Content Curation in 2023: How to Master Content Creation
Content curation is the process of planning, researching, gathering, and sharing relevant information from various sources around the web. It is usually done to increase your knowledge base, provide valuable information to the readers, and emerge as an expert in a particular area. Simply put, content curation is finding the best work in your chosen field and sharing it with everyone with proper attribution.
Content can be created and curated enabling you to share more and consistently which gives you more visibility. As a curator you plan and search topics that interest your audience, add your voice, and at the same time give your brand a wider exposure by them liking, commenting, or sharing your content.
Since you are sharing impeccable quality of the content it gives a competitive edge and gains you visibility and establishes authority.
Many marketers overlook the real value of content curation and see it as mere as sharing other people’s content. Content curation requires disciplines, competencies, and skills and when done strategically, it can ripe many benefits and keep your audience engaged without spending all your resources on creating new content.
Many companies now are beginning to value the role of curators as relevant and decision-ready information is becoming a valuable commodity in the digital space. Curators understand the need for specific information and can provide it in a timely and effective manner. Today we have many tools and software to filter raw content but the real benefit of content curations is entirely dependent on the competencies of a human curator who utilizes their knowledge and experience to apply critical thinking and figure out what is useful and relevant.
The “seek-sense-share” model by Harold Jarche has been widely adopted by curators as a personal learning process.
Even though content curation is not widely recognized, we have been unknowingly using it for many years now. It is a skill that will become a key differentiator for companies hiring curators with their insights and storytelling techniques that adds unique value to the already existing content.
When curation is done right, a curator can leverage the power of third-party content and also benefits the target audience and the content creators. It is one of the most valuable and effective ways to economically increase your content quality, output, and incorporate a more diverse perspective and build credibility as an unbiased expert.
Benefits of content curation
Efficient and cost-effective
Social media requires a continuous stream of professional, superior quality, and related content which is difficult to generate continually by you or your team. You can fill these gaps by utilizing greatly curated content. Content curation is relatively faster than creating a new piece of content.
Curation helps you make a great marketing strategy without investing a huge amount of money and time since you are not creating every piece of content yourself. You can efficiently utilize already established content and keep your content calendar consistent and full. Share something excellent that is already created relevant to you and keeps the conversation going.
Position you as a thought leader
Once you get to know your audience and filter only the best most share-worthy content tailored to them, you will be recognized as a trustworthy and dependable expert in your area. Maintain a conversation with your audience around trending topics and they will trust that you know what you are talking about.
Gathering content from high-quality sources helps increase your credibility, exposure, and authority in your industry. As an expert, you must focus on sharing content that is of high relevance and value to your audience and move beyond just providing information to them.
You should find, share, and comment on the best articles in your industry. If you do it consistently, it will help you gain authority and let your readers look up to you to see what’s happening and what’s worth discussing. To achieve this and make yourself stand out, you must brand yourself as a curator using your real name.
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Connect with influencers
Sharing, curating, and promoting content encourages growth and engagement with your readers and with leaders and influencers in your industry. When you share someone else’s content, you are giving it more exposure to them and when it is done with proper attribution and in a favorable light, it helps you create synergetic relationships. A by-product of content curation is the relationship and connections you build with other influencers by showcasing their work.
Curating content is one of the most generous things you can do online for other creators and yourself especially when it is done with proper mention and share. You may not be able to create an immediate impact on your brand but these relationships are crucial in the long run and engender positivity with others in your industry.
Compliments your social media
The constant pressure of creating new content can put a strain on you or your marketing team and can often pose challenges, especially during peak periods. Content curations help you manage your social accounts consistently and keep your inventory full.
You can only create a limited number of posts for your socials and that too requires a substantial amount of time and effort. It is difficult to create quality content regularly. Curations allow you to complement your social media and blogging and keep the marketing activities going with content produced by others.
Supports lead generation
A quality value-focused curated content will result in substantial traffic to your site which can lead to; increase in leads, an increase in sales, and an increase in subscribers. It allows you to convert visitors into potential customers.
When you curate content relevant to your industry and each time you share it on your socials you boost your digital presence. This activity will drive indirect traffic to your social media accounts and website. Lead generation is the by-product of curating other content of your site.
Improves SEO
When you curate content, you cast a wider net and create opportunities to drive your target audience to your social profiles and sites. Even though SEO is not the main goal of content curation, it is an indirect by-product of this activity.
One of the SEO benefits you get when curating content is by paying attention to trending news about its novelty and relevance. You can leverage search engine algorithms by curating trending content. Such topics appear at the top of the page in the search query which includes top stories from the source as well as third-party publications. Popular content curated by you becomes an additional indexable page that leads more visits to your site via search engines.
Build a knowledge base
One of the reasons companies curate content to enhance their knowledge base in a particular area. It helps them understand market trends and patterns, monitor competitors’ activities, and measure growth expectations, identify useful resources, and helps create a collection of content ideas.
The internet gives access to a variety of information and increases the collective stream of intelligence which consistently enhances your knowledge base. Some examples of curation for enhancing or growing a knowledge base include websites like Wikipedia and Udemy.
Helps to identify trends to create better content
Curating relevant and high-quality content helps requires you to filter dozens of information, articles, and posts. This allows you to stay on top of the most popular and trending topics. As a curator, by surveying the emerging trends you become the first movers which people like to follow for any latest news or updates.
When you curate content using sites where you start the conversations across various topics with other influencers and leaders, it helps you identify trends that you may typically not come across in your SEO research.
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Build a career
Content curation is a great career choice and a full-time job on its own. You can curate content full-time for a living. As a Curator, you access the sources of the content identified, skim the headlines, and narrow the content to a list of potential options. You determine whether or not the content meets the criteria required for sharing, as set by the research done by you.
Many popular companies are running their whole business on curated content. E.g.: Maria Popova, the author of a Congressionally indexed site called Brain Pickings. Next Draft author Dave Pell hand curates’ articles daily and selects the most interesting pieces and shares them via newsletter and website. There are many websites, Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts that curate content from other sites and content creators and receives thousands of millions of reactions and shares.
How to build a remarkable and effective content curation strategy
Content curation can ideally be split into three areas: Discover, read, and share. The most important thing to remember when implementing content curation strategies is to provide value to the readers, be consistent, and share quality content.
There are a few guidelines to keep in mind when curating content:
Identify your audience
Before you start curating, it is important to figure out what kind of audience you are trying to cater to and what kind of content will keep them engaged.
It is crucial to understand that you are sharing something not because you are excited about a specific topic but because what you share or post will help your readers in some or another way. So, before you hit the schedule-this button in your calendar, ask what value you are adding to readers.
Figure out which topics to cover
Don’t share too much of the same thing. Open up and expand your research to topics related. Start thinking of ideas and topics that your readers would love to read. Find out the most popular content shared using various tools (mentioned below) and explore topics related to it. The content you share has to be on topics your readers care about and are likely to read. Search and collect resources from a variety of sources and share only the most important and relevant content.
You should market yourself as a brand and convey your message. Ultimately you should care about your readers to help them get clear, top quality, organized and efficient information. Make sure the topics you share and write about contribute to this aspect.
Curate research
This is the most important aspect of your content strategy. When you start curating content collect the best work of other people’s research. You can organize the information and give links to all sources to give your readers an overview of the most relevant research. As a good content curator, add extra value to the content by including your commentary and go one step further and provide a roundup in the form of an infographic.
As a content curator, you should position yourself as an expert and supplier of superior information. The quality of content you share will have more people count on you and they will eventually support you, reshare and recommend you to others. Always remember, quality content is the main differentiator as a curator. Identifying within the curation process and proposing a new perspective by merging parts of the curated content is a new emerging trend.
Categorize and organize the content you find
Schedule and organize your content in categories so that your curation appears balanced over a while. Use a social media calendar to map out what and how you are going to post. There are many tools and software, as suggested below, where you can schedule your post on set and forget approach, one time versus posting multiple times a day. But don’t schedule too far in advance because you still want your posts to be timely and relevant.
It is important to share frequently and regularly to gain more visibility. One of the biggest challenges in maintaining consistency is keeping your content at the level you originally targeted for. If your audience is people who are new to a specific topic, make sure the content you share is for beginners and don’t start sharing advanced-level content. Any topic you pick follows a pattern, and gradually raises the level of information you provide. Categorizing the curated content will help readers understand organized past information by date to show how specific topics have evolved.
Share content on various channels and give credit
Once you have gathered top-notch quality content for your audience share it with them via many different channels including websites, social media feeds, blogs, mobile apps, widgets, and email newsletters.
For all the content you use and share from other sources, you must prominently identify the source of the article and provide a link to the source of the articles for your readers where possible. It is crucial to take permission or add an @mention or tag them to give them their due credit and reduce any Copywrite or legal risks.
Try to gather your content from various sources and limit using the majority of the content from a single source. Reproduce only those portions that are necessary to make your point and is directly relevant to your audience. You must provide context or commentary for the material you use.
Content curation tools and software
Great curation is done both manually and through automated tools. Check out the few tools that can be used for efficient curation:
- Buzzsumo – helps you find the most shared content on the web for specific topics in real-time.
- Twitter Lists – helps you categorize and organize your followers for easy engagement.
- Pocket – helps you capture and collect all your information, images, articles, and videos in one place.
- Newsletter – sets up Gmail or any other email program to automatically label and sort your repository of useful content by date.
- Instapaper – create a folder e.g. ‘posts to share’ and bookmarklet, any article in the view from your browser, click the bookmarklet in your browser bar and the page will be saved in that folder.
- Hootsuite – helps you manage and stream all your social media channels from a single platform.
- Feedly – keep your favorite feeds and articles all in one spot and also keep track of internal information, and when your business is mentioned online.
- Scoop it – Collect and curate content to find things in organizing topics in a hub page. Publish it elsewhere, such as your blog.
- Curata – helps you discover and recommend only the most relevant and helpful content for your audience. You can revamp, repurpose, review, and distribute them, from a single tool.
- PublishThis – gathers content relevant for your audience from you, your freelancers, your employees, and your partners. It then mixes it up and shares it across other platforms, like email, web, and social sites.
Final Takeaway:
Your content strategy must include both content creation and content curation as an overall plan.
The three fundamentals you must remember while curating content is:
Find content that is relevant to your audience. Organize your resources, define topics, and don’t capture anything unless high quality.
Identify the most relevant and engaging content online which must add value to your work or strategy.
Lastly, share content with your audience various across channels, credit sources, answer questions and comment on other people’s stuff, and keep the conversation going. It is most important to consistently feed your network with good meaningful content.
Using the steps mentioned in this post, you can easily and efficiently curate content for your social channels. It all comes down to understanding your audience, choosing the right tools, constantly analyzing your research, and proper implementation.
