The rise in popularity of content marketing has also witnessed a concomitant increase in content curation. But content curation has to be done smartly. It’s not just about creating a blog post that has a bunch of links and auto-generated summaries. Ideally, it should be a blog post with mostly original content accompanied by curated links. These links must be present to acknowledge the source of the content. However, to get the most plaudits from the search engines, these links must point to high quality sites. Make sure that the post adds value to the reader. When the reader appreciates it, he will feel inclined to share it on social media and the quantity and frequency of shares across social networks is a factor in Google’s search rankings.
A great content marketing plan in 2014 has to include a content curation strategy as well. After all, nobody can be omniscient. If you have got a great many people who look forward to your Facebook posts and tweets, you have to provide them with both great original content as well as great curated content. You might additionally syndicate some content. Only about a quarter of the content is curated according to research conducted by Curata. The curated content is typically distributed via shares on social media, shares on blogs, and shares via email newsletters. Most marketers share curated content via their favorite social media platforms. Blog posts are a great way to share curated content where you link to other content such as articles and opinions posted by others.
Social media is by definition sort of an obsession with those who use it. If you want to use content curation as an integral part of your social media strategy, you have to be obsessive about social media just like your audience. People typically log in to their favorite social media platform multiple times in a day. So, to maintain a continuous contact with your audience, you have to post more than once daily on Facebook and Twitter. If you become irregular in posting content, then your audience will lose interest and stop depending on you to get them the content they love.
You do not have all the time in the world to find great content. So, you need content curation tools that will save you time finding great content. Some great tools include Storify which lets you create a summary related to a single event or topic. For example, an expert might send out a series of tweets related to a single topic. You could Storify that series of tweets so that all the tweets are stored in a single Storified location. You can Storify an event or topic by including tweets, Facebook updates, pictures, videos and more.
Similarly, with List.ly, you can create a list that includes text, images or video. You can take the help of your community to help curate a list for you. You can use Bundlepost to collate content based on your chosen keywords. You can then import this content into Hootsuite and deliver as per your schedule. Paper.li lets you create your own online newspaper. How cool is that! You choose what sources you want, and set filters on those sources and voila! A paper is produced which you can share via Twitter and so on. There are more tools out there that serve different needs.
To summarize, content curation is a key weapon in the arsenal of a content marketer. What examples of content curation can you think of from the top of your head? What about Maria Popova and her Brain Pickings newsletter, Twitter feed, Facebook page and Google+ page? That’s a great example of how to make a success of content curation.
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