Owning Your Content Gives You Full Control of Your Business

The content you create and distribute for your business is a cornerstone of your success. But there’s a price to pay for using third-party platforms when sharing your marketing messages.
Content published on third-party platforms like Facebook and YouTube is ultimately owned and controlled by those platforms. This puts you and your content at the mercy of their terms of service.
Knowing how to get full control of your content through your website is essential to your long-term marketing and branding.

The Publishing Power of Your Website

Everyone is a publisher these days. Businesses and individuals are creating new content on their websites as well as social media pages and other third-party publishing platforms like Medium.
Podcasts and videos have expanded the ways that businesses can get their messages out to their audiences. But most people are also using third-party platforms like YouTube to distribute their content instead of their websites.
The appeal of third-party platforms comes from the built-in audiences they can provide. But not having full control over the content you publish can hurt you in the long run.
Publishing content on your website means you own it. You can tailor your content to match your brand while using it to draw users who are more likely to be interested in your services and products.
Publishing content on your website gives you a more efficient way to capture leads when compared to driving traffic from a third-party site to your website.

The Risks You Take When You Publish on Someone Else’s Website

Third-party platforms are outside of your control. If you’ve published a significant amount of content on someone else’s platform, you’re at risk of losing it if that platform shuts down.
It’s not uncommon for publishing platforms to run into technical issues that cause users to lose content. So you can’t always rely on keeping your content safe when it’s been hosted on third-party platforms.
Security breaches are a real threat to all websites. You can strengthen the security of your own site, but third-party platforms may not be putting the measures in place that you need.
Anytime you publish content on a public site, there’s a risk that it could be taken and reused without your permission. There are legal avenues you can take to hold guilty parties accountable, but these can be time-consuming and costly for your business.

Why You Need to Maintain Ownership of Your Content

Publishing your content on your website gives you full and exclusive rights to that content. More importantly, the results you achieve from that content can be monitored and managed by you.
Whether your content grows your audience, positions you as an industry expert, or generates revenue, having full ownership means that you can scale those results in ways that support your long-term business goals.
Your website can protect your content from being stolen. Content theft can have a serious impact on your business and its bottom line.
Social media and other third-party publishing platforms do have their time and place. They can increase your visibility and help you reach new audiences.
But keep your highest-quality and most original content on your website. In addition to the protection you get against security breaches and theft, publishing quality content on your site drives users to your business.
Third-party sites can change their algorithms, impacting how your content appears in search results and feeds. Making your website the hub of your content marketing protects you from these and other issues.
Save your best content for your website. Give users a reason to visit your site so they can sign up to receive more in-depth, useful, and relevant information through email updates and other channels.
The more ownership and control you have over your content, the more successful your content marketing will be.