Content curation is the process of discovering, gathering and presenting digital content about a specific subject.
The most valuable pieces of content are those that helps save time, money and are easy to replicate to your follower. This in turn helps you estblish your brand as an authority figure and as the go-to person in the industry.
Every business needs to do content curation of some description, but it is particularly effective for small to medium business for a number of reasons but the main one would be how cost effective it is to have a content plan that is suitable for your business.
First and foremost, your customers appreciate the value and knowledge that you're sharing online and are more likely to engage with well-investigated and unique content you’ve created.
Also, good content acts as a posting resource for yourself too. By sharing posts and articles, for example, sector information, news and best practice, it will save your followers time spent on lengthy google searches.
Another advantage of content curation is the SEO element. Continuous sharing of outside, valuable resources from your website will help to increase the domain's search engine results page (or products and services too).
Putting it simply, search engines, particularly Google, regard shared links on social media as positive ranking signals and the most shared, liked and tweeted content has a probability of a far higher search listing.
When you’re curating content, time and money are factors to bear in mind. Remember you are taking others peoples posts, articles and images and repurposing them for your audience, so it needs to be useful to both you and your customers.
Content curation tools are designed to make it easier for you to find, organize, and share great content. They cover a wide range of uses, from email newsletters and blog post content to social media tools that help you find and post interesting and relevant content to your own accounts.
In general, tools for content curation can be broken down by those that help you find content and those that help you display and share it.
The most popular content curation tools for small to medium businesses include:
Feedly, a great tool for gathering content from a range of sources such as industry blogs and online publications. It offers a wide range of content that’s easy to navigate and organize.
Flipboard, which displays content in a magazine-style layout that can be easily shared with others. This makes it a more visual and focused alternative to something like Feedly.
Storify, a tool for creating stories or timelines using social media content. It’s really good for finding and collating a series of related social media posts or creating content from user-generated contributions.
Pinterest is increasingly being used as a content curation tool, as you can save and sort interesting and relevant content by pinning from different sources to your pin boards. Plus, it’s visual catalogue-style display works well when sharing content on social media.
Scoop.it, a tool that not only finds relevant content based upon the topics you specify but also helps you to add your own insights. It’s designed to help you create online publications by pulling together a collection of relevant content found by the platform.
Canva, a tool for the creation of professional standard graphic design materials suitable for use on social media. Use those tools and you are guaranteed to have a strong game when it comes to curating content whether it is for your small to medium-size business or for a personal project.
Postplanner is one I’ve been using for years and years. It works in a very similar way to the others and has added many new features over the years, including AI curation as well.
Know your Audience
Knowing your audience is one thing of course but it’s important that you update this at least once a year, as you business grows.
Curate Consistently
The effectiveness of your work is only going to happen if you keep it up! Consistency in this would mean at least weekly.
Find Reliable Sources
Find sources that mean something to your audience on a personal level. Maybe arrange to work directly with them and collaborate, then you both win.
Create a Curation Schedule
Plan ahead for at least a month in detail and create an outline for at least 3months so you’re always ahead.
Give Credit
Make sure to tag relevant pages, authors and events so that they know you’re crediting them
Add your Own Thoughts
Don’t just post and hope. Add your spin, your interpretation and explain to your audience why you felt it relevant to share in the first place.
Schedule posts
Have I said this enough?
As more content gets published online, the challenge of cutting through the noise and getting seen by potential customers only gets harder. One theme which consistently appears is the importance of a customer focus. Too often, businesses who produce content get caught up in the latest fads or in ticking boxes which, ultimately, have no impact on the customer. And many make the mistake of seeing content curation as a one-off project or a quick win in the race for customer attention.
I cannot stress enough that to make this win in the long term, businesses need to see content curation as a journey which has customer satisfaction at its heart. It's for this reason that the information you provide must remain relevant and effective.
By employing an efficient content curation strategy, business owners and those tasked with creating content are more likely to achieve a solid online presence and a good level of visibility in the marketplace.
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
