Want to know how content curation fits into your overall marketing strategy? You’re in the right place. This guide will walk you through the basics of sourcing and sharing content as a way to connect with your audience and extend your brand reach.
First, let’s start with the basics.
What is curation?
Curation is the process of sifting through the vast world of content and information available online, identifying information that you find useful, and sharing that content with your audience. For business owners, your audience includes your customer base. Examples of curation are all around us. Netflix uses your viewing history to populate your homepage with a curated list of movies you might like to watch next. Music lovers build curated playlists. A wine-of-the-month club handpicks bottles it thinks will appeal most to its subscribers.
Think of a curator at an art museum. Their job is to select works of art that align with the museum’s collection and purpose, or with the direction of a specific exhibit. The best curators are selective and intentional, not apathetic. Likewise, your curated content should be clustered around and related to a specific topic. The content you share can span a range of mediums, including articles, guides, reports, videos, social media posts, and product reviews among other online content.
To be clear, content curation differs from content creation. Curation focuses on gathering useful content centered on a specific topic from multiple sources, re-organizing it and sharing it with your audience in an easily digestible way. Curated content includes articles and links pulled from external sources, like news websites, trade publications and social media. Content creation, on the other hand, refers to the content your business develops on its own, like an original blog post, video tutorial or guide.
A robust content marketing strategy includes a healthy mix of creation and curation, and the approaches can intersect. Once your business starts generating enough content of its own, it’s possible to start curating your original content around specific topics. For example, a landscaping firm that features a backyard makeover each month on its YouTube channel can use that list to curate its most popular videos or feature projects that included a swimming pool installation.
Still not sure how this fits into your marketing strategy? Keep reading to understand why your business should be thinking about content curation.
