bliss; Tuesday: Not Just a Housewife, Nap-Time Creations, The DIY Dreamer, Tip Junkie, Today's Creative Blog, Savvy Southern Style, Uncommon, What We Wore & Made, Gingersnap Crafts, The NY Melrose Family. Elizabeth & Co.; Wednesday: The 36th Avenue, Live-Laugh-Rowe, Someday Crafts, Handy Man Crafty Woman, The Trendy Treehouse, Snap; Thursday: Johnny in a Dress, My Repurposed Life, Tidy Mom, Shabby Nest; Friday: Funky Junk Interiors, Anything Goes, Finding Fabulous, My Simple Home Life, Romantic Home, French Country Cottage, Tatertots and Jello, Thirty Handmade Days, Naptime Crafters, Stuff & Nonsense, One Creative Mommy; Saturday: Be Different Act Normal, Tutus & Tea Parties, Positively Splendid, Sew Country Chick; Sunday: Nifty Thrifty Things, DIY Project Parade, Under The Table and Dreaming, My 1929 Charmer, Sew Darned Crafty; Overflowing}
24 comments:
I have a question.... (hope it's not silly) but what about pinning right from Pinterest? How does that fit into all of this?
~Bliss~
My understanding is that works great if the pin you are "re-pinning" is correctly sourced. If it was pinned from a source other than the original post, then that {wrong} source is getting the 'credit.'
Great information! I have a photo pinned from my blog that I mistakenly included my personal information, such as name, address, phone number and email. I have sent numerous requests to Pinterest to delete the picture, but I haven't heard back from them and it hasn't been deleted yet! :( I know I need to be way more careful and will now consider blocking personal family photos from being pinned!
Great post Christina! I completely agree! Angie xo
ok- i do not have a blog, i follow some very interesting blogs and do occasionally pin things. i do not know if this is how problems are being caused. i do not have any interest in doing so. occasionally i receive a notice that someone has followed something that i have pinned. is this a problem?? How do some people just not have enough to do and have to find a way to corrupt this information avenue???
Wow...so much great information here! :D
Thank you, Christina! Your integrity is much appreciated!
I agree! I have a lot of pet-peeves when it comes to pinning... Some projects may be self-explanatory just by the picture, but sometimes you need more info and the original blog is the only place you're gonna get that, so it just makes sense to pin from the original artist.
Thank you so much! Just went back and made some stuff un-pinnable on a few of my recent posts. Never knew how to do that before.
I appreciate all the time and effort you've taken to educate, inform and find a way to fix the problem! Your proactive approach is inspiring, and I will for sure be more aware to give credit where credit is due.
Hi Christina,
Thanks for linking this great post to my par-tay. You were the first to bring this issue to my attention, & I'm so grateful. Thanks for spreading the word! At a blog conference, I learned that another strategy is to watermark our photos. That way if they end up in the wrong spot, we are still credited.
Warmly, Michelle
You're so welcome! And you're right that watermarking photos is essential. It won't give you the page clicks in terms of proper credit, but an interested person can track down your blog at least. :)
Loving the conversation... Keep it coming!
I agree with all you've said. I feature on my link party. I click each of the features open in a new tab and pin that way. However, if someone pins a pin to the featured party page, yeah I get a pageview, but because it's only one picture, the person viewing the pin will still need to hop over to the original source.
If only there was a school for pinning! so many people are clueless. I've seen great pins pinned to the HOME page of a blog. I searched and searched for the correct post on one of those last week. I gave up. I repinned it because I wanted to save the picture as inspiration, but I made a note of it in the pin text.
thanks for sharing @ catch as catch can!
gail
Good info indeed. I am following and put a link back on my blog so I remember to visit again.
Joy
I'm a very new blogger, I have used photos but asked the original source permission, if I haven't received permission I leave out the photo and just pop a link saying go see this
I'll be looking at how to add this information to ensure even the pics I have permission to use are pinned back to the original
Thanks for the tips
I love pinterest, but you are correct in that people don't always pin correctly, so I'm glad you and others are trying to get the word out. My pinning pet peave is when people put all the instructions in the pin, so repinners don't ever go to the original source, thus diverting traffic to our blog. It's even worse when people make up the instructions, so when someone like me who always goes to the website sees it, they realize the instructions don't even match. Ugh! Thanks for letting me vent. I plan to visit your next linky party too!
GREAT tip Christina!!!!
Thanks so much for sharing this at The DIY Dreamer... From Dream to Reality!
Awesome info! Thanks so much!
Hi,
I'm not a blogger but am an avid pinner and more so in the past month. I've always saved the post as a "Favourite". I didn't use Pinterest for quite some time; I was afraid it would disappear and all of my pinning hard work would be gone. So when I started using Pinterest much more often I was doing double the work - Favourites and Pinterest; now for the most part I just pin. I do backup my favourites at least once a month so even if my computer goes wonky I still have all my favourites. Paranoid? Yep, had my motherboard burn up about 5 years ago and hadn't backed up for about six months! Ouch!!!
Anyhoo, on with the show. I've just read all your comments and found I've been doing something that I shouldn't and will stop immediately, in fact, I'm going to go back to some recent pins and edit my pins - leaving instructions in the Comments. It makes sense why not so have stopped.
Right from the very start I knew to pin directly from the source. It's only fair! There was something I wanted to pin and did what I always do: clicked on the picture looking for the source; which, of course, takes me to the source. Only this pinner had no source so I kept going back through each pin - I stopped after the 30th person and went back to where I originally saw and repinned. Like My Repurposed Life I put what I did in the comment section.
Pet Peeve: if you find something on a blog that is not in English please make note in the comment section, please.
I've just discovered Google Translate and it's so easy to use. Can you hear the "But"? You can't pin from the translated page; you have to go back to the page in the original language and pin from there. Just means a couple of extra steps.
I have some questions re Pinterest and have some ideas about Pinterest. Don't know if this is the right forum, though. I've sent several emails to Pinterest and have never got a reply. I understand they're likely extremely busy but just the same.....
Thanks for your post. It has helped me quite a bit and now I'm off to correct some of my errors.
Cathy
This was really informative. Thank you for taking the time to share it. It is so important to try and pin from the source.
Great information and sharing with us. I always pin from the source! Thanks for sharing your creative inspiration with Sunday’s Best – you helped make the party a success!
You bring up some great points. Love how you are able to modify your comments on the pin:)
Thanks for writing this information. I went to the other blog and will be using her method to block pinning of certain pictures. I have always been careful to give credit to sources, but always hated it when someone pinned another's project from my site. It makes me feel like a cheat.
Thanks for this post.
I just started researching how to best protect photos and designs on the internet. I am going to visit the site you mentioned when I finish here...but I wonder if there is more information you could share with me?
Your experience would be very much appreciated and credited to you when I share with my readers.
Please respond to tracy@crochethappy.com
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