How to Curate Content in Your Content Marketing Program
Once of the biggest challenges in content marketing is being able to continually generate quality content.
It’s hard to do.
Many marketers curate content to supplement their own content generation efforts. Content curation is different than standard content marketing because instead of focusing on creating and sharing new content, curating content describes the process of researching and sharing existing content created by others while adding value for your readers.
Curate Content vs. Create Original Content
While new content generation should definitely be a part of every content marketing program, content curation can add value by reducing the volume of new content you have to produce, expanding your reach and providing additional value to your audience.
When you curate content it’s critical to add new value and commentary to the original content. It’s okay to just promote links via social networks, but whenever possible, include your own commentary that expands on the idea.
Another reason to curate content is that many readers value a single resource for specific information. This saves them time from having to search for it themselves. Creating large volumes of original content is resource intensive, so curating content can make it easier for you to become that single valuable resource for your audience.
Before committing to curate content, it’s a good idea to evaluate the pros and cons and then, if you decide to move forward, identify your curation resources and create your workflows.
Here are some examples of how you can curate content:
- Share curated content on your social network
- Include curated content in your blog or email newsletter
- Curate other people’s research
- Share images
- Share other people’s ideas
- 8 other examples of content curation
- Additional tips for content curation
Here are some potential cons for curating content:
- If you don’t include value-added commentary, you could hurt your brand by looking like an aggregator or, worse, a plagiarizer
- If your comments don’t truly add value that you might annoy your audience
- If you curate too much content, as opposed to generating new content, your audience could view it as a dishonest or shady practice
- If you have a unique voice and tone, you may damage that by sharing curated content that doesn’t match yours, or you might have to spend too much time finding content that matches your voice and tone
After reviewing the pros and cons, should curation be a part of your content generation process?
Content Curation Resources
If you’ve decided to move forward and curate content, the next step is to determine what resources to use to review content.
Since it’s time consuming to search for quality content, use a content aggregation tool. Here are examples:
- IFTTT
- Scoop.it
- Feedly
- News.me
- Curata
- PublishThis
- Newsletters
- Industry blogs
- Twitter lists
- Social media sites
To save time and increase effectiveness, most people choose to batch process their content research, following a specific schedule. Select the frequency (monthly, weekly, daily) and time required for your curation research.
After creating your schedule, it’s a good idea to add a checklist of best practices to review before each curation:
- Value – Are you truly adding value? Avoid superfluous comments that may annoy readers.
- Relevance – Is the topic relevant to the reader? Will it provide useful information to help your readers?
- Originality – It’s difficult to be truly original with so much content these days, but are you avoiding looking like another how-to list from a content farm? Are you authentic?
- Quality – Is the content well written / shot / designed / recorded? Is it free of mistakes?
- Aesthetics – Does it look / sound professional?
Good luck!
Here are some additional step-by-step plans for content marketing: