Using Original Content to Elevate Brand Positioning

Let’s start here. If you were asked to deliver the maid of honor or best man speech at your lifelong friend’s reception, would you simply pull a canned speech from the millions of aggregated speeches on the internet? You could, but would it deliver the right tone, feel, and personality, would it be ceded with slang, stories, and secrets that clearly depict the friendship you’ve developed over the decades-giving those listening a clear sense of what your friendship means to you, what it stands for? Well, the same sensibility should be given when considering your Brand content on your website.

Admittedly, using aggregated subscription-based content for your website has its advantages.

• Cost-Efficiency: Aggregated content often allows you to access a wide range of high-quality content without the expense of creating it yourself.
• Diverse Content: Aggregated content can provide a variety of content types, formats, and topics from multiple sources, giving your website a broader and more comprehensive range of information and perspectives.
• Time Savings: Using aggregated content can save you time on content production, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your website, such as design, marketing, and user engagement.
• Frequent Updates: Subscription-based services often provide regular content updates, ensuring that your website remains current and relevant without constant manual content creation.
• Access to Premium Content: Aggregated subscriptions may grant you access to premium, high-quality content that might be difficult to produce or afford on your own.
• Established Authority: By associating with respected subscription-based content providers, your website can gain credibility and authority in your niche or industry.

What is the value of the Brand?

However, stop and think about the value of your brand and the investment you have made to establish the positioning, tone and messaging that resonates with your audience and connects them uniquely to your brand, shouldn’t that be felt at every touch point, especially your most hallowed owned platform, your website? Before you make the mistake of measuring content value using cost (dollars and time), here is what you need to consider before you start talking and everyone starts looking at you confused based on the words coming from your mouth not at all sounding like who they thought you were and what you stand for.

What risk is there in letting someone else speak for the brand?

• Limited Control: When using aggregated content, you have limited control over the content itself, including its style, tone, and updates. This can make it challenging to align the content with your brand’s specific voice and messaging.
• Duplicate Content: Aggregated content may be available on other websites, leading to issues with duplicate content, which can negatively affect your search engine rankings.
• Subscription Costs: Subscription-based content services can be costly, and these costs can add up over time, potentially eating into your profits.
• Licensing and Copyright Issues: You must ensure that you have the appropriate licenses and permissions to use aggregated content on your website to avoid legal issues.
• Lack of Uniqueness: Relying solely on aggregated content can make your website less unique, which may not set you apart from competitors.
• Dependency on Third Parties: Your website’s success may become dependent on the availability and reliability of the subscription-based content providers.

Make content strategy decisions based on brand connection and consumer conversion, not ease of implementation.

In some cases, a hybrid approach that combines both aggregated content and original content can be a good strategy. Ultimately, the choice between using aggregated subscription-based content and creating your own will depend on your specific goals, resources, and the nature of your website, just ensure the decisions are driven by the investment in your brand and desired connection to your consumer. After all no one knows your story better than you.

Jigsaw’s specialty is helping brands in complex service industries succeed with thorough positioning strategy, planned messaging, and measurement supported with inspired creative, content development and engaging media. We take a brand from wherever it may be today, through every tomorrow yet to come.