When it comes to content marketing, you’ll often find the same piece of content distributed to multiple different platforms. This approach allows for maximum outreach and the opportunity to tailor content into diverse formats.
This is known as content syndication, and if it’s not something you’re doing already, it may well be worth implementing into your next marketing strategy. For B2B marketers, you want to generate as many high-quality leads as possible – how else can you do that if your target audience doesn’t know who you are or what you do?
Today, this blog will help shine a light on the content syndication process and how it can help you run the most effective marketing campaign possible!
What is B2B content syndication?
So, we’ve already established that content syndication involves republishing a piece of content across multiple platforms and third-party websites. You can do this through selling or licensing your content through paid syndication or using your own channels on sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter).
This helps it gain more traction amongst a larger audience and helps you make the most of the content you’ve written.
Syndication is a popular practice in the film and TV industry, where multiple screens and channels can show a recording for a residual fee. It’s also regularly seen on the news when several channels use the same footage or image to cover a breaking story.
But what does this look like for B2B companies?
A lot of time and effort goes into creating a whitepaper, e-book, or even just a well-researched article. It’s a huge shame if it doesn’t gain much attention once you publish it to your website, especially if it has high potential to enhance your position as an industry thought leader.
B2B content syndication can involve working with B2B syndication specialists who host high-ranking websites. These spaces can generate a large number of leads, so it’s a great place for many B2B companies to host their work and encourage a flow of traffic back to their original site.
Content syndication vendors such as RealTop, NetLine, and Hypersonic can help keep track of everything for a monthly fee. This helps keep everything in one place, so you don’t have to juggle with spreadsheets about what content has been posted where. What’s more, these vendors all offer larger digital marketing strategies to help with other areas of your business.
How to plan your B2B content syndication
Like any part of digital content marketing, you need to have a solid plan in place before you can progress further. Here are some key steps to help point you in the right direction.
1. Create quality content to begin with
The first step will always be to create rich, high-quality content you are proud to share. The best content will generate the best leads, so focus your efforts there before going ahead with anything else.
Quality content will solidify you as a thought leader and voice of authority in your industry. It will inspire people to take action and encourage them to work with you when you have something unique and interesting to say. This could be:
- White Papers about your original research
- Opinion articles about the industry and your predictions for where it will go in the future
- Blog posts helping to inform or explain industry concepts
- Engaging videos of webinars, podcasts, or infographics that help diversify your content
Relevant content is more likely to be accepted by syndication partners and well-received by readers. It has to be something people are actively interested in depending on where they are in their buyer’s journey. The graph below shows the most valuable content types for each stage of this journey.
2. Gather intent data
There’s no point in syndicating your content if no one’s going to be interested in it; that’s just a waste of resources. And it’s not worth syndicating the wrong type of content that won’t help generate leads.
Intent data looks at your target audience and sees what they’re most interested in, what they engage with the most, and what brings in the best results.
When it comes to B2B operations, you need a firm understanding of what your potential clients are looking for and what solutions they have already adopted. Doing so will identify viable gaps in the market and neglected areas that your content could fill.
Once you have this data, you can make better, more informed decisions and prioritize the relevant marketing tactics to achieve the best results.
3. Identify syndication opportunities
Plenty of content syndication opportunities are available on the internet, depending on your budget, goals, and the type of content you wish to promote.
If you’d prefer to host your own content, make sure your accounts are set up and have attracted an initial following. Some of the best social media sites for B2B content marketing include:
- LinkedIn: A platform built with businesses and working professionals in mind – networking is at the core of what this site is about
- X (formerly Twitter): Perfect for sharing lots of short-form content and engaging with your audience
- Instagram: Prioritizes visual content and has very easy-to-use backlinking software to take visitors directly to your landing pages
This graph from Statista shows the “leading paid social media platforms used by B2B marketers to distribute content worldwide as of July 2022”.
However, if you decide to go for third-party users, do your research and only work with reputable content syndication platforms with a wealth of experience and knowledge. Otherwise, you risk having your content replicated without credit, distributed too little or too much, or flagged by Google’s search algorithm as spam.
If these providers have any submission guidelines, ensure you know what they are so you can best tailor your content to be accepted. Alternatively, get in touch with their sales team to negotiate a package that works best towards achieving your goals.
4. Optimize your content
Depending on where you syndicate your content, you can optimize it in certain ways. For example, you could abbreviate extracts from larger pieces for better traction on short-form social media platforms.
Some syndication partners may have a word count or certain limitations that you need to adhere to. Alternatively, they may suggest you change elements of your content based on what audiences have engaged with most positively before.
Whilst any of your content can be republished, emphasize your best posts first. First impressions are hugely important in B2B marketing, so put your best foot forward and aim to give your buyers a show they won’t forget. Remember to always link back to your original posts to draw in new leads who will go on to review your services as well.
5. Don’t forget about lead nurturing
Once you’ve started to gain more attention, you need to nurture those potential leads and guide new followers further down your marketing pipeline.
By creating more personalized content, you can appeal directly to the businesses that will bring you the most success. You can move away from top-of-the-funnel marketing tactics and guide your leads toward a genuine sale.
Nurturing will help build trust between you and the people you communicate with. You can present yourself as a source of knowledge and opportunities that will aid in the success of their own business.
6. Track your metrics
Even though third parties take the process out of your hands, it’s necessary that you follow up with them and keep track of how many new leads your syndicated content is generating.
If your syndication partnerships have brought in very little interest, you can always change providers or try different tactics. Alternatively, if your content is improving, focus more on these relationships and work closely with them to optimize as you go.
You should keep an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:
- Bounce rate
- Click-through rate
- Comments
- Shares
- Sales revenue over time
These will all provide unique insights into whether or not your syndicated content has done its job.
Types of content syndication strategies
It may sound pretty straightforward, but you can take multiple different directions when assembling a content syndication campaign.
Your choice of strategy will depend on your goals, target audience, and the resources you have available. For example, if you’re a small business, your approach will differ from a large business with more money to spend.
Here are some common syndication strategies to explore to see which suit your company and your plans the best.
Paid syndication
A quick and effective way to get results is by partnering with the content syndication vendors mentioned earlier. This is a great investment for smaller businesses with some advertising money to spare, as it allows you to be seen quickly by new audiences.
Some content syndication service providers, such as Taboola and RevContent, partner with larger companies like news networks and can feature your content directly on these high-traffic sites. This is like a form of sponsoring on a website where the links provided return readers to your original blog rather than taking up storage space on the host site itself.
Direct paid syndication, whereby your blog post is displayed in its entirety on a third party’s website, can cost a lot more and may not be as viable for businesses on a budget.
Collaborative syndication
Getting your content hosted by third parties is a great way to get your information out there. But it’s also worth collaborating with other B2B companies to develop a trade agreement whereby you both host each others’ work.
A vast majority of B2B marketing is about networking and building a rapport with fellow businesses, who may then go on to work with you more in the future.
Sharing content and hosting each others’ blog posts and whitepapers can facilitate that engagement with mutual benefits. This works well for companies of a similar size and audience since both operate on an even playing field.
Depending on how you wish to arrange it, you can either take a percentage cost per lead/click for hosting someone else’s content. Or you can arrange it as a mutual transaction with no additional costs involved.
Visual syndication
Few mediums are better than a strong video or detailed infographic when displaying a large amount of data in one easy-to-consume format.
Visual content is much easier to separate for syndication since it can be readily shared across the internet. You can:
- Design your work as visual content to begin with
- Convert your written work into a visual format to make it easier to distribute
- Combine both practices and convert elements that would benefit from it while retaining the bulk of your writing
Visual syndication is excellent for social media marketing due to the viral nature of shares and likes. You can have your content hosted organically on your own accounts, or with paid advertising to promote them.
Social media also makes it a lot easier to target your ideal customers, as you can look at the demographics and decide which platform is the best host for your outreach.
Targeted account-based marketing (ABM) strategy
You want to target accounts that will provide you with the most qualified leads – the people and businesses most likely to use your services later on. An ABM strategy tailors the content you’ve created and directs it towards the right audience.
Due to the nature of the internet, there are varying reports on how many B2Bs use ABM, with some sources suggesting 60% or more, while others conclude that the number is closer to 90%. Either way, it’s an invaluable tool that will help you enormously, especially when paired with an inbound marketing initiative.
You should start by creating a buyer persona/ideal customer profile (ICP) for the businesses and individuals you want to connect with the most. This will give you the best information on how to target them correctly by appealing to their interests and company needs.
Then, you can create new content or tailor old work accordingly before sending it to your syndication partners to distribute.
Benefits of content syndication
If you’re still not convinced, let’s take the time to evaluate the benefits that content syndication can bring to you.
Increased lead generation
The great thing about content syndication is that you don’t have to republish a piece exactly as is. You are free to make changes and optimize the content depending on where it will be distributed.
In marketing, you need to consider your buyer’s pipeline and at which part of the marketing funnel customers are at the top, middle, or bottom. From a business perspective, the funnel highlights the stages of the buyer’s journey and how you can use your content to influence customers along the way.
- Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU): Leads look at an overview of the market and focus on building brand awareness. This is where you can solidify yourself as a thought leader without too much emphasis on product placement.
- Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU): Leads look at your brand in particular in more detail. A great way to do this is by using case studies to highlight how your brand has helped others.
- Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU): There will be the fewest leads here, but they will be of the best quality. At this stage, you can offer demos and in-depth insight into your business and work on lead nurturing until your audience becomes customers.
Content syndication is primarily used in the TOFU stage of B2B lead generation, but its versatility means you can use it at any point in the funnel.
Helps your SEO
Every content marketer on the internet has heard of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s one of the best ways to get seen online, outside of paying for a top sponsored spot on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).
Content syndication can help with your SEO score, providing the perfect opportunity to backlink your original content. This drives organic traffic to your site, increasing your SERP spot.
If you’re worried about Google’s algorithms penalizing you for the amount of duplicate content you have online, consider optimizing your meta-descriptions for each third-party platform you post to. Changing tags and smaller administrative details can eliminate the issue.
Better brand awareness
Brand awareness, reach, and recognition are things B2Bs and B2Cs alike strive for. The more people know about you, the more leads you can generate.
By syndicating your content, you can give yourself a much wider platform to be seen by potential customers. It’s common sense that the more you expand the publication of your content, the better chance there is of your relevant demographics seeing and engaging with it.
A few final words
It’s no lie that content syndication is one of the best ways to reach a wider audience, but it’s also a lot of work. There are a lot of threads to keep track of, so make sure you’ve got a strong relationship with both your syndication partner and your marketing team for the best success possible.
