If you have a small staff (or a staff of one), it can be overwhelming to create a constant stream of content that informs and engages your audience. For this reason alone, content curation can help save your sanity. It’s so important that we’re embarking on a three-part series all about content curation.
To review, content curation is showing your audience what’s worth reading. It involves sourcing content, vetting it for quality and presenting the best content to your audience by providing context and explaining why it’s important. This can be a tall order considering the vast amount of content available online and off.
To help you get started, here are six guidelines to follow as you curate content, whether it’s for your business blog, or your email and social media campaings.
1. Know your audience.
In order to know what’s going to feed your audience, you have to know who they are and what they need. What problems do they have that you can help solve? What specific issues do they face in their industry? Once you know your audience, you will have a much better idea of what is relevant to them.
2. Find relevant content.
We live in what author Beth Kanter refers to as “an era of content abundance.” As a content curator, you are tasked with sifting through that abundance to find content that solves your audience’s problems. Y ou also need to find ways to inspire them, help them connect with others in their industry, and/or challenge them in a constructive way.
Remember too that you don’t have to share every piece of shareable content that you encounter. If others in your industry have already shared it, you’ll just be contributing to the echo chamber. Instead, concentrate on finding a unique idea on a common topic that will be useful to your audience.
3. Find credible content.
Each and every piece on content that you share should be vetted. For online content, look at the credentials of the author and those who owns, maintains or sponsors the site. We can take some helpful hints from the academic world by asking several questions about content and its source:
a) Is the source reputable?
Your audience is more likely to click on a link from a source that they recognize as reliable, accurate and trustworthy. This question also requires considering what types of sources your audience values.
b) Who is the author?
Is the author of the post you’re considering sharing respected in their field? If you’re not sure, another good rule of thumb is to look at whether or not the author has cited their sources. Responsible, credible authors will cite their sources so that you can check the accuracy of, and support for, what they’ve written.
c) Is it current?
What counts as current depends on your topic. While sources on a historical topic may be decades old and still contain accurate information, sources on areas that experience rapid changes, such as digital marketing, need to be much more current.
4. Focus
In his article “Become a Content Curation King,” Sean Carton suggested that we “think niche.” This guidelines still applies today—perhaps even more so considering the information overload we experience daily. Carton recommends “picking a niche topic specific to you (or your client’s) industry.”
5. Read thoroughly and critically.
In order to determine if a piece of content is relevant, you must read it carefully. A recent episode of The Lede talked about the importance of reading as it relates to content curation and its larger benefits of improving intelligence, leadership skills and creativity. Beyond that, how can you know if a piece of content will be useful to your audience if you don’t read it thoroughly? We know that the temptation is there to read the title and skim the article briefly or, dare we say it, to retweet and share articles directly within social media platforms without even clicking on the link at all. Resist this temptation. If your audience clicks on a link and finds that it’s not actually worth reading, they won’t follow you for long.
6. Be consistent.
If you’re going to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, you’ll want to ensure that you’re curating content at a level that is sustainable. If you set an expectation for your audience, and then fail to follow through, you will have many unhappy followers.
In addition, you also want to take care that you are sharing content that is consistent with your overall messaging and your brand strategy.
Content curation, when done well, is an effective way to attract attention to your marketing efforts, and it has great potential for building an online community. Everything you share in your content curation efforts is a representation of your brand. As a result, you want to be sure that you’re sharing the best content possible. Follow the guidelines above and you’ll be well on your way toward curating the best and most relevant content on your chosen topic. In the process, you’ll build authority for your brand and create lasting relationships with your audience.
Check back with us over the new few weeks for tips on sourcing excellent content for your curation efforts and the art of community building through content curation.
Filament can help you keep your content stream flowing with content creation, content curation, content strategy and more. Drop us a line, and we’ll be in touch!
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