Content curation is a critical part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. By sharing content from high authority Websites, you provide essential resources for your followers. You also gain brand exposure and goodwill from the authors and Websites whose content you share.
Also, it is important to not flood your social media profiles with content only from your brand or business. Most marketers recommend following the 80/20 rule: Only twenty percent of the content you share should be promotional content. The other eighty percent should be content that is from another source or is at least informational or useful in some way.
But how do you approach content curation without spending hours searching the Web for articles to share?
This post covers how to find high authority, relevant content to share and which will help boost your brand’s presence.
What Type of Content to Share
Content curation involves sharing articles, videos, and infographics related to your industry or niche. The content you share should be useful or entertaining to your followers.
Sharing high authority content helps boost your visibility in ways that your content may not if you are new to digital marketing.
Sharing high authority content helps boost your visibility in ways that your content may not if you are new to digital marketing. #contentmarketing #socialmedia Click To Tweet
What type of content you share depends on your marketing strategy. If your brand’s image is lighthearted and you consistently share humorous content or inspirational messaging, there are plenty of websites and online content repositories where you can find pictures and quotes to share.
However, you want to make sure your content comes from highly ranked sources, meaning you don’t want to pull a quote from a spammy site with a bunch of advertising and pop-ups. But sharing a cartoon from an online publication like The New Yorker is a perfect example of a high-authority site with quality content.
Where to Find Good Content
If your business goal is to present a more serious front in your strategy, research websites, universities publications, and similar institutions would be good Websites from which to share content.
For viral content, sites like BuzzFeed, Mashable, Vox, and Upworthy, might be good options—if they have content that’s related to your industry.
An excellent way to find out which sites have viral content is to use a tool like BuzzSumo.
For content that is relevant to your business, go to your industry’s association sites.
For example, real estate agents can share articles from Realtor.com, the National Association of Realtors HouseLogic Content Resource feed, or from the Trulia or Zillow blogs.
Those in the healthcare industry can use resources such as the Department of Health and Human Services site at Health.gov, the American Medical Association, or Mayo Clinic.
Content Curation Resources
Google Search
Google Search is the first tool I recommend to find content curation sources.
If you search under All, you’ll get a smattering of results that are relevant to the keywords you use.
Search for News to get the latest articles in your industry.
Set up Google Alerts to receive emails whenever new articles are published related to your keywords.
Feedly
Feedly is a content curation tool that replaced defunct Google Reader. It is free to use unless you want advanced features.
The beauty of using RSS aggregation apps like Feedly is you can easily share your content directly from the app.
To use the Feedly, search using keywords and add the RSS feeds of blogs or Websites you find to categories that you define. If you find feeds outside of the app, copy and paste to add them to your Feedly account.
Feedly is free, with paid upgrade features.
Scoop it!
This content aggregation platform has plenty of options for content curation and sharing.
It is much like creating a digital magazine. You create sections called Topics and add content to them that is related to the topic categories. The idea is others will follow your Topics because you “scoop” great content.
You can share your curated content directly from the app to your social media platforms, which will drive readers to your Scoop it! page.
Or you can open the articles from the original publication and share it via your social media management platform.
Scoop it! is free, unless you want advanced publishing features.
Buzz Sumo
Buzz Sumo is a search platform that shows you how popular an article is by the number of engagements it has had on social media platforms.
Many use this platform to find viral topics to write about, but it is also a good content curation app.
Use the Influencer search tool to find bloggers and other publishers whose content you can share.
The app is free to use on a limited basis.
This platform may not be the largest social media site, but it is super active with the latest news and trending topics.
Search using keywords or hashtags, and you will find a plethora of articles you can curate.
Create Twitter lists filled with people who share content from your industry. You can also subscribe to lists others have created, as long as they are public. Curate articles straight from the Twitter app lists using a social media sharing tool like Buffer or Zoho.
In Summary
Content curation is an integral part of a digital marketing strategy. But it does not need to take hours of your time. By using the tools mentioned, you can easily find and share content to your social media profiles and keep your brand presence alive and active.
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