Do not copy others, surpass them

People do not want to buy copies that cost that much as original. The same is true for the web. There are plenty of copywriting sites, and each year it is easier and easier to create another copy of website and try to get some market share.
For example blogging. 10 or so years ago there was livejournal – a wonderful blogging for all platform with paid accounts where one had to beg for invite to get a free limited one. People could skin them a little – change some colors, at some point layout as well. Then came wordpress, blogger, etc. Now anyone can get blog in 5 minutes, skinned to their likes. There are hundreds of thousands skins to choose from. And blog on itself is no longer special.
Same goes for more generic CMS’es. Before that, programmers would code a news portal for month. After that you just install drupal or joomla, configure them a bit and you got a new news site with lots of plugin choices. And a hundred or so similar sites doing the same. The technology improves, it value deflates over time.
This is the true with copywriting as well. You can write the best copy in the world, but the question is how it will stand out? How it will be different from others, that will copy same source, or maybe you? Can you offer something better?
This is the most critical question for successful site : individuality, originality, the brand. You have to answer for yourself and your readers how you are the best. And the answer should be good enough to convince yourself and your staff. Noone else knows everything so in depth as you and the guys in the same room. And if you do not believe in your site, no one else will.
By the way, cheating yourself does not work that well in a long term. You have to get a good understanding what you can do differently from competitors. Counting on being older, having better SEO or Social Marketing skills do not count- most of this do not matter or is achievable. There is always a chance that competitors would hire someone that knows better than your employees do. Heck, they can hire someone better than you to do things that you do now. And you will have to improve, find new things.
Shouldn’t you do same things as competition does ? Absolutely, but you should do them better. Using rewritten copies? Write better ones, gather more information. Presenting news? Get a person that can add unique and useful touch to them. Reviewing something? Think what customer wants to see in a review that is not at your competitors webpage. In terms of business management, raise the cost of entering this market. This will help you in the future.
And yes, I had to do that in the past, and I will have to do this again with one of my projects. I can’t tell if I do everything the best way. But I am trying to do it better.