You’ve worked a long time building your business.

You’ve put hundreds, even thousands of hours into generating unique ideas or solving problems for your clients.

So why would you share your unique content online for your competitors to scoop up and use to get ahead of you?

It’s not that you’re against the idea of creating content for your prospects online. Afterall, good content speeds up the sales process, cuts down on customer service time and boosts your reputation.

BUT is it worth the risk?

The three questions below are responsible for keeping too many business owners up at night. Which one keeps you awake?

• What if my competitors steal my ideas for clients?
• What if competitors copy my content online and use it as their own?
• What if I give my competition an inside look at my company and they use it to get ahead?

Each of these are valid concerns. But you need to address the question that bothers you the most before you start creating content so you don’t waste energy on them.

None of these should hold you back. I’ll explain why with the four major reasons below.

Your Brand Voice Is What Makes Your Content Unique

You may have great information. Information your clients gladly pay for. But if you’re worried that you’ll be the first person to share that information online for free, just try searching for it. The fact is your competitors can already find the similar articles in several other places online.

That’s actually not a bad thing because people want to hear from YOU. It’s not necessarily the content that people connect with it’s how you explained it that creates a bond. It’s your job to deliver information to your clients AND inject your brand into every article you write. That’s what makes them want your content over your competitors.

You don’t need to give away your trade secrets, instead focus on the WHY’S and WHAT’S of your business instead of the HOW.

Your Best Ideas Are Just Ideas If No One Sees Them

If you have a great article and no one sees it, how great is it really? don’t share it, the content is useless. Stop squandering it. That’s like a salesperson not wanting to share all the benefits of their product with someone at a meeting because a competitor might overhear them.

Comb through the content your company already has. Look through case studies, trend reports, brochures, books and any other good collateral that you can find and use it to as the foundation for articles online so you aren’t having to start from zero. It can’t help if your prospects never see it.

You’ll Never Scale & Grow

One of the biggest reasons to add educational content that sets you apart is to help prospects prequalify themselves.

By describing what sets you apart and your unique qualities as well as educating them about what they need to do before becoming a client is a major part of content marketing. If you’re worried your competitors are going to steal it, consider the alternative: A much longer sales process, wasting time explaining the same things over and over again and losing prospects because you look like an amateur.

What If My Content Is Already Being Stolen?

If you suspect your content is being copied or ripped off, there are several tools you can use to check. Copyscape is a simple tool that allows you to add the URL of one of the pages on your website to see if it’s being plagiarized.

Discovering that your content has been blatantly copied is never fun. If you do find that your website content or design has been copied, check out this handy article from Kissmetrics that walks you through step-by-step how to identify and remove the plagiarized content.