I realized the other day I would not be able to get noticed, flourish with opportunities, and create my own brand without curating content.
Why? I was not able to create enough content to meet my marketing needs.
Besides being a writer, I have to make a balance between my professional and family life as well. Thus devoting a huge amount of time only to creating epic content cannot be possible for me all the time.
Solution? Content curation!
Yes, my friend, quality content curation across social channels has helped me secure lucrative writing gigs, and opportunities to contribute to leading platforms, and freelance work. It also helped me become more popular than before across all the social channels, such as Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
What Is Content Curation
When you spot material relevant to your audience from myriad sources and share it in a systematic way across your communication channels, then my friend, you curate content successfully.
If you search online, you can see there are many people curating content every single day, on social media, in newsletters, in listicle-styled posts and more. But not all are successful. Some of them simply add to the noise; some of them share useful and unique information that they know their audience will read, save and possibly even share. My friend, curating useful content is the key to success.
Content curation is certainly not an easy task. Only rounding up the generally popular things on the web will not help you become a pro in content curation. You need to understand your audience’s interest, know what they want to see hear and read, and then share such things that will match their interest. Eventually, it will establish you as a reliable resource of useful content.
Steps to Curating Content Like A Pro
#1. Understand What Type Of Content Will Work Best For You
Share only niche-specific content that your audience would love to read. Mainly there are 5 types of curated content that you can publish.
- Ultimate guide
This type of content is considered as a complete source of any topic. An ultimate guide is designed to attract traffic, wow readers and eventually increase social shares. Such ultimate guides are usually pretty huge and cover massive things. Just research thoroughly what kinds of topics can interest your audience; after that, spot the best ultimate guide on that topic.
Create a curated version of that guide and you are good to go.
- Case study
Case study or case history refers to both a method of analysis and a specific research design for examining a problem. Readers usually appreciate seeing the results of case studies. Just put some case studies together and display all the vital information in a few words for each case study. If the readers love one case study, they will certainly like to have more in one place.
- Webinar
A webinar is an informative or instructional lecture, presentation or seminar that is made available over the web – commonly either as audio or video with slides. A webinar is very interactive because of its ability to present, receive or discuss something in real time. To catch the attention of your audience, opt for a curated list of the top webinars on a particular topic, relevant to your business.
- Roundup
Readers love roundups where they get expert insights on various topics all in one place. Such kinds of posts have the great possibilities to be shared across social media, attract tons of traffic, and above all help you build a relationship with the influencers in a niche industry.
- Customer stories
If you are running a business and have a huge fan base, curate the best customer reviews. Customers even post their own pictures with the products they use on social media. Do proactive social listening and monitor your brand to track reviews for your products.
#2. Research
The main objective of content curation is to gain the trust of the readers who come across.
Does the resource your share meet your audience’s needs?
You need to ensure that your content resolves all of your audience’s queries.
One of the most important ways to do that is to research thoroughly. Find out what your audience is searching online, then curate content. The more you know your audience, the better you will be at content curation. And a great content curation practice will help you get the complete benefits of content marketing.
#3. Professional Presentation
The first impression is the last impression. Who is not aware of that?
Maintaining a professional approach in your content presentation is another way to gain trust from your audience. Readers love to consume content that is well-organized. If you are covering a wide topic, organize it properly. Make sure readers can easily navigate through the content.
#4. Show Your Audience How Much You Care About Them
Nowadays there are many website owners who post curated content regularly. However, the fact is, most of them do not pay much attention to the process of content curation. I hope you would not like to be a part of them.
How exactly can you avoid this to happen to you? You need to understand the true value of content curation.
Show your audience how much you are willing to put hard work for them so that they can find the best resource easily. Firstly, gather all the content that is relevant to your chosen topic. Be minute and do not miss any single great resource. The next step is to review all the content to select the best one.
#5. Add Value To Your Content In Order To Stay Ahead Of The Crowd
When it comes to sharing great content, you are not the only one who feels it worthy to share across social platforms. But there’s a way to stand ahead of the crowd and add an edge to your share. Do not just hit the share or retweet button if you really want to get noticed. Adding a customized commentary with the post will help you distinguish your voice among the people.
#6. Use Tools
Tools help you streamline your overall content curation efforts. Be a beginner, intermediate or advanced content curator, using tools can help you discover content easily and save your valuable time. A few useful content curation are Pocket, Twitter Lists, Scoop.it, Feedly, Storify, Sniply, Curata, PublishThis, Traplt, Reddit, Evernote, Trello etc. In my next post, I’ll talk about these tools in a detailed way.
#7. Don’t Forget To Impress The Original Creators
The last but not the least, impress the original content creators, if done successfully, they will share your curated post with their audience. This way you will get a vast visibility.
What’s the best way to do it?
Tag or message the original creator while posting. Link to the content of the original source. You can send a quick thank you note for the worthy content as well. If you have generated remarkable traffic by curating content, show its original creator to make an impression.
Conclusion
Wrapping it up, content curation adds a great value to your overall content marketing strategy, helps you get noticed and opens the door of new opportunities for you. Follow my shared tips, and trust me, you will be a pro in curating content; soon you will become an influencer across all your promotional channels.
Do you have any other tip for content curation? Do share here. I’d like to hear from you.
