Ahh content curation, a backbone of content marketing, the process of sourcing out the best, most relevant and valuable information and sharing the same with your audience.  But sourcing this material can take hours upon hours of time…time that could be spent crafting your own amazing content. But no worries, we got you covered, here’s how you can get the process automated.
1. Structure Your Content Pillars
Detailed extensively in our piece on content marketing (a must read…. right after this), these are the key themes of your brand so to speak, essentially everything you’ll be talking about on your page. Ideally, they need to be ones of interest to your audience and at the same time relevant to your field whether fitness, DIY, fashion, etc.
So while you might be tempted to talk about the recent election or the Kardashians, unless it ties back to your brand ethos, you best stay away from it.
2. Scheduling
Here’s where putting together a publishing routine i.e. editorial and posting calendars comes in handy. How? They allow you to plan and manage what your page looks like, prior to the fact. Consistency remember! And in this case, they help you pepper them in over time, without overwhelming your page. Curated content should only be seen as supplementary, not taking up more than 25-30% of the content on your page.
3. Tools Of The Trade
And now, on to the good part…here’s a list of tools and sources that should help you find and share what you’re looking for.
- BuzzSumo: In case you didn’t realize from the gazillion times we’ve referenced this tool, it’s one of our favs. It allows you to see trending content by region and topic as well as set email alerts and notifications for when new pieces come up. But that’s not all, this gem also allows you to identify your top competitors. If not used for curation, it’s great for seeing oncoming trends you can capitalize on.
- Feedly: Kind off like the Google Alert (still one of the best out there), but much easier to use. The content aggregator allows you to assign RSS fields by topics, region, and get this…even specific publications.
- Storify: Feedly but with more comprehensive publishing features.
- Pinterest:Â if not already signed up to reap the brand marketing benefits (check out our article on the same), this widely used source of inspiration, is great for searching, sorting and visually storing content for future use. The search function is quite extensive as well.
- Sprout Social/HootSuite: Thought we’d thrown in a couple management and post scheduling platforms in there for good measure.
The best part, all the tools above are free…with some pay to access features of course. So take them for a spin, get comfortable and if required, spring for the upgrade.
4. Monitor & Optimise
And at last, use engagement metrics to identify your best (and worst) performing content on your page(s). Not so familiar with this side of analysis, be sure to check out our guide on the same.
Now don’t get ahead of yourself, as mentioned, you want to make sure about 75% (or even more!) or your content is created. As much as your audience will appreciate you keeping them informed, curating content especially when starting out, is not going to do much for your own image. Used in moderation, however, curated content can be a blessing.