What is content curation?
Content curation is finding great content, related to your interest or topic area, from around the web, and then using it (with attribution) to continue the conversation across your social media networks.
Content curation is a good strategy because it helps you to do a few things that are necessary for generating online engagement:
- It helps you to post regularly and often, without always having to create brand new content yourself
- If helps you to provide value to your followers by providing a filtering function – establishing yourself as an expert in the process
- It helps you carry on a conversation with the people whose content you are cross-posting, building connection and goodwill
Neil Patel is a well know online marketing expert. In this video he discusses the basics of content curation on Twitter and also covers how you can automate the process, to make it easier to keep posting day after day. Access the embedded video, or use this link to view the video on Neil Patel’s YouTube channel.
Content curation is not only useful for Twitter, it can also be used across different social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and even Instagram. Content curation simply means finding content you like from other sources that is aligned with the topic you regularly talk about. Finding ways to store that content for later use, and then posting it later, with your own commentary, and the correct attribution, in order to keep the conversation going.
When you have decided to curate content from other sources to your social network channels you want to do a few things:
- Always give attribution to the originator of the content – it’s like citing your sources in an academic paper, and also helps to build goodwill
- Always use the tagging feature of the social media platform you are using to connect back with the person who originally posted the content as well as people who might be particularly interested in it
- Always add your two cents – why do you think this content is worth sharing?
- Always keep track of what you have shared, so you don’t inadvertently post the same thing too many times, annoying your followers
Want to know more? Check out these articles:
- The Beginners Guide to Content Curation (link) – from the Hootsuite Blog
- Content Curation 101 (link) – from BethKanter.org
- Academic Research Curation (link) – from Community Research Connections
- Content Curation Tools (link) – from Hubspot
Next, I’ll cover some trends in social media, and how you can stay on top of them when choosing which platform to use. That way, you can make sure you’re getting the most out of your content creation and curation efforts.