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Content Syndication: Yes or No?

Didit Editorial

Casual-Business-Woman-Typing-On-Laptop-Whilst-In-BedNovember 1, 2013: If your company is regularly publishing authoritative content on your Blog or site, you might be thinking of syndicating some of this content out — for example, to online publications in your business vertical that can reach additional, relevant audiences.

Advantages of Syndicating:

1. Better Visibility. Your syndication outlet may promote your content via their own promotional apparatus, which typically includes e-mail and social channels. This extends your reach to audiences who might otherwise be unaware of what your firm does.

2. Prestige. Provided the syndication outlet enjoys some prestige, your own brand will get some rub-off effect by being featured in the outlet’s stable of stories. You can also richly promote the fact that a prestigious publication has featured your firm’s work in your own marketing collateral.

3. Editorial management. Some syndication outlets simply republish the content you submit to them directly, with minimal or sometimes nonexistent editorial support. Others priding themselves as elite will massage your content so that it’s free of syntactical errors and awkward sentences. They might even add some flair to your copy that you forgot to add.

Syndication Disadvantages:

1. No Google Juice. A great many online media outlets depend on advertising as a primary monetization strategy. Consequently, they will be miserly with the Google Page Rank they have accumulated, and wish not to expend any of it on articles authored by your staff.

2. You Can’t Use Editorial to Promote Yourself. Like Google, the editors of online syndication outlets don’t want their editorial pages polluted by self-promoting spammers, so you’ll have to muzzle any impulse you have to tout your company’s strengths. Syndication, after all, is an information channel, not a sales channel.

3. You Can’t Capture Leads. When your content is syndicated, it’s typically surrounded by ads, plus a lead capture form for the syndicator — not yourself. So you can only capture interest — not leads.

4. When Your Promote on Social, You’re Promoting the Syndicator. Linking, posting, and tweeting your latest article does a big favor for the syndicator, but only delivers marginal benefits to your own marketing effort. This is not to say that there is no benefit — there is — because any time you publish a new article, or a press release, or anything else — it’s “news” that can liven up your social feeds and channels.

5. You Have No Topic-Level Control. Many syndicators specialize in granular topics and will never let you write outside these topics. Some writers try to stretch this — for example, trying to tie in their experiences in Retail CRM automation with a recent fishing trip — but it usually results in a failed article. If your content is more free-wheeling, you’ll run afoul of the syndicator’s narrow editorial guidelines very quickly.

6. Can You Really Do This Every Week? If the syndicator likes the content you produce, you might be asked to provide a regular (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly) column. You need to ask yourself whether you have enough to say about a granular topic each week. If you don’t, your articles will quickly become lifeless and repetitive.

7. The Duplicate Content Filter. This is a big one. Google’s Duplicate Content Filter will downrank articles whose text strings match articles posted on other sites. This means that you will not be able to leverage the content you syndicate by placing it on your own site, unless it’s extensively rewritten. A work-around to this problem is to use this copy in e-mail and other channels that do not wind up on the Web, where the Duplicate Content Filter will not penalize you.

So Should I Do It? Content syndication can make a lot of sense, because it extends your reach, may add prestige — and perhaps some polish — to the content you publish. It’s not for everyone, because many firms already are tapped out serving content to “owned” media channels such as their own Blog, social and/or e-mail channels. But if you have any surplus bandwidth, you might want to think about creating, and pitching an article to a syndicator who can give this content a good home and promote it aggressively.If you go the syndication route, make sure you have a process for using the stuff that’s rejected — it may be great content — just not a good fit for the syndicator at that particular moment. Even if it’s not “a good fit” for them, it might still be a great fit for you on your own owned online properties.

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