
A Beginner’s Guide to Content Curation
Content curation is the practice of finding, choosing, organizing, and sharing digital content about a specific topic.
It’s different from content creation because it doesn’t require publishing new material. It only involves sharing existing content with your audience.
Benefits of Sharing Curated Content
Sharing curated content is cost and time effective. It gives you a break from writing your own articles or paying someone to write them for you. That lets you publish more often with less investment. While it takes time to find, arrange, and share other peoples’ work, curating content is rarely as time-consuming as creating it.
Content curation allows you to build relationships with other internet marketers. Sending emails to the content owners when you share their articles will help build rapport, and they may return the favor by sharing some of your content.
Don’t underestimate how much you’ll learn from curation. You’ll discover new blogs, websites, and social media personalities while learning more about your niche. Your curation efforts will inspire original content creation and design ideas, and you may even make some new friends.
There are several platforms on where you can use the curated content. Among them are:
–Social media — Social media is a natural place to share curated content. In fact, much of what you see on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is curated material. The sharing of fresh, engaging content is vital to staying relevant on social media and keeping your followers engaged. Don’t think twice about doing it; social media users expect it.
Blog posts — Curation is a blogger’s best friend. It saves time and provides value. A social media marketing firm could curate and share relevant social media news. An affiliate marketer could share his colleagues’ case studies. A craft blogger could share others’ unique craft ideas. It doesn’t matter how big or small your site is. Content curation works almost anywhere on the web.
Email marketing newsletters — Email is an accessible and useful marketing tool, and it gives curators an excellent chance to share their latest finds. Share links to related content in your newsletters in addition to promoting your articles.
Content Curators
Good curators know their audience. They know what their readers are interested in, and they search for it on the web. They choose the best content they can find, arrange it in an appealing way that’s easy to skim and click on, and share it with their audience.
If curators add value to their readers’ lives, they’ll turn them into long-term, loyal followers.
Ethics
Content curation showcases someone else’s content. It’s a legal and ethical way to build online relationships. As long as you follow a few simple rules, people will be flattered when you share their work. It gets more people reading their content, and by sharing, you’re saying that you admire their work so much that you want others to read it too.
To ethically share others’ content, always link to the source and only post links to the content; never post the actual article or blog post. It’s fine to share a short excerpt but never more than a sentence or two, and make sure it’s obvious you’re quoting from the article.
Takeaway
Content curation doesn’t replace content creation; it complements it. If you take the time to find and share fresh, engaging content that provides value to your readers, you’ll turn them into followers in no time.