(This post is to introduce our new joint ebook with DrumpUp: The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation. Get this new resource here.)
Ever wonder what the point is of sharing other people’s content on your social networks? It’s not like you get traffic or sales from it. Why bother.
There’s actually a lot of value in content curation. In fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s vital for a successful social media presence. Why? Here are just a few reasons:
1. It provides value to your audience
I can’t really think of an easier way to be useful to your audience. You don’t have to write anything. You don’t have to research. All you have to do is click a share button and voilà, you’ve provided a quality resource to your audience.
Just make sure you read what you’re sharing. You’d think that would go without saying, but a recent post by The Science Post shows it can’t be overstated. The post, titled “Study: 70% of Facebook Users Only Read the Headline of Science Stories Before Commenting,” has been shared over 56,000 times. Unfortunately, the bulk of the article is in “lorem impsum” text, proving the point of the headline.
At the very least, click through the link to make sure it works and is real content. But you should also be reading it to make sure it contains good information that aligns with your brand’s values and beliefs. What you share is a reflection of you.
A good example: Recently I was curating content for our social media feeds and came across a pretty extensive article about landing pages. Upon reading it, I saw that they advocated that landing pages NOT be optimized and that they should be hidden from search engines, which goes totally against what we’ve always said on this blog. Therefore, I did not share that post because it did not align with our company’s beliefs.
2. You can establish yourself as authority
Because curated content is a reflection of you, great curated content makes you look great. If you consistently share quality content, you will become known as a go-to source for industry information.
A good example is Sam Hurley, who has 152,000 followers on Twitter. If you follow him, your news feed will be packed with digital marketing resources to check out.
3. It helps you connect with influencers
You’ll notice that Sam Hurley frequently @ mentions the writer and/or source. This is a great way to get the attention of influencers.
Remember, influencers are people, too. They want their social media posts shared and engaged with just as much as you do. Therefore, there’s no better way to get their attention than to share their posts. It’s even better if you can add your own comment when sharing. Then you’re adding to the conversation, which not only increases your authority but gives influencers a reason to reply back.
4. It’s a good way to decrease self promotion
You’ve heard it time and again. Social media is supposed to be SOCIAL, not a scrolling ad for your products and services. If you’re constantly posting your own stuff, even if they are helpful blog posts, people are, frankly, going to get sick of you. Content curation keeps you from over promoting yourself…and keeps your audience from getting bored of your content.
5. It gives you more the share
Wrap you mind around this: 6,000 tweets go out on Twitter every second! If you are only posting only once or twice or day, what are the chances that you’re going to reach a large part of your audience? Not good.
Even if it was kosher to constantly promote yourself, most people don’t have enough content to post as often as necessary to get the results they want. By curating content, you can continue to offer good information to your audience even when your own well runs dry.
By curating content, you can continue to offer good information to your audience even when your own well runs dry.” — Julie Graff6. It saves you time
Creating content takes a lot of time, or at least it should, if you are doing it right. There is only so much time to create quality pieces of content that will resonate with your audience.
Even though proper content curation requires sufficient planning and vetting (remember, you need to READ content before you curate!), it still takes significantly less time than creating content from scratch. So instead of being a content factory constantly cranking out new articles and media, you can focus on making each piece you create killer.
So did I convince you? Great! Now it’s time to get to it. Here’s a great resource to get you started:
The Ultimate Guide to Content Creation
