A simple way for companies to engage in content marketing is to aggregate and disseminate content of interest to their customers on their website, through e-newsletters, etc. Aggregating content has a few benefits, including low cost and time commitment relative to creating original content.

The downside to aggregating content is that it’s not that difficult to do. Your competitors can just as easily find and distribute the same content that you do. In fact, it’s just as likely that your customers will find the content themselves through Google Alerts, RSS Feeds, etc. In other words, the barrier to entry is low.

Therefore, companies that want to distinguish themselves by aggregating content must do more than e-mail links to news stories and blog posts that they think are interesting. Here are two examples for sprucing up aggregated content:

Idea #1: Add commentary to your aggregated content.
Example: Fanball.com

When you join a fantasy football league at Fanball.com, you can choose to receive its NFL Newsbreakers e-mail. The newsletter consists of football news aggregated from various sources, mostly newspapers. Each news item contains three parts: A Headline, The News and Our View.

Aug 19, 2009 11:47 PM CDT
Murphy returns to practice

The News
Louis Murphy returned to practice Wednesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle . He has been nursing a hip injury.

Our View
The fourth-round pick is a great athlete and will push for playing time in the future, but his fantasy value looks to be limited as a rookie while learning the ropes as a deep reserve.

Too many companies mail newsletters with a headline and link and nothing else. The lesson here is that aggregated content is more valuable when it contains a summary and, more importantly, analysis.

Idea #2: Compile aggregated content into a narrative.
Example: New York Magazine (It Happened Last Week)

New York magazine used to publish an item every week that aggregated the week’s news, but two features distinguished it. First of all, the news was organized by a theme, which was suggested in the title. Second, the news was presented as a narrative, a single story, centered on the theme.

A good writer can compile aggregated news quickly in this fashion, yet the difference is huge compared to companies who don’t polish the raw content into something valuable.