Let's face it - we've all been told that we need to create lots of high-quality content on a regular basis to do marketing well these days. In some ways, this is true. In others, it's not. However, we can all agree that we need content and most want more of it.
Creating and publishing high-quality content consistently and at the appropriate cadence isn't easy. It's expensive, time-consuming and labor intensive - not something you're going to turn over to an intern to handle. Ideally, your brand's subject matter experts create the content. After all, their expert knowledge is what's going to position your brand as the preeminent thought leader in your industry, right?
While marketers are scurrying around trying to create and lobby for content across their orgs, publishing on the Internet is exploding. In fact, 2.73 million blog posts are published every day and every second 48 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded, 571 websites are launched and 100,000 tweets are shared.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em
No matter how hard we try to out-publish the other guy, there will always be some person or brand to come along and publish more and better content than us. It's a fact that we must all accept. Should you continue the chase or is there another way? Yes there is. Supplement content creation, publishing and sharing with curation. Instinctually though, many people still don't want to promote another brand's content through curation.
Don't forget the reason why we're producing content
We're creating and sharing content to drive revenue, right? Yes, eventually, but content can't drive predictable revenue without the appropriately sized audience. Marketers must first build a substantial enough audience to drive revenue. How do you build audience? You build it by producing content that solves problems or entertains.
Most businesses are in the business of solving problems - that's what they do and that's what content marketing should do. People don't care who solves their problem. They just care that it gets solved. Brands that understand this become inherently useful to their audience, or as Jay Baer would call it, "a Youtility." Curation makes it easier for a brand to become inherently useful and grow audience.
A rising tide lifts all boats
Since there's already a content arms race likely happening in your industry, curating and sharing content has never been easier - especially when you consider the ecosystem of tools that have sprouted up in recent years. However, there are still many marketers who still refuse to use curation as part of their content mix because they fear its SEO implications or the competitor fear mentioned above.
Curation, in all its forms, does not negatively effect authorship or SEO. In the case of curation for syndication, duplicate content should always include proper canonicals explicitely pointing to the original source of the content. Get that right and your SEO worries should go away.
Since a rising tide lifts all boats, implementing curation in your overall content publishing mix by embracing your content-competitors can help bridge the gap between your capacity to publish and share, and what you actually wish to publish and share.
Adding curation to the content mix can build credibility, trust, loyalty, thought leadership and reciprocating brand relationships. Providing the maximum amount of utility using a mix of content from different sources is a win-win for everyone involved, especially the content consumer.
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