It’s easier to find and comment on relevant pieces of content than it is to create your masterpiece from scratch. That’s precisely what content curation is, and it is used as part of marketing strategy.
It’s the process of aggregating data about a specific topic, distilling that information to identify the main ideas, organizing it into a logical order, adding your unique spin to them, and then presenting the content to your adoring audience. You’re not regurgitating what you’ve read. You’re simply repurposing, repackaging, and contributing your insight to third-party content. If you’re looking to boost your YouTube presence with more subscribers, likes, and views, consider leveraging platforms like YoutubeStorm.
Why Your Business Should Consider Content Curation Marketing Strategy
Believe it or not, a content curation marketing strategy offers your brand several powerful benefits.
- Improve efficiency – Most businesses find it impossible to satisfy the ravenous appetites of their online community members. Curation gives the quality information on a frequent basis without sacrificing time and resources.
- Establish thought leadership – Adding perspective and unique voice gives brand’s stamp to the article.
- Increase brand visibility – Curated content can boost your SEO efforts and improve your rankings. People are likely to share cream-of-the-crop information that’s presented to them in a neat little package.
- Educate your market – Essentially, you’re connecting your brand’s voice with the voices of industry experts. You’re participating in a bigger conversation and helping your prospects and customers gain an in-depth understanding of the topic.
- Enhance the level of brand trust – Show the audience through commentary that you’ve read the article and raised its value, they’re more likely to trust the content.
- Create networking opportunities – Drive traffic to a quality article and you might find the author thanking you with an invitation to connect. They may even share a little link love.
Is Curation For Everyone? Unfortunately, It’s Not.
Determine whether there’s dominant competition in your area of focus, the scope of opportunity to source and organize the information. You may find your focus is too narrow to offer added value consistently.
The Dos and Don’ts of Content Curation Marketing Strategy
Although content curation is fairly simple, there are a few guidelines every marketer needs to follow.
#1 – Do stay within the allocated time limit.
If you had a penny for every piece of content published each minute, the chances are you wouldn’t be reading this article. Your research time and paid resources you intend to use, must form part of your content marketing budget. While it’s easy to get lost in a virtual maze of fresh articles, it’s crucial to remain focused. Limit distractions to ensure you digest content in a meaningful way and put your research time to good use.
#2 – Don’t rely on curation alone.
Content creation can be resource- and time-intensive. A good content marketing strategy should incorporate both created and curated pieces. However, a brand that places its future solely on the works of others doesn’t have much of a future at all. Curated content complements your content creation plan—not replace it.
#3 – Select content that provides value to your audience.
The most important part of curating content is handpicking pieces that are most relevant to the needs of your audience. That requires in-depth knowledge of your readership, the ability to mine, organize, and present a customized collection of content.
#4 – Don’t forget to add your brand’s flavor.
Content curation isn’t a simple cut-and-paste job. If you want people to read your content and come back for more, inject your brand’s personality into blog posts, newsletters, and social media snippets. Provide summaries of key points, add your opinion or perspective, or offer insightful information that will further help readers make sense of the article you’re sharing.
#5 – Do honor the authorship of the originals by citing the writers and your sources.
Common sense should tell you that plagiarism is unethical, so make certain you give credit where it’s due.
#6 – Do use multiple sources.
You need to give your readers a diverse mix of engaging and relevant content, which is why selecting a variety of pieces from different sources is essential. Put on your proverbial editor’s hat and search for informative and intellectually challenging material, as well as light-hearted tidbits of interesting insight that are sure to entertain while educating. Whatever you do, avoid unnecessary confusion by sticking to your theme or topic.
Resources and Tools to Make Content Curation Marketing Strategy Easy
Whether you’re sourcing, organizing, or preparing third-party content for distribution, the following tools and resources can make the process a little less time-consuming.
- Google Alerts: Set up search queries that relate to your audience’s needs and then let Google do part of the research work for you. In addition to monitoring the web for interesting new content based on your keyword terms, the search giant will deliver results to your inbox so you can easily sort through the content links in one place.
- HootSuite: Recently, HootSuite integrated ContentGems’ content curation app into their already robust service offering. This collaboration means you can now find meaningful content based on your keywords and social signals, and then push those links, along with your customized snippets, to the social media channels you prefer.
- Google News: Source the latest stories from thousands of popular news outlets.
- Curata: This smart tool rummages through the Internet to identify relevant content, lets you catalog its findings in a way that makes sense, and then publishes content to the channels of your choice. As a bonus, it’ll measure your results so you can maximize your reach.
- Social Media Sites: Most social platforms have their search functionality, allowing you to dig for relevant posts. Beware though; social media sites are noisy so you’ll need to stay focused.
- Alltop: This feed aggregator allows you to gain quick access to the hottest topics and stories from the best sites and blogs on the web. Create customized collections of curated feeds and then use as your go-to source when you need something new and profound.
- Storify: Bring a narrative element to your curated content by collecting, publishing, and sharing content through this information network.
- Addict-o-Matic: Create a customized page of the latest headlines from top sources. Move or delete sites, and then bookmark your custom view for future reference.
Other great sources include RSS feeds and newsletters you subscribe to, social bookmarking sites, Google Blog Search, industry-related forums, and archived databases. There are thousands of content aggregators and curators, so you’ll surely find juicy morsels to share with your fans.
Are you using content creation to spice up your content marketing strategy?
