How To Incorporate Content Curation into Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content curation is a great way to supplement your original blog content. Incorporate it into your Content Marketing Strategy and you’re definitely heading in the right direction.

  • it provides your audience with focused, niche based  content,
  • sets you apart as an authority in your domain,
  • gives your blog diversity and makes it a point of interest,
  • helps drive traffic to your website and blog.

Content curation works in a similar way that art museum curators assemble works of art into meaningful displays; Content curators assemble content into formats that deliver value to their audiences.

For example, a business that focuses on “Elephant Feeding Strategies”, may curate content in topics that relate to elephant feeding strategies, and then provide a meaningful opinion or editorial that supplements the curated content.

Another example – the article you are reading right now. It is an assembly of relevant, informative curated content, in a format that is sensible, and includes my opinions and editorial.

More Than Broadcasting

Content Curation helps shrink the Internet for your audience – Gary Hyman

Content curation is more than just broadcasting content to your audience.

By understanding:

  •  your audience,
  •  the content they want, 
  • your personal brand

…intersecting these three with:

  • a context for sharing,
  • content relevancy,
  • an added personal editorial

…it is considered great content curating. It delivers value!

Content Creation  and Content Curation

Some are better at creating original content, while others are better at assembling other peoples content.  They both have their pros and cons. However, I believe both complement each other, and recommend supplementing your content creation efforts with various content curation techniques.

Nicole Nicolay’s does a great job at explaining WHY content creation; And the process of picking between content creation or content curation.

Shrink the Internet and Add Value

A curator is an information chemist. He or she mixes atoms together in a way to build an info-molecule. Then adds value to that molecule – Robert Scoble

Being a Content Marketer, I’m sure you’ve noticed the sheer amount of new content being produced on the Internet – social, blogs, videos, podcasts, hangouts, etc. The amount of new content created is mind-boggling.

content marketing strategy never sleeps

Your audience, more than likely, is challenged for spare time, and would prefer not to wade through the sea of Internet content to find what they want.

You can help make their life easier by providing relevant, high quality, meaningful content in an easily accessible location.

Shrink the Internet for them!

Curating relevant and high quality content puts you in a position of authority. You have the ability to filter the flood of content for your audience, and present only what they want.

Take a look what Margot Bloomstein says about :

  • the value of adding value,
  • how to filter the flood of content,
  • importance of communication goals,
  • the importance of your responsibility in curation.

Making It Unique and Valuable

By now you should have recognized that content curation is extremely valuable. It has to be done correctly though.

There is one mistake that many make, which you must avoid at all costs.

I’ve eluded to:

  • Don’t just broadcast links,
  • Create an editorial,
  • Provide a unique perspective,
  • Inject personality into your curation.

Each ensures value for your audience. Create VALUE! Value creates trust, relationships, return visitors.

On the flip side, by not creating value, the consequences can be detrimental. You can lose your audience and be penalized by search engines like Google.

Automating your curation efforts is okay, but be aware that if you do not provide any value behind your curation efforts, you will not see the rewards.

Matt Cutts of Google, shows you both ends of the spectrum – a great content curator, and a curator that just broadcasts duplicated content.

Create Your Curation – Borrowed Techniques

Find the best relevant content in your niche, assemble it, stamp it with your personality, and you have curated content of value – Gary Hyman

Now that you understand the importance and the rewards of content curation, here’s a few ideas to help you get your content curation efforts on the way.

  • Thought Leaders: Create a blog post that highlights the different perspectives of the various industry thought leaders in your niche. In essence you will be creating new content, but curating the ideas of the different people into one location.
  • Crowdsource Posts: If you are fortunate enough to have multiple bloggers, your can have them blog, for example at an event, and collect different perspectives.
  • Mircoblog Portal: Develop a goto resource for a single specific topic in your niche. Curate from the various sources and deposit the information directly onto you site, blog or microblog.
  • Content Contest: Have contests where your audience develops content. The audience and judges rate the content (eg. shares, likes, tweets, pins and plus ones). The content with the highest rating gets the recognized publicly.
  • Pooled Expertise: Curate the knowledge and expertise of everyone associated with your company. Let them blog and find content that resonates well with your audience.
  • Customer Images: Curate images from your customers, and have contest around them. For example, Facebook fan of the month, or most gothic looking church in your neighborhood.
  • Infographics: Curate data that resides on the various sources and locations and produce an Infographic. For example, the “Data Never Sleeps” Infographic in this article.
  • 3rd Party Content: Pull together 3rd party content that you have already posted on the various social streams. For example, create a blog post with your top tweets of the week, or your most plus one’ed article on Google+.
  • Curation Sites: Use sites like scoop.it to launch your curation initiative. Sites like Scoop.It automate the process of finding your niche content, groups content into relevant buckets, and provides a mechanism to promote the content.

…and validation about content curation, by some heavy weight Content Marketers.

Your Take Away

If done correctly, content curation can be a big boost to your Content Marketing Strategy.

  • Supplement your content creation with content curation,
  • Make sure you have a Content Marketing Strategy before any curation efforts,
  • Understand what your audience wants,
  • Find a curation strategy and techniques that works best for you,
  • Add value to the content you have curated.

Now its your turn. What content curation strategies and techniques work best for you?

…and if you need assistance with your content marketing strategy, implementation and execution please contact us.

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