Content Curation: 3 Critical Facts [Research]
While content marketing quickly went from “what’s that” to “must have” in 2012, the biggest challenges marketers face are producing enough of the right type of content and having resources, both budget and staff, for creating content.
Content curation supplements original content for both broadly and narrowly focused topics. Through the editorial process, it adds original content and provides an opportunity to showcase relevant gems.
Content curation as part of content marketing strategy – 3 Facts
Almost 60% of content marketers use some form of content curation according to Curata’s 2012 B2B Marketing Trends Report. Doing curation well can give you a competitive advantage because it’s a low cost way to expand your content marketing offering.
Over half of respondents have been curating content less than one year. This shows that content curation is still a relatively new content marketing tool. Further adoption is taking time. This is attributable to the fact that content curation still requires additional resources for most marketers in the form of editors who select the content and augment it with useful insights. For others, it may also involve other forms of services to aggregate the information.
Over 40% of marketers don’t track the performance of their content curation program. As with any marketing program, in order to measure success, you need to have well defined, specific goals and related metrics. Further, it’s important to incorporate a call-to-action and tracking code to help assess your results. Also, of note, content curation wasn’t successful for one out of seven content marketers. Before cutting off your program, ensure that you’ve got the correct metrics in place and the means to capture the appropriate data.
9 Amazing content curation resources
To get your content marketing on track, here are nine amazing sources for content curation.
1. Your own content. While every organization has lots of content, it’s often not well organized so that finding the optimal piece of information for a specific project or emailing can be a lot of work.
- Perform a content audit to ensure that your content offering is useable when you need it. This is particularly important since it helps you to give new life to older content.
- Maximize use of each piece of content created. In the planning phase of your content creation, spend time determining how you can extend each piece of information. Don’t just develop a conference presentation. Instead consider how you can reuse or reformat this content for greater exposure. For example, create a set of related articles for your blog or website as well as third party sites, publish your presentation on Slideshare, take a video of the presentation for your website, and design related infographics.
2. Harness the power of Google. As more than just a search engine, Google offers a number of products that facilitate your content curation process. Among them are Google Alerts which lets you know when there’s new information on designated topics, Google News provides an array of news that you can tailor to your interests, and Google Blog Search allows you to search for blog posts on your key topics.
3. Keep track of the social media stream for your keywords. Where appropriate you can follow hashtags on sites such as Twitter.
- Leverage the power of communities. Join groups on LinkedIn and other social media networks. BTW—LinkedIn is building out its content offering.
- Participate in social sharing sites. Leverage the wisdom of crowds with sites like Reddit.
- Go beyond text. Monitor what’s happening on visual sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr and YouTube.
4. Monitor the top blogs in your category. The goal here is to ensure that you’re up-to-date on the latest trends. This also provides content that you can curate via your owned media and social media. With fewer people using feeds (aka RSS) and Google stopping their reader, this can be done using emailings (just make sure that you’ve got special rules and mailboxes set up on your email client.) Not sure which blogs to select, look at the list of the top bloggers in your field. For example, AdAge curates the AdAge 150.
5. Watch the top news outlets in your field. Think beyond the basics and consider how the latest news has an impact on your business. Here’s one area where you can add value to your curation.
6. Receive tailored newsletter roundups in your field. Every field has bloggers or other media entities that do a great job of sourcing the best information and redistributing it either daily or weekly. Depending on your category, there may be a SmartBrief or two to help you. (For example, I read Smart Brief for Social Media.)
7. Check out your industry’s associations. These organizations often curate content of interest to members as well as to highlight the top trends.
- Ask if the association would be interested in using your firm’s content. This can be a great way to extend your content’s reach in a focused, low cost way.
8. Leverage the power of industry conferences. Whether you attend the conferences or not, get on their email list. This allows you to keep up with the latest trends and follow the important people in your field. Additionally, many conference firms curate relevant information as an added benefit and to attendees to help build their email file.
9. Ask your community to share their latest gems. You can set up special email addresses on your website or blog (but understand that this may result in a lot of information that you’re not interested in.) Alternatively, you can just do this inside of your organization.
Content curation provides marketers with the ability to extend their content offering by leveraging the power of other people’s content and putting it in the context of your brand. Understand that while content curation helps maximize your content marketing dollar, it still requires resources, both budget and personnel.
Have you used content curation? If so, what has your experience been?
Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen
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