Scaling content creation solves what I call the “content pain journey” brands face in social.

Essentially, with the social web, brands need to act like publishers and push 20-40 content pieces a day to keep customers constantly engaged on their social properties. 

In order to do this without skyrocketing content costs, brands should think beyond just creating their own original content.

Five other content types exist (in order of cheapest to most expensive)–

• Aggregated content – machine aggregated content based on keywords
• Curated content – experts at brand bring together the best content from around the web
• Curated content with context — experts at brand bring together the best content from around the web and provide their context on it
• Recycled content – reuse content across formats. For example, if you have a few great whitepapers on the same topic, put them together and call it a “book” and rerelease. “Cut up” a great whitepaper into tweets.
• Commissioned content – pay well known influencers and journalists with built in followings to create content the brand’s platforms

By providing great content to customers from many sources, brand social properties become authoritative sources of industry information and, once that happens, the brand gains much more crediblility with their original content on those properties.

And, brands get more content out faster, better, and cheaper!