What The Power of a Great Content Curator Means for Your Brand
Many businesses focus heavily on creating fresh, high quality content. Although content creation is an indispensable part of content marketing, content curation is powerful as well. It can add value to the content you already have, allow you to connect with your audience more effectively, and give you the freedom to focus on creating content that will truly benefit your brand.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content curation is a means by which we either supplement or promote our brand’s point of view to our specific audiences within the context of how the ‘world’ is talking about that particular topic.” Although it’s true that a lot of curated content comes from outside sources, you can also curate your own content by using content your company has already created.
Curating Content from Outside Sources
Curating content from outside sources is an important part of most content curation strategies. The goal is to gather and present content that will be valuable to your audience. Of course, your audience has the ability to search for information on their own, so you must add value to the content as you curate it.
Content curation isn’t about accumulating huge numbers of links and stockpiling information, but is instead about developing context, annotation, organization, and presentation that makes it easy and desirable for your audience to engage with the content you’re curating. A great content curator will be able to cull through the vast amounts of content online, pull out the best and most relevant content, and make it accessible to their audience.
One of the biggest potential benefits to curating content from outside sources is that it places your brand and your voice within the larger context of your industry or your audience.
Curating Your Own Content
Curating content from outside sources is important, but any business on its content game also has a wealth of in-house content that can be curated and re-presented to the audience. Content your organization already own can be used over and over again, especially if it’s “evergreen” content.
In order to effectively curate your own content, you need to gain a complete understanding of what content you currently have by performing a content audit. The content audit will consist of developing a comprehensive list of all the available content and creating a system that categorizes that content.
After you know what content you have, the next step is to decide how you’ll use it. The content marketing team should work together identify pieces of content that can be curated, decide where and when each piece of content will be shared, and execute the plan.
Trending vs. Evergreen Content Curation
C
ontent curation can be used for both new, trending subjects and topics that stay the same over time. For example, when an important new industry development is unveiled, you can link to press releases or news articles, re-tweet relevant comments from industry experts, or link to a timely op-ed piece that helps readers understand the development. Curating content on trending subjects requires the content curator to be completely up to date on both current events and what readers are interested in.
At the same time, brands should also curate content that will remain relevant over time. Using your own content is especially useful for this type of content curation. For example, you may develop pages that aggregate all the information someone looking for an introduction to your business or industry might need. An attorney might develop a page that aggregates content on the basics of litigation, designed to help readers learn enough to take the step of contacting an attorney.
An effective content curation strategy allows brands to continue to release content throughout the month without having to spend more money creating more content. With such significant benefits and such a positive cost-benefit ratio, there is no reason for any brand not to hop on the content curation bandwagon.
Has your business leveraged content curation in your content marketing campaigns? Do you plan to do so in the future? Share in the comments!
Images: Featured: http://socialpandora.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/content-curation.jpg?w=908
http://www.tangerinedigital.
Jan Gordon
Latest posts by Jan Gordon (see all)
- Curatti Best Articles of 2022 (And Happy New Year 2023!) - December 28, 2022
- Curatti Best Articles of 2021 (And Happy New Year 2022!) - December 31, 2021
- Curatti Best Articles of 2020 (And Happy New Year 2021!) - December 31, 2020
