Blog Writing: Your First Amendment Rights and Copyright Law

The bedrock of a democracy is the ability to freely exchange ideas and information. Blogging face unique challenges since blogged works generally do not pass editorial review as do its print edition cousins. Since bloggers often reference and quote the works of other authors in their pieces, they need to be aware of not only their first amendment rights but copyright law as well. In addition, astrology bloggers work with a body of knowledge that is in constant discussion in the astrological community. This is illustrated with the proliferation of astrology books, newspaper and magazine articles and columns, lectures and conferences that have exploded in the astrological community within the past forty years. It makes it difficult to discern what is common knowledge and what is material protected under the law. Fortunately we have two pieces of law that help us navigate these areas.

The First Amendment
:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The United States Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, but it does not allow you to infringe on the copyrights of an individual.

Copyright gives the author of an original work exclusive right for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation, after which time the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete and fixed in a medium.

A work needs to be a “fixed medium” to qualify for copyright protection. Discussions in public forums, such as a lecture or a meeting are not protected by copyright. Care needs to be exercised if an individual intends to copyright “any expressible form of an idea”. He or she should not discuss these ideas in a public forum before they are “in a fixed medium” if he intends to exercise an exclusive right to that work.
There are distinct exceptions to copyright law.

Fair Use
“Fair Use” certain uses of copyrighted works are protected under our First Amendment rights. These uses include:
Criticism
Commentary
News Reporting
Parody
Other “transformative “ uses
The U. S. Office of Copyrights explains:

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

The U. S. Office of Copyrights cautions care in the use of copyrighted material for quotations:

The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.

This makes sense. It would be unwise to put an arbitrary limit on the number of words that can be quoted. For instance, should the government mandate a limit of 250 words, then most, if not all of a short blog post could be used. A balance must be struck on a case-by-case basis at the hands of the author as to what should be used to cite a source or illustrate a point. Generally though, the shortest amount of material should be used that adequately illustrates your point. Remember to attribute your quotation to the person whose work you are citing.

Certain Things Cannot Be Copyrighted:

The law also states that a fact is not an original work of authorship. Facts owe their origin to the thing or person that makes them happen. For example, if a reporter wrote a newspaper article about a building fire, she could not copyright the facts about the fire because those facts do not owe their origin to her.


Facts discovered through research, no matter how new and amazing, also do not owe their origin to the researcher. However, the ways facts are recorded — style, choice and arrangement of words — are copyrightable. For example, although an author could not copyright an idea for a new foreign policy strategy, she could copyright her expression of that idea in a newspaper article.

Specific works that cannot be copyrighted are:

Works lacking originality
U.S. government works
Items in the public domain
Facts and unoriginal compilations of facts, like the phone book
Freeware (but NOT shareware which can be protected)

The First Amendment is a guarantee protecting our right to communicate and freely discuss thoughts and ideas. The intent of Copyright law is to protect the property rights of an individual who has created an original work whose style, choice and arrangement of the material is separate and distinct from works before it and that has been placed in a “fixed medium”.

Disclaimer: This work is not intended to substitute for legal advice. As with anything, if you have questions you should consult a qualified professional.

Photo published under a Creative Commons License from Flickr.

SEO Tips: Using Google Analytics to Increase Traffic

Editor’s note: When Jeffrey Kishner, publisher of the number one astrology blog on the internet, Sasstrology offers to write a post for Astro Blogging, you’d be crazy to say no. And I wouldn’t, ever. Thanks, Jeffrey!.

by Jeffrey Kishner

The success of my current blog, Sasstrology, is partially a fluke. A few years ago, I was blogging regularly at Lunar Tunes Astrology. Most of my posts were about the New and Full Moons. However, I found – through the use of a blog statistics tool like Google Analytics – that many of my new readers found the blog by searching for stuff like, “How to get a Scorpio man interested.” Although I never explicitly wrote about the astrology of seduction, there was enough content in my blog posts (and from reader comments) that Google matched its googlers with my blog.

On a lark, I decided to try an experiment: start a new blog, and just write posts based on these romance-related google searches. Seduction Central – “the blog formerly known as Sasstrology” – was born, and it thrived.

Why? Because I was taking advantage of the long tail. Many folks may google “Taurus man,” but not as many google “How to get my Taurus man to come back to me.” Since I wrote blog post titles that targeted these less frequent search queries, my posts were more likely to rise to the top in these searches.

How to Find Long-Tail Searches Using Google Analytics

Once you sign up, follow the instructions in Googles Installation Guidefor installing the tracking code. There is also a plug-in for self-hosted WordPress Blogs. Unfortunately, you cannot install the tracking code on blogs hosted on WordPress.com.

When you scroll down, you’ll see the phrases that readers used to find your blog via a search engine. For example, the screenshot below shows the top 10 searches that include the phrase, “Taurus man.”

If I wanted to attract some good blog traffic, I’d write, “How to make a Taurus man propose.”

Of course, the types of posts you’d want to write about would be related to your current blog content, so instead of “Taurus man,” you might find searches like, “North Node conjunct Midheaven.” It is of primary importance that you cater to your current readers more than to Google, so don’t just write a post based on analytics. However, looking at keyword searches is a great way to find what your prospective readers are looking for, which will help you write content that both satisfies your fans and brings in new ones.

About the Author
Jeffrey Kishner is editor/publisher of Sasstrology. He is also a regular contributor at AOL Horoscopes. Jeffrey is available for professional consultations regarding WordPress blogs and social media optimization. You can contact him at jeffreykishner@gmail.com.

Blog Challenge: Make New Friends

Network

When I was a Girl Scout, (yes, I was) there was a little round we sang:

“Make new friends but keep the old,
One is silver and the other gold.”

Neeti Ray has shown through her own blogging efforts how networking can help promote a blog. Barely a year old, her blog is on the blog roll of many sites that I ‘m not on after two years of blogging. It doesn’t hurt that her posts are beautifully written and insightful, but clearly she has the Leo gift for charming new followers. And how does she do this? She makes friends.

She follows blogs. She comments regularly on them. She engages the blog authors in conversations. Recently, she posted an article that shows just how many astrologers with who she’s had conversations. Networking plain and simple.

Sometimes, some of us that have been blogging for a while forget this simple concept. Either we are engaged in our writing efforts or trying to manage the flow of communication that comes at us from our readers, or life happens and we have to pay attention to something other than blogging. Yet if we want to grow our audience, we need to draw attention to ourselves.

Here is your challenge for today. Go to five other astrology blogs and leave an insightful, meaningful comment on the most recent piece. Lets AMP up the challenge and let’s say you visit only two that you’ve visited before and three you haven’t. Keep tabs on the results and see who visits you because of it.

Go out and make some new friends and let your old ones know you are still around. Then drop me a line and let me know how it worked for you

Promoting Your Astrology Blog: Keywords and Search Words

To the left is not an instance of blog deja vu, but an illustration of Google’s Search Engines’ inventory of the keywords and search words on a recent blog post. Its no secret that to drive traffic you need to get the attention of the search engines, though some people aren’t sure how far to go with them. This recent post shows quantity counts. The more of a keyword or search word that you use, the more likely it is that Google will recognize that your post is actually about the subject you are writing about.

What you don’t see from this illustration is that Google inventoried everything on the page to see if the content was relevant to the search. The blog title was inventoried, as well as the titles of recent posts categories and also the titles of the Blog Roll. Talk about being thorough!

Since Saturn, from the way the post was written was mentioned umpteem times, the Search Engine felt confident enough, even though in Google’s eyes this blog is only days old, to list this post within the Top Ten results on the search “Saturn Astrology”.

Promoting Your Astrology Blog: Facebook and Viral Marketing

LIke anything in marketing you toss oatmeal at the wall and see what sticks.
I’ve been experimenting with Facebook and its different apps. Facebook has its advantages and as well as its limitations. Unless you put up a Page your audience is limited to your friends. People aren’t used to searching out pages, not just yet, so unless you pay for an ad you are counting on luck to develop your audience. It’s interesting to see who your fans are, and through insights, what demographics you draw. That is valuable information.

Facebook explains their engagement rating:

When you create compelling content, your fans may choose to interact with the material by commenting, liking, or writing on your Wall. These fans help to spread your content virally throughout Facebook, as their engagement leads to organic stories being published in their friends’ News Feed.

Your Post Quality is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page. It is calculated on a rolling seven-day basis. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar Pages (for example, Pages that have a similar number of fans.)

To increase the number of Interactions and improve your Post Quality you may consider:
Making sure that your posts, whether they are Status Updates, photos, links, or videos, are relevant to your fans. Posting engaging content is the best way to get people to interact with your Page.
Posting frequently, but not posting an overwhelming amount of content that users may find spammy or burdensome to consume.
Increasing your total fan base to generate more interactions: Promote your page with an ad

However, Pages is useful in other ways. During the time my 451 Press blog died and when I put up the new site, Pages was a useful way to stay connected with some on my readers. For this reason alone, even if it seems that much isn’t happening with your Facebook Page, it is worthwhile to put it up.

The Networked Blogs app is interesting but like Pages is slow to build audience. Again, Facebook encourages you to buy ads. The advantage of Networked Blogs is that it will post your latest entry from your blog to your profile and your page automatically, which is useful.

You can also link your Facebook Page to Twitter, which will tweet automatically your latest page entries, including your Networked Blog links. Since your Page is not linked to your Facebook profile, this is a safer way to tweet your Facebook Page activity, since a previous hack of Twitter left Facebook users vulnerable to identity theft.

Facebook has its uses in promoting your blog and shouldn’t be overlooked in your promotion strategy.

Reader’s Question: Promoting Traffic For Your Astrology Blog

Hi Beth!

How have you been? I see you moved to Astrology Media Press. I just read your article there on the astrology bloggers who lose interest and abandon their blogs, and I feel like I’m starting to fit that profile. =( I’m still enjoying blogging, but my numbers are really down. You were nice enough to send me some info. awhile back on adding tags and keywords, but I never got around to doing it. I was just wondering if you could tell me exactly how to do that . . .

I can’t move to AMP as we discussed, because my material is not original, and I’m not looking to charge, so having a PayPal button is not important to me. Thanks for any tips.

Starperson

Dear Starperson,

I’ve been extremely busy setting up the AMP site and pages and getting things off the ground. Well, its here and ran right into Mercury Rx so little things keep cropping up that demand my attention. But I still find time to blog.

Keeping your interest up, and avoiding blogger’s block, especially when your numbers are down, is the main challenge for any blogger. While it is always nice to see that you’ve engaged other people, its good to remember that the original intent of a weblog was to act as a sort of electronic diary. It is really a place to stretch and grow, to generate insights about your thinking processes. As long as you do that, you have reasons (and things) to blog.

Driving traffic is always a hot topic for bloggers. Astrology blogging is such a small niche in the blogosphere, using tags and keys is essential to bringing people to your site. You can read about tags and keywords here. But also, you need to spend more time than the average blogger promoting your site. I know you have a Twitter page and you use it, so keep tweeting. Also, use the search feature in Twitter to find other astrologers and follow them. Most will give you a follow back.

Networked Blogs app and Pages in Facebook has been a Godsend to me while 451 Press was burping itself out of existence. Both of those helped me to maintain contact some of my readers while the 451 site went up and down. I recommend both these Facebook features to help build traffic to your site.

AMP is set up as a opportunity for astrologers to blog without the restrictions that other networks put on you in terms of how you can promote yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to! But even if a person didn’t want an AMP blog, the AMP Community is set up so people can meet up with like minded souls so check it out. Yes, AMP is young, there is a lot of growing to do, but it has a lot to offer besides a web page.