We’ve been curating our own content for years, without even realizing it, and you have probably been doing the same! Here three ways to make curated content work for you!
In Melissa’s kitchen is a binder full of recipes she ripped from the pages of magazines, in addition to the hundreds of recipes pinned on her Pinterest boards. For her wedding (way back in the pre-Pinterest days), she carried a binder of flower, color, dress, and venue ideas from one vendor meeting to the next.
I have hundreds of pins for my own wedding stored on my Pinterest boards, which allows me to easily show vendors what I’m looking for, and helps me to organize all of the details.
And at Grapevine, each of us has hundreds of online articles and videos stored in our Evernote archives, for easy reference and sharing with our social media communities.
Curating content is defined by storing, organizing, and sharing content written by someone else.
It has become a digital marketing best practice, and has made it easier to create and share tons of information from a single location.
Curated content is most commonly seen through social media (ie: 75 Podcasts for Sales, The 15 Best TED Talks for Entrepreneurs, etc.). It can also be incorporated, with careful attention to the rules of copyrights and duplicate content, in blog posts and email newsletters.
When you share, retweet, quote or repurpose content from other bloggers, companies or brands, you are helping them to promote their own message!
However, it is very important to appropriately credit the author, to avoid plagiarism and duplicate content. Make sure the link leads back to the original source, include the original title and author in your post, and do not copy and paste their article directly into your blog or email newsletter (instead, provide the title and a summary of the content, and then link directly to it).
Here three ways to make curated content work for you:
1) Just starting out? Curate in social media first.
Sharing content from industry influencers through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn will show your followers that you are on top of industry news and trends.
The best way to curate content on social media is to tell your readers why they should read the article or mention a key takeaway that resonated with you. Your readers will appreciate your perspective. Spark a discussion!
2) Ready to take it up a notch? Curate in email.
If you’ve got social media down, you should be able to see which content is performing best on those channels, and now you can share the best-performing posts with your email list.
To create a remarkable newsletter with curated content, simply pull in three to five relevant articles (remember, these should include the title, author, and a brief summary, and then link to the original source). Don’t forget to add a blog or call to action of your own into the mix. Often, this is a roundup of trends, resources or breaking news.
When formatting your curated newsletter, add your own commentary and a blog or call to action of your own. This is a great way to nurture prospects into qualified leads!
3) Want a More Advanced Strategy? Curate on your Blog.
Simply select a blog from a news source, brand or your sphere of influencers that would allow you to expand on the conversation.
To avoid plagiarizing, include the original link and highlight a specific section, but DON’T copy and paste the actual article. You could disagree with the original article and delve into your alternate opinion, or you could agree with the original article but expand upon it.
Alternately, you could provide a listing of resources or articles, similar to how you developed the above email newsletter. It’s important to avoid duplicate content penalties from search engines (both for YOU and for the author), so again, make sure you don’t copy and paste the original content but instead provide your own unique content and link back to the original source.
