As a marketer or blogger, social media can be a powerful tool for engaging relevant traffic and driving them back to your website or blog. Social media can also be a time-consuming burden. With best practices pointing to more-than-daily publishing, it can be difficult to keep your social queue loaded with fresh, relevant content. Enter: content curation.
Content curation is a crucial piece of every effective social media strategy. In this article, we’ll explore what content curation is, why it’s so important, and how you can get started.
What is Content Curation?
Art curators are responsible for hand-selecting art to be included in a gallery. The curator must find quality work, ensure its relevance, and identify complementary works to accompany it.
Similarly, curating content is the act of selecting high-quality, relevant content and distributing it to your audience. Depending on your process, this can include scouring relevant industry sites, selecting top content, then developing a short post to share it with on your social media.
Anyone can curate content, but it’s most popular for bloggers, social media influencers, and marketers.
Why Should I Curate Content?
Developing content takes a ton of time. Curating existing content is far easier than having to develop net-new resources to promote.
Another important consideration is your followers’ experience. When you’re only ever sharing your own content, your audience can get bored and might see you as too promotional. Mixing in industry content that is relevant to their needs can help maintain interest and provide additional value to your audience.
Curated content is an effective way to keep your social media queue full of diverse and engaging content. That ensures that your audience will always have something new to consume and not lose interest over time.
How Can I Get Started Curating Content?
Like most other marketing initiatives, you want to start with your customers in mind. What are their interests, passions, and desires? Identify publications and sites that align with your audience’s interests.
Typically, if you’re a content creator or business, you’ll want to share adjacent publications, instead of direct competitors. For example, if you sell seeds for vegetable gardening, it would be a good idea to share articles from DIY blogs, gardening tool providers, or container manufacturers.
Once you’ve selected publications, you’ll want to check back regularly for new content — depending on your social strategy, about once per month should work. At that time, go through and find any relevant articles you’d like to share. From there, you’ll want to develop a bit of copy explaining what the article is about and why your audience should click on it. It may also make sense to explain your point of view on the topic, depending on what type of article you’re sharing.
Similar to implementing other new strategies, you’ll want to experiment with different topics and frequencies to find what works best with your audience. You may find that topics from a specific publication always go over well. If that’s the case, it may be worth reaching out to the publication to explore partnership or guest post opportunities. After all, if their content resonates well with your audience, you may find that their audience is also interested in what you provide.
What Are Content Curation Mistakes to Avoid?
Largely, curating content is pretty straightforward. Look for articles that are relevant to your audience’s interests, are in your niche, and aren’t published by competitors. However, there are a few things you’ll want to watch out for.
Sharing Promotional Content
It’s typically a good idea to shy away from sharing other organization’s promotional content. If the article is focused on trying to sell something or promote services, you’re essentially sharing an advertisement for another organization. Instead, stick to educational content that falls in your niche.
Shying Away From Sharing Different Opinions
While it’s typically best not to share your competitors’ content, you may want to explore how sharing content with views different from your own can impact your expertise. Without being combative, you can share an article that doesn’t align with your company’s process or views. When you post it, include a few sentences highlighting your alternative point of view and explaining why you feel that way.
For example, that same seed company may share an article about how vegetables can grow in any dirt. Along with the article, they would include a short blurb explaining why nutrient-rich dirt is actually essential to growing fantastic plants. They could cite a few sources, and get specific about how compost and fertilizer can help combat diseases and lead to healthier plants. Instead of shying away from the conversation, this can create a memorable interaction for your audience, displaying your expertise.
Not Reading the Article
While content curation is a great way to spend time, you can’t curate content by the headline alone. You should always click through and read the full article to ensure it’s about what you expect it to be. This is also a good opportunity to ensure the content isn’t overly promotional or from a competitor.
Not Tagging the Source
Content curation shouldn’t involve stealing — you never want to try to pass someone else’s content off as your own. Instead, be sure to tag or mention the source, and link back to their original content.
Manually Curating Content
As with other elements of your social media strategy, content curation is a prime opportunity to schedule posts in advance. Pre-load your social queue with curated content ahead of time to save you time during the workday!
Amp Up Your Social Media with Missinglettr
Missinglettr isn’t just a scheduling platform. With Missinglettr Curate, you can browse relevant content from all over the web, right from our platform. Add your categories and topics of interest, and we’ll provide recommended content for you to curate. From there, you can either use the developed social content or write your own copy because adding the post to your schedule.
Explore how Missinglettr can save you tons of time on your marketing and social media efforts when you give it a try for free today.
