Content Curation:Tips and Tools to Engage Followers and Boost Your Brand
Modern marketing is as much about enhancing brand recognition and customer loyalty as it is about driving sales. As consumers become increasingly bored and disengaged with traditional types of advertising, your team may be scrambling to develop an effective tactic to capture the attention of an audience.
You’ve probably heard the famous real estate mantra: “location, location, location.” Digital marketing has its own mantra: “content, content, content.”
Branded content, sponsored content, native content—it’s all about moving away from the hard sell of old-school advertising and toward a broader strategy that spurs growth by creating a distinctive brand voice and identity. One of the pillars of this marketing revolution is content curation, which reinforces your brand as an industry leader while offering added value to attract a wider audience.
But what does “curated content” mean? Here we outline all you need to know about using content curation as an essential part of your marketing strategy. We’ll define curated content, offer tips on how to curate digital content effectively, and share the top content curation tools to optimize your team’s time and resources.
What is Curated Content?
Curated content is content created by other brands, experts, or influencers that a company then shares strategically on its digital platforms to inform or entertain its audience. Content curation, meaning the act of choosing relevant content to populate a company’s social media or other channels, is focused on reinforcing a brand’s reputation as a credible and trustworthy source of information and expertise.
Businesses leverage expert articles or research from other companies, insights from industry leaders, or other influential content to engage their audience by offering value and, at the same time, bolster their brand identity. Though sharing content is simple, curating the right content as part of a larger strategy takes time and effort.
More than simply reposting the most popular content on the web, content curation means carefully selecting articles and links that are cohesive with the brand and offer value (generally in the form of information or entertainment) to the audience.
Successful curation prioritizes the right content resources, is strategic in deciding what content passes, and always keeps the brand’s core values and target market in mind when sharing.
Content Curation Advantages
Content curation is the Swiss army knife of marketing tools. It performs multiple tasks simultaneously, but all are focused on engaging your audience and reinforcing your brand identity. Here are a few of the main benefits of using curated content as part of your overall marketing strategy:
- Engages and expands your audience by providing value. Consumers follow brands and companies on social media and other channels because they want to gain insights and learn from experts about a specific industry, field, product, or service.
With curated content, your brand can offer valuable information or resources without your team having to use up their bandwidth to produce the content in-house. Plus, your followers get access to different perspectives, and your brand shows that it cares about providing value to customers rather than simply making sales.
- Positions your brand as a thought leader. Providing a constant stream of quality, relevant content establishes your company as a trusted point of reference with a deep understanding of the field.
Followers will consider you a credible resource, both based on the content you share and the unique perspective your brand adds with an introduction or commentary on each post. - Expands your network. Tagging other brands, businesses, or influencers when sharing their content is a great way to garner attention and build a network within your specific field or industry. This kind of networking is a fundamental part of broadening your brand’s audience and penetrating new markets.
- Populates your platforms and channels. Producing branded content takes significant time and energy. Sharing curated content from other sources is an easy way to fill gaps in your content calendar and populate your accounts with minimal time and effort.
- Engages and expands your audience by providing value. Consumers follow brands and companies on social media and other channels because they want to gain insights and learn from experts about a specific industry, field, product, or service.
Content Curation Tips and Strategies
Content curation is more than just sharing the latest TikTok meme or celebrity video — it requires a cohesive strategy to speak to your audience and add value. For effective use of curated content, social media is just a critical channel of many resources available.
Here are some tips and strategies for successful content curation:
- Tailor your content to your audience. This process begins with defining who your audience is and creating audience personas.
Then, put each piece of content you intend to share to the test by asking if and how it offers information or insight your followers would find helpful or entertaining.
Keep track of what kind of content resonates most with your target audience by checking engagement levels and focusing on similar posts in the future.
- Establish your brand as a thought leader. Add an insightful introduction or comment that offers an additional perspective on the content you share from other sources to reinforce your brand’s voice and mission.
This lends a personalized feel to content curation that enhances rather than detracts from your own company’s identity.
- Share as part of a network. Be sure to link to the source and tag the social media accounts of the brand or influencer as a way to build your network and avoid appearing unethical by stealing or plagiarizing content from others.
If you share content as part of your blog, include a short preview with a link to the source rather than copying the whole text.
- Highlight credible sources. Your shared content should bolster your brand’s credibility. Sharing information that is false or inaccurate will undermine consumer trust.
Be sure to fact-check any content before sharing and curate content from authoritative sources.
- Create a content calendar. Scheduling your social media calendar in advance gives your team an overview of the in-house and curated content available to populate your social media channels strategically and cohesively.
It also keeps your tracks looking active without having to dedicate staff to manage them in real-time. The easiest way to create and complete a content calendar is with digital curation tools.
- Tailor your content to your audience. This process begins with defining who your audience is and creating audience personas.
Content Curation Tools and Software
Curating relevant, engaging content that captures your audience’s attention and enhances your brand takes time and effort. Here are several tools to help you find and share content around specific topics:
- Flipboard: This app allows you to gather relevant news stories, blog posts, websites, and other links into a personalized digital magazine format.
You can keep your curated content private before sharing it on your social media channels. Or, set it to the public so other users can view and share your curated content directly on Flipboard. - Pocket: A streamlined way to save interesting content you come across online in one place to read and share later; Pocket allows you to save content from several devices and group accrued articles with tags (or use the search function) to reference them later.
- Twitter lists: Twitter can be an excellent source of content if you organize your feed into curated lists that separate users by category. Scan these lists regularly for relevant content to save on Flipboard or Pocket to be shared on your brand’s channels.
- Hootsuite: A leader in content curation and calendar management, Hootsuite offers a variety of valuable functions. Find relevant content via the platform’s RSS feed syndication and populate your content calendar with the handy scheduling tool that gathers all your social media channels in one place.
- Instapaper: Like Pocket, Instapaper allows you to save articles you come across while surfing the web but offers the additional perk of allowing you to highlight and comment on the text of each item. This is useful to jog your memory about why you saved an item when you return to it in the future.
Content curation is an excellent way to position your brand as a credible industry authority by sharing insightful and engaging content for your audience but requires a thoughtful strategy to be successful.
LeadJig Can Help
At LeadJig, we can help you incorporate curated content into your financial marketing strategy with tips and tools to boost impact while minimizing time and labor. Contact us for more information about our financial marketing services and how our financial advisor marketing platform can generate leads and increase your customer base.
