And it’s ethical … but only if you’re plagiarizing your company’s own content. Here’s what I mean: if you create good content, re-use it.

• Split a white paper into a number of blog entries
• Re-purpose a brochure as a web page
• Take a video of a company executive speaking at an industry event and put it on your Web site

Re-using good content not only saves time, it helps you maintain consistency in your company’s message and brand.

Below is an example. I wrote the following paragraph for a client white paper about marketing planning during the late stages of an economic downturn:

The important question during a downturn isn’t whether or not the economy will recover. It will; it always does. What’s important to ask is whether your company will be in position to surge as the economy begins to grow. To a large degree, the level of your success will depend on your marketing efforts and capabilities—what you have done during the downturn and what you put in place now to win business during the recovery.

This one paragraph has since appeared in a white paper, a promotional email, an article written by a company executive, a presentation script, and a marketing planning kit.

Okay, so maybe the headline to this article “Plagiarism Saves Time” is a shameless hook, but the point remains the same. And I couldn’t use the tired cliche about “not re-inventing the wheel.”