How to be a Great Content Curator on Social Media
The most successful social media marketers create and publish a high volume of original content through blogs, videos, white papers, and other vehicles.
But they also share quality content produced by others. Gathering, sorting, and republishing content from other authors that you believe your followers will value is called curation.
By being a great content curator, you help customers, prospects, and colleagues find the “good stuff” online and know what to read. This not only makes you an informative and influential social media contributor, but it also helps attract new followers.
Here’s how to find, filter, and share the best content with your social media followers in a smart marketing strategy.
10 Steps for Sourcing and Selecting the Best Content
There is a wealth of potential content online to share with your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter followers. Follow these steps to curate information that will bring real value to the people you’re connected with:
- Use Google Alerts and similar tools to see who’s publishing what on the web about the main topics and keywords related to your business.
- Sign up for RSS feeds from websites in your field, such as trade associations, conference sponsors, competitors, and industry media.
- Subscribe to the top blogs in your industry to hear what the most influential voices are saying.
- Follow key industry leaders and commentators on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
- Sign up for e-mail news briefs from news media specific to your industry to know the latest news and research.
- Follow reporters at major business news media like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg who write articles related to your business.
- Apply your knowledge of your industry to separate the wheat from the chaff. Focus on information that offers meaningful insights, a new perspective, or new findings on a key topic.
- Look for patterns that could indicate potential trends. Follow top researchers and share findings that could indicate a shift in your industry or your market.
- Filter out content that’s obviously self-promotional or “research” that’s self-serving or otherwise suspect.
- Add your point of view so people know why you’ve selected this content to share. Include comments like “A great demonstration of…,” “Helpful tips about…,” “Important news…,” “A can’t-miss conference,” etc.
How Content Curation Fits in a Smart Marketing Strategy
Content curation is an especially effective approach in a business-to-business marketing strategy, where companies strive to showcase their knowledge. Being a content curator is an ideal way to demonstrate your expertise and position yourself and your company as thought leaders in your industry.
Bob Nemens
I learned this through a mistake:
Positioning yourself as a “thought leader” and aggregator to your customers can be a very strong dimension to deepen the value of your brand, but in our instant, on-line world be mindful of two things. First, is monitoring volume and being careful that you don’t migrate into the category of “spam”. Second, is relevance; with a clear understanding of what your audience will find useful. The second needs the same fine tuning and understanding that is a solid marketing foundation and, delivered through all mediums, of what information is useful, to what market segment, and how it is best delivered–as defined on their term, not yours.
Life moves faster narrowing the margin of error. Lesson learned.
jeangianfagna
You are absolutely right, Bob. It’s crucial to respect your followers by not deluging them with “stuff;” they’ll unfollow you in a heartbeat. And relevance is key; that’s what using your expertise is about, to find and share what’s most meaningful to your audience. Vetting is the most important part of sharing content, in social media and in all marketing channels. Thanks for an excellent and thoughtful comment.
Daniel Kauwe
I’m just wondering, if everyone actively curates their social information streams, wouldn’t wide spread engagement reduce the affect/value of key influencers and thus the matter would really revolve around learning to research daily issues directly with primary sources?
jeangianfagna
I suppose that’s possible, Daniel, though I think it’s unlikely due to the sheer volume of web and social media users. The vast majority of people and companies don’t curate content at this point. It’s growing and we encourage clients to do it, but I doubt that it will ever be practiced by the majority of people online. I think key influencers will still retain their influence and that their influence will grow as they are more often quoted, reposted, and retweeted. Thanks very much for your comments.
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jeangianfagna
Thanks, Steve, for sharing my blog post-appreciate it!