Original Content vs Curated Content: Which Is Right For Your Business?

Today, businesses widely recognize the importance of content creation and marketing. In fact, it’s mainstream now.

However, the shocking fact is that a whopping 70% of the content goes unseen, despite the tremendous effort put into its development.

Even more of an issue is that 86% of businesses find their content marketing efforts don’t provide any value they can measure.

With these challenges in mind, it’s no wonder that some are starting to question whether producing original content is always the ideal approach.

This is where content curation becomes an alternative strategy that can better cater to your business needs and engage your audience.

An example of an email newsletter by Wall Street Journal showcasing curated news.

By leveraging curated content, you can provide valuable and relevant information while saving resources and achieving better results. Let’s explore how in this post.

The State of Original Content in Content Marketing

While there isn’t detailed research on original content since it is as varied as simple blog posts to blockbuster movies, here are some things we can know: 

• There are 70 million blog posts published on WordPress every single day! That’s millions of original content pieces a day. 
• 84% of millennials state that user-generated original content influences their buying. A similar proportion of people spend 18 hours a day with the media. 

It’s clear that original content should be a key component of most content marketing strategies. It helps brands build authority and trust, inform their audience, and drive organic traffic to their website.
However, in today’s highly competitive landscape, standing out with original content has become increasingly difficult.

Content creation can be time-consuming and often feels repetitive due to the abundance of content across various platforms. Not to mention the growth of AI content-generation tools means that there’s more content being churned out than ever before. And very little of it provides value.

So, while original content is crucial, it is essential to recognize that it is only one part of a comprehensive content marketing approach.

Your brand needs to diversify its strategy by incorporating other tactics such as content curation, social media engagement, and so on.
By leveraging a holistic content marketing strategy, you’ll improve your reach and make use of your existing content. And this will save time and resources while driving results.

The Importance of Content Curation in Content Marketing

Content curation is gathering and organizing existing content from various sources and presenting it in a meaningful way.

At its heart, it provides value that standalone content can’t create. People need information from multiple sources. They also need options to choose from. And curation that has been done well can help people get a comprehensive view of a subject and meet their needs.

There are many tools that do this today. Many thought leaders, influencers, and brands curate content using social media tools, email newsletters, and specialized platforms like Scoop.it.

How Scoop.it makes it easy to curate content on any topic and create value. Source. 

Since these tools make it easy to curate content from multiple sources, you can easily supplement your original content to create more value.

There are several benefits to curating content:

• Save time and money that would go into creating more content
• Ensure that the content you did make circulates more than once
• Draw from other sources to create varied offerings that your audience will enjoy. You can curate and showcase diverse perspectives, industry trends, expert opinions, and more.
• Improve your audience engagement and reach
• Create more value by offering targeted content that addresses the specific needs and pain points of their audience with content curation.

Next, let’s look at what strategy you should focus on in your business.

Which Should You Choose: Content Curation or Original Content?

The decision between content curation and original content is not an either-or choice.

The smart thing to do is to use both. You need to create original content to stay with the times. And you need to curate content to provide added value.

Now, let’s look at how you can curate content effectively and choose to create original material when it’s most effective:

• Do you have many posts that are buried or simply don’t get much engagement or traffic? Then prioritize them by curating them into a resource or guide, revitalizing traffic and engagement.
• Think about knowledge gaps in your market. Will filling such a knowledge gap help your audience? You can curate content such as relevant posts, videos, and other content formats to build an ultimate guide or resource base.
• Add value to your email list by curating valuable trending news and developments, keeping your subscribers informed and engaged.
• Turn your social media channels into a powerful source of information by curating and sharing valuable facts, details, data, and other relevant content.
• Save time and effort by repurposing and curating older content to fill your content calendar.
• Create original content when you’re missing critical pieces of information that are relevant to your industry. For example, if your brand is about e-learning, then besides covering the usual topics, write about community engagement which is important to learning.
• Want to stand above your competition? Then write content that they’ve missed or compete with them by creating better sources of information.
• You can do both, create original content or curate content when something new happens in your industry. Seize the opportunity to create blog posts and white papers. And also curate trending information and developments. Through these means, you can update your audience on news that hasn’t been covered by anyone else yet.

Remember, a combination of content curation and original content creation can help you provide valuable and diverse content to your audience while effectively meeting your marketing objectives.

Leverage Your Content with Scoop.it.

It’s clear that if you want to execute a successful content strategy, you need to create content from scratch and also curate it.

The key lies in being clear on your purpose so you know what to leverage. By curating content and making original material, you’ll reach more people, drive more traffic and sales, and build your authority.

And to make the entire process easy, it’s important that you use the right tool. And this is where Scoop.it shines. We are a content curation platform that empowers brands and individuals to curate top-quality content with ease.

Build your audience, become a thought leader, and meet your marketing goals with Scoop.it to help.