By Charlie Patel
Content curation is the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. Whether you’re a blogger or small business, curating content on your channels is an important part of the marketing mix. Content curation that facilitates the discovery of relevant information or helps consumers make informed decisions is truly worthwhile.
For example, a typical newspaper publishes relevant and timely content. You’ll notice that many of the pieces are republished from other sources. This form of curation attracts readers on a daily basis looking for the latest local news, business updates, or interesting stories. The publisher is an influential source of information because they consistently aggregate high-quality content.
As we all know, content creation takes time, energy, and money. Therefore, it makes sense to complement it with content curation which requires fewer resources. Below are a few examples of how to quickly embed curation efforts into your marketing strategy:
- Share valuable content with readers on social channels
- Provide opinions, reviews, or reactions on already trending pieces
- Break the news or play an important role in the news cycle
- Build an audience that relies on you to recap events in your industry
- Aggregate the opinions of other leaders in a roundup
What are the Benefits of Content Curation
The remainder of this post will identify the key benefits of content curation. Below is a list of 9 content curation benefits that we’ll explore in greater detail:
- Establishes Credibility as a Thought Leader
- Promotes Content to an Audience
- Complements Social Media & Blogging
- Supports Lead Generation
- Provides an Opportunity to Repurpose Content
- Improves SEO
- Enhances or Grows a Knowledge Base
- Builds Community Interests and Relationships
- Helps To Identify Trends and Create Better Content
Establishes Credibility as a Thought Leader
Curating content from high-quality sources helps increase credibility and exposure in your industry. Unlike sharing generic content, a thought leader focuses on sharing content that is of high relevance and value. Marketing thought leader Seth Godin explains the importance of curation and leadership in great clarity on his personal blog:
And this is the challenge every organization faces in the uber-indexed world we live in. It’s not enough to sit with a prospect and ask him what he wants. Once we know what we wants, search finds it for us. No, we have to offer a menu, we have to curate choices, we have to dream for people who don’t have the guts or time to dream for themselves.
Seth describes the need for leaders to move beyond just ‘providing information‘ and step into the realm of curating resources that actually add value to their audience.
Example: Maria Popova is the author of a Congressionally indexed site called Brain Pickings. She has amassed over 5 million-plus fans and followers across the internet but even more impressive is how her story began. Brain Pickings began in 2006 as a weekly email sent to seven of her friends. Today Maria continues to send out a weekly digest of interesting and inspiring articles.
Promote Content to Your Audience
Promoting content to your audience with the help of content curation encourages growth and engagement. While content curation is crucial, it’s equally important to think about how and where your content gets distributed. If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to get your curated content in front of a wider audience, consider services like The Remnant Agency. They specialize in purchasing unsold ad spaces on TV, radio, and billboards at significant discounts, helping your content reach prime time slots and a wider audience without breaking the bank. Remember, great content deserves to be seen and heard by as many people as possible. Incorporating a social wall can also amplify your reach. A social wall aggregates and displays user-generated content from various platforms, showcasing real-time interactions with your audience. This not only builds community engagement but also encourages others to join the conversation and share your curated content. Some other examples are;
Next Draft author Dave Pell hand curates articles daily. He selects 10 of the most interesting pieces and shares them via newsletter and website. Dave adds his unique personality and prowess through wordsmithing to share the internet’s top 10 pieces of the day.
Compliments Social Media and Blogging
The constant pressure for new content can put a significant strain on any marketing team. Take a moment to quickly run through your content production inventory. In most cases, established websites that invest time and resources into content creation will produce the following assets:
- X number of blog posts
- Featured images for blog posts
- Social media posts by network
- Quora responses
- Newsletter content
- And other promotional tactics
Quite frankly, these activities alone require a small army of individuals. For example, a company like Ampfluence focuses strictly on Instagram growth. Simply put, it’s difficult to create quality content daily or consistently. Curation allows you to complement blogging and social media marketing activities with content produced by others.
Example Facebook Page DIY & Crafts curates content from other sites and content creators. In the screenshot below, the curated post received 827k reactions and over 2 million shares.
Supports Lead Generation
Curated content drives traffic to your site which can lead to specific goals such as:
- increase in leads
- increase in sales
- increase in subscribers
Value-focused content curation can result in substantial traffic to your profile or site allowing you to convert visitors into potential customers.
Example: Companies like Credit Karma curate relevant content within their industry. Each time the company shares a Facebook post, Tweet, or Instagram post, it boosts their own digital presence. This activity drives traffic to their social media profiles, and indirectly to their website.
Provides an Opportunity to Repurpose Content
Content curation can provide opportunities to repurpose across different channels for greater content distribution and reach. We’ve also created a resource that outlines how to repurpose content.
Example: Rank Watch created an expert roundup post on the Future of SEO that includes curated opinions from experts in the SEO industry. The page provides the option to embed the content on another site or download the image.
The same images and assets are repurposed and used as pins on Pinterest.
They also repurposed the content on Quora.
Furthermore, the company also pinned a tweet of this post to their Twitter profile.
This process is a simple and repeatable method for promoting high value curated content while also creating multiple promotional assets in the process.
Improves SEO
By curating content, you are creating more opportunities for search engines to drive your target market to your social profiles or pages. When you curate content, you are casting a wider net. While SEO is not the main goal of content curation, it is an indirect by-product.
Example: A good example of SEO benefits when curating content is paying attention to trending news. Especially as it pertains to freshness and relevance. Curating trending content will allow you to leverage search engine algorithms that hone in on content freshness. Notice, the image below showcases a trending search query, “perfect remix Beyonce”. The results for this search query, appearing at the top of the page, include top stories as well as Tweets from several third party publications.
Build a Knowledge Base
The internet increases our capabilities in collective intelligence. High-level examples of curation for enhancing or growing a knowledge base include websites like Wikipedia and Udemy. On a smaller scale, organizations can also curate content to enhance or grow a knowledge base.
Some examples of how content curation assists in enhancing your knowledge base include:
- Create a library of content ideas
- Understand industry trends and patterns
- Monitor competitor activities to identify milestones or gauge growth expectations
- Identify useful resources for team members
Example We use Triberr Curate to help us understand industry trends and patterns. The image below displays our “Best In Class: Marketing Blogs” content group. In this content group, we curate authoritative marketing blogs. This collective stream of intelligence consistently enhances our knowledge base.
Build Epic Communities
Content curation can also help build communities. In fact, some of the internet’s largest communities are built entirely on curated content. People are always searching for convenient solutions. If your curation efforts can add value and save time for a specific group of people, you’re halfway towards generating a loyal following.
Example: An excellent example of using content curation to build a community is Product Hunt. The famous tech site for “hunting” products began as a humble newsletter helping its readers discover new tools, services, startups, etc.
Helps To Identify Trends to Create Better Content
Content curation allows you to stay on top of trending topics. The act of curating content requires you to sift through dozens of articles, posts, and tweets to find relevant, high-quality information. By surveying their industry landscape, curators often notice emerging trends and become first movers or early adopters.
Example: For example, Neil Patel curates content using sites where people actually have conversations across various topics. This helps to identify trends that may not be visible through typical SEO research.
How will you start using content curation?
While we’ve provided the benefits of content curation with examples, everyone can manage content curation in their own way. Though, the most important thing to remember when employing content curation strategies is to:
- Provide value
- Be consistent
- Choose a curation tool that makes the job easier (ala Triberr Curate!)
Are you using content curation in your marketing stack? If so, share your thoughts in the comments below. If not, what are you waiting for? Start curating content today.
