75% of marketers don’t have the time to create custom content. According to the experts at Curata, time and resource constraints are a major barrier for many companies who want to build a content empire, but lack the time. Content curation isn’t a quick fix for your staffing woes, or a way to escape your company’s need to think in campaigns.
Marketing Profs’ Ann Handley shared at the recent Inbound13 marketing conference that she believes effective content curation is a way to enhance a company’s existing strategy. According to Handley, “creating the kind of content that’s going to engage your customers, that’s going to delight them” is an ongoing effort. You should approach content curation with a goal of enhancing and adding value to your existing content resources, in order to best tell your brand’s story. Whether your company’s narrative is about effective customer service or quality, search for resources that can add to your messaging. To inspire you to approach content in a campaign mindset, we’ve curated some brilliant ideas on how you can find the best resources on social media networks and other web hubs:
There are over 500 million Tweets published per day. That’s enough content to fill a 25-million page book! The challenge with content curation on Twitter isn’t a lack of resources, it’s setting up effective filters for finding the right articles. If your company isn’t already using TweetDeck for social media management, it’s likely time to invest in the tool. The platform is among the best for filtering! The following steps can help you sort through the noise:
1. Create a Twitter List
Setting up a list of influencers who consistently share the right content quickly is time-consuming and tedious, but it’s critical for any content promotion specialist. Monitor your feed for content curation resources in TweetDeck or an equivelant tool, and be quick to republish any resources that fit your brand’s content strategy.
2. Perform Keyword Searches
TweetDeck users are able to perform automated searches for keywords and hashtags. Results automatically populate in your dashboard, allowing you to gain immediate access to the articles which are just beginning to trend around your target keywords! Don’t be afraid to continually adjust your keyword searches to draw more targeted results.
3. Set Up a Paper.Li
While the results of automated content curation can be mixed, one of the best-known tools for Twitter is Paper.li. The app pulls results from your feed, allowing you to automatically spotlight the social media users who contributed to conversations in your industry.
With over 1 billion active members, you’d think it would be relatively easy to engage in content curation on Facebook, right? Unfortunately, the world’s biggest social media network is also one of the most challenging for finding the right resources. The following steps can allow you to filter through your friend’s personal content to convert your Facebook feed into a steady stream of resources.
A little-known but powerful Facebook feature is the ability to create lists of friends and company pages you follow. Follow the feeds of influencers and other bloggers in your industry, and create a dedicated list so you can switch your feed when you’re in full-on content curation mode!
It’s hard to beat Facebook’s own tutorial for setting up friends lists, so we recommend checking out their advice here if you’re interested.
AllTop
It’s tough to define what AllTop is exactly. It’s a bit like the world’s biggest RSS feed, where thousands of websites are syndicated on a daily basis in incredibly narrow categories. While the website is popular, it’s not the best-known tool for content curation strategy, allowing you to potentially gain an edge on other marketers in your niche by gaining access to lesser-known, quality content resources. Using AllTop effectively could incorporate the following steps:
1. Select a Broad Topic
The homepage of AllTop is dedicated to trending stories, but if you’re looking for specific content curation resources, it’s best to immediately start filtering your results by category. Pick one of the options listed at the topic, which range from “health” to “work.”
2. Select a Sub-Category
Each of the maior topics on AllTop has hundreds of sub-categories attached, which can contain between dozens to thousands of participating blogs, who have each agreed to be syndicated to the AllTop community. Select the sub-category which best fits your company’s focus.
3. Check Out Their Recent Resources
Subcategories lead you directly to a dedicated page, where AllTop blogs are listed in order of popularity and authority. Under each blog title is a link to the website’s five most recent articles, which can allow you to identify outstanding resources for content curation. If you like what you see on a given website, opt to subscribe for automatic access to their marketing.
Google+
Who knew that Google+ was a dream come true for content curation specialists? The up-and-coming social network combines many of Google’s rich keyword search capabilities, allowing you to super-easily connect with images, videos, infographics, and links that fit the bill for your social media strategy.
To get started sifting through Google+, simply type a query into the search bar at the top of your screen. Results are automatically filtered by “best” posts in the last several hours, which is likely attributed to the poster’s utilization of Google”, website authority, and post engagement. However, you can switch your results to “most recent,” allowing you to capture a comprehensive stream of posts which match your keyword criteria.
Pinterest isn’t just for visually-stimulating images of expensive home decor or clothing. There’s a number of content marketers using the platform to it’s fullest extent, to serve as a repository for sorting, managing, and maintaining content curation resources. One of the platform’s biggest promoters is social media expert Jeff Bullas, who had nearly 1,200 pins at the time of writing.
Searches on Pinterest operate in much the same way as Google+ or Twitter. Simply type your target keyword into the search bar at the top, and filter through results from across the massive social media network. To expand your brand’s own content’s chances of getting noticed by other content curation specialists, add hashtags to your description, which can significantly increase your post’s chances of getting found.
YouTube
Any list of content curation resources should mention YouTube, which is currently ranked as the world’s second-largest search engine – ahead of Bing and Yahoo, but behind Google. With over 100 hours of video uploaded each minute, you could find that there’s an abundance of video resources primed to share on your Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts.
Fortunately, YouTube’s search functionality is well-equipped to handle complex queries. If your request for “content marketing” isn’t bringing up the right results, try narrowing your request by asking for “content marketing blog tips” or adding additional keywords. YouTube’s search algorithm is a complex measure of “relevance,” which places a heavy weight on how long the average video viewer spends watching a given piece of content in order to determine quality. If you’re seeking content curation resources on a brand-new or trending topic, you can filter search results by upload date to find the freshest results.
The world’s largest professional networking website recently introduced a “Channels” category which is primed to be a goldmine for content curation specialists. The website works to deposit relevant content resources directly into your LinkedIn feed in real-time, allowing you to gain access to breaking news that fits well with your content marketing strategy. Channels options are limited, but likely to become more abundant as the feature is adopted by LinkedIn users. To set up your subscription to categories, select “Interests,” and filter by “Influencers.”
LinkedIn’s relatively recent foray into custom content marketing also holds the potential for finding unique resources to share across your company’s social media profiles. Increasingly, the world’s best thought leaders like Rand Fishkin of Moz and Ryan Holmes (CEO of HootSuite) are adopting LinkedIn’s influencer capacities to publish articles which aren’t typically syndicated off the platform. Seek out names from your Twitter list to follow, so you’ll be among the first to see their articles pop up in your LinkedIn feed.
Drawing from a broad mix of social media networks for content curation can add richness and depth to your content marketing strategy, and enhance your company’s ability to create campaigns around important concepts. VerticalMeasures President Arnie Kuen recommends what he calls the rule of thirds for integrating content curation in your own social media posts:
- ⅓ of Your Time is Promoting Original Content
- ⅓ of Your Time is Sharing Content Curation
- ⅓ of Your Time is Engagement and Dialogue
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