Write Your Own Damn Content

I share a lot of content from people I know, trust, and respect. In fact, I have about 45 people whose content I regularly share on Twitter and a few other social sites. Their content is valuable, and it is useful. But I never share their content on my blog. My blog is where I share my insights, and publishing other people’s content on my site would be an abdication of my responsibility.

If you have a blog, guest posts don’t create as much value as publishing your content. You might think it’s easier to share someone else’s content to gain attention and drive traffic to your site. You might think that guest posts bring their audience to your site, and once they are, they will become your audience. The content may be great, and the person whose content you’re sharing may have a massive audience. But the insight being shared isn’t yours, and you aren’t getting the credit for it.

There are a few sites that scrape other people’s content (mine included), as a way to try to gain attention. They don’t ask for permission. Instead, they just publish what someone else wrote verbatim. Occasionally they’ll attribute the work to the person who wrote it and include a link to the original work. But why bother with the superfluous link to the original work when you’ve scraped the entire post? Even if the content makes it seem that you are publishing, you aren’t.

You might believe that other people’s content is a shortcut, but like most shortcuts, it doesn’t produce the intended result. You are supposed to be making your contribution, sharing your ideas, and nurturing your relationships.

Your point of view matters. Your opinions are important. Giving people some idea as to how you think and what you might be like to work with is how you gain their trust and create opportunities. When you share other people’s views or opinions, you aren’t sharing yours.

Write your own damn content.