Ever feel like you’re creating some of the best content in your industry, but no one is seeing it?
Contextual, relevant, and thought-provoking content has proven time and again to be an effective marketing and sales strategy, building brand recognition and building out your sales pipeline. And its effectiveness is no industry secret. In fact, HubSpot reported a whopping, “82% of marketers report actively using content marketing in 2021, up 70% from last year.”
But the reality is, if no one is seeing your content, no matter how great it might be, it really isn’t making any kind of impact. Let alone an impact on your bottom-line revenue.
And that’s where content syndication comes in. In this article, we’ll explore what content syndication is, how it can help your business, and the step-by-step process to achieving your content syndication goals. Let’s get started.
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What is Content Syndication?
Content syndication is the publishing of your original content on 3rd party websites.
Think of it like retweeting or sharing a post on Facebook. By sharing out your content on 3rd party websites you expand your reach and gain a whole new set of audience members. And if you’re lucky, new leads as well.
How Does Content Syndication Help Me Work Smarter?
So, we’ve established in broad strokes that content syndication expands the reach of the content you’ve already published, but how does it really work for you? Getting a little more specific, it can help you achieve a multitude of objectives:
- Increases Exposure by Leveraging a 3rd Party Audience
The Law of Familiarity is a simple one: The more someone sees you or your brand, the more likely they are to take a specific action and eventually become a client. By exposing this entirely new audience to your brand and your content, you begin that process of familiarization. A process which, down the road, could turn that cold call slightly warmer for your sales team or outsourced sales partner.
- Extends Your Reach Beyond the Typical Channels
Maybe you’ve got an extremely active LinkedIn or you’re fairly well-known on Twitter. But what about the other channels? By distributing your existing content, you let someone else do the work of publishing and promoting your work, extending your reach to new channels and new audiences (which as we covered above, can be extremely powerful in warming up new leads).
- Boosts Your SEO Ranking
Without getting too technical, content syndication offers an SEO-boosting benefit in the form of backlinking and referral traffic. And while this will not be a substitute for your own on-page SEO efforts, it will certainly help to increase your ranking – especially if the websites publishing your content are deemed authoritative sources!
- Positions Yourself/Your Organization as a Thought Leader
The only way to become a thought leader is to get your thoughts out into marketplace, a task that is made exceedingly easier when you have the help of outside partners to promote your content through their channels.
And the best part? When you reach that mountaintop of thought leadership, you become a trusted industry source and an organization that other brands actively seek to do business with. Making your sales a whole lot easier and faster.
- Generates Leads and Clients
In the end, it’s all about the leads. Expanding your audience and your reach, boosting your SEO, and becoming a thought leader work in sync to help generate interest in your brand and fill that pipeline with qualified leads that are primed to become your next best customer.
What Do I Need to Do to Syndicate My Content?
Ready to get started on your content syndication journey? Let’s walk through the five steps to perfecting your syndication strategy.
1. Specify a target persona or audience segment.
Understanding who you are targeting will set you on a clear path for the next three steps. It’s important to remember that you can’t be everything to everyone, and by selecting a target persona or segment of your audience, you narrow the focus to allow your content to truly shine.
2. Determine the content.
An obvious, yet extremely important step. Content syndication isn’t just limited to blog posts or articles. Whether you choose an eBook, a webinar, or your favorite infographic, make sure the content speaks to your target audience and answers the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) of it all.
3. Select how you want to syndicate your content.
Just like the range of social platforms (and the distinctly different purposes they serve) the types of content syndication platforms and networks can vary, and the right selection may be the difference between a small audience bump and a viral takeover. HubSpot breaks it down like this:
- Republish more recent content on a bigger (broader reaching) website
- Republish older content on a website of similar size and authority
- Guest post on a website with a larger audience or better authority and publish on your own website later
- Get picked up by a website
- Pay to have your content syndicated
4. Identify your content syndication platform.
Once you’ve selected how you want to syndicate your content, the natural next step is selecting the right platform. Finding your syndication platform (whether paid or free) probably won’t happen overnight. Extensive research will be required, but in the end, it will be worth it.
Not sure where to start? A few free options include:
- Outbrain
- Taboola
- Quora
- Medium
4b. Use your sales team.
While certainly not the most traditional content syndication platform or network, your sales team is often one of the best channels to share your content, reaching an audience that may not be organically finding your blog or resource page. Not only does this technique generate new interest in your content, but it also gives your sales team or outsourced sales partner the perfect opportunity to reach out to a lead with relevant content that could help drive a sale.
5. Measure the results and course correct.
Like everything else in marketing and sales, it all comes down to the KPIs. Is this strategy generating results? Is it worth a continued investment of our time and energy?
If you answered yes, you’re ready! If you answered no, then go back, see where you could improve your strategy. Readjust and realign.
Don’t let your content library get stale…begin syndicating content today. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you see measurable results!
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