What is content curation?

Generating content can be a Herculean task. The challenge would be coming up with new and original ideas. In a world that is filled with information and data, you have to do the extraordinary to brew something new, fresh and original. This is just one side of the coin. Stay with me.

One good skill you need to have as a content creator is social listening. A wise marketer once said that sometimes the best marketing ploy is to shut up! The skill of listening is largely underrated. 

Amidst all the noise we can maintain silence sometimes and allow others to speak for us through their content.

This brings us to our topic – content curation. See how the Macmillan dictionary defines it. “the process of analyzing and sorting web content and presenting in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme”

Selflessness is a quality of a good writer. Always thinking about your audience would help you serve them with what they love. All of that shouldn’t come entirely from you.

Content curation isn’t time-saving. Organizing, grouping content and knowing what’s right for your audience can take time and effort but in comparison with working from the scratch, it may save a little but significant time.

Benefits of content curation

1.       It helps you and your audience stay informed and up-to-date with current trends.

2.       It helps educate your audience. They get the chance to see things from a different perspective and expose them to the right kind of information.

3.       Information is better managed. Curation helps you group, separate, and organize information. You can share quality, relevant and superior information with your audience. 

4.       Builds authority and makes you a reputable brand especially if you do it right by giving credit to the owners.

5.       Increases online visibility. sharing content from higher authority sites can help you gain search engine visibility.

6.       Helps to build relationships with other brands in your niche, competitors, and influencers.

7.       Using the right kind of content that you curate can help you build a community of like-minds. All you need is the right kind of content to share with them. If it resonates with them, you begin to acquire loyal fans.

8.       It keeps your content calendar full.

The Curation Models

Under the curation principle, there are 5 ways to go about content curation

1.       Aggregation

 This involves putting together information about a certain topic and storing them in one place for when it is needed. RSS feed is an example of a content aggregator where learning videos are featured and stored for easier on-demand access. 

2.       Distillation

Information is managed in such a way that only the most relevant information is gathered and stored to be shared with your audience for the sake of simplicity.  This can be done by sorting information through relevant keywords and hashtags of social media. Google keyword planner can help to sort out relevant information through long tail and seed keywords. 

3.       Elevation

 It involves gathering information that is related to current trends and elevating them. Identifying current trends based on every piece of data. Information has to be analyzed to be sure that it suits the context of whatever current trends are being captured. The trending feature of Twitter helps to analyze tweets and elevate them as trending topics over some time. It tries to give a broader insight from smaller pieces of information shared several times a day. This has to do with data analysis. 

4.       Merging/Mashup 

This requires putting various sources together and building content from these sources by giving a new perspective or drawing conclusions. Wikipedia is a platform where this form of curation thrives. New Content is developed from various existing content to create a new point of view.

5.       Chronological 

This curation method arranges information according to dates.  It tracks how topics have evolved and how an understanding of certain things has progressed. For instance, content marketing as it was known in the 80” s has evolved to include digital media. One can develop a timeline post that discusses content marketing in that light. content marketing in this light.

Content marketing does not curate content strictly on these principles. As a matter of fact, Content marketing sees aggregating and curating as two separate methods of making content.

Content curation and content aggregation (difference)

Aggregating content in content marketing involves gathering content from different online sources using an automated method. You need to use a content aggregator to achieve this.  Various content aggregator websites can do this for you. They store all the content that has been sourced into a single online location.

Examples of content aggregator site

The web list

It curates all the latest information on the web from trending tweets, googles news, Youtube videos and the latest news from news websites like CNN and BBC.

All Africa

This site curates news about Africa in different news categories. Like entertainment, sports, governance, ETC.

How to curate content

Find out what is suitable for your target audience

Validate your curated content ideas by sharing different content in various niches and see what your audience warms up to. Once you can figure out what your audience wants, you can concentrate on finding the best take on such topics.

Give your take

When you share curated content, say something about it. You can give your perspective on the issue. You should also give room for your audience to say something. Don’t say it all. This would encourage engagements on your post.

Choose the goal you wish to achieve and plan your topic

Write out your goals and topics that would help achieve these goals. 

 Give credit

Avoid stealing or plagiarism. Always note the source of your content. This gives you credibility and boosts influencer relationships and relationships amongst businesses in your niche.

Content curation examples

1. Shares, re-shares and retweets.

On Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter respectively, the above methods are a simple way to curate content to curate on social media.

2. Screenshots

Screenshots may be seen as a lazy means by some to curate content. With screenshots, you can easily share content from a different platform across all social channels.

The Marketing Millennials on LinkedIn have built their following by sharing screenshots of tweets made by others.

3. Add your commentary to third party content. 

Take a news trend and give it some context as it relates to what you do.

For example “End SARS” was a news trend on Twitter that centered around the end SARS protest in Nigeria. A topic like “5 PR lessons to be learned from #endsars” would make a good topic in the PR niche.

4. Make a roundup post.

Ask experts to contribute to it or curate what experts have said about certain things in the past about a particular topic.

You can use an aggregator but you need to manually select a list of specific content types that you need information about. Here’s a roundup post on how to increase engagement and social shares.

5. Collaborate with other content creators to co-create content.

Hub spot and scoop.it co-creation about getting started with content marketing.

Invite customers and fans to share amazing content with you like pictures, videos, and commentaries. This is also known as user-generated content (UGC).

GoPro invited customers to submit pictures they took using GoPro cameras.

6. Make a ranking list

This is an example of a ranking list of the top ten paid bloggers in 2020.

Do an interview

Turn a conversation into a blog post.

This is a blog post based on an interview with a storyteller expert.

7. Write a short post on an infographic or video 

Infographics and videos are good resources you can expand into an in-depth blog post.

The next question would be, how much of my content should be created? Bear in mind the following rules when curating content.

25% curated

65% original 

10% syndicated

The ⅓ rule by Hootsuite for social media curation.

• ⅓ personal brand promotion.
• ⅓ curated content.
• ⅓ social conversations.

Content curation will continue to be an effective tool that drives consistency in content marketing. Begin to fill up your editorial calendar with this powerful idea. Looking for more ways to be content resourceful? Check out our post about content recycling.