Many marketers think that content syndication is primarily a B2C marketing tactic. That’s not true. B2B content syndication is just as effective.
Still, only 23% of B2B marketers use content distribution platforms, as per Content Marketing Institute’s 2022 report.
This gives you an advantage. You can gain a competitive edge by leveraging this low-cost marketing tactic to your advantage.
In this article, we’ll help you learn what B2B content syndication is and how you can use it to generate new leads and sales for your business.
Let’s get started.
What is B2B Content Syndication?
B2B content syndication involves the distribution of high-quality, industry-specific content created by a business on third-party platforms.
The content could be anything from articles to whitepapers or explainer videos.
The goal is to reach a wider audience than what a business would reach by simply sharing content through its website and social media accounts.
The key benefit of content syndication, over other distribution methods like guest blogging, is that it allows content republishing and repurposing.
So, you don’t need to create fresh content for syndication sites. You can redistribute your existing content to increase its reach and generate additional user engagement.
In the next section, we’ll cover the benefits of B2B content syndication in more detail.
The Benefits of B2B Content Syndication Marketing
Before we get into the details of how to use content syndication for your business, let’s first understand why you should use it in the first place.
1. Increase Your Reach and Brand Awareness
Using multiple third-party content syndication platforms, you can widen the reach of your content. It can help you build stronger online visibility and brand awareness, among other benefits.
iSelect Australia, for instance, used Outbrain’s content syndication services to get over 350 million impressions on its content.
2. Build Thought Leadership and Authority in Your Industry
By sharing high-quality content on trending industry topics across platforms, you can establish yourself as an industry expert. It also helps establish thought leadership for your business and builds credibility.
3. Increase Your Website Traffic and Leads
By publishing your content on multiple channels, you can significantly increase your referral traffic and generate more leads for your business.
Use strategically-placed and contextually-relevant links to direct people to your website from different content syndication networks.
Red Hat, for example, used content syndication services to generate 2,500 qualified leads and over $7M in revenue.
4. Cut Down Marketing Costs
Content syndication is an easy-to-execute, low-cost marketing strategy with many benefits. You don’t need to create fresh content every time.
Distributing your content across multiple customer touchpoints is a simple and effective method to stay on top of your consumers’ minds.
B2B Content Syndication Process: How to Do It Right
Let us walk you through the process of syndicating your B2B content in the right way to reach a wider audience, build backlinks, and boost your brand awareness.
1. Find the Right Content Syndication Networks
Finding the right content syndication networks is crucial to your B2B content syndication strategy, as it ensures you’re not wasting effort in generating irrelevant leads.
You should choose networks that have a group of websites relevant to your industry and where your target audience frequents.
Some of the most popular B2B content syndication networks are:
- Outbrain
- Taboola
- Digiday
- Business 2 Community
2. Join Relevant Content Syndication Platforms
A content syndication platform is a software application that helps you syndicate your content to other websites and blogs.
The free platforms, such as Medium, simply require you to create an account and syndicate your content.
For paid B2B content syndication services, you can reach out to the individual platform and discuss its terms of use. Once everything is set, you can start sharing your content through it.
Some common B2B content syndication platforms include:
- Medium
- SlideShare
- Pressboard
3. Optimize Your Content for Each Content Syndication Platform
While content syndication doesn’t require creating fresh content, you still need to follow the guidelines for each specific platform.
For example, SlideShare is a platform for sharing presentations and documents. You may need to repurpose your blog content into slides to syndicate your content on SlideShare.
Before you share content on any website, ensure that you optimize and tweak your content to meet the guidelines. Also, make sure you disclose that a piece of content is being republished, if the platform requires that.
See how this Medium post discloses that it’s a republished post and also mentions where it was originally published.
4. Monitor Your Content’s Performance to Refine Your Syndication Strategy
Analyze your content’s performance to see what type of content works best on different platforms.
According to Content Marketing Institute’s latest report, B2B marketers use the following metrics to measure their content’s performance:
Also, see which platforms are bringing in the most leads and traffic to your website. Refine your content syndication strategy to focus on high-performing content types, posts, and syndication channels.
Choosing the Right B2B Content Syndication Platforms and Networks
The success or failure of a content syndication campaign depends on your choice of platform. Here are some popular options and tips for you:
5 Popular B2B Content Syndication Networks and Platforms You Can Use
Here are some free and paid content syndication platforms that you can use to increase the reach of your B2B business:
1) Medium
Medium is one of the most popular content syndication platforms, used by both B2B and B2C marketers. After all, it’s completely free and has a massive user base of over 130 million monthly users.
You can create an account and share relevant content to build an audience on the platform. Once you have enough followers, it will become an effective lead and traffic generation channel that works on autopilot.
2) LinkedIn
It offers a freemium solution for B2B content syndication marketing. You can, of course, share free content on the platform.
But for more targeted B2B content syndication campaigns, you can use LinkedIn Sponsored Content. It’s a paid content syndication service that will show your content on the feeds of relevant audiences.
3) Outbrain
If you’re looking for paid B2B content syndication services, you should consider using Outbrain. It’s a content discovery platform that will allow you to syndicate your content across a network of relevant websites.
This includes top media outlets like CNN, Times, and ESPN.
If you have the budget for paid content syndication, then Outbrain can help you reach a wider audience than most free platforms.
4) TechTarget
TechTarget is a B2B technology media company that offers paid content syndication services to tech companies. They claim to help companies get highly relevant, qualified leads through their content syndication programs.
Here are some stats to back the claim:
5) Industry-Specific Content Syndication Networks
There are many industry-specific content syndication networks that you can use to reach niche and targeted audiences.
Here’re some more B2B content syndication channels that you can consider:
How to Choose the Right Content Syndication Platforms
Here are some factors you should consider when selecting the B2B content syndication platform or network for your business:
- Relevance: Choose platforms where your target audience is active. Also, consider whether a platform is specific to your industry. Prefer industry-specific platforms over generic ones.
- Reach: The more users a platform has, the better it is for your business. In the case of paid services, assess how many websites or channels they can help you access.
- Budget: While there are many free platforms, sometimes you may need to invest in paid content syndication services. In such cases, choose the ones that offer maximum reach at the lowest cost.
4 Best Practices for Results-Driven B2B Content Syndication
While content syndication is an effective marketing tactic, not every business can successfully leverage it. To improve your chances of success, use the following tips and best practices.
1. Choose Your Top-Performing Content for Syndication
The beauty of content syndication is that you can simply republish your existing content. So do a content audit and identify your top-performing content pieces and share them on multiple platforms.
If you already know that something works, why not share it with more people? It’s the best way to get great results from your content syndication campaigns.
2. Add Relevant Links to Your Website
If your goal is to generate more website traffic and leads for your business using content syndication, then adding links is a must.
Here are some tips to add links to your content:
- Only add contextually-relevant links.
- Use relevant anchor texts.
- Don’t add too many links. In fact, add them sparingly.
- Follow the guidelines of the target website or network where you’ll syndicate your content.
3. Track and Analyze the Performance of Your Syndicated Content
Always monitor the performance of your syndicated content to assess:
- Which content syndication platforms are generating maximum traffic and leads for you?
- Which content pieces are receiving the maximum user engagement?
- What are your most successful content types?
This will help you refine and optimize your B2B content syndication strategy, which will help you get better results in the long run.
For example, here are the results of our content syndication service for a fintech company. We generated 3540 marketing-qualified leads for their new solution and helped them increase their conversion rate by 78%.
4. Avoid Common Pitfalls of B2B Content Syndication
Lastly, avoid the common pitfalls to ensure your B2B content syndication campaign is successful. Here are some tips to do that:
- Don’t share your content on every platform. Limit your efforts to a few selected platforms.
- Never share low-quality content as that can damage your reputation.
- Make sure you have a lead nurturing strategy in place to capture the leads generated through your content syndication efforts.
- Always optimize your content for each platform and only share relevant and targeted content.
Ready to Use B2B Content Syndication to Your Advantage?
Content syndication is a cost-effective marketing tactic that you should add to your marketing mix. It doesn’t require much time and cost investment but still delivers great results.
Use this detailed guide to use B2B content syndication to generate more qualified leads for your business. Remember, that choosing the right channels is crucial to the success of your content syndication efforts.
So, what are you waiting for?
Start using B2B content syndication today and use this guide to ensure you’re well prepared.
FAQs
- What are content syndication platforms?
A content syndication platform allows you to republish your existing content beyond your own channels to reach more people.
- Is content syndication free?
Yes, there are many content syndication partners that allow you to republish your content for free. However, for B2B content syndication to be more effective, you may need to work with paid content syndication services.
- What is an example of content syndication?
Let’s say you publish a blog post on your website and share the exact same post on Medium to reach new audiences. That’s content syndication in its simplest form.
