Bringing meaningful organization to the multitudes of content available today is easily a full-time job and daunting task for even an experienced writer. The fabulous thing is that we each bring our own focus to the content as we strive to provide the segments of our target audience with interesting and relevant content in a timely manner. So how do you make an overwhelming task a bit more manageable? Here are some tips!
1. Have a clearly defined purpose for each piece. Know your intended audience, which topics they are interested in, and the best voice in which to communicate that information.
2. Identify trusted sources you can use as your core set of information. Look for sites and writers who provide consistently high-quality content.
3. Have a variety of sources to ensure you are pulling in different viewpoints from both within and outside of your niche.
4. Look to your customers and partners for content. This not only provides you with great material, it also is a gesture of goodwill that others will appreciate and hopefully reciprocate.
5. User-generated content is easily curated on social media platforms. Encourage people to use a branded hashtag in their posts.
6. Always give credit back to the original writer or publisher. Include a link to the article or “via @twitterhandle” mention.
7. Never copy and paste unless you are directly quoting someone. Use your own words to restate the content and then provide a prominent link to the source.
8. Keep your topics relevant to your industry and target audience. Show that your brand is dialed into current trends and subject matter in your field.
9. Personalize the content. Add a piece of your own knowledge and expertise, tell your audience why the information matters to them, bring some sort of value to the content through your commentary.
10. Always create your own headlines and titles and add your own images!
11. Your own content is a source for curation – repurpose text into an infographic, expand a blog post into a full-blown article, and so on.
12. Create visuals to include with your commentary and expand on the information being shared.
13. Curate visual content by gathering relevant images that not only reinforce the text but perhaps tell a story or make a point.
14. Craft your curated content in a way that enables you to share it on multiple platforms.
Use content curation tools to save you time. They range in price from free to hundreds of dollars per month and each offers a slightly different approach to the art of content curation.
1. BuzzSumo: allows you to search through the most shared content on a particular topic.
2. RightRelevance: finds and ranks relevant influencers and content.
3. UpContent: pulls articles and blogs using an algorithm based on social influence, recency, etc.
4. Feedly: lets you see recent posts from websites you specify (a glorified RSS feed).
5. Curata: pulls content based on a profile you create that includes customized categories.
6. Paper.li: allows you to create “newspapers” based on the topics you indicate, finds not only articles but also video clips and photos.
7. TagBoard: focuses on curating hashtag content.
8. Pocket: lets you curate content on the go by saving content to be used at a later date.
9. Scoop.it: finds relevant articles based on your selection of categories as well as allowing you to pull content other platform users have shared.
10. Quora: a slightly different approach, Quora efficiently, and with accuracy, finds answers to the industry-related questions you ask.
11. PublishThis: similar to Curata, this option not only pulls high-quality content, it also has components that allow you to organize and share content from within the platform.
12. BagTheWeb: provides a network for content curators to not only find and create content but to also share it within the network.
Truly, the goal should be a mixture of pure creation and content curation to provide your audience with fresh, high-quality content that edifies, enriches, or simply provides entertainment. The content experts at Strategy Driven Market love to hunt, sift, organize and create! Let us help you with all of your content needs. Whether you are looking for original or curated, website or social, blog posts or white papers, SDM is ready to help you take your content to the next level. Contact us today!