Content curation is the process of using other people’s content to grow your own network and improve your online marketing. Using social content in this way can be highly effective, but simply posting links to other blogs or articles is not sufficient. To make curated content really work for you, you need to add your own personal spin to it, and these six tips will help you do just that.
1. Voice Your Opinion
People who don’t have an opinion are boring, warns Joshua Merritt of BMC Software. If you are going to brand yourself as a thought leader through curated content, you need to state an opinion on the content. If you agree with a post, say why. If you disagree, go ahead and share it, but let your audience know why you disagree.
2. Tell Them Why It Matters
Marketers need to tell their audiences why the content they are sending to them is worth reading. If you can clearly show value in the content you share, you will brand yourself as a forward thinker who is “in the know” in the industry.
3. Keep It Short
Curated content is designed for social sharing, as stated by B2B Content Engine. Stating your opinion about an article in 140 characters or less is not easy, but if you can master this technique, you will see an increase of traffic to your site by incorporating your opinion into the content that you share through social media. People will be more inclined to click the link or re-tweet your comment when they see why you chose to share it.
4. Create “Best of the Week” Sections in Your Newsletter
Newsletters and content curation also go hand in hand. You want your newsletter to be as valuable to your readers as possible, yet creating newsletters with content from scratch can be time consuming, thus the need for content curation. You can draw in the reader by creating a “Best Posts of the Week” section in your html email newsletter, then adding a little blurb about what interested you in your own browsing this week.
5. Use Wrap Up Posts
“Best of the Week” sections do great when creating newsletters, and these also work well as posts on blogs. A “wrap up” post at the end of the week that links to some of the top content in your industry, with your own comment or two about it, positions you as an expert in your field. They also may garner you some incoming links of your own from those you linked to. Forbes indicates this has been successful for some of the top blogs on the web.
6. Think Outside the Box
While most of the content you share will be directly related to your niche, sharing content that is outside of that box gives you a personality. Did you come across a funny video that has nothing to do with your site? Share it anyway, and give your readers a laugh. If your followers see your feed as entertaining and enlightening, not overly promotional, you are going to have a greater following.
Content curation without your personality is nothing more than spamming your lists with other people’s content. Throw your personality into the mix, and you create a resource that people trust and turn to for information. That is the difference between success and failure in the online marketing world.