Is It Bad To Reuse Website Content For Our Newsletter??

[ASpaventa]

I recently convinced my boss and the President of our company to fan out in our internet marketing and dive into social media. One facet of this is generating a newsletter.

When discussing the specifics later, my President asked if there would be any harm writing good content and then using it for both the newsletter, our website, and distribution across the internet. I'm not totally into whoring out all our content across all three methods, but I didn't see anything wrong with reusing some things from the newsletter.

Am I way off base here?

[jrobconsult]

I would probably put a different spin or rewrite it a little bit, so it is not an exact copy. I take stuff from my web site or book put a different spin and it is in my newsletter or blog. Good luck Andrea.

[ASpaventa]

But is there anything wrong/dangerous about reusing the exact same content?


...man, we're coming off lazy here, haha.

[Soapin'Angela]

Why not put the content in your newsletter first, and then add it to the website after your subscribers have had a chance to benefit from it? That way your subscribers will feel special for getting exclusive content before it's available for everyone else.

One issue with putting the content on your site and then distributing it throughout the net would be duplicate content. As mentioned already, I would reword it a bit so that it's not exactly the same as what's on your website.

[Crimson Fox]

Many people including the good folks at this forum, give you a snippet of an article or just the title with the option on reading the entire thing on the website itself.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the method and I'd assume it does quite well at driving traffic to the site.

While what Angela is saying about the duplicate content on the web is true. Content in your email box doesn't count the same way.

[Wilks_eye]

I think Angela has given the perfect solution to your problem.
Maybe you can do this: When distributing your content, add a notice in brackets along the lines of "This article has appeared in ...." citing your newsletter. I think it gives it more credentials as having been published somewhere, even if it is your own newsletter. Promotes your newsletter too.

Or you may want to shorten the content (if its to long its probably a good idea to shorten it for Internet use) and add something like "A lengthier, more extensive version of this article can be found in...." then give a link of where the full article is archived, which would be in your company website.

[TheFiend]

I couldn't agree more with this discussion - we regularly tease shows in our newsletter and have almost identical copy as the first paragraph on the website - I find that it makes people comfortable that it is exactly what they thought they were going to read, then go off into a full blown description.

[David Tandet]

Thumbs up to Angela's response.
You've also got something major in your favor that will keep your information from seeming rehashed.
You provide tax advice. The people that really need that advice are going to want to make sure they know exactly how it applies to them.
The more people are reminded how you can address their personal needs, the more likely they are to show up at your offices.

[LCGoldman]

I would be very careful about not only copying text verbatim, but even crediting the original source without first obtaining permission to do so.

[whitenoise]

IMHO I would reword it to say, 60% minimum - for article, ezine & other subs too. In terms of duplicate content, I've been advised that is meant for content within the same domain.