As a small business owner, you already know the importance of creating content for your social media networks. But with so much content already floating around social media, it’s hard to figure out what will resonate with your target audience. Much like how a museum curates its artwork and artifacts, you need to curate your content to ensure you’re offering your followers a high-quality collection of valuable media. This can be a challenge, especially if you are new to content curation. Let’s look at the ins and outs of curating content for social media and the five best practices you can use today to enhance your social media content marketing strategy.
What is content curation?
Essentially, content curation is the process of identifying relevant content for your target demographic and collecting it from various online sources. You then strategically present the most substantial pieces throughout your social media channels to engage with your audience and establish your company as an industry leader. Not to be confused with content creation, where you generate your own original content, content curation involves lots of research to find and share the information your intended audience will find appealing. For example, you may find insightful blog posts or videos that help ease a common pain point in your industry. Or you could compile a list of the most popular tools to help facilitate workflow and post those pieces of content on your social media networks with videos, infographics, review posts. It’s almost like being a DJ and compiling the perfect playlist of songs rather than a musician writing songs for their album. Content curation is much easier than content creation but offers many key benefits that can help enhance your social media presence. Let’s look at the benefits of content curation for your social media marketing strategy.
Why is content curation important for social media marketing?
Your customers are bombarded with messages on social media, so you need to constantly create engaging social posts to keep audiences engaged with your brand. However, traditional marketers agree that creating original, high-quality content daily is unrealistic and impossible with the amount of information circulating today. Since content marketing is a near-daily task for social media marketing, content curation makes more sense because it helps you fill up your content calendar while not requiring an investment of a lot of time or resources. Sure, it’s smart to create original content to share now and then, but sharing valuable content is just as effective, especially since it adds value to your brand. Sharing content helps you create valuable relationships with your customers and makes your brand more trustworthy. Not only does it save time and enhance your SEO efforts, but it also increases productivity as you now have time to focus on other pressing tasks outside of your content marketing strategy. Additionally, curated content is a great ice breaker when starting conversations around hot topics in your niche. It allows you to provide fresh, relevant content across all of your active social media accounts. This will keep your brand in the minds of your followers.
5 best practices to leverage content curation for Social media marketing
As you develop your social media content strategy, you’ll want to ensure that each piece of curated content supports your brand goals. You can use social media management tools to make it easier to track metrics and use those insights to make intelligent decisions about the content you choose. If you’re looking for a stream of curated content, add the blogs you find the best on to your RSS feed for easy access. With social media management tools, like Metigy, you can even add these stories directly to your feed with ease. Here are five best practices you can incorporate into your content curation to boostsocial media engagement and ensure you are posting the right content:
1. Be consistent with your curation strategy
Consistency is one of the pillars of success when you want to reach your audience through social media. Even influencers and content creators cannot generate original content on a daily basis, so use curated content to fill in the gaps between your original pieces of content. Be consistent with your posting schedule to ensure followers know what to expect from your brand. Use curated content that accurately represents your brand and be predictable with your posting times. This will help you keep everything consistent and save valuable time for other essential tasks. Consistently posting content on your social networks will build anticipation within your followers as they look forward to your content in their feed. As a result, your followers will be more likely to interact and engage with your social media content compared to if you sporadically post content throughout the week.
2. Add your own flair
Each time you post curated content, add a little bit of spice via your original thoughts and insights to show that your team understands what is going on in the lives of your followers. Consider adding a fresh angle on the story that isn’t mentioned within the article. Use the content to offer people something they can relate to or connect to your own company. You can also provide additional suggestions to enhance the content you post. Remember to maintain a balance between the original content and what you’re adding. Too much, and it may appear as though you disagree with the main idea of the content.
3. Find the right balance of curated content and fresh content
Content distribution is key to striking a balance on your social media accounts. If you do nothing but share curated content, your target audience may fail to see the value your company offers. You can start with a 60/40 split of curated content to the content that you’ve created. Adjust this ratio depending on how your audience responds to each type of content. Another approach is called the 5-3-2 rule, consisting of 50% curated content, 30% created content, and 20% fun or personal content to humanize your brand. Whichever approach you choose, keep a close eye on audience engagement and other metrics to observe what works and what doesn’t. You can also track your ROI for a complete insight on how successful your curated content is against new content you created yourself.
4. Use trusted experts and influencers to curate content
As much as they try, no one is an expert in every topic related to their industry. That’s why it’s essential to curate and share content from reputable, authentic, trusted sources in the same niche. This will help you learn about new things that will add to your skillset and demonstrate to your followers that you are a trusted advisor in your field. It’s also a great way to grow your audience and attract new customers to your business.
5. Never duplicate or plagiarize
Just because someone shares information on public social networks doesn’t mean it’s okay to take it as your own. Never take original ideas and present them as your own. This is the quickest way to lose credibility and permanently damage your company’s reputation. Always credit the original source with a backlink or mention, depending on the social media platform. If you share a video or image from another source, share it directly rather than downloading it and re-uploading it. This makes it more difficult for your followers to identify the creator of the original content.
Use Metigy’s content curation tools to optimize your social media presence
The platform with the best content is typically the one that wins at digital marketing. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for content curation. Every brand and business on social media needs to stay true to its unique goals by designing an individualized digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking to revamp your digital marketing strategy or need help getting started, try out Metigy’s AI tools to help you create a high-quality content strategy that will wow your audience.
FAQs
How can I simplify my business’s content strategy?
Simplify your content strategy by focusing on the most significant problem your customers have and repurposing existing content to fit their needs.
How can I increase my video view rates?
Refresh your ads, experiment with bids, and try your hand at retargeting to increase your video view rates.
What is an example of content curation?
Sharing a blog post from a reputable company in your industry or a video made by an influential thought leader on your own social media page is an example of content curation.
