Content Curation vs. Content Creation: What’s the Difference?

There are many strategies a business can use when it performs content marketing. Whether it’s crafting weekly blogs or creating animated videos, there’s often more than one way to succeed with their marketing goals. It’s no different for content creation versus content curation. Though the two strategies are similar, each can offer its own benefits to businesses, both separately and together.

What’s the Difference?

Content creation and content curation really only differ in one way: how the content’s made. Content creation is the act of creating new, original material. Companies can perform content creation when they write new blogs, white papers, and eBooks from scratch using their own ideas and expertise. Content curation, on the other hand, is using and adapting content from other businesses and brands for your own company.

There are various ways to perform content curation, including sharing someone else’s post on your own social media account or commenting on another brand’s blog article. That means, if you see someone else’s blog that you think your audience would enjoy, you can create your own content using that article and its information.

Image via Giphy by @chrisleyknowsbest

It’s important to mention that curation isn’t plagiarism. When companies perform curation, specifically with blogs, they create the same type of content using their own words. In fact, some companies backlink to the content they’re referencing. This can help show Google and other search engines you’re creating quality blogs and white papers. It might also encourage the brand you’re referencing to curate one of your own articles in the future.

Which One’s Better?

Both content curation and content creation have benefits. Timothy Carter lists a few of those benefits in a recent article he wrote for the Entrepreneur:

Content Curation

Here are a few benefits to content curation:

• Requires less creative work: When you curate content, you use articles and blog topics you already know are getting a lot of readership. That way, you can quickly and easily produce content that people are already searching for.
• Builds relationships: Curating content can help you build relationships with other brands by referencing their work. Backlinking to another website helps generate more traffic and in return, that company might backlink to your own website. This can make that relationship mutually beneficial.
• Follows trends: Creating content around popular trends or topics can help your website climb the search result rankings. When you curate different blogs and articles, you can keep up with fast-changing trends to ensure people will read what you’re trying to say.

Content Creation

Here are a few benefits to content creation:

• Unique content: Creating content from scratch can allow your company to host original content on its site. Having unique content can separate you from competitors and attract more customers to your brand.
• Brand-specific material: If you use content creation, you can develop content that specifically targets your brand. That can include product release statements and benefits to using your services. Brand-specific content can help people become more aware of your business and what you offer.
• Trendsetting ability: If you develop unique content that’s popular, you can create a new trend. That means, more people might use your content to curate their own. This can develop more backlinks to your site and show your brand as trustworthy to readers and customers.

Using Them Together

Each strategy alone can give you different benefits, but most often, these strategies work well when you use them together. Filling your website with both original and curated content can help show visitors you’re a well-rounded business with a lot of information to offer. If you consistently just post your own content on social media, some people might lose interest over time. However, if you also post about other brands’ opinions and content, you might attract a larger audience.

But it’s also important to know that performing two different content marketing strategies can be time-consuming. That’s why content marketing companies, like CopyPress, make it easier for you.

Image via Giphy by @cbc

CopyPress offers many services to help you create strong content for your business and marketing needs. We can even help you develop marketing strategies that incorporate both content curation and content creation. Contact us today to see how we can help you with your content marketing needs.

CopyPress