Creation VS content curation: what to choose?
Companies wishing to embark on their content marketing journey often face a dilemma – curating content or creating original web content.
The first option is to share articles, videos, etc. from external sites with your community (via different communication channels such as social networks or emailing). The second is to produce your own content and promote it to your audience.
To make this complex choice, it is important to weigh the pros and cons and consider the benefits of each alternative.
The Benefits of Content Creation
1) Create traffic
The main interest in creating web content is probably the generation of additional traffic to your site.
Suppose you have a community of 10,000 members on Facebook. When you curate content, you offer thousands of visits to an external site, while yours remains in the shadows.
Sharing blog articles and original web pages, therefore, has an immense interest in creating traffic on your site, which is positive:
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For the natural referencing of the site;
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To capture new prospects.
2) Generate leads
One of the objectives of content marketing possible from a marketing point of view by creating infographics, videos, images, and call-to-action.
Have you downloaded our Content Marketing Guide yet?
3) Assert your expertise
Content marketing is, beyond gaining traffic and customers; a privileged means of working on your brand image. By developing your own content and sharing your knowledge on a particular domain or niche to the world, you assert yourself as a company expert in its sector.
And it is a virtuous circle. The stronger your image, the more the credibility of your creations increases, making them even more effective.
4) Own the content
The use of content produced by others can pose a number of problems. Indeed, the border is thin between the curation of content and plagiarism.
Reusing a text without citing the author can be expensive. Even the simple sharing of a link without specifying the source can be reprehensible, especially in certain areas.
Creating original and unique content is the best way to protect against these risks. Have you tried leveraging on Instagram stories in your content strategy?
5) Becoming a leader
Some companies or people who actively curate content manage to bring together large communities and make a name for themselves.
However, they never become real references, since they are ultimately only information relays.
A company that practices effective and sustained content marketing, through the regular production of original texts, infographics, or videos can achieve this objective. Become a reference in your field. Of course, this requires determination, work, and ambition, but it is by no means impossible.
The Benefits of Content Curation
1) Save time
One of the undeniable advantages of content curation is that it is much less time-consuming.
Producing, editing, and promoting original content takes time. Whereas curation requires (almost) only monitoring work to find sites, articles, and other infographics likely to interest your community. Especially since there are curation tools like Scoop.it to make your life easier.
2) Vary the subjects
One of the limits to the design of original texts is that a brand cannot be an expert in hundreds of different subjects.
Content curation, on the other hand, allows you to broaden your horizons and vary the themes addressed in your communication.
You can thus share content on subjects that do not fall within your field of expertise, but which are complementary to yours and which may interest your audience.
3) Build relationships
Content curation is mostly done through social media, which is an invaluable way to build new relationships. When you share someone else’s content, that person is somehow ‘indebted’ to you, which opens up new opportunities.
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On the one hand, you can probably count on this person to share your own content in the future. ‘win-win’ cooperation, in short;
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On the other hand, it is a good way to build a relationship with an influential content producer and to set up joint content marketing actions (guest blogging, co-creation of content, etc.)
