Many different content formats are used in corporate communications. Companies position themselves as trustworthy experts in their field, draw the audience’s attention to their brand, emotionalise the brand and retain customers. It is often time-consuming and expensive to continually create new content. Content syndication is the best practice for this.
Content syndication refers to a digital marketing strategy where companies reuse existing content for platforms such as LinkedIn and Reddit or for industry-relevant digital ones. Thanks to their broad distribution, they reach new target groups, gain credibility, increase brand awareness and gain new customers. There are two forms of content syndication: free and paid. Let’s delve deeper into free content syndication.
Free Content Syndication: Pros and Cons
Both content syndication variants have advantages and disadvantages. When you syndicate content for free, you keep your distribution investment low. The technical effort is also limited, as the platform operator usually takes care of the publication. All types of content that offer the community real added value are suitable: e.g. thought leadership articles, infographics, e-books, etc.
Free content syndication also has weaknesses. Precise targeting is difficult, the wastage when addressing people is comparatively high and you don’t have the power over what content is published. Measuring the results is more difficult because often only clicks and views are available as metrics. Since there are no investments, the return on investment (RoI) is tricky to measure.
Tips: What should you look for in free content syndication?
There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to free content syndication:
- Quality and relevance: The higher quality the content, the higher the likelihood that the operator of a platform will publish it without additional costs. Every piece of content should be relevant to the target group and offer them added value. This also increases the chance that it will be shared and achieve a greater reach – completely organically.
- Place of publication: The place of publication is also important. It influences what the content should look like and what it can achieve. Social media platforms and websites/blogs follow different guidelines than professional magazines. The content can often be optimised for a specific publication location with small changes.
- SEO ranking: The Google algorithm is constantly being revised. It’s important to be aware of these changes. With content syndication, there’s a risk that Google will view content as so-called duplicate content – i.e. a copy. This leads to a lower SEO ranking. It is challenging to avoid these pitfalls. Organisations can try to mitigate this risk by including meta tags that indicate the original source of the content or instruct search engines not to index duplicate content. Many companies work with service providers who create powerful content taking SEO rules into account.
Content syndication as an integral part of corporate communication
With free content syndication, you can get great value from existing content. An organic redistribution of the content often occurs when it is picked up by influencers, journalists, experts or competitors. This creates engagement, increases the value of your brand and leads to more traffic to your website. For this reason, free content syndication should be part of every modern corporate communication tool.
FAQ Content Syndication
What is an Example of Content Syndication?
Several platforms offer the ability to syndicate content for free, either by republishing an entire article on another platform, posting a shorter version of the original article, or publishing an excerpt from the original article. Two of the most popular platforms are Medium and LinkedIn. Medium is a collaborative platform where anyone, professional writer or not, can publish insightful articles. LinkedIn is essentially known for being the leading social network for professionals. Now, it also offers the ability for any user to write articles and share that content with their network.
Does content syndication hurt SEO?
No – as long as the syndicated texts are revised depending on the platform so that Google does not classify them as duplicate content.
What are the benefits of content syndication?
- Content recycling (efficiency)
- Cost-effective
- Increasing the range
- Increase credibility
- Lead generation
- Customer acquisition
- Customer loyalty
What are the possible disadvantages of content syndication?
- No precise targeting
- Scattering losses
- Limited measurability of results
Are you interested in having an effective content strategy? Our experts will be happy to help. Contact TEAM LEWIS today.
