An age-old debate in marketing is whether to create or curate your material. Although you will find strong opinions on value and validity on either side, the truth is that both can serve your business. Genuinely successful content marketing will be a blend of creation and curation.
Defining the Purpose
Created and curated materials serve different purposes. Focusing solely on one means missed opportunities. Content creation is self-promoting, content curation is cross-promoting.
When you make a social media marketing post that links to an external site, you will get 33% more clicks than when you link to your site. Importantly, though, posts with links to your site have a much higher click-to-conversion rate than those with external links. Ultimately, both are essential.
Defining the Terms
Content creation is, quite simply, material you have created on your own, either in-house or written for you by an external team. Curating content is seeking out existing information (blogs, social media posts, etc.) and sharing it with your audience.
Content Creation
One of the most significant benefits of creating your content (or having content created for you) is to position your brand as an expert, bringing valuable information to your audience.
Created content will align perfectly with your brand philosophy and be crafted for your target audience. Brand awareness takes time. It takes 5 to 7 impressions to build brand awareness, so posting sufficient “on-brand” material is vital.
Google loves original content. Creating your content will drive organic traffic to your site.
Content Curation
The primary limiting factor with content creation is the time and effort involved (which is why an outside agency can be a huge benefit!). Competition is fierce; anything you write must stand up against other great content to be noticed.
Curating content allows you to share a broader base of knowledge. It is critical to choose content from reputable sources; otherwise, you could damage your brand image.
Sharing great content can also increase your reach. You don’t necessarily need big names to drive your brand. Micro-influencers can build trust and credibility. 92% of consumers see micro-influencers as more believable than big names.
How can you keep up?
Many sites post one or two blogs a month. To maximize traffic, you need to post A LOT more. Sites that post 16 blogs a month net 3.5 times more response than sites that post less than 4. (2) This is a lot of writing – for either curation or creation.
Talk to the team at StreetDog to learn more about how we can help you with content creation that is unique, valuable, and engaging for your audience.
