I met with two new clients last week to discuss their new websites: a personal injury attorney and a real estate agent.  Both don’t have an online presence right now but were excited to get started.  In my initial meeting with both of them, they asked the same question: Can I copy someone else’s content for my website?

In a word: no!  Copying content isn’t kosher.  It’s considered plagiarism (or worse) copyright violation.   In essence, you’re breaking the law.

But that’s not to say that you can’t take ideas from other websites and blogs for use in your own business.

I’m a big believer of modeling the masters.  Picking a handful of mentors and studying the techniques and tactics that they use for their business.  And then applying them to your own.

The same holds true for web design.  When you’re working with a designer, it’s helpful to have a handful of sites that you like to share with them so that they can gauge your design sense and get a feel for the type of look that appeals to you.

When writing copy for your site, I suggest creating a swipe file of ideas to draw from.  Your swipe file can contain articles, salespages and other reference copy.  But I’ve got to stress that the swipe file is just an idea generator, or in the case of salespages, a way to learn how to structure your salespages and learn the basic elements involved.

So the next time you sit down to write content for your blog, be sure that you are creating original content or properly citing sources when you’re referring to the original work of others.

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