How to Create Curate content your audience will love

What is content curation?

At its most simple, content curation is the process of gathering, organising filtering and presenting relevant information on a particular topic. When you curate content, it is not original and it’s not usually content that you own.

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that content curation is simply and excuse to copy and repost the original work of others; it isn’t. Nor is it a way of effortlessly filling your content calendar; far from it. Effective content curation is a skill in its own right.

If you approach it well, curating existing content is a powerful marketing tactic; it can bring huge benefit to your business as a vehicle for your brand by offering content to your target audience that adds value, increases trust and improves your authority.

How does content curation help my audience?

Approach content curation with the same degree of care that you would use when you create your own original content. Put your target audience first and research their needs. The process of collating, reviewing and reposting blog post content from around the web can be hugely beneficial. How many times have you spent literally hours reading reviews for very similar looking products or tools while you try to work out which one would be best for you to try? Wouldn’t it have been easier if someone you genuinely trusted had done the legwork for you? The world moves fast, so there is no shortage of emerging tools, apps and approaches vying for the attention of your readership.

Researching content to curate kills two birds with one stone. All that reading up you’ve been doing on the latest trends in your niche? Why not share it with your audience? Better still, supplement your research with your own experience to add a personal perspective that will be even more relatable to your potential customers.

Periodic curated roundups make for great newsletter content; you can include a mixture of original and non-original content to add that extra dimension of interest. This is a great way to maintain engagement with past or potential customers who just haven’t had time to keep up with your blogs and posts.

Time-saving

Time-saving is the most obvious benefit of curating content rather than creating from scratch. But to work, it must be strategic; it must have a defined purpose, clarity about the audience need you are meeting and a means of measuring effectiveness for your business marketing objectives.

Audience Reach

There are multiple ways that curated content can help you expand your audience reach. Reduced production effort allows you to include a broader range of adjacent but relevant topics in your content plan; this has the effect of reaching adjacent and potentially overlapping customer groups with your brand. This overlapping customer group may my not be in the market for your product or service right now, but that might change in the future. They may never require your service, but they could easily become an advocate.

Variety

Content curation is a great way to add some variety to your content calendar; it’s an opportunity to use types of content and formats that are less well-suited to your own core content.

Value

Organising and presenting helpful content from industry influencers and thought leaders is valuable to your audience. Moreover, it helps you to stay up to date on emerging topics and trends in your niche.

Credibility

Recognising, distilling and curating the work of experts and thought leaders in your niche, will add credibility and authority to your brand. Referencing reputable sources in your content increases trust, both from a human and a search engine perspective.

“An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.”

Stephen Fry (actor, comedian & writer)

Benefits of content curation for your business

Time-saving is the most commonly quoted benefits that should encourage you to curate content as part of your marketing strategy; but that’s a bit misleading. The process of collecting and analysing content on behalf of your own audience can still be very time consuming. Content curation certainly takes effort – it’s just a different kind of effort. Curated content can however be very effective at blasting through creative blockages; as you are reviewing others’ content, I guarantee you’ll get a ton of ideas for your own original pieces in the future.

This fascinating Zapier case study presented by Foundation Inc clearly shows how content creation can yield huge SEO benefits. It can be a way of broadening reach by appealing to adjacent audience groups. These are potential customers that you don’t necessarily appeal to directly. This can be particularly helpful if your own niche is very crowded, has low search volumes or has lower than average conversion potential. In SEO terms, it’s another way to appeal to search engine algorithms, which is never a bad thing.

Referencing experts in your field adds credibility to your brand; recognising the efforts of your peers is a healthy professional networking habit. It’s also the perfect excuse for a coffee break while you catch up on all that reading from your favourite creators!

Putting together quality content isn’t exactly effortless, but this list of 10 simple curated content ideas from A HubSpot blog post shows that there are plenty of content curation strategies that you can put your unique stamp on for a lot less input than writing from scratch.

If you are considering curation as a strand of your marketing strategy, make sure you set relevant objectives for each piece. It should be targeting a clear objective and must have defined success indicators that you can actually measure.

Simple rules to follow when you curate content

Relevant

Keep it relevant to your audience and your marketing objectives

Credit

Credit the Creator

Give credit where it is due; cite the original source and clearly reference the original creator. If you are in any doubt about the nature of the material, ask for permission before sharing.

Amount

Less is More

Aim for no more than 10%-15% of your content to be curated content

Measure

Effective?

Monitor. measure and analyse to make sure your content curation effort is paying off