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Promoting your blog on a daily basis can be a big challenge. That is where content syndication now becomes valuable among bloggers and webmasters who could not devote the time to promote their content on a daily basis in order to increase its traffic. Content syndication is a process where you are publishing your content on a third party website in order to maintain its exposure to your target readers. Some consider this process as a part of their search engine optimization strategy in promoting content. It is possible to syndicate content using a free and paid methods. Either way you can achieve your most desired results, that is, exposure of your content.
What makes content syndication beneficial
Many are quite reluctant about the impact of content syndication to their search engine ranking. There is the idea that Google might penalize their website because of the publication of duplicate content. This is not the case, however. Third party publishers will be showing a link directly taking the readers to your original content where it was first published. The following are among the benefits that can be derived by using content syndication:
- Gives your content maximum exposure
- Builds traffic to your site
- Promoting yourself as an expert
- Receive quality links back to your site
- Increase your search ranking
- Better exposure of your brand
- Build the number of your followers
- The process does not violate Google policy
Content syndication is considered to be a win-win situation between the content owner and the publisher. With the above-mentioned benefits of content syndication, the content owner will be able to grow its massive exposure and brand promotion while the publisher gets premium content to publish on their site.
Syndicating content through the social media
There are many ways by which content syndication is used by a publisher. Your content may appear as a snippet on their site or may be in the form of a link, thumbnail or even your full content published. The social media sites are the most popular publishers of syndicated content. Social media marketing strategies of online marketers consist of writing shareable content that will help increase their website traffic and grow a wider exposure of their content among social media readers. Here are the things that you can do to syndicate content on social media:
- Optimize the local exposure of your business by linking your blog RSS feed to the local directories for local businesses.
- Include the links of your social media content to the local directories for maximum exposure.
- Use LinkedIn in showcasing your articles posts on your profile and LinkedIn listings.
- Always include in your blog posts the “Follow us on Facebook,” “Follow us on Twitter” tags below your articles.
- Contact social media sites that are industry specific in order to gain maximum exposure of your content to your target readers.
Methods of content syndication
Content marketers have two options on how to syndicate content. They may opt for the free or paid methods which involves different content syndication approaches.
Free content syndication methods
This is a method where you don’t get to shell out some money in order to gain exposure to your content. There are social media sites that don’t charge a dime for re-publishing your content such as the following:
- Hubpages. This site has its own group of members called hubbers who owns their own domain and are able to publish their content on their own hubs. Ember your own video content, share your article links and even publish your own article to the other hubbers.
- Scribd. Members of Scribd are able to share their content through iPaper format. Your content can gain high exposure to its users who are also republishing their content or eBook.
- Facebook. The most popular social media platform that can get your content high level of exposure. You can share a link to your content and even automate your blog site to publish newly added content from it to your Facebook page.
- Twitter. You can automate to display tweets on your Twitter account regarding your latest content which increases its exposure to your newly published content.
- YouTube. Post your shareable videos and include a link to your published content for others to visit as well.
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Paid content syndication
The idea about paid content syndication is offering your content to a third party publisher that is willing to syndicate your content while charging a fee such as those seen on CNN and Forbes. While these sites are not categorized as social media sites, they have numerous social media followers to whom you can introduce your shareable content. You can also undertake an ad-supported blog syndication where you get a share of the advertising revenue when your content is performing well in generating traffic and followers on an industry specific social media site.
Finding the best content syndication publisher
Where you publish your content for syndication helps to define the measurable success of gaining traffic and exposure of your brand and business. Whether it is a paid or free method of content syndication that you opt to use for content marketing, it is essential to find a reputable social media partner that can help you promote your content. The key to maximizing your social media content syndication includes the following:
- Select a social media site that has bigger social community members. This will give your content maximum traffic and numbers of followers.
- Choose social media sites that are industry specific if you want to easily find the target audience for your content.
- Create a social media profile for your brand. This will take your content publication a long way using a free content syndication method. Make sure you have a profile on these giant social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn.
- Make your content shareable by adding social media buttons. This makes it easier for your readers to share your content which basically helps increase the exposure of your content within the social media networks.
Take advantage of social media tools from HootSuite and Sprout Socials. These tools can help save you from manually syndicating content from your different social media networks.
Read More: A Content Regimen That Generates Organic Traffic.