Question: Our company wants to include a strategy of curating great content around the web to increase outreach and engagement. What are some important considerations to make this a valuable content marketing activity?
What a great idea for your business to spend more time curating great content. Even though buyers these days (especially B2B) spend a good deal of time searching out information on the internet, there is such an abundance of content that it is really hard for buyers to find the best of the best.
Did you know that ~2 Million new blog posts go up each day? For more on this and some other mind blowing stats on internet activity check out this infographic.
This proves two things. First, that content is obviously really important given the amount generated and time spent on it. Second, it is really easy to get lost in the shuffle. So in this case we are looking for how to use curating content as a way to stand out.
Hare are some important considerations for businesses looking to curate content for your current audience and to develop a larger audience.
- Seek out dependable sources. (Note the amount of content out there)
- Make sure what you are sharing is highly relevant. (This is what makes your site a preferred source vs. less targeted sites)
- Try to diversify sources so your curating doesn’t start to look like Co-advertising
- Mix curated content in with original content to generate thought leadership and to be informative
- Add something to the content you are curating.
What we mean by “Add Something” to the content you are curating…?
While all of the items above are very important to successfully curating content. The essential add is your personal or company add to the content.
This is really what curating is all about.
It is one thing to post or tweet something that says Good Read…then the content.
It is another thing to say why it is a good read, what the client should be looking further into and why you thought it was worth their time.
For instance, if you sell Cloud Software and you share an article from IBM on Cloud Applications. Rather than just saying “I Like This,” you could say the following…
Today we are sharing an article from IBM on how Cloud is Changing the Small Business Landscape. Many of our customers are looking to the cloud everyday for ways they can migrate certain parts of their business to the cloud. We feel this article provides an excellent roadmap…
Now depending on the platform you may be limited to the characters you can post, but I guarantee you when you add to the story you are sharing and give your audience an understanding of why you are sharing the information there will be more engagement and value than just clicking and sharing.
Curating is a great way to build outreach and engagement for your brand.
How is your business curating content to drive better marketing results?
In This short video we discuss the importance of curating content with purpose
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.