4 ways to leverage the Interest Graph through impacting Content Curation

Content curation and the Interest Graph are two different things but are deeply connected. While some content curators like Maria Popova are great at being eclectic, a lot of value to readers come from being able to discover and read from publishers who address the specific niches they’re interested in.

Chad Politt from Digital Relevance clearly establishes that connexion in this contribution to the Huff Post and I would draw the following conclusions for content strategists and content curators:

1. Leverage the interest-graph on platforms where you can easily be discovered by people who can then share your curated or created content: Scoop.it is of course one of them but Quora is another and Reddit also adds value there (I would actually challenge the notion that Twitter is really interest-based: when you’re on a niche and you’re not Justin Bieber, it’s actually hard to be discovered just by being on Twitter).

2. Don’t expect readers or machines to do all the work: add context and value to connect the dots as content curators should to make the highest impact to readers. Tell them what’s in it for them so that they memorize you – not the machine or the Twitter algorithm – as the essential resource that brought them that knowledge.

3. Be clear on your topic(s): you can have several target segments in your audience but defining topics where you’ll be consistently able to publish your own content or relevant third-party content will help you raise above the noise. All the more than as Chad points out, social networks and search engine will be better and better at surfacing content specifically on readers’ interests. As an example of that, we’ve now seen the share of traffic from Google Search to Scoop.it topic pages raise to 40%+ through the various algorithm changes they went through.

4. Be your own content platform: if you’re just sharing content on social networks, you’re missing out. Bringing readers to your own content hub will help readers idenitfy your expertise on a specific topic and remember your brand. It will also create higher engagement: visitors to Scoop.it pages read on average ~3 pieces of content which is much higher than what you’d get from a simple click on a Facebook post.