Content Syndication is Part of an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketers know the importance of having a range of B2B marketing strategies at your disposal. These tactics can increase awareness about your brand, help you expand your reach, and drive more sales leads.

You can do a bit of everything by syndicating content. You syndicate content you have written or created. Third-party organizations can then share it or publish it on their platforms.

You should syndicate your content in some way or other if you aren't already. It is absurd to believe that your content can be distributed only to your blog. It is always a good idea for your blog posts to be shared with a wider audience.

The Key Takeaways

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  Content syndication refers to sharing your content on third-party sites.
  
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  This can include republished articles or a service which generates leads through whitepapers or research reports
  
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  Content syndication is free or paid, and should be part of your overall marketing strategy
  

What is Content Syndication?

Content syndication refers to the sharing of content such as whitepapers and blog posts on third-party sites. You can choose to pay for content syndication or get it free. Many websites and news organizations that specialize in the industry will allow you to republish your content free of charge. For larger media sites, it is common to charge a fee for sponsored content to be republished on their sites.

A content syndication network will distribute your content to their affiliate sites. They will also charge you for each click on your content by visitors to the publishing website. Your link will take them to your website where they can continue their content journey.

Another type of content syndication, which isn't well understood, is whitepapers. These programs are often referred to as “pay-per-lead” programs. These programs are often part of a larger program and may be charged per lead. They may also include guaranteed minimum leads.

You will see the first page of search results for content syndication if you type in “content syndication”. This is where you republish articles from another site. But equally as relevant and much more measurable is the 2nd definition where you share gated content (registration-required) such as e-books or whitepapers in order to capture leads.

Is Content Syndication a Good Idea?

These are just a few reasons content syndication is an effective marketing strategy.

1. Capturing a wider audience

Your content can be syndicated to authoritative websites with loyal audiences to increase its exposure to a wider audience than it might otherwise have. Let's suppose that your original blog content is viewed by 1,000 people. However, this reach can be extended to thousands of people on other sites.

Repurposing great content can help you reach new audiences.

Whitepaper content syndication service services might also be available to specific industry or title audiences.

2. How to Create a Strong Online Presence

Your brand will be more visible online if you regularly syndicate content. This all begins with providing relevant content for your audience and then following up with additional content that can help you nurture your visitors through their content consumption journey.

A steady online presence can help you to target a niche that has been challenging for your team. Reach out to websites with a strong reputation in your industry and let them know what you have to offer by sharing your content.

In the past, I used content syndication as part of an ongoing marketing strategy and lead generation strategy. This allowed us to determine which content syndication campaigns were most effective at capturing high-quality leads. This allowed us to evaluate which platforms offered the highest quality leads, allowing us to optimize our budget. Also, because the timing of most B2B purchase transactions is over 6 months, always on programs give you the opportunity to track results and close and win deals.

This is something that the CMO and the sales team love!

3. Traffic Boosting

Although goals for article content syndication vary from one business to another, increased website traffic is usually the number 3 priority of marketing teams. You must drive traffic to your website before you can create awareness about your brand.

Google and other search engines associate specific syndicated content as authoritative and quality, which can help boost your organic traffic. Google and other search engines see your content as valuable and informative if it is accepted by credible news sites. This will allow you to rank higher in search results over time.

4. Educating customers

You can give readers more information about your brand and how your products can solve their problems once they click on your content. You should provide them with high-quality content that is educational, newsworthy, and entertaining.

Your content should be 20% promotionspan type=”font-weight 400 ;”>. These top content types might be helpful for your content syndication strategy: whitepaper, 60% webcast and 50% infographic.

5. Improved Lead Generation

A focused strategy is essential for modern content marketing. It's easier to generate leads when you distribute your content to publishers who target the same buyer personas that your brand. Your content will be more interesting to like-minded audiences, which indicates a good customer match.

Syndicating content can be a great way of improving your lead generation efforts. It increases your reach and allows you to reach an audience that you may not otherwise have. This allows you to optimize your returns and place your content in front a relevant audience with high buying potential.

You've put so much effort and time into writing high-quality content. It's only natural to want to increase your reach so more people can benefit from what you have to offer. Effective content syndication is a great way to increase traffic.

Sharing your content increases search engine performance by generating backlinks to relevant pages and enhancing credibility. This also makes you a thought leader within your industry. Higher search placements can lead to more traffic, which could possibly result in more qualified leads.

Paid content distribution can be very useful. Most ad platforms offer audience filtering optionsspan type=”font-weight 400 ;”>. You can target prospects based on their job title, industry, size and device type.

6. Increasing Brand Authority

Another benefit to syndicated content? It helps you establish your brand and site as subject matter experts.

If things get too crowded within your niche market Content syndication can help to differentiate your brand from others. It will allow you to secure your position as thought leader, one who can inform, delight, and entertain your audience by talking about your brand, product or service in a way that is relevant and relatable for your target audience.

Different methods of content syndication

What options do you have when it comes time to syndicate content? There are many options available to you:

Co-Marketing: co-marketing refers to when two companies work together on promotion efforts for a jointly-branded offer. Each company promotes a piece or content. This could be an ebook, whitepaper or research study. After providing their contact information, users are taken to a landing page that allows them to access the content. These leads are shared between both companies.

Social Syndication This is also known as “content swapping”, and it involves two brands agreeing that they will promote each other’s content through their respective social media channels. Because sharing content via social media is easy, this strategy is simple and straightforward to implement. This tactic is worth considering because of the possibility for increased exposure.

Press Releases – Press releases are distributed to various online media outlets for a nominal fee or free. These content are best when your company has a new product or other company news that might be of interest to your audience. This article is news-style and links to your company's website. You can optimize press releases to increase lead generation by linking to a landing page that allows you collect contact information.

Guest blogging: When an author creates unique content that is published only on another brand's site, it's called a guest blog. This is a great way for you to create backlinks, and it also improves your online search results. Guest blogging is a great way to increase traffic to your site and build trust and authority. As a bonus, backlinks should be acknowledged.

Paid ArticleSyndication: You can advertise your brand content on specific websites or push it onto other sites by partnering with a content syndicator service for a fee. This service will also recommend your content to relevant websites for the target audience you are targeting. The most popular syndication networks are Outbrain and Zemanta.

Blogs that Publish Syndicated Content: This is where brands contact relevant syndication websites to republish their content. This can be done by republishing an entire article, a portion of an article, or an RSS feed. Most popular marketing syndication websites are Social Media Today and Mashable.

Whitepaper content syndicatation: Here you can republish the original content of your company, such as whitepapers, blogs or videos, on third-party websites to generate leads.

Content Syndication Networks: Check Out

Authoritative syndication networks are a great way to increase your content syndication skills. They can place your content on high-traffic websites or provide targeted vertical leads. This could make your brand an authority on the subject, drive traffic to your website and provide quality leads for your sales team.

The content syndication network is basically a service that helps you distribute your content to many news and blog sites within their network. These are the options available to you if your goal is to syndicate content.

Outbrain

Outbrain, a content discovery and marketing platform, helps you readers learn more about your content and recommends it to top media outlets like CNN, Time, ESPN, and ESPN.

Outbrain claims that it has more than 550,000,000 online users and provides them with approximately 200 billion content recommendations each month. This is how far your content can go on the Outbrain network. Outbrain has other features that allow you to track reader engagement, so you can determine which version or part of your content is most popular with your audience.

Zemanta

Outbrain owns Zemanta, a programmatic content distribution platform. It uses automated bidding technology and artificial Intelligence to optimize content for the right audience based on CPC (or if your analytics are integrated, cost per visitor engaged).

This platform is used to syndicate content from clients to relevant platforms. We often achieve much lower CPCs than the industry standard and more engagement.

SlideShare

SlideShare, a LinkedIn affiliate network that offers a free platform for anyone to upload their content as a slideshow format. Visitors can view it at their leisure. These visitors often come from targeted searches, which gives you more confidence that your content is reaching the right audience.

Publishers don't have to follow any guidelines because it's an open-source platform. This could lead to content of inferior quality being published and distributed. This is not good news for brands that want to establish brand authority.

Taboola

Taboola serves mainly high-end publishers like The NY Times and NBC. Its content engine allows you to determine which sites offer the most engagement for your posts.

Taboola appears to have had great success with marketing video content recently, so consider Taboola if your brand is interested in video content marketing.

Medium

Medium is a great place to republish content. Medium is an online community that allows users to create a blog (if they don't already have one) and share their content with other members of the Medium audience.

Medium is a popular platform for startups and companies who have their own blogs. Medium allows them to post their content easily and links to their social profiles.

ActualTech Media

ActualTech Media assists the largest technology marketers in the world to generate leads and sales pipelines through whitepaper content syndication, webinar programs, and other means.

They provide targeted leads for hundreds of thousands at very affordable CPLs (cost per led). Their team of experts can also create content for you.

How to optimize your syndicated content

There are many ways to syndicate content. These strategies can be used to find the best strategy for you and your target audience. To determine which tactics are most effective, keep track of the referral leads quantity and quality.

1. Set Specific Goals

Content syndication is a proven way to increase leads and expose your content to a wider audience. It's not enough to just know this. It is important to know what you are aiming at. It is best to define your goals at the most detailed level.

Are you trying to find top-of-the-funnel leads from people who are not necessarily part of the sales funnel or someone who is already identified as being in the middle? Is this a follow up campaign targeted at Marketing Qualified Leads or is it?

To help you determine your goals and decide what next steps you will take, it is important to define them.

2. Align your content to specific stages of your sales funnel

The type of content that you will use will depend on the stage in which your prospects are at. Someone in the latter stages may want to compare their options so they can make an informed decision.

A pricing or features comparison study is appropriate in this instance and will yield the best results. People in the early stages of the funnel will most likely choose topics that present a problem and offer possible solutions.

You must maintain the relationships you have established by following up on new leads. To keep them interested, send them more relevant content to help them move up the sales funnel. Make sure you refer to the content downloaded when you send them a follow up email. Add another call-to-action that encourages brand loyalty and ambassadorship.

3. Don't Compromise on Quality

High-quality content should be created to appeal to your target audience. Make it valuable, as well as entertaining and informative. Your primary goals should be to build authority and drive traffic. Therefore, quality is crucial for your syndicated content.

4. Offer secure content that compels visitors to act

Make sure you capture prospects' contact information if your content is available online. This can be achieved by linking your syndicated material to your gated content, which requires prospects to submit contact details to gain access to it.

The following formats are preferred by most readers: e-books and case studies, research reports, webinars and whitepapers.

5. Select the right syndication partners

When choosing which online platforms to distribute syndicated content, it is always safe to choose publishers and companies with a good reputation. Although a large audience can be helpful, it is more important to choose a partner that aligns with your brand. Your publisher should be able to segment their audience so that your content can reach targeted markets.

You may be able to agree with your partner to republish syndicated content, or feature your original content (also called guest post), on a regular or one-off basis. These agreements can also be made in terms of revenue sharing.

• Ad-Supported: This method rewards you for creating great content and allows you to receive a portion of the advertising revenue from the syndication service.
• Licensed – Also known as licensed blog syndication (or license blog syndication), this method allows you earn royalties when “high-quality users” discover and access your content.

You can also reach out to your syndication partner to share metrics about your content. To help you refine your next strategy, look at click-throughs and other results.

Tips to Maximize the Performance of Your Syndicated Content

These are some tips to maximize the positive effects of content syndication.

1. Pay for content syndication on popular sites or Mainstream Media

Reputable online publishers like CNN and USA Today are often extensions of their print counterparts. These sites are well-known in the publishing industry and are a great place to republish your content. You will usually be charged for their syndicated services.

These sites have the potential to generate traffic and awareness that is huge. You have the potential to reach prospective buyers if your content resonates well with them. These readers might become regular readers of your blog, which could lead to increased thought leadership among readers who may not have heard of you brand.

2. With Content Quality, Pay Others

You can have your content republished on a trusted website without paying anything. Depending on your industry, many sites won't charge you anything to repost your content. If you adhere to certain guidelines, most sites will allow you to submit your content for free syndication services.

But that doesn't mean you should abandon your blogging and allow random websites to promote all of your posts or any other content.

For your content to be published on reputable sites, you will need to adhere strict quality control guidelines. Others post only content that is relevant to their target audience and niche.

However, you should carefully review any syndication agreements that you make with publishers. Not all websites are created equally. You should look for websites that have not only a strong reputation but also have a solid content syndication program.

3. You can Syndicate to Sites With Greater Authority Than Yours

Your site's credibility can boost your rankings by linking to a site with a high level of credibility. You should ensure that you only target the top sites in your niche that Google considers to be authoritative. The website's reputation will boost your authority and increase your search ranking.

The borrowed authority can improve your SEO, increase traffic to your site, and bring in new readers. You can attract new readers to your site by creating quality syndicated content that resonates with them.

Remember that you must ensure your content is of high quality when syndicating content to high authority sites.

4. Select Relevant Content to Syndicate

It is important to remember that content submitted for syndication must be in line with the website's interests. Take the time to research the topics and content that will resonate with your target audience.

Your reputation is being built with a site with higher authority than yours, if done right. You should therefore put forward your best content and syndicate what you have to offer.

5. Make sure you publish enough content frequently

The more the merrier in this instance. Your potential lead volume will increase the more content you syndicate. This will increase your ability to reach your lead targets faster. Make sure you have enough original content for your website. Users won't be motivated to visit your site if they don't.

There is no additional cost to provide more syndicated content. The time it takes to create the content to syndicate is the only extra cost. Find out which types of content receive the most attention from different channels. You can choose to focus on eBooks, white papers, videos, webinars or infographics.

6. Write Enticing Abstracts

A summary is usually around 200 words and describes the content that you have shared on a website. This is an excellent alternative to clickbait headlines.

You should ALWAYS test your headlines and the content you distribute.

Many people fall for the trap of writing abstracts that are boring and uninspired. This is a terrible strategy if you don't want your readers to forget the amazing content you have created.

You should create an abstract that encourages clicks. This can be done by explaining the content's value and highlighting key selling points. To ensure readers know what to do next, use action words such as “learn” and “find out more”.

7. Search Engines Don't Confuse Your Syndicated Content With Duplicate Content

You might be tempted to create duplicate content in order to syndicate your posts if you aren't careful. Search engines can penalize websites for content that isn’t original or unique. Make sure you take every precaution to avoid this.

Three common methods can be used to make sure that your republished content isn't considered duplicate content.

• Rel=Canonical:

The “rel=canonical” tag will be placed on syndicated content. This tag points back to original post on your site and attributes all authority to it. This tag informs search engines that you are the original author and that syndicated content is a copy.

• NoIndex:

The “noindex” tag in the syndicated content informs search engines that republished content should not be included in the directory. It also tells them that automated bots should not index the page.

• Direct Attribution Link

Another option is to have a link from the syndicated copy to your original content. The link must point to the article, not your homepage.

8. Use Content Syndication Software

Automation software and martech tools are available to help you increase the reach of your syndicated content. You're not getting the convenience and ease these tools offer if you still do it manually on multiple platforms. You'll also be able to save hours searching for syndication opportunities.

9. Follow up on leads

You must act fast if syndicated content is able to drive prospects towards sales funnels. You must act quickly, as the old saying goes. After capturing leads, ensure that you have a prompt lead follow-up strategy.

After they are added to your prospect list, each one should receive a welcome message. This is so that leads are recognized and you don't miss any opportunities to turn a lead into paying customers.

Content Syndication is here to stay

Content syndication can make your marketing strategy more effective, as you can see. This can help you build brand recognition, audience engagement and leads. It also helps you to be an industry leader. You can't waste quality content if you don't share it via syndication. This is one of the best ways for your brand to be more visible online and improve your reputation.

A more aggressive approach may be better for someone just starting out. You should use every opportunity to syndicate content, targeting sites with high authority. You can be more selective about the places you will republish your content if you have an established reputation.

Yes, content syndication will continue to be a powerful marketing strategy. To maintain engagement and keep people interested, you need to have a balance between original content and curated posts. Your content offering should have a clear value proposition that is linked to your strategic goals.