In today’s landscape, content is king. Marketers must produce multiple content to keep up with the demand, day in and day out. However, not everyone has the time, budget, or manpower to produce this much content. Not to mention, constantly coming up with fresh and engaging ideas is a challenge as well. That’s where content curation comes into play.
What Is Content Curation?
Content curation is a content marketing strategy where you find relevant and engaging content online and then share it with your audience and followers. Unlike the usual content creation, you are not creating content from scratch. Instead, you’ll look for valuable online content, curate the best ones, and then share it with your audience.
What Are The Benefits Of Content Curation?
Content curation saves time and money
Clicking “Share” on a post is definitely easier than creating it from scratch, right?
While there is still some work done in content curation, such as the time spent researching for the appropriate content, or the work it takes to organize your gathered content into a roundup post, that’s still a lot of time and money saved.
Not to mention, you won’t be needing that much additional manpower when it comes to working on curated content. For example, if you have to produce a marketing video, you’ll probably need a team of artists and video editors. But if you were to create an infographic from all your curated content, you’ll only need one. A very cost-efficient strategy, right?
Content curation keeps your content calendar full
Unless you are a superhuman who has endless inspiration, there are probably some times when you’ll find it hard to come up with new and original content ideas.
Content curation can help you fill the gaps in your content calendar, while still giving out content to your audience that is relevant and engaging. In fact, 57% of marketers feel that content curation helps them produce content constantly.
No more random posts just to keep your page active. With content curation, you’ll actually provide your audience with content that will be helpful and personalized to them.
Content curation balances your content
Nobody likes a brand that only talks about themselves.
If you only post content to promote your brand, your audience will find it boring and unhelpful fast.
As with the social media rule of thirds, only ⅓ of your content should be promotional. Another ⅓ should be used to interact and engage with others, and ⅓ to share information that is beneficial and relevant to your audience.
With content curation, you’ll definitely hit the ⅓ of information sharing since you are essentially curating and distributing useful content to your audience, based on thoughts and ideas from your industry experts. You’ll also show your audience another perspective about a topic aside from yours, giving them a more diverse and well-rounded view.
Content curation can help position you as a thought leader
Of course, content curation doesn’t (and shouldn’t!) just end with sharing a tweet or a blog post. You also need to add your insights or thoughts to make this a viable marketing strategy.
By adding valuable thoughts or knowledge to the content you shared, you’ll build yourself as a credible leader in your industry.
By sharing relevant and timely content, it also shows that you are “in the know” with your industry and that you have a deep understanding of it.
Content curation can be used as a networking opportunity
Aside from helping your content marketing strategy, content curation can also open doors for networking opportunities.
Sharing content from experts or influencers helps you put your brand on their radar. You can also use this to connect with them and hopefully build a relationship. If you play your cards right, it might lead to a partnership or collaboration in the future.
How To Do Content Curation
Now that you know the benefits and importance of content curation, let’s dive into how to actually implement it.
- Define and understand your audience
- Find your sources
- Filter and organize your content
- Add your thoughts
- Get your content ready for distribution
- Analyze the performance
1. Define and understand your audience
As with any content marketing strategy, knowing your audience is the first and most important step.
To properly curate content, you’ll need to identify your audience, know their wants and preferences, as well as figure out their priorities and motivations. You also need to do a comprehensive audit of your content strategy.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What kind of content does your audience want to see?
- Where do they usually see their content?
- What time is best to engage your audience?
- What kind of content that you posted before was successful?
- What do your competitors post?
From there on, you can build your content curation strategy.
2. Find your sources
After defining your audience, the next step is to find and choose sources that cater to them.
Don’t rely on just one website. Make sure to explore different sources to maximize the amount of content that you’ll get, as well as find more quality content to share.
Some sources you can use are Google, aggregate sites, news sites, company newsletters, and social media (Pro tip: look at hashtags relevant to you and follow people who have the same job title as you to find the best content). You can also use RSS tools or other content curation tools to make it easier for you to find and gather content.
Think of the latest trends as well. With the rise of TikTok, it might be worthwhile to browse the site for videos that you can use.
3. Filter and organize your content
Not every piece of content that you’ll see will interest or benefit your audience. Set up filters or rules to make it easier for you to decide whether the content is worthy of sharing or not.
It’s also recommended to divide your gathered content according to different formats (blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, ebooks, podcasts, quotes, etc.). By organizing them, it will be easier for you to plan what to do with your curated content, as well as map out when and where to best post it.
4. Add your thoughts
As mentioned earlier, content curation is not just simply sharing or retweeting a great content that you saw. It’s important to also add your own comment or thoughts about the content so that you can add more value to the topic for your audience, as well as open it up for more discussion.
While you don’t need to do this to every single piece of content that you share, it’s important to add your thoughts every once in a while to make your content more valuable.
Especially if you are sharing content that talks about timely and relevant issues, it’s important to share your take on it. Your audience will respect you more if you speak up or stand behind your values.
5. Get the content ready for distribution
Aside from adding your thoughts, you can also “repackage” your curated content. This can be done in multiple ways.
You can collect the great blog articles that you saw and compile them into a roundup post.
You can also summarize the important data and information from a research article, and present them in an infographic.
6. Analyze the performance
As with any content marketing strategy, analyzing the performance of your content curation strategy is important for you to improve and optimize your future posts. This will also help you decide if this strategy works for you and if it’s worthwhile to continue.
Best Practices For Content Curation
By now, you should be more familiar with content curation. Here are some more tips to keep in mind to make the most out of your content curation strategy:
- Always credit your sources – Remember, you are sharing content and not plagiarizing them. Make sure to always credit or link back to your sources. Not only will this make you look more credible, but it will also help you build better relationships with the person that you shared content from.
- Curate content constantly – Make it a habit to read blogs or newsletters every day to keep yourself updated and to discover more content. Make sure to always save the great content that you find, so that you can build a base of content that you can use instead of rushing to find one when you need to post one.
- Double-check the content that you are sharing – What if you shared something that can only be accessed through a subscription, or is hidden behind a paywall? Make sure that the content can actually be accessed by your audience. If they can’t access it, summarize and post the key points from it instead.
- Find the right balance – According to a study done by Curata, marketers use 65% of created content and 25% of curated content. Even if you find tons of awesome curated content, make sure that it won’t overwhelm your actual created content.
- Use tools – There are tons of free and paid tools that you can use to make your content curation faster and easier. Try to find the best tools that work well with your strategy.
- Be discerning – Don’t share content just for the sake of it. If you didn’t completely read through the content that you shared, chances are your audience won’t either. Make sure the content is high-quality and engaging.
Final Words
With the competitive and content-driven market we have today, content curation is definitely a great content marketing strategy to keep up with the demands of your audience.
However, content curation is more than just simply sharing content. It takes a lot of thought and art to it to provide content that your audience will actually appreciate and like. Make sure to follow the tips above to make sure that your content is actually relevant and useful, and you’ll be a great content curator in no time.
Author Bio
Faviola has been in the digital marketing industry for six years and is currently an SEO Content Writer at BrandCrowd. Her expertise lies in content marketing and design.