Content Marketing Hacks: How to Become the Ultimate Social Curator!

The term “social curation” has been a revolution for digital marketers around the globe. It refers to a collaborative sharing of web content organized around one or more particular themes or topics. People or services responsible for the implementation of this process are known as curators. Services or people who implement social curation are called social curators. A majority of the companies today, prefer social curation over content creation as a way of discovering new content.

As per a recent report 80% of marketers today, share curated content. They do this in order to position themselves as an authority in their industry. This further results in the users perceiving them as a reliable source of information and also strengthens their relationships with their customers.

Before you know how to curate the content required for effective marketing, let us see why content curation is so important.
  • It helps you get the best out of the available content which allows you to build trust among your target audience.
  • It helps you to maintain the quality of the material that you publish.
  • It extends your reach by attracting those who follow the content from the original sources.
  • It helps you to incorporate other people's content within your published material.
  • It builds brand value by creating a better impression on your audience.
Now that you know how important social content curation is, it becomes all the more necessary that you know how to do it correctly and bring out the most of your efforts.

Social curation can work wonders for businesses and individuals around the globe. However, being a social curator takes a lot more than just discovering the latest trends and sharing related posts. One can make the most out of social curation if he/she is aware of the most fruitful strategies. Wish to be a great social curator? Here’s a list of the most useful social curation tips:

Define your niche:

That’s the very first step towards being a successful social curator. Start by defining your niche and specifying your keywords. This will help you shape your social curation strategy in such a way that it makes all the required content available on your social media pages. This would further help your audience simply follow you and find everything they wanted without wasting any time.

Identify credible resources:

As a social curator, you need to have an exhaustive list of resources to curate content that appeals to your target audience. This list should probably include the best content creators in the industry. Your source of reference can vary from individual industry experts to news and content agencies. However, you need to make sure that the sources you are referring to, are credible. That’s important for assuring the accuracy and quality of the curated content.

Nonetheless, the better the quality of the content you curate, the more reliable you become. Credible resources help build stronger relationships with your audience. As a matter of fact, your audience tends to trust you when you share quality content on a regular basis. So, when you share your own material, they’re more likely to engage, hence resulting in a fruitful social curation.

how to curate quality content that makes your brand look great on social media

Leverage Newsjacking:

Newsjacking refers to the usage of the latest industry related news to attract attention to your business. As a social curator, you can do this by attaching your opinions to all the latest news and then sharing it to attract attention to your business. One of the best tools to make the most out of newsjacking is DrumUp. All you have to do is, identify the original resources that share the most useful news in your niche and set up the RSS feeds for these resources on DrumUp.

Wondering how newsjacking can help you as a social curator? Well, you must have seen the marketplace reporters going crazy over a piece of viral news and desperately trying to get expert comments for the same. So, when you provide what’s so much in demand, it gets you media attention and ultimately makes social curation a fruitful affair.

Monitor social metrics:

It’s a well known fact that social media is ever-evolving. In order to keep up with this pace, your social curation strategy also needs to evolve. For this, you need to be an eagle-eyed social curator. Study the trends and try to identify the content that is grabbing the maximum number of eyeballs. both on your platform and those of others in your field. Once that’s done, you can then use this content to your benefit and let it influence your curation strategy.

Be consistent:

You cannot expect a social curation strategy to be successful overnight. It demands patience and consistency. You can’t just curate and share the most impressive content once or twice and expect it to reap the required results. You need to curate and share quality content on a regular basis. If you keep your audience waiting, they are most likely to lose interest in you and everything that you share.
Related: 14 must-know visual content marketing statistics for 2019 (infographic)
Inconsistency may cause you to lose your hard-earned audience. When you do not post quality and engaging content on a regular basis, your audience may simply start looking out for other options. So, in order to be a great social curator, you need to make sure that you do not let that spirit die and maintain your quality standards and consistency throughout.

Trigger conversation with content:

As an impeccable social curator, you need to know the best strategies that can help get your audience to engage with you. One of the most successful one is, sharing a piece content (probably some news article or a piece of discussion) that you don’t agree with. You can entice your audience to start a conversation by letting them know why you think differently.

Once you put forward your views, your audience may or may not agree with what you think and that would help spark a discussion. In both cases, curated content serves as a great conversation starter. All you have to make sure to keep the conversation going is to reply to all comments on your posts.

Focus your efforts on the most beneficial platform:

There’s no use of curating content and sharing it on every social platform where your brand has an account. Instead, try to identify where your targeted audience usually hangs out on social media. Once you’ve figured it out, make sure that you focus your sharing efforts on this channel. This will help you reap the best results!

7 Tips to Become the Best Content Curator

Share what matters

Make sure that the content you share is relevant and useful. It should be engaging and fun, so that the readers do not leave in between. At the same time, it should be informative as well to serves the purpose of the user. Another important thing that you must remember is that the content should not be outdated and should be timed properly. You cannot share a blog with trends for 2017, because in 2025 those blogs will be as good as useless.

Decide How Much You Want to Curate

It is important to strike the right ratio of original and curated content. You cannot share curated content every time, as that might raise a question on the authenticity of your brand. A percentage of your content should be original. Moreover, you must figure out the ratio in which you need to focus on each network. For instance, Twitter might prove to have more quality content for your brand as compared to Instagram. Go for an ideal 65:35 ratio between originally created content and curated content.
Also Read: How to Make Your Business Go Viral On Social Media Through Content Marketing (infographic)

Make it personal

You must share content that can strike a chord with the readers and can help them resonate with the material on a personal level. Your readers must identify with the shared content and should be able to associate with the brand. Having said that, be consistent because that is the only way you can stay in your user’s memory. Schedule your posts throughout the week instead of sharing all the posts at one go, so that you appear on your user’s account at least once a day.

Promote yourself

Although creating fresh content is the best and most organic way to promote a brand, sharing curated content can also help you to gain added traction. When you share relevant posts of other brands, you can gain more trust with your users and will give a feeling of healthy competition. Moreover, sharing others’ content more than your created content will make it look less promotional. Your viewers will be able to see how you use the internet to your advantage.

Mix it up

It is true that you must stick to the industry your brand belongs to. However, too much of anything can get really monotonous. So, instead of sharing too much of the same thing, blend it with other topics as well. Sharing interesting content on generic topics that will benefit your users irrespective of the industry can help you up your game. Share blogs on productivity and self-help issues. Provide tips and hacks to help them become more organized, efficient, informed and excited.

Analyze what you share

It is not necessary that people will engage with the curated content that you have shared when they see it. Measuring the content marketing metrics using social media analytics will give you an insight into what is working and what is not. Accordingly, you could adjust your strategy to share the kind of content that your users engage with the most.

Listen, socially

It is essential that you learn what works and what does not for your business. You need to remember that your audience is dynamic and their tastes and preferences change all the time. To keep pace with their changing demands, you need to engage in social listening.

Make the Most of These Content Curation Tools

If you want to reap the benefits of creating contents that bring in organic traffic your way, you should make the most of these 5+ tools listed below:

Buzzsumo

The best source to curate content is the archives of the top influencers belonging to your industry, and that is precisely what Buzzsumo does. The tool can help you find the most shared topics and the prevailing trends of content marketing on the web that have been searched for in the last few hours or months. The tool starts with a subscription as low as $79 and goes up to a hefty $559 per month. It will be cheaper for you if you invest in a yearly subscription.

Twitter Lists

If you have been on the lookout for a tool that can assist you in curating social content from Twitter, this tool is perfect for you. Twitter Lists can help you stay more organised on the platform and respond to all your followers. You can categorise your followers and engage with them in segments. This way, you will be able to make sure that you engage with each of your users.

Instapaper or EverNote

If you are done with the misery of losing a post before you could share it, then Instapaper or EverNote is the right choice for you. Just sign up for a free account and create a folder to save all the posts that you would want to share later. You can do the same for blog sites too where you can scan and pick posts from each website and save them in a “bookmarklet”.

Hootsuite or Buffer

If you are finding it a tedious job to manage all your social media channels, then third-party tools e.g. Hootsuite and Buffer is what you want. You can stay logged in to each app or move them around just on your screen. You can share, analyze, schedule content, and reply from each and every tab while operating through a unified system.

Scoop.it

If you like the way Pinterest works, then Scoop.it is the one for you. You can use the tool to organise topics in one page and then publish the content in all your social media platforms.

Other tools that you can use for finding great quality content includes Reddit, Twitter Trends and Google News.

Conclusion:
Content curation helps you pick the most relevant trends in your industry and distribute them appropriately. With the above guidelines laid out for you, you will be able to curate content quickly to turn a brand into a success story.

So, that’s all you need to be an unmatched social curator and fuel all your marketing strategies. Which of the above strategies do you plan to work on first?
Author Bio: Shirley Brown is a content strategist and a Ghost writer. She extends Assignment help to students pursuing digital marketing studies. She is a bibliophile and likes to travel. Follow at Twitter.
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