Why Slower Work Wins In The End

Everything always has to have been done yesterday; it’s the nature of living and working in this fast paced digital world. Every day is dominated by deadlines, and in far too many cases of online content, quality, copyright permissions and good relationships are the factors that fall under the wheels in the rush to hit the publish button as soon as possible. It shouldn’t be like that, and at Hailer it isn’t. Work gets done on time, but is done properly. “Better right than twice” is no bad adage to work by.

Here’s a few ways to help you win at this content game in the long run:

Don’t have a suitable image to illustrate an article? Don’t copy and paste one from Google images – that’s just stealing. Find out who produced the image that you like, then e-mail them and ask permission to license their work. If they ask for a license fee and you can’t afford it, say so and keep looking and asking permission for other images. You probably don’t work for free so don’t expect a photographer to, and be grateful if they allow you to use their work free of charge.

Posting an interview, or quoting an interviewee within a larger article? Let the subject review the post and read their contribution in context first, to make sure that they’re happy with how they’re being represented. It’s easy to read something the wrong way, and people’s reputations are at stake. It may insert an extra step and delay in the publication process, but that person will always respond to requests in the future and be happy to share the article that they feature in.

Hyperlink credits on web pages and tag credits on social media posts within the caption. What goes around, comes back around.

Research; know your subject, whatever or whoever it is.

Read source articles and critically analyse them. Is it a credible source? Because if it isn’t then your work automatically defaults to the same low level of credibility as the articles and sources that you’re quoting. Be skeptical, particularly if you’re about to cite somebody’s personal blog, because the next post they write might state that the earth is flat or that there’s no such thing as climate change.

These aren’t “best practice for SEO” tips, or any sort of “how to produce engaging content”. They’re just the things that you should be doing to ensure that when you publish and share content you’re not putting anyone’s nose out of joint, setting yourself up to receive a massive invoice from a stock image library for breach of copyright (they do that), or putting something out there that either serves to spread disinformation or can be picked apart by a keyboard warrior who has taken the time to fact check more than you did.

Oh, and don’t forget to also take the time to proof read your work, because nobody’s perfect.