Can You Copy Someone’s Blog Posts?
Copying someone else’s blog posts would be a bad idea. Wouldn’t it?
Google might penalize you for it; they might even de-list your site. And then you’ve got the whole ethical and moral aspect, because, yeah, you’d be stealing from someone.
But what I’m about to suggest doesn’t violate any of those boundaries. If someone in your category of business is writing good content and creating ongoing blog posts that are knocking it out of the park, don’t take their words, but definitely consider their topics.
If you’re a plumber and you come across another company’s blog post entitled 3 Things You Should Do to Keep Your Drains From Clogging, well, those are three things that probably anyone should do. And maybe you have a fourth thing you want to add.
Don’t copy and paste their post. That’s stealing. That’s a bad idea and copyright infringement is a crime. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. One of the cool things about Shortcut Content is that we use personal interviews to create all of our clients’ content. You can use some of your competitor’s topics, without even reading the material, and tell us about them in your own words.
The content we help create at Shortcut Content is always 100% original, even if the topic came from a competitor, because the stories all come out of our customers’ mouths. And they’re always going to tell it in a unique way.
We’ve even written before about repurposing old blog posts. You can copy your own topics by going back a year and using your old posts. All you have to do is come at them from a different direction, maybe using the new information and experience you’ve gained over the year. If you source your written work from audio, it’s going to be different every time.
You can always use our free brainstorming exercise to come up with 64 of your own topics in less than hour. You’ll find that and more cool stuff (at least we think it’s cool) at ShortcutContent.com.
updated: April 5, 2018