What is content syndication? How does it work?

Content syndication is a marketing strategy that refers to republishing existing online content on third-party websites or platforms. That means you’re republishing your content on those platforms. The aim behind this marketing strategy is to promote your content to a larger audience. It helps you to gain more traffic, and brand awareness, and generate more conversions. More interestingly, it not only increases the reach of the business that has created the original content but also helps the syndicate to improve its reach. 

So, by knowing what is content syndication and how it works, you will learn a new strategy of content marketing and its benefits.  

Importance of content syndication

• By syndicating the content, businesses increase their views through the old content. Therefore, they engage with more audiences. Moreover, it promotes your content in front of your target audience.
• Syndication helps to boost your site’s organic and referral traffic. When you gain referral traffic, you have acquired so many links from trustworthy sites. It indicates that your site has quality content. Thus, it also enhances your site’s authority. 
• The ultimate goal of content marketers is to generate revenue from their content. Content syndication helps them to earn more revenue with thought leadership. Thus, it enhances content marketing ROI. 
• Moreover, businesses can opt for syndicating content reviews. Review syndication helps businesses improve their SEO, and increase visibility, and authenticity. 

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How does content syndication work?

1. Free content syndication

There are different ways to syndicate your content free of cost. Let’s learn one after another.

• You can republish the best performing or latest content on a bigger platform or website. It’s also known as a major publication. A bigger platform means they have a wide range of customers, followers, and audience. That’s why you will gain a higher reach when you publish the content on a larger platform. Moreover, when the readers read your syndicated content through a third-party site, they are more likely to find the original resource of your content. It increases your organic traffic and brand awareness. Thus, major publication is an effective way of content syndication. 
• Creating guest posts on a larger publication and syndicating it later on your website, is another impactful method. It becomes helpful for the audience who want fresh content from you. As a result, you can reach more people. Also, syndication with guest posting helps you to establish your thought leadership abilities. Thus, people come to know about your expertise in a specific domain.
• If you want to syndicate your old content, you should choose websites that have the same authority as yours. Now, if you want to reach an audience of a specific niche, then you have to syndicate your content with a smaller publication that has content production for your target niche. These publications allow you to create more contextual links. 
• Several publications pick up content from a big publication and naturally syndicate it. For this, you need to maintain these – 

Make your content more visible and explain how others can syndicate your content.

Your site must include optimization for content syndication.  

Include visuals like diagrams, charts, infographics, etc.

Add some tips, statistics, key takeaways, etc.

Remember that some publications may not want to syndicate your entire content. In this case, they go for partial content syndication. That means a part of your content will be syndicated. For instance, they may choose a summary, excerpt, visuals, tips, or tricks for partial syndication. 

2. Paid content syndication

When a platform or website syndicates your content instead of spending a certain amount of money, that is known as paid content syndication. It works similarly to pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements. Thus, you need to set a cost per click, a target audience, and a budget for your paid campaign. After that, the third-party platform promotes your ad to the readers as recommended content. Also, they may feature other elements of your content on the ad – such as a short title, image, or link. So, when a reader clicks on the ad, you have to pay depending upon the configuration of your campaign and target audience.  

Large brands directly collaborate with large publishers and get their content syndicated for a wide range of audiences. The small brands use tools like Taboola and Outbrain to syndicate their content on large platforms like BBC, The Guardian, or CNN. 

3. Content syndication with the help of partners

If you’re looking for content syndication partners, then go for the publications that have –

• Better or similar authority as your site
• A readership that is inclined to your buyer persona
• Canonical links with original articles 

Also, avoid those publications that have no proper editorial guidelines, suspicious outbound links, and low reputation.  

But how to find partners or syndicated content that has partnerships with other platforms?

Search for the articles which have mentioned “republished with permission”, “originally published in” or “originally appeared on”. Now, you can use a simple Google search trick to find these syndicated contents with the partnership. The syntax is – 

“republished with permission” inurl:[domain]

Example:

“republished with permission” inurl:holistic marketing

From the search results, you will find the publication’s name which has syndicated the original content. So, by comparing these publications, you can pick the best partners for your content syndication. 

Sites, networks, or services for content syndication

You need to choose the right platform to make your content syndication successful. You will find these types of platforms to syndicate your content –

• Blogging platforms: They allow you to create your content on their website. Then, you can select customized options with these platforms to syndicate your content. Ex. Medium, Reddit, etc.
• Syndication networks: These networks syndicate your content by featuring the recommendation links of your articles across several sites. Eg. StumbleUpon, etc. 
• Social networks: Many social media networks support content syndication by publishing content directly on their platforms. For example, you can choose LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform, Facebook’s Instant Articles, etc. 
• Multi-author publications: Several multi-author publications support syndicated content and republish an entire or partial article. Ex: Social Media Today, Business 2 Community, Medium, etc. 

Conclusion

Content syndication is a great way to charge up your holistic marketing effort. It assists you in leveraging your content to a newer audience. But ensure that you are providing fresh and original content to the audience so that they can’t leave your site.