Content creation and content curation are often thought to be the same but they are actually quite different. If you want to dip your hands into content marketing but you aren’t sure how to approach it, you have come to the right place. This article will help you understand both concepts to help make an informed decision.
Although they are distinct from each other, these two concepts when combined in your content marketing strategy can work wonders for your blog or website. Content creation and content curation are both designed to provide customers with valuable content. As a business owner, you may find yourself in a dilemma between creating or curating content.
What is Content Creation?
- Benefits of Content Creation
- Drawbacks of Content Creation
What is Content Curation?
- Benefits of Content Curation
- Drawbacks of Content Creation
Creation or Curation: Which One Is Better?
- Understanding The 60/40 Mix
- Best Practices To Keep In Mind
What Is Content Creation?
Content creation is the writing of content from scratch. Whether it’s for your company blog, social media channel, or YouTube videos, the content being created is original. Content creation involves adding fresh content to your website or blog. With content creation, you put your brand front and center.
Content creation is based on the theoretical cornerstone of traditional marketing– creating original content as much as possible. You create fresh content specifically for your purposes. This was also the original thinking behind content marketing. Offering valuable content will get you more followers because people will be liking and sharing your content. It gives you social proof.
Benefits of Content Curation
There are many benefits to creating content from scratch. Here are some of them:
1. It generates leads and traffic
For 61% of marketers, generating traffic and leads remains their biggest challenge. However, creating unique content can solve that problem. For instance, blogging regularly can help attract 55% more traffic compared to those that don’t. As for lead generation, 90% of consumers are willing to share data with brands if it makes the shopping experience cheaper and easier.
In addition, content creation allows you to add branded images, logos, links, and call-to-action buttons. Sharing original content generates an average of 2.4% click-to-conversion rate, 54% more than sharing third-party posts. Original content, when well presented and valuable, has a better chance of ranking higher on SERPs.
2. It helps promote your brand
According to the Lucidpress survey, a consistent brand presentation can help increase revenue by 33%. Achieving brand consistency is much easier with a content guide that ensures a uniform tone of voice across all marketing channels and materials. With content creation, you can develop content that specifically targets your brand.
Creating original content can help solidify your brand, its voice, values, and beliefs. Studies show that 45% of a brand’s image can be accredited to what the brand says and how it says it. Sharing original content that is in line with the values of your audience has a higher chance of resonating with them.
3. It allows you to be creative
Who can better promote your brand than you? After all, no one knows your brand better than you. Content creation lets you show the world exactly what you want your brand to be. By creating original content, you can be creative in how you want to present your brand. Moreover, you won’t have to deal with copyright issues. You can use your own colors, logo, slogan, and hashtags to achieve maximum campaign exposure.
Content creation allows you to control the content you share and publish. Being creative will allow you to separate yourself from the competition and attract more customers to your brand. Who knows? Your creativity in creating content might become a trend and other marketers might end up curating your content for their own.
4. Builds You Up As A Thought Leader
Creating content will help you be seen as an industry expert. To attract potential customers, you would want to build your credibility instead of always relying on other sources. When you create original and high-quality content and share it to platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and others, you will be perceived as an authority in your industry.
Research conducted by The Grist revealed that 66% of executives rely on thought leadership to stay ahead of trends. Furthermore, 60% say that thought leadership helps them make better and more informed decisions. Customers will feel more connected to brands with CEOs that are active on social media, authentic content creation will help to build B2C loyalty.
Drawbacks of Content Creation
While content creation will set you apart as a thought leader, it also has some drawbacks.
1. It is time-consuming
Writing unique content can be time consuming. A single blog post, for instance, can take up to four hours to write especially if you want to load it with the latest facts. Google’s algorithm prefers more content with an average of more than 1,000 words. Keep in mind that you will be doing this on a regular basis.
In addition, you will also need to spend time doing organic search, creating and researching keywords, writing well-structured articles with keywords, social media sharing metadata, and on-brand contextual images or videos. Finally, you also need to consider the time it will take to create the appropriate graphics and schedule social media posting.
2. Creating social media content is not cheap
Creating social media content comes at a price. Don’t expect to pay pennies for decent content. Content creation needs to have sufficient budget, depending on your niche and industry. Not only that you will also have to include the costs for managing content and social media uploads, matching graphics, and any promotions you will do later.
If you really want to stand out from the competition, you really need to spend money. You may be tempted to set aside a small chunk of money and let an intern, freelancer, or cheap social media team do the job. While it’s fine if you are just starting, eventually such risk will pay off in the long run. When it comes to social media, you get what you pay for.
3. Content creation requires a plan
When creating relevant and valuable content, you need to have a plan. A recent report from the B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends reveal that 73% of organizations have a content marketing strategy but only 42% have a documented strategy. Your plan should also include scheduling content for significant industry events or social media content for specific days of the year.
Your content marketing plan should be aligned with your business goals. It should be geared towards what your target audience really needs. The bottom line is that it should always put your brand at the forefront of the content marketing strategy and make it stand out.
What Is Content Curation?
The problem with offering valuable content is that not everyone can create it. On the other hand, content curation is the gathering of content from other sources to suit your business purposes and sharing it on your website or social media networks. Content curation could also mean adding your own commentary to someone else’s blog post or even cultivating testimonials from your customers.
With content curation, you choose the very best posts to share with your audience. It is worth mentioning that curation isn’t plagiarism. When you curate content, you use the content of another author but use your own words. In fact, you can cite or include a backlink to the article you are referencing. Who knows? The author might return the favor and curate one of your articles in the future.
Pros of Content Curation
Meanwhile, here are the benefits of content curation:
1. It saves you time
With the knowledge that content creation can take several hours, you would rather save your time and just share other people’s content. An ideal blog post length for SEO should be 2,100 – 2,400 words which takes a long time to compose.
In addition, you don’t have to plan out all the graphics, videos, or GIFs to go with the article. You can just share it and add your own commentary if it’s relevant. Since you use articles and blog topics that are already getting a lot of readerships, you already know that people are searching for that content.
2. It is less egotistical
With content curation, you remove the worry of coming across as braggy or egotistical. By sharing content from another brand, you provide the audience with validation and a third-party perspective. This way, you could support another brand’s charity or community initiative.
Retweeting posts you’re tagged in or linking to social media content that mentions your products or key team members can help boost brand awareness and reach.
Moreover, referencing their work can help you build relationships with other brands. By backlinking to the other brand, they will generate traffic from you and in return, they might backlink to your own website as well making the relationship mutually beneficial.
3. You can draw on the strength of micro-influencers
88% of customers say it’s important for influencers to be authentic and genuinely care about their interests. This is where micro-influencers come into play. Those with smaller follower numbers have the tendency to engage better with their followers and are more choosy with what to promote.
Having a huge following is not always better. Aside from that, the cost of working with influencers with larger followings rise as the count increases. Micro-influencers are capable of creating a wide range of sharable content such as product tutorials and Q&A sessions to interviews and debates.
Cons of Content Curation
While content curation saves you time creating content and provides you with a great tool for improving your brand outreach, it has its own share of drawbacks.
1. It changes how you’re perceived
Yes, some famous websites get billions of hits daily but they are not industry authorities. They can feed you with interesting content but lack authority. For the sake of brand image, it is important to consider the source of content you refer to. The website where you get your curated content can damage your brand reputation.
Unlike content creation which can make you an authority on a certain subject, content curation only makes you become an aggregate feed, not an authority. By sharing content, you change the way people will perceive your brand.
2. It can result in a lack of trust
When you curate content, be wary of your sources. Surely you don’t want to provide your audience with inaccurate information. Make sure that the sources you are using are known for posting reliable and credible content. Credibility is important especially if you are trying to become a go-to source of knowledge. It is also important to make sure that they are not overly biased about a particular topic.
In addition, you should always watch out for plagiarism. Beware of any liabilities because you may still be held accountable for any retweet. Just because you can share someone else’s content does not mean you can directly copy the information from another brand. This will make you liable for plagiarism.
3. You lose your voice
While content curation can help lighten the load of your content creators, it can also dilute the strength and clarity of your brand message and voice. You may agree with what you just shared but that’s not your voice and the rest of your work may contain messages not aligned with your branding.
The business where you may be curating your content has its own tone and may not be aligned with yours. Thus, you must do deep research on the brand before extracting its content. Although you can add your commentary to the content, it still isn’t your voice.
Creation or Curation: Which One Is Better?
After knowing the pros and cons of both content creation and curation, you may find yourself asking which one is better for your business. You can leverage the benefits of each but filling your website and blog with both original and curated content will also work well for your business.
Understanding the 60/40 Mix
Some businesses lean towards one type of content or the other, there are also compelling reasons for incorporating each into your content marketing. But you can also be successful by using the 60/40 mix– that is 60 percent original content and 40 percent curated content. However, over time you should also get a feel of what type of content speaks best to your customer base.
You can start out with the 60/40 mix but if you find that you are getting more responses to one type of content over the other, you may want to play with the percentages. There is no ‘perfect mix’ so experiment a little bit to find the strategy that works best for you. For instance, you may choose to curate content for social media platforms to protect your brand voice and use original content for your blog and/or website.
Best Practices To Keep In Mind
Deciding whether to create original or curated content or mix them together can be a dilemma for many businesses. Here are some tips to make your decision easier.
1. Get To Know Your Audience
At the onset of your content marketing campaign, you can use content curation to get to know your target audience. You can use content curation to experiment with different types of content to find out what your followers like, what post gets shared the most, what style gets more engagement, and the best time to get maximum engagement.
2. Shake It Up
Content marketing is like an owner of a bakery bragging about how good his bread is and why people should buy from his bakery. Slowly but surely, customers will start looking at him with disdain try to avoid going near his shop, and stop going to his shop altogether. As a result, the baker loses business because of his antics. This is what happens if you will only share original content. Your visitors will soon get tired of reading it even though it’s good and really valuable. That is why you should also share curated content to retain not only current visitors but also attract new ones.
3. Curate content from trusted experts
No one brand can be an expert in everything related to their field. However, curating and sharing content from reputed and trusted experts will not only show your followers you know more but will also help you learn new things about your niche. It will not only help you grow your audience but also establish yourself as a trusted advisor.
Content marketing can be challenging especially if you don’t know whether to create original or share curated content. It will all boil down to your brand and your target audience. That is why you need to test whether mixing both or focusing on one type only will work for you.
Why Outsourcing Content Marketing with airisX Makes Sense?
At airisX, we help drive traffic and increase your conversion rates by creating engaging copy that captures your readers’ attention and drives them to action. Whether writing content for your blog, bullet points and product description, landing pages, and/or news articles, our writers have the training and expertise to craft the content you need. Contact us at contact@airisx.com for your content and copywriting needs.