If you’re setting up a new website for your business it’s only natural to check out your rivals first.
Because there are so many companies online nowadays, it can be hard to create something original when it comes to your online presence.
It’s not impossible to be unique online, but it’s easier to feed off other’s good work. Check out my five tell-tale signs below to discover if you’re an online vulture.
You hover – waiting for a rival to make a mistake and then pounce
Keep a close eye on your rivals and when they slip up either on Twitter, their blog or just in general, pounce on it as quickly as you can to make the most of some free publicity.
Who cares if it’s negative? You don’t need to bother with your own ideas when you can just pick holes in other people’s misfortune and slip-ups.
You don’t fly under your own steam
Why waste time building up a genuine following on Twitter when you can just use some software to follow everyone who’s following your competition?
While you’re at it, you should probably just tweet about you and how great your business is compared to your rivals because that’s exactly what your followers will want to hear – who cares about benefits anyway?
You’re a vulture and a parrot
Hey, we all know maintaining a blog can take time and effort – so choose a smarter way. Simply wait for your competitors to think up some ideas and then re-write their blog posts and post them on your own site.
Life is really interesting for internet users when all the sites they look at have very similar content so keep up the good work!
You pick at your competitors’ content for the best bits
Yes, unfortunately even re-writing content and blog posts takes time and effort. Forget about it, why not just swoop down unexpectedly and steal some content word for word? It’s not like your competitors will ever notice, and sharing is good right?
You call up your competitors’ clients lists to look for scraps
Investing time in marketing and building relationships is boring. There’s a much easier way – just look at your competitors’ websites for a list of clients and then ring them all up and say how rubbish they are and how great you are. There you have it – a much easier way to get new business!
In all seriousness though, if you’re going to launch a business online, show your potential customers the respect they deserve and put your own ideas, blood, sweat and tears into it.
With so many online outlets for people to express their opinions on, if you act like a vulture it won’t be long before the wind goes from beneath your wings.
I’ve had clients tell me about being called or emailed by a random competitor and try to convince them to jump ship. That kind of unsolicited contact is a really bad idea, even if you are hard up for customers. First off, no one likes being contacted out of the blue. How many people still trust the miracle weight loss emails they get at 3 am? Secondly, it really devalues your brand. What kind of legitimate company has to beg for business like that?
While it is generally go to keep informed about what your competitors are doing , it Is not good practice to copy them directly . People generally notice when you copy from them and it only can harm your business.
Wow. What a sad, cautionary tale this post is. I hope that some people read this post and really have an awakening and stop cluttering up the internet with junk posts. Sadly, I don’t think that this will be the case.
I agree with Alyasha that it’s good to keep an eye on the competition, but that can’t be your only strategy. It’s much better to take the time and energy that this article talks about people spending looking for loose threads in their enemy’s content and instead using it to generate new content and market their site properly.
wow…thanks for sharing…
Calling up the competitors clients will never be a genuine idea and I will never encourage it. But following their operations and techniques will probably bring them no harm.
Every industry has its vultures, its nothing new. Most ideas are never original.