10 Top Tips For Content Curation

A well curated site has many benefits, it doesn’t only make life easier for readers to browse relevant material without hunting across the web, it also helps establish your authority.

What you should aim for is thoughtful leadership. In essence be someone who is well read, seeks the latest information, evaluates and reflects on developments and news. Someone who shares the more valuable content within context and adds their own perspective. In essence a good curator is often a thought leader. According to Forbes a thought leader is:

“an individual or firm that prospects, clients, referral sources, intermediaries and even competitors recognize as one of the foremost authorities in selected areas of specialization, resulting in its being the go-to individual or organization for said expertise.”

10 Top Content Curation Tips

My top tips for content curation are:

1. Discover content widely

To be a curator you need to be well read in your area of expertise and use multiple sources for content discovery including news, book reviews, surveys, blogs, Twitter lists, search and RSS feeds.

Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute describes the content curation task as unearthing the best content on the planet in your niche. There is no shortage of content across the web the key is to discover the best and highest quality content.

2. Use social networks for content discovery

There is a huge amount of information contained in social networks and it can be an invaluable source of knowledge. This is an area where BuzzSumo can help you. You can search for topics and find what is being widely shared across social networks in your niche. Give it a try, type in a keyword using BuzzSumo. You can also find out who the key influencers are and add them to your list of discovery sources.

3. Add value to content

Simply republishing content is content aggregation not content curation. You need to add your own perspectives and context to the curation process. You might provide a historic view on trends, compare new content to older articles, etc.

4. Create as well as curate

If you create original content alongside the content you curate, you can add significant value to the curation process and help establish yourself as an authority.

5. Get contributions

No one is as smart or as knowledgeable as everyone. Invite your readers to contribute content articles and ideas.

6. Curate consistently and regularly

Establish a publishing cycle and stick to it. This will help you attract and keep readers. It doesn’t need to be daily just ensure it is regular and consistent.

7. Embrace multiple platforms and formats

Your readers won’t simply come to your blog or website, they will hang out in multiple places such as YouTube, SlideShare and Pinterest; and they will consume various forms of content. Thus you need to embrace these different platforms and curate your content in multiple formats.

8. Provoke debate

Engage with your readers by posing questions and setting up debates. It is great that your readers get value from your content curation but even better if they add value to your site by contributing.

9. Share and promote

Always make sure you attribute the original sources of content you curate and link to them. Be sure to always give credit.

10. Track performance

Track the performance of your content curation. This will help ensure that you are focusing on the topics your market is most interested in.