How to Use Curated Content for Content Marketing

By Jessica Davis

Content is at the center of everything digital. It is what people look for when searching for something on the web and it is what makes them share, like, subscribe, comment, follow, buy or donate.

But creating valuable content can often be quite challenging, and when you are not quite ready for this challenge, curated content comes to your rescue.

What is curated content?

Content curation basically involves sifting through relevant information on the internet and sharing the best of what you can find on your social profiles. However, curating content manually takes a lot of time and effort. To make things easier, you can use tools like DrumUp, Scoop.it and List.ly and overcome this hurdle. Using high quality, curated content projects you as an expert and an authority in your field. It gives you the reputation of being a reliable source of information, which will act as your social capital.

Why use curated content?

1. To save time and money
   Original content can be expensive and takes a lot of effort and time to create. Content curation is a way in which you can make sure that you have quality content when you’re strapped for money or time.
2. To become the trusted source of information
   Prudent use of quality curated content will turn you into an authoritative source on the web. Sharing high quality content can make you the preferred source that others refer to for advice, tips and suggestions.
3. To create round-ups for better engagement
   Your audience could easily miss some content you share because information moves quickly on the web. Doing a round up of the best stories of the week on a specific topic can help them stay up to date. They will be grateful to find all the noteworthy advice and news that interests them in one post.
4. To reach out to a wider audience
   Using different content formats such as audio,video, presentations, and infographics on different social media platforms will add variety to the content you share and will help keep it interesting.

Top 3 ways in which curated material can be shared and how

1. Social media
   In a survey of 400 marketing professionals, 76% of the respondents said that they share curated content on social media. When using curated content on Twitter, try expressing an opinion or asking a question. But you’ll have to keep it short since you only get 140 characters. Facebook and LinkedIn on the other hand give you a little more scope for long-form content. You could write a summary, add a commentary or ask a question to begin a conversation.
2. Newsletters
   Use newsletters when you need multiple pieces of fresh curated content all put together in one place. Remember that newsletters should include the latest in industry trends and data from the previous week, fortnight or month. Along with curated content, a good newsletter will include a note from the editor, original articles, calls-to-action and information on how to contact you.
3. E-mails
   Though email has often been prematurely declared dead and irrelevant, there are marketing tactics that live on. Curated content can be used in email marketing. You can charm your subscribers with interesting and quality curated content sent straight to their inboxes. Share links to your blogs and social network profiles in the mail. You will only earn more loyal subscribers.

There are three main challenges you face while creating original content – paucity of time, inability to create sufficient amount of content and inability to create engaging content. Curated content can help you overcome all these challenges effectively.

Are you curating yet?