Sharing content with your target audience has become one of the most used strategies amongst everyone who wants to get their brand out there. The content you share is typically relevant to the interest of your target audience.
The quality of your content will ensure that your prospective customers continue to absorb the knowledge you provide them and make them return to your website more often. It also ensures that they always have your brand in mind whenever they need a particular product or service.
While sharing your content with the rest of your followers isn’t a terrible thing, there is a good chance you may be neglecting to share other content besides your own. Think about it for a moment, how much of the content you share is yours instead of someone else's?
If that’s the case, you may need to change things up a bit. While your audience may enjoy the content you provide them with, offering them a variety of content will spice up their lives. That is why you need to start curating content. The idea is to share the content from others in a similar industry as yours on social media. Sharing others' content serves as an excellent way to show that you are not just interested in yourself and that you value all sorts of perspectives aside from your own.
If you’ve already caught on to this idea and are curating content, are you pulling it off correctly? Is the content you share with your audience the right one?
Here’s all you need to know about curating content for social media like a king!
What is curated content?
Essentially, curated content is content created by others that you choose to share with your own followers. The content can be anything from valuable blog posts from a company in your industry to expert advice from a well-known thought leader or anything else that you think your audience may appreciate.
The term curator was borrowed from museums since they are known for having specific people who curate the most important artworks and artifacts to display throughout the museum. That way, they can ensure they put up a collection that will attract a specific audience to their museum. In this case, you are sharing information created by others instead of high-class art.
The idea behind curated content isn’t anything overly complex. In fact, every retweet is considered a basic type of content curation. If you want to get the most value out of your content curation, you’ll need to know the best steps to curate efficiently.
How should you curate content?
The content you curate needs to be useful and relevant to your audience's interest. While it’s nice to curate cat memes, your audience may be dog owners, and cat memes won’t resonate with them, making the content irrelevant to their interest. If you continue to share irrelevant content, they will start to tune you out and lead to less engagement.
The algorithm of the social media platform will adjust itself when it comes to showing your content accordingly.
Share top quality content that you’ve enjoyed, that your audience members have shared and are discussing over, and helpful content. Here’s how to pull this off.
Be aware of your audience
Researching your target audience is the first step towards developing a curated content strategy. If you want to share helpful content, you need to know who are the ones you are aiming to reach. One method of determining who your audience may be interested in is to create an audience persona. That grants you a chance to think about your audience as real people and permits you to consider carefully what type of curated content is valuable to them.
Keeping in mind that you aren’t just sharing content but curating content. The curator needs to choose only the best content to share on your social media channels. Before you share the content with your followers, make sure you understand how the content will benefit them.
Afterward, observe how your audience reacts to the shared content. Look over your engagement level for your curated posts. Doing so will inform you what kind of content affects your followers. Concentrate more on those types of content for future posts.
Here at Missinglettr, our tool’s curation feature can provide you with the results and data you need to see how well your shared curated content is interacting with your audience. You’ll know how well the shared content is engaging with your followers, along with knowing what type of content performs best, thanks to our tool.
The content should be from a reputable source
Unfortunately, not everything that is posted online these days can be considered factual. Some people tend to post misinformation, whether it’s due to ignorance or malicious reasons. One of the things you need to ensure before sharing a piece of content is that the information provided inside of it is factually correct. The content you curate needs to come from a reputable source.
Fortunately, our tool’s curate feature can provide you with a list of top-quality content that your target audience is looking for. Our system does not suggest articles or blog posts at random. It recommends content that will entice your followers and ensure that the information is from a reputable source.
Add your own take on the content
One of the many reasons why your audience is following you is because they want to hear what you have to say. You can’t just go around resharing posts and content without leaving a comment for your followers to know what it’s helpful. They want to hear what you have to say about the resources you have shared with them.
It’s not necessary for you to write a lengthy explanation. All you need to do is write up a sentence or two explaining why this piece of content is valuable to the reader. If you can include some personal insight on this, you’ll get even more notice.
Make curation categories
One thing you want to avoid is boring your social media followers with content on the same topic. Knowing how much of which subject to post about depends on your brand and what you wish to share with your audience. Some organizations only publish content strictly related to their industry, whereas others tend to take a far broader approach.
For example, let's say you own a small business, such as a pet grooming business. It's not ideal to only share an article on the best ways to trim a dog’s nails every day. Consider sharing other things such as the top reason to shop locally. While it may seem a bit odd for a pet groomer to share an article like that, a sizable portion of your customer base likely enjoys supporting the local community. There is a good chance that your audience may enjoy the article and find it helpful.
Schedule ahead of time
Unless the post you are sharing contains breaking news, you should consider curating your content posts ahead of time. That grants you the opportunity to maintain a regular posting schedule without needing to constantly remain at your desk for most of the day. One of the best ways to pull this off is by using a tool that can not only curate your content but schedule them ahead of time. If you are looking for a tool that can provide you with that, check ours at Missinglettr.
Let’s not forget that curating content can be a massive time sink. Your precious time could be used for other aspects of your business. By using our tool, you’ll have a platform that does all the tedious work of hand-curating fresh content for your social media posts, allowing you to focus on other business matters. Our tool is the best way to fill your social media post with quality curated content ahead of time.
Benefits of content curation
Let’s go over some of the benefits you can gain from curating your content.
Closes the gaps on your calendar
While a bulk of your content will likely be made in-house, your social media calendar is going to have some gaps that need to be filled. Sure, you could repost some of your older content, but mixing things up is more likely to keep your audience engaged with your account. Since posting content on various social media accounts is a part of your content strategy, you need to ensure that these gaps are filled with something fresh.
Curated content is an excellent fix to this situation. Sharing valuable content from other sources is a cost-effective way to maintain your posting schedule.
Gives value to your audience
You must give your audience a reason to continue following your account. One of the many reasons your target audience is following your social media account is because they want to hear what you have to say. They want to hear your thoughts and ideas about the industry you are involved in. They want to learn from the best and improve their skills in some fashion.
Of course, not every piece of wisdom you dispense to your followers needs to come straight from your mind. You're not the only person in your industry who has experience and knowledge in the field, and you should delude yourself into thinking so. When you curate content to share with your followers, you offer them extra value. That is accomplished by providing them with various perspectives from others experts in the field.
The relationship between your audience and yourself should never be purely for business reasons. You need to offer them value in return. Sharing curated content lets them know that you care about them by keeping them informed and sharing resources instead of just growing your number of followers.
Become a thought leader
One of the many things you want to achieve from your content strategy is turning your brand into a thought leader in the industry. While sharing your own content is one way to pull that off, you can also establish yourself by sharing other people's content as well. By taking the time to share the best content out there, your followers become aware that whenever you post a resource that pops up on their feed, it’s worth spending time to read.
It also offers an excellent opportunity to share your thoughts about the content you shared with your audience. If you can provide them with a unique perspective, it helps grow your reputation as someone knowledgeable in your industry.
Grow your network
Sharing content made by other people grants you an excellent opportunity to gain their attention, especially if your post has managed to provide them with extra traffic. If you discover someone who has high-quality content, be sure to let them know how much you found it valuable. You should also let them know that you shared their piece with your audience, but don’t ask them to return the favor in any way. Doing so will most likely end up with them feeling annoyed and blocking you instead of interacting with you in the future.
Instead, you should let them know that their content was helpful and that you’ll be following their work to see what else they post in the future. Over time, you’ll develop a relationship with other leaders and influencers in the industry. These relationships are far more crucial than trading a link with someone who may feel obligated to return that favor.
Missinglettr’s curating feature serves as an excellent tool to curate content. It enables you the opportunity to engage with the creator, thanks to our built-in features such as drip campaigns. Influencers enjoy the idea of others sharing their work with their followers and are more willing to return the favor and share your content with their followers as well.
Conclusion
Curating content may seem like a simple method, but it serves as an excellent strategy that ensures your social media account continues to engage with your followers.
If you haven’t begun to curate content to share with your followers, then you need to start right away. If you want to ensure that your curated content is of the highest quality, consider checking out our tool. Not only will it curate the best content out there, but it will do so automatically while you perform other important tasks.
