Instagram Best Practices: Don’t Share Other People’s Work As Your Own. Here’s What To Do Instead.

You see a cute, catchy phrase on Instagram, you save it and then you go to Canva to make it on brand for you to post on Instagram.

Yes, catchy and relatable phrases with a cute on-brand design are great content and will get more engagement than most pretty photos these days. BUT you can't just use someone else's phrase. Some will even add their handle to the design, which is even worse! When you get a relatable and catchy phrase and you redo it in the style of your brand that's theft of someone else's work.

Just because you screenshot it, doesn't mean you can appropriate. The owner of the copyright is the creator unless they have created the image/text/icon for their employer, in which case the business owns the copyright. And if someone else uses that content on their marketing, including social media, that's copyright theft.

So what do you do instead?

👉 Create your own relatable content.

👉 Do a parody of existing relatable content.

I crated this parody image for a post and it was one of our Superposts™ (top performing posts). Parody is a great way to tap into the trends and do your own thing, remain original and also on brand.

👉Share directly from the creator with proper credit —and for this one, make sure you do a google search before, so you don't share and credit the thief instead.

Original work is the way to go. It will make you gain followers and engagement. It will put you in a thought leader position (even if just the thought leader of fun and witty things). It will make your brand remarkable and make you grow. Trust me on this one.

PS2: If you like these conversations, there's more on our Instagram @yoursocialteam, plus biweekly free mini classes on our IGTV! See you there.

PS3: We absolutely love Canva. It helps us to create great on brand content very easily. But use it to create your own! Canva Pro is a game changer. (this is an affiliate link but the commission comes out of their regular price, no cost to you).

FEBRUARY 17, 2020