Marketing teams can obtain marketing content by either creating, curating, or purchasing it, and to each of which its own advantages and disadvantages.
Creating the content from scratch requires marketers to write high quality content that is relevant to the brand or the company, then this new content needs to be proof-read by content experts to verify that it is free from spelling or grammatical mistakes. In addition to that, matching images, illustrations, or videos needs to be created, which could be time consuming and cost a lot of money to obtain or make.
The second way of obtaining content is through curating it from other publishers. The process includes finding the right content from a reliable source and republishing it to the reader along with more explanations or details around that topic. A lot of marketers use this technique in writing their content, where about 25% of their post has been curated and the rest was originally created by them.
The third and last way of obtaining content is through purchasing it, or as might be referred to Content Syndication. Content syndication involve republishing content from a recognized and reliable source for a certain fee and under license. The purpose of Content Syndication is to deliver content to readers, and then use the analytics gathered from those readers to gage their interest in the syndicated topics or articles. That being said, Content Syndication can be used in an opposite way, where if marketers have a great original article or content that they wrote they can syndicate via other sources and gain more publicity by getting these articles in front of other readers on different websites whom have purchased syndicated content.
When comparing the three ways in which marketers obtain content, there is no doubt that creating content from scratch will provide the most value to the brand due to its originality, novelty, uniqueness, and newness to the reader. But at the same time, it is the hardest to obtain or create. On the other hand, Content Syndication will probably provide the least value to the brand, but it will be the easiest to obtain. The middle ground between the two options mentioned earlier would be choosing to curate content. Curated content, as discussed earlier, is a very common way marketers use to obtain content. Although the process of curating content is not easy or straightforward, but it is definitely easier than creating content from the ground up. The process usually requires finding the right article or post to curate, reading it fully and understand it, and then edit it to look and feel like an original content. The editing process requires coming up with a new title, images, as well as adding additional text and further explanations to the original article quoted. In addition to that, a link to the original article should be included to avoid any possible copyrights issues.
Useful Links and References:
- http://www.curata.com/blog/content-curation-the-art-of-a-curated-post-infographic/
- https://www.quicksprout.com/content-syndication-networks-for-bloggers/
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/16/content-syndication
