If you deal with business-to-business marketing and worry about having the time to generate lots of original content, here’s some good news — readers don’t care. Give them useful information with your own touch and it’ll do just fine.
BTW, I’m demonstrating the point right now; this topic was first covered by marketing writer Bob Schier in his What Works, What Doesn’t blog. Schier recounts a survey that he conducted of B2B readers in which he asked whether they preferred staff-written content to articles picked up somewhere else and summarized. The answer:
Nobody even knew what we were talking about. They don’t care where a story comes from, or even if they’ve seen the basic facts elsewhere. If your take on it tells them something useful, they like it.
This is not simply “cut-and-paste” writing; you need to provide context and value along with your own style. Think of it this way — if you found the information useful, your audience probably will too.
Now feel free to take this topic and re-write it for your blog.
Think simply having a website is enough to qualify you as a web marketer in this day and age? His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI doesn’t.
