Steemit 101 - writing posts and plagiarism

Welcome back to my next episode of steemit 101. Today we are going to talk about how to write your posts, what to avoid and plagiarism.

Use Markdown

So I covered how to use Markdown in a previous episode so I'm not going to cover that, if you want to check that out click here. using markdown, you should always title each part of your content with a heading as I have done here, especially if you're talking about multiple items within your content. It gives your audience an idea of what they are about to read.

Don't forget to clean up your links as well it's much neater to include a click here link than a long url. Markdown can be used in a multitude of ways to make your post a lot easier to read than an endless wave of text.

Always include a picture

Although you may not be posting photography and may be writing a story or a poem etc but always include a picture that relates to the context of your post. Yes you can use images from google but if you do and they are not your own original content you will need to include the image sources linking to where you found them, as we know images on google are considered open source but steemit is about originality and new content so if you are using someone elses intellectual property then you should give them the credit for that content so you aren't trying to pass it off as your own, it's quite simple and just requires you to copy the link of where you found it and list them at the end of your post under Image source. To check out how to do it just scroll to the bottom of this post and you'll see how I have credited the images I have used.

Avoid plagiarism

Im not sure if you have heard of Cheetah but it is a Steemit bot that checks your content against google based on what you are writing for similarities, so if you copy and paste a large segment of an article you found on google cheetah bot will leave you a comment listing where you copied the text from and more than likely people will down vote you for plagiarism which will hurt your reputation score and nobody wants to be know as a plagiariser. In fact on one of my posts which I took my power up segment from my Steemit economy post and created a post just on powering up cheetah tagged me because I used my own content.

You can use other articles as a reference as we all research our posts often on google to get a greater insight into what we are writing but if you are using something as a reference for your post list it at the end of your article by simply writing 'reference sources' and list the articles you used as a reference.

Plagiarising is not something you want to do on Steemit, this platform is about original content that enriches the blockchain, if we wanted to read something you found on google we would go on google and search it. If you get tagged by cheetah bot you will get down voted and once your reputation hits a certain low level it will restrict who can see your content, meaning you'll earn nothing anymore.

I hope this article has helped some of you with something that isn't really explained on Steemit but is very important, facebook is full of copy and paste shit and the community of Steemit doesn't want it bleeding into Steemit.

Listing the image and sources of reference will also make you post look more professional and show that you actually went and researched what you're writing which is a bonus!.

If theirs anything you would like to see in a help topic let me know in the comments.

For more help blogs check out:

• Upvoting
• Payouts, Steem dollars, Steem power, Steem
• How to Power up!
• Using Markdown to liven up your content
• Introduce yourself!
• Use of Tags
• Cashing out Steem into your bank account - Part 1
• Cashing out Steem into your bank account - Part 2
• Interacting with your viewers

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