Seven tips for effective content curation

Content curation is easy enough; we all do it. But how is it done well? For starters, curation requires research, patience and the willingness and flexibility to change direction at the drop of a hat to meet our audience’s needs.

Ultimately, we all want to be the trusted source our audience turns to, but it’s important to understand that it won’t happen overnight. All in all, knowing the process and using the right tools will be most beneficial to becoming an effective curator.

We’ve pulled together seven tips to help navigate the curation process:

  • Know your audience: This may seem obvious, but it’s about more than focus groups and sales trends. Look at the conversations being had on social media platforms. Research where your audience is looking for information and what other trusted sources are in your space, participate in conversations and most importantly, listen.
  • Monitor the web daily: Look for information relevant to your program or product. Use tools like Klout and comScore to find existing thought leaders in your field and follow them.
  • Understand that not all your content is of value to your audience: Becoming a trusted source means sharing relevant and informative content different than your own. Chances are you’ll find ways to tell your story more effectively during the process.
  • Avoid becoming a victim of content overload yourself: Limit yourself to a realistic number of blogs, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages for monitoring or you’ll become sleep deprived and have a meltdown. Know your threshold.
  • Build trust through transparency: Do not post content on your website that is not your own, but rather provide a link. Attribute all quotes and statistics and ask permission when using someone else’s images. Pinterest is great at this.
  • Embrace yourself as a thought leader: Knowledge and training aside, what makes you different? What do you bring to the table that no one else has? What can you share that is of value to your audience? Answer these questions honestly and you are on your way to becoming an essential, trusted source.
  • Just do it already: Enough said.

For more on content curation, check out our latest whitepaper. Click here to download.

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