4 Ways to Implement Content Syndication

A content creator typing on a laptop. Photo by Daniel Thomas.

Content marketing is ever-evolving, but fundamental strategies remain. By now, you know that a successful content plan requires a balance between creating content for your established audience and attracting new attention. Targeted posts like a customer appreciation campaign can go a long way to show your dedicated audience you value them. In contrast, a testimonial campaign can be the thing that helps potential customers decide to make a purchase.

Since content creation is time-consuming and requires resources, you might not have consistent time to devote to crafting something new. However, if you plan well and focus on quality, the quantity might not be the problem you imagine. You don't always have to create a brand new piece of content every time you want to meet a new audience. One of the strategies you can use is content syndication.

In the age of TikTok influencers, we've learned one good series of content around a fun theme or your area of expertise is all it takes to build a repeat audience that will tune in and even share your content. Often, these creators find success with one type of video and then repost it to their other platforms. Your best bet is to syndicate your quality content to multiple locations and build partnerships with creators looking to do the same. This can be as simple as repurposing a blog post or re-sharing a video in another place.

What is Content Syndication?

Content syndication is when you republish content in multiple locations online. The content – like an article or infographic – often stays the same or has a slight change in the copy and external links when it gets shared on another website. This is not only an opportunity to communicate your brand's value but a straightforward way to get your brand in front of a larger audience.

How to Syndicate Your Content

1. Syndicate Your Best-Performing Content on Another Website

Writing a guest post is a guaranteed way to connect with a broader audience, but it can take a lot of additional work, especially if you're already creating content for your site. The beauty of syndicating your content on another blog or website is that you already have a post ready to go by simply selecting from your existing content library. At most, you might have to edit your article slightly to speak to a wider audience, but usually, a syndicated post is shared with an additional paragraph or two that introduces your work to the new site's readers. The effort needed is minimal and the results can be huge.

Are you wondering how to figure out which pieces of content perform best on your site? Make data-driven publishing decisions by looking at your statistics and determining the content that attracted the most reader engagement. Pick your top content pieces in terms of traffic, and then start researching other blogs and websites with an audience you’d like to target. Finally, inquire about reposting there.

You don’t need to build your syndication strategy exclusively around similar websites; you can start syndicating select content through a content-sharing platform. Sites like Medium or LinkedIn offer excellent opportunities to build an audience through an additional platform. Many companies create a LinkedIn blog or a Medium publication and use it as an additional space to share more focused content pieces around a specific topic. You could also pitch to well-established publications on these platforms and find those looking to syndicate content within your industry.

3. Contribute to a Site that Syndicates

Writing for any site with a large audience is enough to boost engagement with your brand and help you establish authority. However, contributing content to a place that syndicates its content will take you that much further. All you need is to apply to the site in a contributor role, and anything you write there could get picked up by several other sites or even one larger than where you’ve contributed.

To contribute to a site that syndicates, you often just need to demonstrate your expertise, come ready with a pitch, and have a clear vision about the articles you plan to contribute after the first one. Naturally, a contributor role on a site like Inc., Forbes, or Business Insider could help you get your content in front of millions of readers, but don’t forget that a piece of content on a more niche site within your industry can be more impactful. In fact, the more targeted the readership, the more engagement you might receive from the audience.

4. Syndicate Guest Content on Your Site

Content syndication isn’t just a one-way street. Ideally, you should look for a way to feature guests on your site so you can add a diverse set of voices to your brand and connect to the community within your industry. You also have the chance to be seen by new people because a fresh voice often comes with an audience of its own.

A great way to find guest content is to research websites within your industry. Search for thought leaders who write articles regularly, both in their own dedicated spaces and as contributors to other websites. It’s essential to have multiple guests featured. To start, try committing about 10% of your content marketing strategy to syndicated content.

What about SEO?

If you've done a bit of research into SEO best practices, you know that search engines like Google don't like duplicate content and will penalize websites that just copy/paste content in multiple locations. However, syndicating your content is perfectly fine. You just need to syndicate your content carefully.

According to the developers at Google, if you syndicate your content on other sites, "Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search." It may or may not be the newest version, but you can avoid the fear of the dreaded duplicate content strike by making sure "that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article." Easy peasy!

How Issuu Can Help

So, now that you know how to syndicate your content, it's the perfect time to think about how and where you'd like it presented in the first place. Creating a central hub for your digital content is an important step in the publishing process. Issuu provides an all-in-one platform to turn your static PDFs and articles into interactive embeddable flipbooks hosting all of your publications in one place for easy discovery. You can create an immersive reading experience, complete with videos and images and link building, where your content leaps off the page. And with no-code embedding, a single link allows you to easily syndicate your content across multiple websites by embedding your flipbook content wherever you’d like.