Hulu and Netflix are both investing hundreds of millions of dollars into original programming, instead of being just a conduit for content. The value of mere distribution is shrinking everywhere – it’s not a great time to be a wholesaler.

Relevant question for your brand: can search engine robots find original content on your website?

It’s not a trivial matter, since truly original content is the single biggest factor you can control to become more visible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of cookie-cutter sites, especially smaller businesses victimized by the lowball sales pitch of “specialists” in their category. The price seems like a bargain, but the buyer never realizes that the copy they publish in Waukegan gets recycled in Wilmington and Walla-Walla. Human site visitors never notice, but the search engines downgrade the unsuspecting realtor/orthodontist/financial guru who wonders why his competitor is kicking his butt on Google.

Hey. If you’ve got your hands full being a doctor/restaurant/shopping mall, blogging and tweeting original content may not be a core competency, or even interesting to you. But it’s fascinating to robots, so you should stongly consider outsourcing. Content curation is a very hot discipline, and often a great investment. Ask us about it.