Content curation has become an integral part of content marketing strategies, allowing businesses and brands to share relevant and valuable content with their audience. This article will delve into the importance of content curation, effective curation strategies, finding curated content, best practices, and the evolution of content curation in 2024 and beyond.
What is Content Curation and Its Importance?
What is Content Curation?
Content curation is the practice of searching and identifying meaningful content that is generated by third parties and sharing it with your target audience. Given the benefits it provides, curation has become an integral part of a great content marketing strategy.
With the high volume of information available online today and the reducing attention span of readers, curating enables marketers to share content that is both valuable and convenient for their target audience.
From seasoning blog posts with essential statistics to sharing articles from influencers or industry leaders on social media, content curation has no boundaries. There are many spaces where curated content can be shared. These include blogs, emails, newsletters, and social media platforms.
Defining Content Curation and its Role in Content Marketing
Content curation involves finding, organizing, and sharing the best content on a specific topic or theme. It plays a crucial role in content marketing by providing a steady stream of valuable information to the target audience.
Benefits of Content Curation for Businesses and Brands
Businesses and brands benefit from content curation by establishing themselves as thought leaders in their industry, increasing brand visibility, and building a loyal following through the consistent sharing of valuable content.
Identifying Relevant Content to Share
Identifying relevant content involves understanding the interests and needs of the target audience, determining the kind of content that resonates with them, and sharing content that adds value to their lives.
How to Curate Content Effectively?
Utilizing Content Curation Tools and Software
Content curation tools and software help content creators to discover, curate, and share high-quality content efficiently. These tools streamline the curation process and enable the curation of diverse content from multiple reliable sources.
Key Strategies for Effective Content Curation
Effective content curation involves understanding the audience, staying updated with industry trends, and maintaining a balance between curated and original content to provide a comprehensive and engaging content experience.
Examples of Curated Content Done Right
Many content creators have excelled in curating great content across various platforms, such as compiling a list of top industry resources, creating comprehensive guides, or sharing thought-provoking insights.
Where to Find Content to Curate?
Explore Different Types of Content Suitable for Curation
Content curation extends beyond written articles and blog posts to include videos, infographics, podcasts, and visual content, offering various options for content curation.
Finding Unique and Engaging Content to Curate
Finding engaging content involves exploring niche platforms, social media groups, and industry forums to discover unique content that adds value and resonates with the target audience.
Creating or Curating Content for Social Media Posts
Social media platforms provide an opportunity to create or curate content that aligns with the brand’s voice and resonates with the audience to drive engagement and enhance brand visibility.
Best Practices for Content Curation
Developing a Content Curation Strategy and Calendar
Creating a solid content curation strategy and calendar ensures a consistent flow of content, aligning with the brand’s objectives and allowing for better planning and organization of curated content.
Maintaining a Balance Between Curated and Original Content
By balancing curated content with original content, content creators can showcase their expertise while also sharing valuable insights from industry peers, creating a well-rounded content experience for the audience.
Content Curation in 2024 and Beyond
The Role of Curated Content in a Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy
In an ever-changing digital landscape, curated content will remain integral to a comprehensive content marketing strategy, providing fresh and diverse content to engage and educate the audience.
So, what curation processes can help your business achieve their content marketing goals effectively?
1. Understand Your Target Audience
Successful content curation begins with understanding your target audience. Most marketers create buyer personas for the same. Whether you decide to do this or https://mail.eboxman.com/?_task=mail&_mbox=INBOXnot, asking yourself some questions will give you clarity on the needs of your audience. Some of these are –
- What does your target audience look while seeking information?
- What is their greatest need – do they want to be informed, entertained, or inspired?
- What content do they share on social media?
- Do they prefer reviews and comparisons, or are they into new industry trends?
The most effective way of knowing what buyers want is by conducting online surveys. For this, put up questions that enable customers to express their desires. Consider:
- Asking open-ended questions. Instead of asking, ‘Do you like posts about cars?’, ask them, ‘What kind of posts would you like to see often?’
- Asking your audience to prioritize options
- Allowing customers to share their suggestions
2. Have a Clear Content Curation Goal
Knowing what you want to achieve with content curation is critical because it will determine the kind of content you share and where you share it. There are four strategic benefits of content curation. You can turn each of these benefits into a goal.
- Lead nurturing
With this goal, you provide sales enablement content that is relevant to your prospects or leads at specific times during the lead nurturing campaign. Also, you don’t have to wait for a campaign to share content. If you feel the content is helpful, you can directly share it with your prospects. The best way here is to have a sales enablement content strategy in place, as it helps you pick the right content.
- Thought leadership
Here, you curate content that enables you to showcase your in-depth understanding of an industry, the community and the needs of your customers
A great example of a company that curates for thought leadership is INC.com. The site has an ‘Expert’ section where it curates content from experts and influencers from which leaders are happy to learn.
Source – Inc
- Search engine optimization
Here, you share curated content in the form of intra-page links, infographics and summarized articles on social media to increase your ranking on search engines
- Unique content ideas
By reviewing content produced by third parties continuously, you get the hang of what’s going on in the industry. This helps you come up with new ideas for creating original content.
3. Curate From Credible Sources
With the vast amount of information available online, there is so much content to choose from. The only challenge is – how do you find high-quality content that is relevant to your audience? Having pre-defined criteria during the curation can help ensure you only curate and share credible content. Here are several aspects you could consider including in your criteria:
| Criteria | Focus |
| Credibility | – How trustworthy is the source of the curated content? – Has the website where the content is published distinguished itself in a way that earns it respect among readers? |
| Relevance | – Is there relevant information for your target audience? – Does it address their needs? |
| Validation | – Is it possible to verify the accuracy of the content? – Has the content creator linked to data sources, and can people who are quoted be validated? |
| Value | – Does the content provide value to you and your target audience in the form of new insights, ideas, strategies and trending topics? |
It is important to note that any time you share content with your audience, you give it a nod of approval. This means you need to read every article you curate before sharing it.
4. Share Unique Content
In sharing content that you have curated, you must make the content unique and attractive to users. One way of making curated content appear unique is by adding your opinion or giving it your own spin.
Also, you can contextualize the content you share based on the communication channel that you are using. For instance, you can ensure that the content you share on Twitter or Facebook is newsworthy. On other platforms such as blogs and websites, opt for evergreen or fresh content on a specific topic, and avoid sharing outdated pieces that are more than one or two years old.
5. Be Ethical
Content curation should be approached ethically. Companies that include curation in their content marketing strategy should observe the three golden rules that successful curators tend to follow. These are:
- Respecting Copyrights- not infringing on them deliberately. You can do this by avoiding over-reliance on a handful of sources.
- Crediting bloggers, content owners and thought leaders prominently in every piece of content. The most obvious way to do this is to always reference the source by linking back
- Adding value to curated content. One way of doing this is by avoiding sharing the original content as it is. Give it your own twist. Sprinkle it with your opinions and insights, while encouraging readers to click on the source for more.
6. Leverage Content Your Readers Haven’t Discovered
Ever seen a famous musician share a great video of an upcoming artist that people have never heard of before? He or she gets very excited about it, and so does the audience. You can do the same with content too. Find and share valuable content that your readers haven’t discovered yet in a way that impresses those who created it.
By doing this, your website quickly becomes the go-to place on Google for readers who want to read great content. To grow your following and brand awareness, you need to be a trend finder and analyst. One of the ways to find undiscovered content is through the use of Twitter feed – RSS.
This Twitter feed sends you an alert as soon as articles get posted, even before companies promote them. These alerts present you the opportunity of sharing fresh content, promoting the content owners, and elevating your brand visibility.
7. Add Real Value to Curated Content
How you frame the first sentence of a post matters a lot. Whether you are curating for a Tweet, Facebook, or a blog post, this sentence can determine how effective your curation would be. Instead of auto-sharing article headlines just as they are, take a few minutes to add your thoughts to contextualize it. Dress your content well so that it sticks with the audience.
Good curation includes gathering information from credible sources and adding something new to it to make it interesting and worth sharing. Some effective ways to add unique value to curated content include twisting words, adding opinions, or commentary. This also gives a human touch to the content, which helps readers connect in a better way.
See the content curation example below
Wrapping Up
Content creation is one of the biggest challenges that marketers struggle with. With a shortage of time and limited staff, content creation is an uphill task. Content curation provides a great alternative to this. It saves time while ensuring that marketers are able to share valuable content that their readers want.
It can increase customer engagement by attracting shares and drive traffic to your site. It provides you with opportunities to open dialogue with influencers that you wish to connect with. Use the eight strategies discussed above to power your content curation strategy.
There are several content curation tools that marketers can use to curate great content. These include, but are not limited to:
- Quuu – obviously Quuu are the specialists when it comes to quality content curation because all their suggestions for content on social media are hand-picked and reviewed by a team of qualified curators. So that’s pretty unique!
- Curata – with this tool, marketers can identify valuable content that is gathered using a self-learning engine.
- Paper.li – finds and collects content that’s aligned with your audience’s interests, using a combination of natural language processing, machine learning and social signals.
- Feedly – a blog reader that gathers content from different blogs in your niche in a single place.
- Flipboard – a content aggregator where you can create magazine-style collections of content that is relevant to specific keywords
Whatever you use there’s no denying the importance of content curation within any team’s marketing strategy in 2024, it saves time, money and positions you as a brand which is on-the-ball.
What are your tips and experiences of content curation? Are there any methods or tools that you use that we’ve missed in this post? Let us know in the comments below or via social media!
Whatever you use there’s no denying the importance of content curation within any team’s marketing strategy in 2020, it saves time, money and positions you as a brand which is on-the-ball.
What are your tips and experiences of content curation? Are there any methods or tools that you use that we’ve missed in this post? Let us know in the comments below or via social media.
