Content co-creation is the practice of developing any kind of textual, audio, visual or audiovisual material through collaboration of more than one party. A company can co-create content with the help of freelance writers, marketing firms, scholars or industry experts and using the information available in public domain as well as proprietary information that they have the right to use. Content co-creation doesn’t necessarily involve multiple parties. It could be just one party other than the company that would own the content and using it in some form. Content co-creation can also involve users or the end customers.

There are content co-creation platforms today that allow companies to hire the best talents in specific niches and more than one talent can collaborate on a project to come up with more formidable content. A company can hire one or more parties and they can come together to create the articles, blogs, sales pitches, marketing presentations, images, audios and videos among others. Right from info-graphics to white papers, blogs to testimonials, content co-creation is becoming more common.

There are many ways to approach content co-creation. You could get in touch with influencers on social media and get them to pen down their takes on issues using their own expertise. The material will be from the influencers which will have certain significance and a substantial following at the outset. Then the company can further use its outreach to get more attention. You could get consumers or users to create content for you. From product reviews to opinion pieces, help with designing and even conducting market studies, there are many ways to engage the users. The best part about content co-creation with users is that one doesn’t have to pay the users unless explicitly agreed upon as such and the content generated is truly unique, from the perspective of the audience which has greater impact on the rest of the prospects.

Content co-creation can include crowdsourcing, sponsored posts and earned or auto generated material as well. There are blogs, comments on various posts, forums and discussion threads. The information shared on such platforms and the various opinions can be used to form engaging content with a larger message that the company needs to convey. Such contents are sourced from likely and unlikely sources so it is not exactly the company that is creating the content but simply mining the information and weaving the narrative.