Content curation is an essential part of an effective content marketing strategy. The key to a successful content curation strategy is finding and sharing the content that will connect with your target audience. Like most things, this is easier said than done.
At The Squad, we have developed a five-step process that we use to curate content for our partner clients.
Know your target audience
This first step is Marketing 101 - you have to intimately know who your target audience is. Savvy marketers take it a step further and develop detailed buyer personas for key decision makers within a target audience. This extra step gives you the capability of providing relevant content with pinpoint accuracy.
What are you trying to accomplish with curated content?
There are four distinct benefits of curating content:
Thought leadership - showcase the depth and breadth of understanding of your industry, client needs, and community
Lead nurturing - provide relevant content to leads and prospects at specified times during a lead nurturing campaign or send directly to a prospect when you read an article that would benefit them
Original content ideas - consistently reviewing content being produced by others in your industry may provide you with ideas about content that can be created by your team
Potential SEO benefit - sharing curated content on your social media and as summary articles or intra-page links may benefit your score in major search engine ranking algorithms
Finding content
There is no shortage of content! The challenge is finding relevant content that is high quality. It is important to remember that when sharing content with your tribe, you are by default giving it your stamp of approval!
You have to read every article before you share it! Evaluate the content for the following criteria:
- Relevancy
- Credibility
- Value
- Validation
In our experience, the best sources of content are industry publications, key influencers, and social media.
We recommend the following tools to help you find content to share:
Where to share your curated content
There are many avenues in which you can share your curated content including:
- Blog
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Lead nurturing workflows
- Business development activities
Measuring success
It is always important to measure the success of any marketing tactic. Some tactics are easier to measure than others. The impact of curated content is one of those that can be difficult to directly measure.
Our team typically uses engagement factors (likes, comments, shares, etc.) to gauge the impact of curated content.
Social media followers or website visits in most cases are not good data points. Curated content may or may not impact follower growth on social media and will have minimal impact on traffic to your website because you are sharing content from other sources.
Next steps
Before sharing curated content, make sure you have a plan. Develop an overall strategy and tactical implementations that will benefit your content marketing strategy.
I personally enjoying finding and sharing curated content. It helps me stay up to date on the ever-changing marketing industry and provides me with lots of great information to share with my tribe.
Let me know if you have any questions about curating content or would like to learn more about our content curation services at The Squad.
