How can businesses with an online presence cut through the noise and add value to their audience? The answer is curating content.
Content curation is aimed at building online communities. It goes beyond sharing insights with your audience and involves carefully selecting the right content.
Why Content Curation Matters
Many organizations are strapped for resources and time when it comes to content creation.
Content teams have tight deadlines and limited budgets to produce original content.
Content curation helps solve this challenge.
Benefits of Content Curation
- Save time and money: Curating content can save teams a lot of time. It is faster to find and share a valuable resource online than to create it. It’s also much more affordable to share information than to use content and design teams to create something from scratch.
- Build relationships and your audience: When you tag the original content creator in your post, you will build relationships and grow your business network while adding value to your audience.
- Add diversity to your content calendar: When you have more variety in your content calendar, you diversify your online content offering.
- Promote link-building: You can create a better linking structure for your blog posts. With curated content, you can also create indexable pages. This is a great strategy to help search engines find and rank your content higher. In such cases, you can boost the number of visits to your website and attract more quality leads.
- Deliver a better customer experience: Customers like to see added value from a single source. You are also much more likely to create stronger connections with them.
The Role of Curation in Building Credibility and Thought Leadership
With content curation, your brand can become a trusted source of information. Audiences appreciate different angles in conversations.
When you position your brand as a thought leader, you become this source of information in your industry about trends and developments.
Sourcing high-quality content from relevant third parties can boost your trustworthiness and credibility as an impartial authority on a topic.
Finding and Sourcing Exceptional Content
Finding and sourcing exceptional content needs prior preparation. Here are three steps to ensure you have a solid strategy:
Step 1: Define Your Audience
Knowing your audience and their interests is key. When you know what they want, you can better tailor your curated content to their needs.
You need to ensure that what you select will retain their interest. You should also be ready to engage with them as a community.
Step 2: Choose Your Sources
When it comes to the topic, you need to find one that’s in a high-quality, low-competition niche. It should also be of interest to your audience. Finally, there needs to be enough content about it so that you can curate it.
This is where choosing your sources wisely plays a big role. They need to be timely, relevant, and important.
Step 3: Add Your Unique Touch
Adding your unique touch should include providing context for the curated information via summaries. Do so by adding commentary and by inserting your own branding in the piece.
You can also organize and categorize the content to help your audience digest your curated content.
You can link to your own content, such as blogs, articles, case study presentations, interviews, online courses, and webinars.
Optimizing and Sharing Curated Content
Let’s dive into how to optimize and effectively share curated content to truly stand out.
Choose the Right Platform: Selecting the right platform to share your curated content is crucial. Depending on your audience and industry, you might find that some platforms work better than others. Common options include social media, your website or blog, email newsletters, and content curation tools like Scoop.it, Pocket, or Flipboard.
Consistency is Key: Just like with original content, consistency is crucial for curated content. Develop a regular schedule for sharing curated content, whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly. This not only keeps your audience engaged but also helps you establish a reliable presence.
Craft Engaging Headlines and Descriptions: Your audience often decides whether to engage with your curated content based on the headline and description. Make sure they are attention-grabbing and concise. Use relevant keywords and emotional triggers to entice your readers to click and read more.
Cite Sources Properly: Always give credit to the original creators of the content you’re curating. This not only respects copyright and intellectual property rights but also builds trust with your audience. Provide proper attribution by linking to the source, mentioning the author, and including publication dates if available.
Leverage Visuals: Visual elements, such as images, infographics, and videos, can make your curated content more appealing and shareable. Use visuals to complement and enhance the content you’re curating.
Add Value through Commentary: One of the key advantages of content curation is the opportunity to offer your unique perspective. Accompany your curated content with insightful commentary, explanations, or additional information. This adds value to the content and demonstrates your expertise.
Encourage Discussion: Actively engage with your audience by asking questions or prompting discussions related to the curated content. Encourage them to share their thoughts and opinions. This interaction can help build a sense of community around your brand.
Measuring the Impact of Content Curation
Content curation is a valuable strategy for adding value to your audience and building your online presence, but how can you measure its impact? The effectiveness of your content curation efforts can be assessed through various key performance indicators. Here are some metrics and tools to help you gauge the impact of your content curation strategy:
Engagement Metrics: Track user engagement with your curated content. Metrics like likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates can provide insights into how well your audience is responding to the content you’re sharing.
Audience Growth: Monitor the growth of your online community as a result of your content curation efforts. You can measure this by looking at the increase in followers, subscribers, or website visitors.
Website Traffic: Analyze website traffic data to see if your curated content is driving more visitors to your site. Tools like Google Analytics can help you track the sources of your traffic and the pages that are receiving the most views.
Lead Generation: If lead generation is a goal, track how many quality leads you’re generating through your curated content. This might involve tracking email sign-ups, inquiries, or downloads of gated content.
Social Listening: Monitor social media mentions and sentiments related to your curated content. Tools like Hootsuite and Brandwatch can help you track brand mentions and audience sentiment.
Content Lifecycle: Evaluate the longevity of your curated content. Some pieces may have a longer shelf life and continue to drive engagement over time. Identify evergreen content that consistently adds value to your audience.
About the Author
Velislava Georgieva is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Inbound Blogging, specializing in Content Marketing and Outreach Strategies. Besides her passion for digital marketing, she likes yoga, fitness, and hiking. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
