8 Ways Curated Content Helps Your Content Marketing Strategy

As content marketers and/or bloggers, we pride ourselves on keeping our digital tool box up to date.  Here’s some help to make sure that your content engine is tuned up and humming.

Of course we understand the importance of creating original content that is useful and helpful to our targeted audiences and online communities. But it can be tough to consistently write on topics of interest and provide consistent, expert commentary. Fortunately, with a smart content curation strategy, we don’t have to.

What Is Content Curation?

You’ve probably heard of content curation, but may not understand exactly what it is or how it can help you develop and share information.

Content Curation — done according to best practices — is selecting, and sharing relevant and remarkable content created by others. It goes beyond just sharing links to articles. Personalizing or editorializing about the thought leadership of others can be a highly effective marketing strategy.

Why Add Curated Content to Your Content Marketing Strategy?

Here are eight great reasons for adding content curation to your digital marketing tool kit:

1. It’s a Time Saver. This is the most obvious reason so we thought we’d get it out of the way first. And indeed, for many of us it may very well be the number one reason to curate content. Especially when enabled by technology solutions, content curation can free our time for other important efforts besides content creation. By the way… content curation is also a timesaver for your audiences. You can provide them with a go-to source of information that they don’t have to hunt for.
2. It Demonstrates Thought Leadership. One might think that the only way to demonstrate thought leadership is via original content creation. Not so. Republishing content from other high quality sources, when carefully curated for your audience, is a way to share  information that is relevant and useful, and helps to shape the conversation in your niche. Beyond simply spouting expertise, it gives insight into our thought processes and brand character.
3. It Makes Your Brand Story More Interesting. In any business or industry, there are lots of players and influencers. By introducing this cast of characters via curated content, you round out your blog, fill holes in your knowledge, and make your brand’s story more complete.
4. It Increases Visibility in Your Niche. Providing a variety of viewpoints with curated content in your niche sets the stage for discussions that can help you further address the topic at hand from your own perspective, de-bunk myths and engage other thought leaders.  It builds visibility and strengthens your message, too.
5. It Creates Context. Curating content properly is similar to what museum curators do. Within a theme, they select objects that may seem unrelated at first glance. But by the way they place the objects and by the flow they create throughout a gallery, they provide a context for each object that relates to the overall theme. By curating carefully and thoughtfully, we can provide our followers, readers, and subscribers with a contextual experience that they would not have without us.
6. It Helps You to Build Your Tribe. Generous sharing of meaningful information helps us to build relationships in two directions: with those who read what we share; with those whose original content we share. Also, when you become known for sharing and commenting on interesting content, your blog and social media posts will get more Likes and re-tweets, increasing your social reach.
7. It Can Beef Up All of Your Social Channels. Curated Content is not limited to text articles. You can curate images to share on Instagram and Pinterest. You can use curated content to make slideshows that you can share on sites like SlideShare. You can curate videos on YouTube and make videos that include curated content. It’s a flexible approach limited only by your creativity.
8. It Can Add to Your Marketing ROI. Adding a content curation strategy to your marketing mix will add to your content posting frequency and consistency, your social reach and clout, and your brand credibility.  By nature, this will result in more engagement, traffic, and sales.

Of course, there’s more to successful content curation than just finding content in your niche.

When brands do it well, they create a content experience that keeps an audience coming back for more, week after week.  We’ll be covering the how-to’s and how-not-to’s of content curation in coming weeks.

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In future blog posts, we’ll explain how to create a content experience that truly delights your site visitors, identify the best curation tools for sourcing content,  and help you find content that is already licensed for re-use in your niche.  Subscribe today!