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Want to boost your marketing with content curation? Learn how to find and share great content that engages your audience and builds your brand. In this post, I will cover the basics for 2024.
Understanding Content Curation
Content curation is more than sharing a few links; it’s an intentional process of finding, organizing, and sharing existing great content from other sources. As content curators, we don’t just aggregate information; we add our own spin and weave together multiple pieces into a cohesive and valuable narrative that resonates with our audience, often in the form of a blog post.
Curated blog posts can be a resource for your audience by gathering expert advice and summarizing it so they don’t have to search. This makes the content more engaging and relevant.
The value of content curation lies in the difference between sharing existing content and creating new content. We can select information relevant to our audience’s interests and needs. In today’s world, where information overload is a problem, content curation helps businesses meet the growing demand for content and entertainment.
Sharing curated content allows brands to engage with their audience more by providing context and insights that hit home with their needs. This builds a personal relationship with the audience and increases customer trust and loyalty. Plus, content curation supports a complete marketing strategy by supplementing your own content and adding value to your overall content strategy.
Content curation turns published information into usable content. Being the go-to resource for your audience means curating the best content and being a trusted source of information.
Benefits of Implementing a Content Curation Strategy
Content curation has many benefits that can supercharge your content marketing. First, it saves time and resources by not having to create content from scratch so that you can focus on other areas of your business. Second, curated content can increase audience engagement by offering different perspectives and insights so your audience will return for more.
Plus, a well-executed content marketing strategy can position your brand as a thought leader in your industry. Consistently sharing great content from other sources shows your expertise and builds credibility with your audience.
These benefits support your social media strategy and keep your brand consistent with a steady content stream.
Save Time and Resources
In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, time is money. Content curation is much faster and more convenient than creating new posts from scratch. While creating original content is important, it can be time-consuming and expensive, especially for small marketing teams. Using existing content reduces the cost of content creation and provides valuable information to your audience.
Plus, scheduling curated content allows you to spot content gaps and share relevant information on time. It saves your audience time by getting quality resources in a few clicks and increases your overall content marketing efficiency. Almost 50% of B2B marketers say content creation is holding them back from content marketing, so using existing content to adhere to a publishing schedule is a big advantage.
From my experience, weaving content curation into your strategy doesn’t replace your strategy and approach; it supplements and aids it. There have been many times that I felt I had the perfect comprehensive plan but was proven wrong by leveraging some curation techniques that highlighted gaps in coverage. Just highlighting gaps alone is worth implementing a degree of curation into your weekly research. I guarantee you will find trending themes and topics you already have experience with and can add value to, and jumping into these discussions with your expertise can pay off big.
Boost Audience Engagement
Engaging with your audience is key to any content marketing strategy. Curated blog posts can be a way to engage with your audience by providing expert advice and summaries. Good curation means sharing different types of content, articles, videos, infographics, etc., that cater to different audience preferences. By curating content that’s relevant to your audience’s interests and values, you can start conversations, get people to participate, and increase engagement.
Combining curated content with original insights keeps your newsletters and social posts fresh and interesting for your subscribers. Curated content has a broader range of sources, so you can offer a content mix that your audience will love and show appreciation for the work of others. This drives traffic to your site and positions your brand as a trusted source of great content which also can boost your E-E-A-T score.
Plus, identifying top-performing content means your audience will find it enjoyable and relevant. Highlighting your brand values and aligning with your audience’s values through curated content will strengthen your relationship with buyers and get them to return. These content creation efforts will increase overall audience engagement and loyalty.
Establish Thought Leadership
Being a thought leader is a powerful way to build credibility and trust in your industry. Using curated content can help you achieve this by showing your expertise and staying current with industry trends. Regularly sharing great curated content from other sources can position your brand as an authority and increase your reputation and influence.
Thought leadership also improves search engine optimization (SEO) by increasing brand visibility and credibility. Curating expert content connects you with influencers, can lead to collaborations, and further cements your position as a thought leader in your industry.
Steps to Develop an Effective Content Curation Strategy
Creating a content curation strategy involves several steps to ensure consistency and effectiveness. Following a process will fill gaps in your current content strategy and produce content that’s entertaining and relevant to your audience.
The first step is to define your goals, which will determine the type and content of content to be shared in your strategy. The second is to identify your target audience so you can tailor content that connects and gets engagement.
Last of all, sourcing great content from trusted and different sources will give you credibility and keep your audience interested. Review and refine your strategy regularly based on performance data.
Define Your Goals
Setting your goals is the base of any curation strategy. These goals will determine the type of content you curate and how you share it with your audience. Examples of goals are increasing website traffic, improving social media engagement, or establishing your brand as an authority by publishing industry news and insights.
When sharing curated content, provide context around it to increase its impact and help you achieve your goals. Also, review and revise your strategy regularly to adapt to changing goals and audience needs so your efforts are aligned with your overall content marketing strategy.
Identify Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is key to content curation. Analyzing demographics like age, gender, location, income, and occupation will allow you to create content that meets specific needs. Online surveys and analytical tools are great ways to get insights into what your audience wants.
Having and understanding of your audience’s interests and pain points will allow you to source content that adds value and gets engagement and loyalty. This knowledge will help you curate content that speaks to your audience and overall content marketing efforts with great content.
Source Quality Content
Sourcing great content is a vital part of the content creation process. Identifying trusted sources will give you credibility and align with your brand values so you don’t send conflicting messages. Keeping a list of sources from which you don’t want to curate content will prevent you from watering down your brand message.
Great ways to find content to curate are to follow brands and influencers, use social media channels, and sign up for newsletters. Diversify your sources to keep your audience interested.
Make sure you read every article before sharing it. This is crucial for quality control and your brand credibility.
Tools for Efficient Content Curation
Using the right tools will make your content curation more efficient and effective. These tools will help you find, organize, and share great content so you can have a steady stream of information for your audience.
From RSS feeds and social media management tools to automated content curation platforms, each tool has features tailored to different curation processes. Using these tools will streamline your workflow, save you time, and improve the overall quality of curated content.
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are great tools for content curation. They summarize and organize a website’s latest content into bite-sized formats. They help aggregate content from trusted sources so you’re always up to date with industry news and trends. Personally, I use Feedly, which allows me to collect and manage content from multiple sources, making curating relevant and timely content easier.
Semrush’s Social Poster, for instance, allows you to create up to 5 RSS feeds to track authority sites and boost your content curation. RSS feeds increase efficiency and keep you up to date with the latest content across multiple platforms, so they’re a must-have in any content curator’s toolbox.
Social Media Management Tools
Social media management tools are for curating and distributing content across multiple platforms. Hootsuite is a powerful platform that helps you manage your social media presence by scheduling posts, monitoring mentions, and finding content. Hootsuite Syndicator allows you to schedule curated content and see relevant posts, so content curation and content repurposing is more streamlined and efficient.
Curate by UpContent integrates with Hootsuite, pulls trending content into your dashboard, and offers customization options like calls to action and custom images. Hootsuite Streams can monitor mentions, keywords, and hashtags so you can do social listening and keep track of trends and topics related to your curated content.
Automated Content Curation Tools
Automated content curation tools are a total game changer. They use AI to curate articles for you automatically so you save time and effort. Google Alerts, for example, will email you when new content is published on a topic you’re interested in, so you never miss out on important updates.
Curata makes content discovery more efficient and improves search results over time. These platforms use keyword searches to help you find content to curate, filtering the latest content based on your interests.
Tools like the Keyword Magic Tool give you thousands of keyword ideas for alerts, allowing you to curate more content.
Best Practices for Curating Content
To get the most out of your content curation, follow best practices to ensure quality and relevance. Sourcing content in advance makes it easier to compile into valuable resources for your audience. When choosing topics, pick those that are beneficial to your audience, have enough content, and are not already covered elsewhere.
Mixing sources to curate content prevents echo chambers and makes the shared content more credible. Automation helps you maintain a consistent publishing schedule to engage with your audience. Following these best practices will make your curation strategy effective and engaging.
Add Unique Insights
Adding your own commentary to curated content can add tremendous value. Providing context to shared curated content helps the audience understand why it’s relevant and worth their time. You can create unique content from curated content by adding your own opinions or contextualizing them based on the communication channel.
Including your thoughts, insights, and expert opinions to content roundups adds value. This personal touch makes the content richer and builds a deeper connection with your audience so they’ll engage more with it.
Credit Original Sources
Crediting original sources is critical to establishing credibility and building relationships in content curation. Proper attribution protects you from legal issues and builds audience trust. Attribution should include the author’s name/username and relevant links to the original content.
Giving credit to content creators helps you build networking and relationships. It shows you’re honest and transparent. Inform original creators you’re sharing their content by tagging them and saying thank you so you build goodwill and professional connections.
Diversify Your Content Mix
Mixing curated content with original content keeps engagement and your content calendar fresh. Start with a 50/50 mix of curated and original content and adjust based on your production capacity. A good ratio is 40% original content and 60% curated content.
Having multiple content sources will keep your audience interested. Positive audience feedback can increase the amount of curated content in your mix, so your strategy stays dynamic and effective.
Measuring the Success of Your Content Curation Strategy
Measuring your strategy is key to understanding its impact and making adjustments. Key metrics are audience retention, engagement, and production costs. Tracking engagement metrics consistently will help you know how your audience interacts with curated content.
Content performance reviews are necessary to determine where to improve your curation strategies. Data-driven decisions will help you refine your approach to meeting your goals and overall content marketing.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Your goals determine the KPIs you track, which should align with them. Metrics to measure each platform are audience consumption, potential leads, sharing performance, and sales. Shares should be tracked as a KPI if you want to grow your social media following.
Social media analytics and Hootsuite Analytics can help you analyze curated content. Monitoring and analyzing KPIs regularly is vital to measuring content performance and making informed decisions on your strategy.
Analyzing Metrics
Ongoing analysis of KPIs is key to refining content curation strategies. Tracking sales performance is essential to know the impact of curated content on business results. Knowing engagement patterns will help you understand which content types resonate with your audience so you can adjust your strategy.
Using this to refine your curation strategy means your efforts are aligned with your goals and audience. This continuous improvement is key to a successful strategy.
Conclusion
Content curation is a time-saving and resource-saving strategy that can increase audience engagement and thought leadership. By understanding the content curation process, setting goals, knowing your audience, sourcing good content, and using the right tools, you can have a content strategy that complements your overall content marketing.
These our my personal best practices to remember: add your own insights, credit original sources, and diversify your content mix (identify the gaps). Also, make sure you measure your strategy through KPIs and metrics regularly to refine and improve. Give content curation a try in 2024 and unlock the value I have.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is content curation?
Content curation is your chance to shine by finding and sharing good content from trusted sources while adding your own insights to your audience. Try this to become more influential and connect better with your tribe!
How does content curation save time and resources?
Content curation saves you time and resources by allowing you to share information without creating everything from scratch. Try this and simplify your content and engage your audience!
What tools are recommended for content curation?
To supercharge your content curation, try using Feedly for RSS feeds, Hootsuite for social media management, and Google Alerts for automated updates. Try these to simplify your curation and be ahead of the content curve!
How can content curation boost audience engagement?
Content curation increases audience engagement by delivering varied and relevant content that speaks to their interests, sparks conversations, and builds a loyal community. By sharing what they love, you can keep your audience engaged and wanting more!
Why is it essential to credit sources in content curation?
Crediting original sources in content curation builds credibility and trust with your audience. By doing so, you honor the creators and your own integrity.
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