5 Benefits of Curated Content and 5 Tips on How to Best Utilize it
Are you developing a content marketing strategy for your business?
You’ve got your keyword research. You’re developing value-adding content. And now you’re putting together your content calendar.
But there are so many days. And weeks.
How will you fill up an entire content calendar without spending all your time generating content?
The answer might be curated content.
Read on to find the answers to questions like:
- What is curated content?
- Why is curated content beneficial?
- How can I implement curated content into my content marketing strategy?
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Contents
What is Curated Content?
Curated content is information — blogs, articles, etc. — that has been vetted by a brand or business and deemed beneficial to their audience.
Curating content is the strategic sharing of such information on the digital platforms operated by the brand or business in an effort to add to their brand authority.
Curated content is generally created by organizations unaffiliated with the brand or business.
For example, if you own a boutique clothing store, you may share a piece of content released by a fashion magazine highlighting “7 Trending Summer Styles.”
You’re utilizing pre-existing content that your audience will find interesting and may encourage sales of similar styles from your shop.
What is Curated Content in Social Media?
Content curation in social media is using social media platforms to curate content. It is one of the most popular methods of sharing curated content.
The goal of using curated content through social media is to build authority and make your brand or business a trusted resource for information.
This authority will help you achieve better results when you promote your own brand or product on your social media platforms.
5 Benefits of Utilizing Curated Content
If you’re researching curated content, you likely know that content marketing is an extremely important aspect of modern marketing strategy.
According to Content Marketing Institute, 71% of B2C (business to consumer) marketers have a content marketing strategy.
But continually creating your own content requires a decent amount of time and monetary investment.
Enter curated content.
You can keep your audience connected — and your blog and social media up-to-date and active — by using content that’s already out there.
Now, we’re not saying curated content should entirely replace your business’s unique, custom content. But there are significant benefits to employing curated content as a supplemental avenue of your content marketing strategy.
Benefit #1: Reduces Content Creation Costs
If you outsource your company’s content creation, you’ll likely spend a good portion of your content marketing budget on high-quality, value-adding content.
If you create your own content, you’ll need to devote a significant amount of time to generating frequent, consistent content.
Either way, the expenses — in money OR time — can add up.
Luckily, you can utilize a few content creation tools to identify pre-existing content that fits your brand or product and use it to add variety to your own content.
Benefit #2: Fills Your Content Calendar
One of the most important aspects of content marketing is to be consistent with your content.
Adding a new blog post to your website every few months isn’t going to make a huge impact on your content marketing strategy.
Curated content allows you to fill up your content calendar without requiring you to generate your own content daily.
Benefit #3: Cultivates Conversation With Your Target Audience
An engaged customer is the best type of customer.
Curating high-quality content is an easy way to keep your target customers engaged with your voice and your business.
Are you still learning who your target audience is and how they engage online? Portland SEO Growth can help you determine where your traffic is coming from and how to best engage with your customers.
Benefit #4: Generates Brand Awareness and Authority
In order to build awareness and authority, you need to post and share content often.
But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If you find existing content that aligns with your mission or brand, use it to build your authority as an expert in the industry.
If your target audience frequently sees you sharing value-adding content, they are more likely to engage with your promotional content down the road.
Benefit #5: Expands Your Network
One of the best things about curated content is the opportunity to impress the original creators of the content you’re using.
If you …
- Curate their content in a meaningful way
- Tag them in your posts
- Initiate customer engagement; and
- Push your audience to their digital outlets
… you just might earn some high-authority respect.
Original creators may start following you on social media, sharing your content, and increasing awareness of your brand or product.
5 Tips on How to do Content Curation the Right Way
There are right and wrong ways to implement curated content into your marketing strategy. It’s not as easy as simply finding “cool stuff on the internet” and sharing it.
You should strive for your curated content to be:
- Personalized
- Valuable but not over-shared
- Attractive to your target audience
- Consistent
- Ethical
Shortly, we’ll review a few ways to ensure you’re implementing curated content in the best possible way.
But if you’re stressed about making sure your curated content is valuable, let Portland SEO Growth help.
Our team of search engine optimization specialists can help you implement an on-page SEO strategy to expand your reach and improve your rankings.
Tip #1: Always “Frame” the Content you Choose to Curate
When you curate content, you want your audience to remember who provided them with the information.
To do this, you’ll want to frame the content with a unique and personal introduction.
This will add time to your content scheduling, but it is a step that should not be overlooked.
Let’s go back to our clothing boutique example. If you share that article on trending summer styles without any context or personalization, the only thing your audience will remember is the article.
You want them to also remember your boutique.
You could include a picture of a store mannequin dressed in an outfit similar to one featured in the article and say something like “Rosie over here is already ahead of the game.”
The idea is always to engage your audience and make an impression.
Tip #2: Find Valuable Content That Hasn’t Been Widely Shared Yet
If you frequently share valuable content with your audience before they’ve seen it from another source, you’ll quickly build trust and authority.
The key is finding ways to stay ahead. There are many services you can utilize to ensure that you see content related to your brand before it’s widely distributed.
A few of these services are:
- Google Alerts
- RSS Feeds (you may be thinking ‘how old school,’ but RSS feeds are still useful!)
- Social Searcher
Don’t forget to frame the content to make it personal and unique to your business.
Tip #3: Know Your Audience and Share What Matters to Them
Always, always, remember your audience. You may find a piece of content extremely valuable. But you must ask yourself if your target audience will also find it valuable.
Keep your content relevant.
If you own a boutique clothing shop, you probably don’t need to share content about the best dog breeds for families.
This tip just requires a bit of common sense.
Tip #4: Vary Your Content and Be Consistent
Because curated content is often shared across social media, you should try to follow the rule of thirds for social media marketing.
The rule of thirds essentially states that your social media posts should be:
- One-third brand or business promotion
- One-third curated content sharing ideas or news from your industry
- One-third interacting with trending social media conversations
You don’t want all of your content to be curated. But you want your curated content to have an impact.
Post curated content surrounding a variety of topics related to your industry and be consistent in your posting.
For example, don’t go weeks without posting a piece of curated content and then suddenly post several pieces daily. Outline a schedule and stick with it.
Tip #5: Be Ethical
The ethical sharing of content is very important. Never make it appear that the content was created by you.
Doing so is not only disrespectful but if discovered by your audience, can be disastrous to any authority you’ve managed to generate.
To ensure you are ethically curating content, always:
- Link — don’t steal. Frame the content and provide a link to the content. Never publish the whole piece of content.
- Use the original source. Link to the original source of the content, not another site curating the content.
- Tag the author’s handle. If sharing on social media, tag the creator’s handle to give credit.
Ask for permission. If the content is something the creator can profit from — like photography, get the green light to curate.
Content Curation Tools: A List of the Most Popular Tools Available
The most efficient way to add curated content to your content marketing strategy is to use a content curator.
Content curators make sure your curated content adds value and impact. They help your curated content stand out from competitors.
So, what is a content curator?
A content curator refers to a service, a tool, or a person who implements content curation. Some businesses employ content management personnel who devote a significant amount of time to identifying and scheduling content for curation.
These individuals will often utilize many content curator tools.
Below, we’ll list several content curation tools for beginner, intermediate, and advanced content curation. This list is far from comprehensive.
For Beginner Content Curators
- Elink.io — turn saved links into beautiful content
- Pocket — save images, articles, videos, etc. in one place for easy access
- Twitter Lists — organize and easily engage with Twitter accounts
- Buzzsumo — connect to industry-relevant influencers
For Intermediate Content Curators
For Advanced Content Curators
- Curata — discovers, recommends, and shares relevant content
Trying to Develop a Content Curation Strategy? Portland SEO Growth Can Help
Designing and implementing a content marketing strategy isn’t necessarily difficult. But it is time-consuming and can easily verge on overwhelming.
Portland SEO Growth has a team of search engine optimization specialists who can assist with your content marketing strategy.
In addition to helping you create unique content, we can also help you identify relevant pre-existing content that you can curate on your website or social media platforms.
We serve businesses within the Portland-metro area as well as nationwide. Get started with a free website audit.
Courtney Kirk
SEO Specialist and Military Spouse
