It was drilled into my head not to copy, cheat or plagiarize. In college, I was a History major and was constantly told that if I didn’t cite sources or give credit to where credit is due that I would be immediately sent to the Honor Committee.
Much of that obviously still reigns true, except there are some blurred lines as to what is actually copying and the extent of “stealing” ideas. Most of our minds in school were molded to think in black or white, if someone used that idea then it was immediately off limits or face the risk of plagiarizing that idea.
Much of these thoughts raced through my head currently, when I’m constantly asked “My competitor did that, so if I do it wouldn’t it be copying?” “Am I stealing my competitors idea?” “Why would I want to copy competitor x?”
These are all valid points, but what’s stopping you from using what worked for a competitor and making it better, or casually debating the topic that you know they got wrong, or even building off of the foundation they already set with the blog post? As marketers, we are constantly pushed to develop the best and most content over competitors to get our audience’s attention. Did you know that blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links? Think about that in terms of the potential links you could gain with the added number of posts you could write.
Original Infographic via Content +
Taking a look at your competitors’ most successful blog posts can help improve your own strategy when you are trying to outline what content to write and potentially how engaging it can be. It’s not copying, plagiarizing, or stealing ideas; you are simply strategizing, while gaining the competitive advantage through what if working best with your competitors blog and producing it into your own successes.
How to Use Competitors’ Blog Posts for Your Marketing Advantage
If they got over 500 social shares of a post, a sudden surge in monthly uniques, or links to that post constantly? Don’t you want that too? I sure do.
Maybe you can’t replicate it exactly, but knowing how to mold what content that has worked for them into your own strategy can improve your content marketing as a whole.
1. Using the Same Idea, but Better
As much as you don’t want to admit, face it, sometimes your competitors think of some pretty good ideas here and there. You’re then posed with the conundrum of “Why didn’t I think of that?” However, channeling that energy to something more plausible and less frustrating can score you the marketing advantage. What’s stopping you from using that idea, but making it better. You can see first hand how the results of the blog post did with it’s social shares, potentially how much traffic and/or traction they received from it as well.
Let’s say competitor x wrote about the What is Big Data, you could make your own blog post How Big Data Can Improve Your Marketing. So maybe you took the big data idea, but you made it better by making it a little more granular and showing the direct advantage your reader will get out of reading your blog post.
Social media sites and blogs reach 8 out of 10 of all U.S. Internet users and account for 23% of all time spent online. Creating better posts from already successful ones can command attention to your post. Granted, making the post “better” could be subjective and you would need to test the results; however, there is a higher probability of it working for you if it worked for a competitor because of the similar audience you share.
You also, can see the other side of this…if your competitor posted a blog post and it completely flopped, maybe you shouldn’t dive into that territory.
2. Rebuttal
This sometimes may be the easiest ways to use your competitors’ blog posts to your marketing advantage, while also crushing the thoughts of “stealing” your competitors’ ideas.There have been countless times where I have read posts and completely disagreed with what the author was saying. These thoughts have also arisen from posts from competitors, only fueling the fire more for disagreement.
Use your disagreeing thoughts into a well formulated rebuttal blog post. Citing stats or giving a potential review of the other side of the argument also helps give your potential buyers (who may be conflicted between you and a competitor) a useful take on the argument that they can thank you for.
Although, I wouldn’t suggest going after competitors negatively in blog posts, these rebuttals may spur discussion and more engagement into your blog, social media and could potentially create a co-opetition between you and your competitor.
3. Building off the Foundation
Building off of your competitors’ blog posts goes well with the idea of taking one of your competitors’ blog posts and making it better. However, it can simply be adjusted by building more to the post because they were bound to leave something off of theirs and/or maybe they also lacked in promoting the content out as well.
Another idea to this could be by repurposing their content with something more from your end. So maybe they wrote about “x topic” and you could build that content into a bigger white paper, ebook or Slideshare for your own blog post. That only builds up your own competitive advantage. Creating more content always produces more results.
There’s this constant stress and pressure that other marketers place on each other to develop unique content. And it’s a point that I fully agree with and feel that pressure everyday. However, using, repurposing and debating competitors’ is a form of unique content and shouldn’t be considered otherwise. No where in this post am I saying you copy word for word what your competitors are writing because that is plagiarism; however, using their most successful ideas into your own can help your blog succeed. As Austin Kleon states in his book Steal Like An Artist, “Nothing is original, so embrace influence, col-lect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own [marketing] path.”