Today’s article is written by Victoria Greene. Victoria is a branding consultant and freelance writer. An e-Business specialist, her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, is filled with useful articles to help you develop your online business through marketing, social media, and content creation.When it comes to content, which is more important: quality or quantity? The answer is you need both and lots of each. Here is your guide to content curation!
Image Source: Pixabay
Your gifted writing chops cover the quality, but what about quantity? That’s where content curation comes in.
Content curation allows you to piggyback off the quality of industry thought leaders and use their words to show that you’re on topic.
Below I’ve outlined a guide to content curation. Read, digest, and then use the tips to help you on your journey to becoming a thought leader for your industry.
Recommended reading: How To Make A Good Blog Into A Great Blog
Setting Up Your Curation Networks: Finding And Harnessing Material
Content curation done right is about knowing what your audience want, need, and desire, then bringing them something new and fresh that ticks these boxes.
In order to meet this objective, it’s essential that you start by putting your content network in place and then begin harvesting material from them.
Discussion forums:
- Reddit – Sign up for relevant subreddits, such as:
- Quora
- Use this to establish what topics your audience is interested in
Social media:
- Twitter
- Create lists around the topics you are seeking content for, so that you can cut through the volume of tweets
- Host Twitter chats around key subjects
- Pinterest
- Use the guided search function to fine-tune your search results and source relevant and niche content
Industry sources:
- Whitepapers
- Plenty of sites make it part of their mission to collect industry white papers, Search for white papers in your fields of interest, and digest the latest data for your followers
- Blogs from existing thought leaders
- As a thought leader in training, there are few better places for you to search for content than amongst the individuals you aspire to. Do some digging for the thought leaders in your field – for example, if you’re an entrepreneur, these 21 thought leaders are a great place for you to start your search for content to curate
Look at topics in the news:
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach — you must establish which sources work best for you and your brand. So, be very clear on what your audience wants, test out a variety of sources, and update your curation network as you establish how the two harmonized.
For more information on how to get started with content curation, download the Content Marketing Institute’s The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation [White Paper].
How To Manage Content Automation And Syndication
Time is your greatest obstacle when it comes to the content that you are able to post, upload, and publish. Employing content automation and syndication tactics are one of the best ways you can be more time efficient.
This is where content curation tools come in:
- Feedly – this lets you track the content feeds of selected websites, allowing you to go after specific domains, topics, and keywords
- Triberr – this content marketing software puts you in touch with thought leaders and enables you to share their content with your audience
- Moosend – the value of content curation is the time that it saves you. By automation the dissemination of your curated content and its associated marketing, you can save yourself valuable minutes and hours.
- Sniply – your bottom line with content curation is that it benefits you and your brand. This tool helps you to do that by adding a custom call-to-action, linking back to your website, to any content that you curate
- TINT – content curation is about giving your audience what they want and what better way to do that than by sharing content created by your audience? This tool uses hashtags to dredge the net for content and then publicize it on a display stream
For further information on how to bring automation to your content curation, check out the below video from content marketing guru Neil Patel…
What Does Real Thought Leadership And Curation Look Like: The Artist Who Curates The Gallery
Don’t believe a single thing these boys say, words are not all that you have: a key component of your curation strategy is the way you present the content you’ve sourced.
The Skimm by Danielle Weisberg & Carly Zakin brings curated content to your inbox every morning. Head over to their site and you’ll see that they display their content as below…
Credit: TheSkim
It’s simple, unfussy, and straight to the point.
It’s important that you have a site which is able to display your curated content in a way that draws in your readers while allowing you to impress your brand’s sense of identity.
Weisberg and Zakin understand the value how their curated content is displayed and they’re not doing too badly – among their many followers is the queen of US TV…
Credit: TheSkim
Example Of Niche Specific Leaders And How They Manage Curation For Good
Content isn’t the only thing that you need to borrow to create a successful curation strategy: you should also view, review, and then reuse the curation strategies of existing thought leaders.
Next Draft by Dave Pell is one of the finest examples of content curation you’ll find on the web. It’s wry, thought-provoking, moving, and enormously popular. So, how does he manage his content curation?
Credit: NextDraft
So, how well does Dave Pell’s his management of content curation work? Here’s what one of his fans has to say…
Credit: NextDraft
How To Spot A Good Story & How To Put Your Own Spin On Things
One of the things you must remember with content curation is that you’re not only bringing interesting content to your audience, you’re also presenting your voice to them.
If you’re like Dave Pell, you can use your eye for a topic to find and own someone else’s content.
If, however, these things don’t come so naturally, there are a couple of tools you can use to spot a good story:
- BuzzSumo is a tool that you can use to source the most shared content within a specific topic
- ContentGems is a discovery engine that scours hundreds of thousands of articles to give you a stream of content
As far as adding your own spin goes, that’s all about knowing your voice and then bringing it to the content. If you’re like Dave Pell, then you’ll apply a wry sense of humor to the story. But if you’re not, simply establish what it is that your readers expect from you and then make sure that voice is heard.
Final Tip: How To Become The Content That Others Curate
There’s no easy way for you to become the content that others curate. Some people gain fame through luck, others via natural ability, and a portion are handed theirs.
For the majority, though, success comes through drive, rather than talent.
This means that in order to become the content that others curate you must produce high-quality, insightful, and unique posts that people want to read, and, crucially, lots of them.
Remember, though, that while this guide carries a host of invaluable tips, the most important piece of advice anyone can give you when curating content is to know what your audience wants.
So, get inside the heads of your readers and then fill theirs with the information they desire by curating excellent content for them.
