The In’s And Out’s Of Content Curation

Are you a digital curator?

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Did you know that being an effective content creator means curating content too?

Creating content is straightforward enough. But how does one curate content? What does that even mean?

Curating content simply means finding and sharing content along a certain theme. So you may find that you are already a digital curator!

But if you are not familiar with content curation, no worries. We’ll outline what curators do, the best practices of a curator, and show you a day in the life of a content curator undergoing a curation process.

Why is this all worth knowing? Because content curation can help you reach your goals in less time, with less effort, and establish thought leadership.

What Is Curated Content?

Wikipedia describes our lovely friend content curation as, “the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. Services or people that implement content curation are called curators. Curation services can be used by businesses as well as end users.”

You may already be curating and not even know it. Do you love dogs and re-post dog pictures all the time on your social media page? Congratulations, you are a digital curator who specializes in canine photography.

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur and you share inspirational, self-help content in your business’ weekly email newsletter. Pat yourself on the back. You have been a curator of motivational tidbits this whole time.

Yes, content curation is just as simple as finding and sharing information about your favorite topics.

You Are A Digital Curator

As a curator, you:

search out the best items
select for the collection
authenticate and preserve items
add interpretation, descriptions, and meaning
publicize viewings

And instead of paintings, you work with online content like:

blog posts and Tweets
articles
meeting summaries
presentations
competitive analysis
video
conversations
images
infographics
TED talks
sales pitches
… and much more

Content curation isn’t anything new, only 5% of marketers surveyed worldwide never share another organization’s content. Nearly one-third of blogs share blogs, industry resources, or other resources on a daily basis.

The Benefits of Curation are too good to ignore

Content curation can boost your profits, save millions, and reduce frustrations. Anyone, you or someone on your team, can be a curator. The act of curating improves critical thinking, build reputation, and grow personal networks.

The most apparent benefit to curating content is it simply saves time. Creating quality content isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, effort, and internet scouring. Even after researching for hours, you have to bring an original perspective to the information and statistics that already exist.

On top of that, you also want to make it relevant to your audiences’ lives so it brings some real value to them. The cherry on top is to make the content engaging and entertaining.

Because we live in an online world bloated and busting to the seams with content, content that doesn’t immediately catch someone’s attention simply gets lost in the void.

When you share an authority’s content, you are able to “piggyback” on their reputation, in a sense.

Goals Of Content Curation

Curating content isn’t just about gathering information, it’s about drawing like-minded individuals together to form a community. When you share enough content, combined with your own original content, people have an easier time figuring out what your brand stands for.

And if they find value in the content you provide, that online user will choose to join, follow, and engage in your community. One of content curation’s goals is to create a go-to feed for audience members interested in your topic. Curated content always gives value to the audience.

Another plus side of forming a community is your brand is seen as a leader in your respective niche. Establishing thought leadership is the main objective of 85% of curators.

Content Curation: Best Practices

So now you want to try your hand at content curation (or you want to brush up your skills). To start off, here are a few quick “Best Practices” tips:

Explain why the content is important to your audience. Bonus points if that explanation is short, sweet, and packs massive insight.

Include clear links and credit for the original content. Identify the author and the source of your content.

Post snippets of content. An example of a snippet would be tweeting a short phrase from your article to accompany the post that shares your curated content

Find a unique voice. When you share content, add your own flair and brand personality to the content to share. Otherwise, you get lost among other brand’s voices.

Share over time. Rookie marketers throw a whole pile of content at their audience and then disappear for weeks at a time. This is no way to build a trusting relationship. Instead, consistently share one or a few pieces of content each day.

Metrics matter. Nothing talks like cold, hard metrics. Consistently check your metrics to see what’s working and what’s not.

Trim the fat. Algorithms change… audiences move on… if you find your former content champions falling short, it’s time to cut them loose and say goodbye.

Ask what people want. In the race to create, curate, create, and curate, it’s sometimes easy to overlook the most important person – your audience. By simply asking what they want, you have tons of future content ideas that your audience will find valuable.

Content Curation Success Examples

Here’s an example of a no-cost, one-persona curation project from Jay Cross. It can give you a feel for what the content curation process looks like.

"An example: How Jay Cross Curates Content

When I started studying the future of conferences, I began with research. I set up a Google Search for daily news on the topic. I opened a free account on the curation platform scoop.it and put in search terms and authorities to listen to. I scoured the web and paid particular attention to curation champions like Robin Good and Howard Rheingold.

Every day I would sift through a hundred or more items suggested by my social networks or the search engines. Perhaps one item in fifty seemed worth commenting on. Sorting through posts made me think critically and see patterns. It’s an excellent way to get a bead on a subject.

I voiced my opinion on nearly every item. Wise interpretation is what adds value to the content. The human touch is required. In my case, the review of thousands of items taught me a whale of a lot about the future of conferences. In order to write my opinion, I needed to pin down and say why this item made any difference. Like the pitch of the docent in front of a painting in the gallery, I sold an item — or panned it — and tried to win you to my way of seeing things.”

Word Up:

Content curation is a lot simpler than it seems. In fact, you may already be curating if you collect and share content based on a certain theme. That theme could be anything from pictures of french fries to SEO tips and tricks.

The best content curators add their own wisdom and insights along the content they share. This adds your own unique, personal voice to another piece of content.

Do this consistently enough and you can see the benefits of content curation like forming a community and establish yourself as a thought leader.

sources: wikipedia, litmos, internetmarketingreach, writtent, pegfitzpatrick