Content curation for marketers

Content Curation For Marketers – A Complete Guide With Examples

What is content curation and what does content curation for marketers even mean? Let’s find out!

As  marketer’s we all understand the importance of being where our customers are. With over 40% of the world’s population on the internet and over one billion websites, we certainly have our work cut out for us!

There’s an ever-growing number of popular platforms that increase every year. All of us are being forced to stretch our marketing operations to the limits with regards to time and resources as we try to accommodate more and more of these platforms.

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Regardless of the size of marketing departments and budgets, each of us is dealing with the same set of issues. Simply put, the changing dynamics online are making us find clever ways to utilize our limited resources and engage our customers.

According to a study by Linkedin Technology Marketing Community, the two biggest content marketing challenges our community faces are:

  1. Lack of time and bandwith to create enough content.
  2. Producing enough content in variety and volume.

So what’s the solution? Content Curation!

Many content marketers, social media marketers, and digital marketers are turning towards content curation to help them create additional engaging content. In fact, 82% of marketers have added curated content to their marketing strategy.

To help you get started, we’ve put together this content curation guide that will walk you through what content curation is, what benefits you will reap from it and how you can incorporate it into your marketing strategy.

We want to help you and your team achieve your goals and create efficiencies with your marketing efforts. So let’s dive right in!

PART 1: What is Content Curation?

“Curation is more than packaging – it is to help readers (discern) what is important in the world.” 

Maria Papova, Brainpicker

The basic idea of content curation is to handpick the best content pieces from a variety of sources (including yours) around a single topic.

The first step brands and marketers have to take is to choose a topic, that their customers would find interesting.

It can range from industry news, cool gadgets and tools, customer reviews, top 10 lists, interviews, presentations, product recommendations and more. Bottomline, you’re going to want to collect and curate information that is both meaningful and incredibly useful to your customers.

For example, if I were going to target the audience (you) reading this blog post, I could curate content around Top Content Curation Tools for Marketers.  I know that my audience has an interest in content curation and can assume that by the end of this guide they will likely start researching content curation tools.

By providing my top picks (after endless hours of research), I’m helping my audience save time and potentially look at me as a thought-leader. Here’s an example of what that curated content piece would look like:

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PART 2: What Types of Content Can You Curate?

Every marketing team has it’s own set of expertise and areas of strength with the types of engaging content they produce.

One of the main advantages of curating digital content is that you have various mediums of content to choose from: videos, articles, podcasts, webinars, social media posts, infographics, etc.

By tapping into these online channels you can select the very best content and put them together in a smart and engaging way to share with your audience.

By utilizing the best content out there, you will help your customers find answers to their questions, create new thought processes, incorporate efficient tools and much more. Your audience will appreciate your efforts and will reward you with higher engagement levels.

PART 3: Why You Should Add Your Own Voice

“People are more interesting than algorithms.”

Noah Brier, Percolate

As you curate content, it’s important that you add your own voice. Tell your customers why they should pay attention and care about the curated content you are sharing. It will help your audience get the most out of your curated content and look at you as a thought-leader.

Related Article: Top Content Curation Tools

One way to think about this is to imagine being a professor. Your lectures consist of curating and deliver information on a specific topic from a variety of sources. You aren’t going to just read books out loud, you will be inspiring your students through your delivery, opinions and thoughts.

Make sure you focus on the way you deliver your curated content to your customers.PART 4: Why You NEED to Start Curating Content Today

There are three main reasons why marketers are adding content curation to their marketing strategies:

Benefits of Content Curation for Marketers

1) Saves Time

It takes a considerable amount of time to produce quality videos, whitepapers, infographics, long form articles, etc.  Countless hours are spent researching, writing, creating visuals and editing to make fresh content engaging.

In fact for every hour invested in content curation (versus content creation), small to medium-sized businesses see 3.7x more volume and 1.6x more traffic. By supplementing your engaging in-house content with content curation pieces, you can not only increase the amount of content you share, but also end up with higher engagement levels!

2) Become a Thought-Leader

Your audience may be interested in topics that either you don’t have the expertise in or the resources to cover. Curation is a great way to pull quality in-depth content from experts and organizations that have covered topics you are simply unable to.

By bundling the best resources intelligently, you will be able to provide your customers with valuable information that would have otherwise taken them hours to research! It’s a great way to keep them coming back to you for more information and sharing your curated content with others.

3) Grow your network:

Curation is a fantastic way to expand your reach by including content from other companies, experts, and influencers. You’ll want to make sure you properly give credit and notify your sources of their inclusion in your content.

It is a wonderful catalyst to create new partnerships, have your content shared with a larger audience and lastly, it’s an excellent way to build up your professional network.

How To Curate Content?

There are three main ways you can curate content through your marketing channels. Some of the most popular ways marketers do this is through curated newsletters, blog posts and through social media.

Different Types of Content Curation

1. Curate Email Newsletters:

One of the most popular ways to curate information is through newsletters. You can collect and share the most relevant industry news, weekly roundups, case studies, listicles (top 10, best of, etc.) and more. By choosing from a range of topics and sources, you have the ability to create engaging emails consistently. You are also able to test a wider variety of topics within your industry to entice your customers.

Read more: 12 Facts About Content Curation You Might Not Know!

2. Curate Web Content & Blog Posts:

You can increase the frequency of the content your post on your website through curation. Figure out what topics will resonate with your audience and create content around key resources, informative videos, webinars, reading lists, etc.

If your marketing goals are to drive traffic to your site, you should find ways to curate your brand’s own content. You can either curate solely your brand’s content or you can include your brand’s content intertwined with other sources.

Some ideas include curating content around your most popular posts of the month, the best posts about a particular topic, collection of product offerings, interesting articles about your company, and more.

3. Curate Social Media Posts:

An excellent way to engage your audience on social media is to share different kinds of content. By adding curated posts to your social media calendar, you’ll be able to tag brands, experts, and influencers.

It will open up the potential to get in front of the audiences of some powerful social voices, as well as drive conversations around your curated content.Conclusion By now you should have a good understanding of what content curation is, reasons why you should employ a curating content strategy and how you can curate content.

We are also including a recommended content curation toolkit that will help you collect and publish content in the quickest way ever.

elink, an all-in-one content curation tool that allows you to curate content and publish it as a newsletter, web page or embed it in your blog. It’s a content marketer’s dream tool.

Learn how to create fast newsletter for any email proivder

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