Having a content plan is essential, but what happens if you don’t have enough content for all of your platforms? If you struggle to develop fresh content, are short on time, or just do not have enough resources to do it every week, you are not alone.
It was late at night, and I was about to turn off my laptop when I realized the analytics dashboard was going crazy. My website traffic increased overnight, and I couldn’t believe it. This unanticipated spike was not a fluke; it was caused by a curated content hack that altered everything. In this article, I’ll walk you through the exact processes I took, as well as provide insights and statistics that most websites do not provide.
Many small businesses cannot consistently develop fresh content, so they rely on curated content to engage their audiences. So, whether you’re writing for a blog or social media, consider using curated content. But what exactly is curated content, and how does it benefit your content strategy?
What is a Curated Content?
A content curator chooses which content to share on social media sites. Curated content is carefully selected external content that you can publish on your blog or social media channels.
Curating content entails more than simply sharing someone else’s post; it requires time to ensure that you are sharing the appropriate content with your audience to increase your credibility and engagement.
Furthermore, curating content allows you to save time and money by eliminating the need to develop the content yourself. Instead, you locate relevant content to broadcast on your own channels to keep your audience interested.
Key Takeaways
- Curated content can effectively double your website traffic by selecting and sharing high-quality content from reputable sources while adding your unique perspective to it.
- Curating content saves time and resources by leveraging external content, thus maintaining audience engagement without the constant need for original content creation.
- The curated content process involves finding relevant content, organizing it by relevance, and scheduling posts using tools like Feedly, BuzzSumo, and Google Alerts.
- Content curation offers benefits such as efficient brand development, thought leadership potential, ongoing audience engagement, networking opportunities, and showcasing your selflessness.
How Content Curation Works
Blogging takes a long time, and while you can post your blogs on social media, you may ultimately run out of content to share and must develop social media content. Fortunately, curated content enables you to enhance your existing blog posts with content created and produced by others.
However, content curation is not as simple as it seems. You cannot simply Google a topic, copy the URL, and post it on your social media platforms or blog. Instead, you must adhere to a content curation process, which includes the following:
#1. Finding relevant content
To curate content, you must first identify high-quality content for your audience. The content you share online should be relevant to your followers’ interests, based on your business or niche.
Assume you’re an electric vehicle producer. Depending on your target audience, you could post stories from trade or consumer periodicals about government regulations, technologies, and other popular themes. If your target audience is consumers, consumer publications may be the best option, although there are several alternatives available online.
#2. Organizing
After you’ve identified the content you want to publish, it’s time to organize it. Certain content is more timely than others. To remain relevant, an article regarding recent occurrences should be published as soon as feasible.
As a result, you should organize curated content by relevance and integrate some of your own content in the planning phase. While curated content might be useful, it should not be your sole content strategy.
#3. Scheduling
Once you’ve sorted your curated content by relevance, you can schedule posts in your CRM or social media tools.
Benefits of Curated Content
Content curation is largely used to help your marketing team. Creating fresh content to share on social media every day takes an unending amount of creativity and time. If you’re active on many social media networks, the pressure to create regular content may cause the quality of your postings to decline. Content curation helps to maintain brand consistency. Additional benefits include:
- Efficient and cost-effective brand development: Curating content is more cost-effective than producing it.
- Thought leadership potential: The correct content reveals your industry knowledge and comprehension, which boosts your leadership credibility.
- Maintain discussions with your audience: Sharing more content makes it easier to keep your customers interested.
- Unlock networking opportunities: Sharing other people’s content allows you to develop relationships with them. Curation is an excellent technique to interact with influencers and potential partners.
- Show your selflessness: Curation shows your audience that you’re not only interested in talking about yourself.
I Doubled My Traffic Overnight With This Curated Content Hack
Step #1: Find High-Quality Resources
The first step in effective content curation is to find credible sources. This entails locating credible websites, blogs, and influencers in your sector. Feedly and BuzzSumo can help you find hot content and top influencers.
According to a Curata survey, 85% of organizations that use content curation report increased brand visibility and thought leadership. This is critical for establishing a reputation and generating a loyal following.
Step #2: Provide Your Unique Perspective
Curated content should not simply be a collection of links. To make it more valuable, include your own perspective. Share your thoughts on why the content is significant, how it relates to your target audience, and what key takeaways they should focus on. This not only offers value but also demonstrates your competence.
Step #3: Use a Curated Content Template
To make the process easier, I used a Curated Content Template. This template assisted me in organizing the curated content, adding my analysis, and ensuring a consistent framework. This is a simplified version of the template.
- Introduction: Briefly describe the issue and explain why it is significant.
- Curated Content: List the curated items, including links, summaries, and comments.
- Conclusion: Summarize the main points and urge readers to contribute their feedback.
Using this template saved me time while ensuring that each curated piece gave maximum value to my audience.
Step #4: Promote your curated content
Once your curated content is complete, advertising is essential. Share it on social media, incorporate it in email newsletters, and connect with communities who might find it useful. LinkedIn and Twitter are particularly effective in reaching a professional audience.
I recall publishing my first curated content post on LinkedIn. I tagged a few influencers whose content I’d featured and asked them to give their comments. The level of engagement was remarkable. It not only increased traffic to my website, but it also sparked meaningful conversations with industry experts.
Step #5: Measure and optimize
After posting, it is critical to assess the performance of your curated content. Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor metrics like page views, time on page, and social shares. This data will help you determine what works and how to improve future curated content.
According to HubSpot, firms who blog regularly receive 55% more website views than those who do not. Curated content can help you keep a steady blogging schedule without the need to create original content every time.
How Lamphills Can Help
Lamphills Media understands the value of curated content and how it can enhance your web strategy. Our skilled staff can assist you in identifying high-quality sources, adding value through unique insights, and effectively promoting your content. Whether you want to boost traffic, improve brand visibility, or establish thought leadership, we can design a strategy to match your needs.
How Much Content Should You Curate?
Now that you understand what curated content is, you should consider how much-curated content you want to incorporate into your content marketing efforts.
You want a fair quantity of curated content in your social media feeds to help build your brand as a thought leader and reap the various benefits of curated content, but you also don’t want to be just a link-sharing machine.
While there is no clear consensus on how much-curated content to post, a decent rule of thumb is to aim for curated content to account for 30%-60% of your overall social media content, with the remainder of your content calendar dedicated to your own original posts.
You can then start repurposing your older content and resharing previously published items to avoid creating fresh content every day.
Another fantastic tip is to focus your content curation on quality rather than quantity of posts.
It is always preferable to publish less frequently on social media than to post lousy content or low-quality links.
Spend a significant amount of time confirming the source of curated content and ensuring that it is only part of your content marketing plan, not the primary focus.
How To Effectively Curate Content
Now that you’ve learned about the benefits of curated content and how much you should post on your social media feeds, let’s look at some of the best practices for curating and sharing content with your audience.
#1. Know Your Audience
Overall, you want to ensure that your content meets both your audience’s expectations and their desires. Ideal content pieces transcend these expectations by adding value and context that your audience may not have been aware of before seeing the material.
It is best to gather content that goes beyond your audience’s obvious demands. For example, if you publish a newsletter for computer experts, readers will expect to receive industry news and updates. You can, however, go deeper by displaying content that demonstrates how technology is transforming many markets and individuals for the better (or worse).
By delving into the “why” of your content themes, you can create a much more interesting and engaging user experience.
While you should have buyer personas for your consumer group, you may want to consider fine-tuning those profiles for social media. Then you can begin asking key questions during your content curation, such as:
- Is this content relevant to my target audience?
- Is this content useful to my readers in any way?
- Will this content align with the brand objective and values we convey to our audience?
- How may this content address a problem for my audience?
#2. Give credit where it is due
Curated content is defined as content created by others. When using their content, you should make sure to properly attribute and tag those sources.
While you don’t want to come across as endorsing another brand over your own, you also don’t want to be accused of copying or theft.
Crediting your sources in tags or with a @ will help you avoid unfavorable charges against your business.
In addition to labeling your sources, it’s important to interact with them. Realistically, you may form a symbiotic connection with your top content producers, especially if your following sends them traffic. For example, you could have first access to new content, or the provider may be ready to share special content with your followers.
The goal should be to build favorable relationships inside your content network. This creates a win-win situation for all parties concerned, including your audience.
#3. Avoid off-topic content
The basic goal of content curation is to provide insight and engagement on a specific topic, which could simply be your brand. So, you want to curate things that are as closely related to the issue as possible.
While you want to share fascinating and entertaining pieces, you also want them to be useful and instructional.
Fortunately, most content curation companies use technology to keep each piece as current and relevant as possible. This way, even if you set your curation to autopilot, you won’t have to worry about unrelated stories appearing in your audience’s feed.
What if you wish to offer a fascinating article that isn’t directly relevant to your main topic? In this case, it is best to provide some context or explanation.
Your audience will understand why you’re sharing it, and you may add some great insight into why the content may be useful to them. Otherwise, inexplicable diversions may be irritating or make your distribution system appear defective.
#4. Add your own captions and thoughts
One of the most important questions to answer when curating content is, “Why should my audience obtain this content from me rather than somewhere else?”In many circumstances, the answer is “convenience,” but this should not be the only option.
You have significant thoughts and experiences relevant to your content, therefore share them as frequently as possible. For example, if you run a newsletter, you can include commentary in the email messages you send to subscribers. These messages can summarize some of the most popular content pieces or express your thoughts on a specific current issue.
Overall, you should make your content curation as unique as possible. In addition to commenting on third-party publications, try to contribute your own content when possible. This will keep your audience engaged and returning for more.
#5. Select Good Sources
Just because there are so many content pieces available online does not imply you should use them in your newsletter or website. Choosing high-quality, credible sources benefits your content curation system in several ways, including:
- Enhances Your Reputation – When you curate content from credible, trustworthy sources, you appear better by association.
- Adds Value To Your Audience – High-quality sources will benefit your audience, causing them to return to you more frequently for comparable content pieces.
- Improves Your Understanding – Even if you have significant insights, you can learn a lot from your content sources. The more you know, the more effective you are at offering value to your followers.
- Improves SEO – Search engines penalize websites and pages that link to questionable sources. You may improve your search rankings by selecting only the best content.
Working with our skilled content strategists and writers ensures that your content references and sources are of high quality. With Linkme, you can connect with over 15,000 skilled freelancers who take content research seriously. Try it for free!
What Tools Can Help With Content Curation?
While content curation is an essential component of your content marketing plan, it may be time-consuming if not done appropriately.
While you can manually search for relevant subjects and postings online, it may be more efficient to employ a digital tool to assist with content curation.
Let’s look at some of the top tools for content curation that will help you and your team.
#1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite helps brands curate content by tracking keywords, subjects, and even specific accounts.
It may also help you plan your social media posts and share curated content directly on your social media platforms, making the content curation process faster and more efficient.
#2. Curated by UpContent.
Curate by UpContent finds high-quality content that you can use on your social media channels by applying customization tools to facilitate content sharing.
This includes modifying URLs and adding custom images to posts to keep things consistent with your organization’s branding.
#3. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is one of the earliest but still most effective tools for tracking new content.
Setting up an alert for specific keywords or phrases allows you to keep track of new content and receive email notifications when it is released. It also allows you to track brand mentions.
#4. TrendSpottr
This tool offers both a free and a premium paid edition of their program, allowing you to choose whether you want additional features such as pre-viral content scanning and multiple language tracking.
TrendSpottr also displays recent postings at the top of your results page, making content selection much quicker.
#5. ContentGems
ContentGems is an excellent easy solution for individuals who do not want many complex capabilities for content curation.
It is free to use and prioritizes content quality above complex filters and search settings.
#6. Pocket
Pocket is a freemium content curation application that lets you create a personal library (or pocket). You can then share this library with your audience via social media. Pocket interacts with over 1,500 apps, making it simple to gather a wealth of content from many sources and distribute it the way you want.
The free plan is adequate as a basic content curation system, but you must upgrade to a subscription version if you want additional tools that help manage your library and make it more accessible to your target audience.
#7. Scoop.it
One of the issues of content curation is the time required to find and compile content from various sources. Scoop.it addresses this issue by learning your search behavior and displaying just the most relevant results. So, after laying a solid foundation, you can “set it and forget it.”
This platform also makes it simple to generate newsletters with useful content from around the web. With a drag-and-drop interface, you don’t need to be a webmaster to create a comprehensive newsletter that will help you grow your list.
The pricing options are also less expensive than those of competitors such as Pocket, making Scoop.it an excellent solution for smaller, newer sites.
#8. Flipboard
RSS feeds and curated content listings are useful, but they typically lack personality. If you want to make your content curation more unique and entertaining, Flipboard might be the ideal option. This platform allows you to construct a prototype digital magazine, making it much easier and more enjoyable for your audience to read each section.
The software automatically updates content from your favorite websites and allows you to easily incorporate your own content. In this manner, you may create a more riveted audience focused on your work while content curation fills in the gaps. Best of all? Flipboard is 100% free to use.
#9. Elink.io
As you curate content, you’ll create a list that may contain hundreds of links. Elink.io makes it simple to curate these connections and include them in a website or newsletter. This platform is undoubtedly one of the simplest to use because it doesn’t take much technical knowledge to produce beautiful and engaging pages.
Elink.io is powerful enough to enable you to develop content lists in minutes, allowing you to grow your audience faster than ever before. While it may not offer as many distinguishing features as other content curation platforms, it is an excellent starting place for many artists.
#10. Curata
Curata is an all-in-one content curation platform that is excellent for individuals or brands looking to grow their reach. This application includes everything you need for curating and distributing content across several channels. Best of all, Curata employs machine learning to automate the curation process, ensuring that everything is new, relevant, and distinctive to your business.
This service is slightly more pricey than others, but it’s ideal for individuals serious about using content curation for marketing purposes.
Conclusion
Curated content can increase your traffic overnight, as it did for me. You can get amazing results by discovering high-quality sources, adding your own unique perspective, employing a curated content template, and promoting effectively. Remember, the key is to deliver value and establish trust with your audience. So, are you ready to test this curated content hack and watch your traffic skyrocket?
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