Trying to keep your content fresh? For busy B2B marketers, this is an uphill challenge. The Internet is a bottomless pit of information; to stay at the top, you need to produce ever more interesting and relevant content. And content takes time.
There are a couple of options when it comes to keeping your content current. You can, of course, produce it in-house or outsource it to a writing service. Outsourcing has become especially popular but, while it saves time, it can be rather hard on the budget. Enter content curation, the latest answer to B2B marketing’s content woes.
Content creation is simply creating content that didn’t previously exist. It could be posting a new photo or writing a block of text. Content curation makes use of existing content by gathering it all together in one place, be it a newsletter, a blog post, or on a Pinterest page.
Both content curation and creation have their place, but they each achieve different objectives. Content curation works like a floodlight, illuminating anything relevant that’s in sight.
Content creation is works more like a spotlight. It highlights only the content that is the most interesting and relevant to your audience because you’re custom tailoring it specifically to their needs.
To be sure, content curation is cheaper than content creation. Programs like Storify, Scoop.it and Paper.li (which we talked about last week) have made collating interesting copy as easy as point and click. For B2B marketers, content curation can be a great way of tapping into the vast amount of information on the internet and winnowing it down to what is relevant to you and to your client base. Once you’ve completed the selection process, you then repackage it and pass it on. You get new content, and the content creators get more views.
But is curated content really enough to keep your audience captivated? If it seems like the same ideas are being regurgitated over and over by everyone in your industry, it may not be. Your communities are craving something original, and you should be the one to step up to the plate and provide it.
Content curation is a convenient and cost-effective way to keep people informed about your industry, but when it comes to driving home sales and communicating the benefits of your brand, nothing beats unique, targeted content.
In short, content curation won’t replace content creation. And content creation need not be your sole source of fresh content. Used together, these two tools are powerful.
(Click here to expand)
