Content Syndication for Your Partner Network: Seven Mistakes to Avoid
b'Content marketing has become the cornerstone of marketing effectiveness, and content syndication provides amplification via an extended network. Organizations selling through the channel can reach an audience of unprecedented size if they put together a cohesive strategy to distribute relevant content for strategic audiences. Rising above the noise is very important, but so is building a content-based relationship with target buyers via a distributed network. However, many companies flounder when it comes to pulling together a comprehensive content syndication strategy.\\nIn this article we will explore seven core mistakes or pitfalls that can be avoided to maximize the benefit from content syndication via a distributed network of partners:\\n\\n\\n \\tNo overarching content strategy. Often, companies will dive right in and begin leveraging content syndication to drive awareness and reach, but without taking the time to think through how their overall strategy, both from a cadence perspective\\u2014daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly cycles\\u2014and from the perspective of media channel alignment. Because of that, content syndication often ends up just amplifying the noise while failing to connect with the proper audience. The best remedy for this is to step back and think through a couple of key questions: Exactly who is the target audience you are trying to reach? And what are the media channels they typically go to? Once you\\u2019ve answered those questions, the next challenge is to put together an overall marketing/messaging framework\\u2014perhaps on a quarterly and annual basis\\u2014that\\u2019s tied directly to core business objectives and events that are happening in the organization. Once you\\u2019ve addressed those alignment issues, you\\u2019ll be in a much better position to define a clear content strategy that will help you not only expand your reach via content syndication, but also amplify the core messages that you\\u2019re trying to distribute through various channels.\\n \\tUnprovocative storytelling. Too often, we get carried away tweeting about product features or events or specific items that, frankly, are not that exciting. A savvy marketer once told me, \\u201cNo one wants to hear about the lock, but we all want to hear about the burglary.\\u201d We all know news is all about sensationalism, but so is content marketing. If it\\u2019s not provocative, doesn\\u2019t grab attention and doesn\\u2019t engage, increasing your reach is actually going to hurt content syndication activities in the long run because your audience is going to tune out. Therefore, it\\u2019s essential, once a broader messaging architecture has been created, that companies think about what kinds of stories they\\u2019re going to tell to their target audience, and then proceed from there.\\n \\tFailure to know\\u2014and act on\\u2014what\\u2019s actually working. Once you\\u2019ve figured out your overall content syndication cadence on a daily/monthly/quarterly basis and have determined the channels you need to reach, and once you have a clear idea of the stories you want to tell to your target audience, the next step is to figure out what is really working. When you\\u2019ve done that, instead of creating new \\u201cstuff,\\u201d the most important task is to figure out how to get the messages that are already working out to your entire audience. Unfortunately, many companies have a tendency to overlook what has worked and instead continue to create new content\\u2014just for the sake of creating new content. These organizations not only lose the investment they made in previous content syndication activities, but also fail to capitalize on the continuity of discussion through a variety of channels. A much better approach to driving content syndication via a partner network is to focus on the specific types of messaging and channels that are already producing good results and replicate those efforts.\\n \\tInability to effectively repurpose content by channel. There is now sufficient data to show that, for business audiences, LinkedIn, SlideShare and Twitter are the three most effec...'