In the age of the Internet, content marketing is a term of regular usage. But tell me have you heard about the term content curation? If not, then we will be throwing light on the usage and significance of content curation.
Being a digital marketer, it becomes difficult to post attractive content every week for the audience. After all, if at one reading the target audience does not find it scintillating then they can switch over to another post or article in another second.
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Now you can save yourself from this situation by posting the content of others via posts, blogs, and videos on your page to delight your target audience. Now this is content curation. A content curator is involved in the task of finding relevant content for the target audience and posting it in a synchronized manner.
This task does not involve content generation like content marketing. Now content curation can be done via numerous media such as blogs, videos, posts, online news mashups, RSS feeds, and others.
Let me explain this concept to you with the help of an example. I am a huge fan of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan and like to follow his account on every social media platform whether it is Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Likewise, I like to subscribe to a newsletter that gives the latest information about him. In this manner, I collect the most pertinent and updated information about this personality and refer to it on a daily or weekly basis.
So I curate content about this famous personality and post recent information about him on my Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.
Some useful content curation tips
- Always give credit to the content of others being posted on your site for your target audience.
- Always give preference to quality rather than quantity in content curation.
- At times, you might need to mix original content with curated content to drive search engine optimization (SEO).
Having understood content curation, you must be wondering about the significance of content curation in contemporary times. How does content curation build value?
In the process of content curation, you share the content of others to a bigger mass audience. This works both ways. You as a marketer can give credibility to your audience by sharing the content of others relevant to your industry and on the other hand, the audience feels at ease for finding compelling content within their reach.
Moreover, this also saves cost as you do not have to develop content but post and share the enticing content of others (with their consent) to your audience.
Difference between content creation and content curation
You must be wondering why everyone is opting for content curation these days instead of going for content creation. After all, content creation provides the opportunity to create unique content to keep your target audience hooked.
In addition, you will have multiple articles, blogs, and posts to be shared on one particular topic. But wait a minute! What if you get the chance to keep your target audience hooked by posting the content of your peers on your website?
In this manner, you will not only save time but also retain relationships with your valuable customers. You also tend to develop good relationships with the author or publisher whose content you posted and that individual might also mention you in this post.
So are you not curious to find a way of doing content curation? Let me put it in simple words:
Process of content curation
So let us continue our discussion focussing on the process of content curation to Identify, organize, and share your content.
1. Identify
This is the most crucial stage of the process of content curation as it accounts for 75 percent of the process. You need to locate the main resources where you can find relevant content for your target audience.
- Apart from these sources, you can also subscribe to a newsletter.
- You can also utilize the option of Google Alerts. This is a free service that you can use to get email alerts when a particular topic is found.
- Moreover, you can also create Twitter lists.
- You can also associate yourself with forums and special interest websites for this purpose.
Tip: Please ensure to limit the number of your potential sources to 25 and not more otherwise, it becomes difficult to segregate the relevant ones. Also, you tend to ignore the obvious relevant topics in the rush of topics.
You must have now realized the significance of the first stage—identity in content curation.
2. Organise
The second stage is crucial from the perspective of organizing your content and it accounts for 25 percent of the process of content curation. Once you have identified the potential content, you need to think and analyze interesting content for your audience.
For instance, some content is suitable to be published on Twitter and Facebook while other kinds of content would be suitable to be published in a newsletter.
Tip: You must note one point not every content that has been collected needs to be shared with your audience. You can keep that content for some future date to be shared.
At this stage, you need to review and organize the content and finalize the appropriate medium for that content.
3. Share
Now this is the stage that accounts for 10 percent of the process of posting curated content. You finally post the content in ways that will be beneficial to you and your target audience.
Sharing curated content on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn is the most common practice for posting curated content. In this manner, you can promote your business (product/service) and generate sales leads.
In addition, you tend to share the views of the industry leaders with your target audience making them acquire more information within the stipulated time and without any hassle. Through the social media platforms, you can interact with your audience and explore and influence their views.
Another effective medium of sharing curated content is a newsletter. Your audience will save time if they get to subscribe to the newsletter which provides compelling content pertinent to them.
Now what about introducing a weekly newsletter for posting curated content? Your audience would be extremely delighted to go through your newsletter and would rather wait for it to come out.
Benefits of content curation
Content curation is a win-win situation for everyone. Primarily, it creates long-term benefits for the other sources that are being cited on your social media platform. Your audience gets to appreciate you for your enhanced knowledge of the industry.
There are chances that when that publisher writes on a particular topic it might link you or share your articles to its audience. This leads to brand building and gives immense credibility to both parties. In addition, the audience directly gets the latest information about this relevant topic without many hurdles.
Tip: Some of the useful content curation tools are Scoop.it, Feedly, Pocket, Flipboard, BuzzSumo, Curata, Quuu, UpContent, Elink, Triberr, ContentGemas, ContentStudio, Pearltrees, Pinterest, Twitter, Paper.li, Sniply, Storify, Listly, SocialPilot, and more.
So you must have now realized the immense potential of this concept—content curation. What a poignant role it plays in the marketing field and that too on the Internet. It is extremely beneficial for all the parties involved in the process of content curation.
What are you waiting for? Do try your hand at content curation and share your feedback with us!
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