What is Curated Content and the Best Practices to Follow?

Content curation can be a successful strategy for your brand’s content marketing planning, provided that you understand what is curated content and the best practices and tools to make it happen.

What is Curated Content and the Best Practices to Follow?

A strong content marketing strategy requires you to post content frequently on all of your platforms and social media channels. 

However, you might find yourself struggling to come up with original content to post without running out of material. 

Thankfully, there is an easier way to fill your Facebook and LinkedIn feeds that doesn’t require you to write new content every day. 

Rather than creating an original piece of content yourself for every social media post, many marketers use content curation to help find entertaining, educational, and inspiring content for their social channels. 

But what is curated content? And how can it benefit your business? 

In this article, we’ll answer those questions and also look at some of the best practices for your content curation strategies.

    What is Curated Content?

    The simple definition of what is curated content is that it is the process of selecting content from other sources to share on your channels. 

    That includes the process of searching, discovering, gathering, organizing, and presenting that content to your audiences. 

    Rather than creating your own original content for every social media post, you can gather other content like blogs, infographics, and news articles to share on your social media channels

    By amassing content from a variety of other sources, you can save a lot of time and avoid overworking yourself or your team to create new, original content every day. 

    When you curate content, you find other reliable sources that post about the topics and interests that your viewership has and share posts. 

    Just like a museum curator, it is your job as a marketer to find the best content that is out there to share with your audience.

    After all, you don’t want to share posts from unreliable sources or content that doesn’t match the interests of your audience.

    What are the Benefits of Curated Content?

    Curated content has many different benefits for your brand. 

    As mentioned above, it’s a stress reducer for you and your team. But there are also some benefits of curating content that you might not have thought about. 

    Here are some of the biggest benefits of curated content.

    Saves Time

    While it still takes time to properly discover, approve, and post curated content, it will save you the time it usually takes to create an original post for your social media channels. 

    Typical content creation requires writers or designers to spend time putting together original content, while content curation can be done with just a few clicks. 

    Even if you add your own comments, change the image, or adjust the formatting of curated posts, it still takes less time than doing the same to an original post from your brand.

    Positions Your Brand as an Expert

    As a digital marketer, you want your brand’s reputation and reach to grow through social media. 

    You want your profiles to be so well-respected that people come to you for their information rather than other sources. 

    Content curation helps make that possible. 

    When you share relevant, helpful, and educational content from other sources, your audience knows that you can help them find the content that matches your interests, regardless of whether you created it or not.

    Promotes Links

    Curated content also helps your organization create a better linking structure in your posts. 

    When audiences are used to seeing and clicking on links in your posts, it encourages them to do the same for your original content as well as curated content. 

    You can also set an example for other brands to share your content on their pages when they see that linking is becoming more common in your industry.

    Starts Conversations and Engagement with Other Brands

    Speaking of other brands, content curation is a great way to start conversations and engagement with others in your industry, not just your audiences. 

    That can help you expand your own followers and create important relationships with other brands that can help you in the future. 

    It’s always a good idea to be open and willing to engage with other brands, as that helps improve and promote your own brand’s reputation online.

    Delivers a Better Experience to Customers

    Social media is all about appealing to your audiences and helping turn followers into loyal customers. 

    When you can deliver a great experience to them on social media, it helps to endear your brand in their eyes. 

    Content curation helps save your customers time by providing great content from a single source. 

    Rather than searching the internet or trying to find helpful answers on their own, you can provide that content directly to your viewers. 

    That also helps your brand as more customers will start to rely on you as their main source of information for topics in your industry.

    Avoids Too Much Self-Promotion

    Have you ever walked into a business and been jumped on by salespeople before you even get a chance to get your bearings? 

    Social media can often have a similar feel for customers. 

    If all the content you post on your social media channels is original content from your brand with CTAs to “buy now” or “learn more”, it can feel overly self-promotional. 

    While you want to promote your brand, you want to do so subtly while providing value in the form of curated posts to your followers.

    How Much Content Should You Curate?

    Now that you understand what is curated content, you need to start thinking about how much curated content you want to use in your content marketing strategies. 

    You want to have a healthy amount of curated content in your social media feeds to help establish your brand as a thought leader and get the other benefits of curated content, but you also don’t want to be nothing more than a link-sharing machine. 

    While there is no clear consensus on how much curated content to post, a good rule of thumb is to try and have curated content make up about 30%-60% of your total content on social media, leaving the rest of your content calendar to your own original posts. 

    You can then start repurposing your older content and resharing previously published posts to help you avoid making brand new content each day. 

    Another good idea is to keep the focus of your content curation on the quality rather than the quantity of posts.

    It’s always better to post less frequently on social media than to post bad content or poor-quality links. 

    Spend a good amount of time verifying the source of curated content and make sure it is only a part of your content marketing strategy, not the entire focus.

    How to Effectively Curate Content

    Now that you understand the benefits of curated content and how much of it you should post on your social media feeds, let’s look at some of the best practices you need to effectively curate content and share it with your audiences.

    1. Know Your Audience

    Before you can even begin to think about curating content, you need to understand exactly who your audience is. 

    While you should have buyer personas for your customer base, you might want to consider refining those profiles for social media. 

    Then you can start to ask important questions during your content curation, such as: 

    • Is this content relevant to my audience?
    • Does this content help my audience in any way?
    • Will this content support the brand mission and values we give to our audience?
    • How can this content answer a problem of my audience?

    2. Give Credit Where Credit is Due

    Curated content is by definition content created by other people. 

    You’ll want to make sure that those sources are properly credited and tagged when you use their content. 

    While you don’t want to come across as promoting another brand over your own, you also want to avoid any accusations of theft or plagiarism. 

    By crediting your sources in tags or with an @, you can avoid any negative accusations against your brand.

    3. Avoid Off-Topic Content

    During content curation, especially as you begin your curation process, you’ll come across many posts that are interesting but might be off-topic to what your goals are. 

    While you do want to share posts that are interesting and engaging, you also want to be helpful and educational

    If a post is only slightly related to your brand’s products, services, or industry, it might not be the right content to share.

    4. Add Your Own Captions and Thoughts

    While you don’t need to add your own captions or copy to every curated post you share, it is a good idea to occasionally add in original content to the post. 

    Something just as simple as a sentence or two of your own thoughts or calling out a quote can help you relate the post back to your brand and keep it in the forefront of the audience’s minds. 

    It also can make the post stand out in the social media feed.

    5. Select Good Sources

    When you curate content, you want to ensure that the sources you use are reliable and trustworthy. 

    After all, you don’t want your audience to click on a link that takes them to a less than reputable site. 

    It can also damage your own brand’s reputation if you use sources that share incorrect information or have negative associations. 

    Always verify the sources you use and spend a few minutes exploring other sites if the source isn’t one you were previously aware of.

    Which Tools Can Help with Content Curation?

    While content curation is an important part of your content marketing strategy, it can still be time-consuming if not done correctly. 

    While you can manually search for relevant topics and posts online, it can be more effective to use a digital tool to help with your content curation. 

    Let’s take a look at some of the best tools to make curating content easier for you and your team.

    #1. Hootsuite

    Hootsuite helps brands curate content by tracking keywords, topics, or even specific accounts. 

    It can also help you with planning your social media posts and sharing content that you’ve curated directly to your social media platforms, which makes the content curation process faster and even more efficient.

    #2. Curate by UpContent

    Curate by UpContent finds high-quality content that you can use for your social media channels by utilizing customization tools to help make content sharing easier. 

    That includes changing URLs and adding your own custom images to posts to keep things on-brand for your organization.

    #3. Google Alerts

    Google Alerts is one of the oldest but still best systems for tracking new content. 

    By setting up an alert for specific keywords or phrases, you can track new content and get email notifications for when content is published that matches your alerts. It also can help you track mentions of your brand.

    #4. TrendSpottr

    TrendSpottr has both a free and a premium paid version of their app, which means that you can decide if you want extra features like pre-viral content searching and multiple language tracking. 

    TrendSpottr also lets you see recent posts at the top of your results page, making content curation move much quicker.

    #5. ContentGems

    ContentGems is a great simple tool for those who don’t need many complicated features for content curation. 

    It’s free to use and focuses on the quality of content itself rather than elaborate filters and search parameters.

    Wrap Up

    Content curation can be a lifesaver for brands who need to find inspiring and educational content to fill their social media feeds. 

    By mixing curated content with your own original content, you are able to establish your brand as more than a sales machine and instead put the company forward as an industry leader and reliable source of information. 

    Understanding what is curated content is just part of having a well-rounded and successful content marketing strategy. 

    In order to see exactly where your content strategy stacks up, try taking our content maturity assessment

    You’ll see exactly where your content stands on the maturity scale and see if there are any gaps in your strategy that can be filled!

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