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As a regular speaker at software conferences around the word, I work hard to make my talks and presentations interesting. And I spend a lot of time trying to share unique ideas, as opposed to regurgitating other people’s thoughts.
If you’ve heard me speak, you’ll have probably noticed that I like my analogies. And one of my favourite marketing analogies is about scratching an itch. However, it’s not about you scratching your own itch – it’s about your customers having a need or problem, and you having a means of solving it.
I’ve been using the analogy extensively in articles and talks for more than five years. You may even have heard me use it.
Today I’ve come across two competitors who are both are using the itch analogy. I didn’t go looking for it; I just happened to stumble across their content.
The question is whether two competitors happened to use the same analogy by complete coincidence? It’s not impossible.
The bigger question is how much it actually matters?
Most people who write extensively online are used to having their words and ideas borrowed by others. Sometimes it’s blatant plagiarism. Sometimes it’s legitimate. And sometimes it’s unintentional.
Our company has had competitors who have copied and pasted pages and text from our web site. One was stupid enough to leave our link in.
We have also had competitors who take our ideas and present them as their own.
And we know of one company who present themselves as experts, but simply regurgitate other people’s ideas. To the extent that I’ve never seen them utter a single unique thought. (You know who you are. At least this one blog posting is probably safe.)
If your business strategy includes presenting yourself as an expert, using other people’s ideas will get you nowhere.
Creating original content is difficult, time consuming and worthwhile.
Copying someone else is easy, quick and worthless.
Nice post, Dave. It’s a classic case of a double-edged sword when posting something online. On one hand, you can be deemed as a genius by those who come across your work; on the other, some wanker can steal your content and claim it as his/hers. I’ve always been careful with how much I write on my blog or even speak about in groups. Although you want to come off intelligent, you also don’t want to be naive to think that someone won’t steal your thoughts. My boss told me one of the best things I’ve ever heard:”I taught him everything he knows, but I didn’t teach him everything I know.” The approach I take is that I give “appetizers” and never an “entree”. If someone wants the entree, you’ve got to be willing to dish out the cash : ) Cheers.
Very wise words!!