What is curated content?
Curated content is content that originates from outside your business. It could be social media posts, videos, blog articles, thought pieces, infographics and more. It’s content that you think will be valuable to your audience and which might help them to see you as a trusted content provider, encouraging them to investigate your brand further. If you are a content marketing manager or you manage social media services, it’s worth putting together a strategy for managing this type of content.
Here are our top tips, distilled from years of experience in social media marketing outsourcing:
Know your audience – before you start thinking about sharing content, make sure you know what your audience wants to see. There’s no point sharing anything and everything – you will turn people off, and they will stop looking at your content. The better you know your audience, the more targeted your content should be.
Say why you’re sharing – this is important because lots of businesses just share content with no comment or context. Taking the time to say why you think the content is important, or useful or thought-provoking will help you to maintain a conversation with your readers and demonstrate that you’re putting thought into what you’re sharing.
Always credit – the content you’re sharing has been created by someone else. Even though it may have been created to share, you should always credit the original source. This shows your audience that you value other people’s work, and it can also help you build good links with other businesses.
Cultivate relationships – people like to see that you have shared their content, and they’ll be interested in you in return. Good relationships take time to build, so let people know what you loved about their content and why you think it will be useful to your audience. Keep in touch, and build a network and you could find that they will also share your content, or even be able to collaborate with you in some way.
Don’t forget your own content – curated content saves you time and hassle. Whether you manage content in-house or you have outsourced marketing assistance, your content calendar should include a good blend of your own original content and carefully curated content from others.
Questions to ask yourself
We’d always recommend a content plan, so that you can make sure you’re saying the right things to your audience at the right time. It also helps you to make sure your content is always relevant, and it allows you to work ahead, scheduling content and posts ahead of time to make sure you are working efficiently. When it comes to curated content, ask yourself these questions:
- Is this content relevant to my target audience?
- Is it shareable?
- Can I put it in a context that helps my readers?
- Have I got a relationship with the original source? If not, can I start to build one?
- Does this content spark any ideas for original content from my business?
Curated content can be a useful, time-saving and important part of your marketing for social media. If you develop a strategy and have the right resources to help you manage your content, you can use it to help boost your credibility and drive new interest in your business.
Want to know more? Why not call us on 0800 994 9016 or use our contact form in the menu above to find out how we can help?