Want to grow your brand, increase fans, and start selling more?
Then you need to follow the marketing trends that guide the way people do business online.
And today’s biggest market trend? Social media.
There’s only one problem: social media management takes time. What was once relegated to a lowly intern is now a multi-million dollar business, with huge agencies doing nothing more than managing social media accounts.
That’s great for them. But what about for the everyday business owner? How can he or she grow a brand—for yourself or your business—on social media without spending countless hours or dollars?
Glad you asked.
Because today’s technology has a simple answer: content curation. Today, you’ll learn how to use content curation to speed up your social media strategy while reaping all the same results.
Let’s jump in!
The content problem: Why good social media content isn’t enough anymore
A lot of people think the problem with content today is that they aren’t producing it.
There’s a widely-held belief that the secret to growing your brand or authority is just publishing more content. But almost nothing could be further from the truth.
You see, there is already plenty of content out there, and the secret to standing apart just isn’t producing more.
Breaking through the clutter
In today’s environment, there is a glut of too much content. Every single day, writers the world over publish two million blog posts. And that’s not including the hundreds of thousands that get updates, revisions, or new promotion.
And of that content, 55% of visitors only stay for 15 seconds or less.
In other words, the world is full of too much content. The information overload is on the rise, and publishing more isn’t the secret to standing out.
So why do the big brands still do it?
There are two reasons.
You see, a lot of those posts are published by the movers and shakers in the blogosphere—the Time.com, Huffington Post, and BuzzFeeds of the world.
For those companies, they’re essentially working on content mill model. Publish hundreds of posts a day, and a few will go viral. Major sites like them thrive on the 0.1% that go big, bringing in enough traffic to make the whole strategy worth it.
The other secret is simple: big pockets.
The major players in industries like marketing, technology, and startups simply pay to play. They spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars per article on salaries for content promoters and ad budgets to attract new followers.
In fact, paid content promotion has increased nearly 5x since 2014.
For the small or medium business owner, the truth is a bit discouraging: it’s prohibitively expensive to cut through with your own content.
But don’t lose hope. There’s a solution.
The secret to brand-building social media content (without breaking the bank)
The secret isn’t to create new content: it’s to curate and share the best content that others are writing.
That’s why more and more marketers are using content curation. It helps them boost their brand, establish credibility, and increase engagement with buyers.
You see, the problem is that there’s just too much information. And this has created the inverse problem: people are actually starting to resent the amount of information available.
Just like we’re overwhelmed by a huge number of emails in our inbox, it’s nearly impossible to find a good source of information.
If you’ve been frustrated with the 105,573,897,394 results in every Google search, you know what it feels like. And this is a perfect opportunity for you to step in and become the trusted expert.
How?
By curating the best content and sharing it on social media. You can reap the benefits of an excellent content marketing strategy without the expense or effort.
Even better, curated content does great on social media. You can become the source of the best type of content for those that want to learn more. As a result, you’ll become the trusted expert.
You can use curated content to build authority, grow brand awareness, and develop your credibility as a thought leader.
So, how well does curated content work on social media?
How curated content gets results on social media
In the day when everyone has a voice and can share their opinion, those with authority and credibility are the ones who can vouch for what really matters.
That’s why your authority online is one of the most valuable skills you can master.
Examples abound of companies, brands, and individuals who have used the power of content curation to rise to the top of their fields.
Marketer Ross Hudgens used content curation to grow Siege Media into one of the Inc. 5000 companies by skyrocketing his Twitter followers.
Curated content is so important, he says, that “Siege Media wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for content curation.”
An extreme claim? Perhaps. But as someone who manages marketing campaigns for clients like Airbnb, Shutterfly, and Y Combinator—he knows what he’s talking about.
You’ll be able to build up a following of readership through your promotion of the best pieces out there. This attracts people eager to find the best content available, but without the time to sort through everything there is.
(And don’t worry—you won’t need to sort through that content yourself. You’ll have a little secret that will help you curate the very best in just minutes.)
Using this curation can help you with whatever strategy you’re looking for. Whether that’s selling physical products, digital products, or just build up brand awareness, curated content has you covered.
Wholesome Culture, an eCommerce store, scaled to six figures in nine months by finding and sharing viral content like this through social media.
If you’re looking to promote mobile content, you might see even better results. According to Statista, 61% of North Americans use a mobile device to access social media.
This means you’re tapping into a huge market without the type of effort and expense it would usually require.
But perhaps the biggest advantage of using curated content is the leverage it gives you to build relationships with larger influencers and draw attention from them and their following.
You can use curated content to get the attention of influencers in your space by tagging them in posts, sharing their content, and engaging them by spreading their message.
In short, you can develop a social media following with content curation through a variety of ways.
But won’t it take an insane amount of work? Is it even possible to find all that content by yourself?
Well, there’s good news on that front, too.
How curation improves your efficiency
If you’re going to start a campaign to promote your brand or your site, you need a technique that’s going to be easy to get started and not require a ton of time to maintain.
The reality is that most giant marketing campaigns are simply too difficult, and instead of following through we get distracted, give up, and don’t get any benefit.
So will curated content fall into the same trap?
The answer is no. When done correctly, curated content can be one of the easiest promotion strategies available. Here’s how to make it work without spending too much time on the process.
Get automatic recommendations
The hard way to do content curation is to use a manual feed reader.
To do this, you’d need to find all the relevant sources one by one and start following them. You could check in on the most recent posts, then do the manual work of sharing their content.
But today’s technology lets us skip the manual part of the process and speed up the curation in a fraction of the time.
Using Scoop.it, you can view the top-performing content from your favorite sources from the main dashboard.
It’s a cinch to follow new sources for content, and you can quickly and easily see the shares in the sidebar. You’ll even get notifications with the content your followers are most likely to share and appreciate.
Even better, you don’t have to worry about spending lots of time revising and refining your posts. Instead, you just need to quickly skim and approve without the hassles of normal content curation.
Share seamlessly in a few clicks
With Scoop.it, you can quickly and seamlessly take a single content piece and share it to all your social networks with a few clicks. It’s a fast and easy process that makes sharing a cinch.
You can also use the Scoop.it bookmarklet from your browser to share content quickly when you find it. No more copy-and-paste hassle. You can be the first to share content in your network.
Make time for conversation and engagement
At the end of the day, you’ll want to engage more with your audience.
Since you’ll be able to automate most of the content curation and sharing, you can save extra time for engagement.
One of the best parts of curated content is that you can use it to maintain conversations with your audience. In a fraction of the time it takes to create a new piece of content yourself, you can share an existing piece of content and use this as a starting point for conversations with your fans.
Putting it all together, what kind of results can you expect to see from curation?
Of course, there’s no guarantee of success—it all depends on the work you put in. (Of course, with Scoop.it’s streamlined system it’s far easier to curate and share.)
But some case studies show huge gains. A great example is a small business that boosted traffic by 120% using Scoop.it.
When used consistently, those kind of results are achievable. You can skyrocket your followers and brand awareness using curations, without expending huge time and energy to create your own content.
Conclusion
If you’re wondering how to grow your social media strategy without the tedious effort it usually requires, you have your answer: content curation.
It’s the preferred method of today’s busy executives and entrepreneurs. You can set up a simple content curation system using Scoop.it and start reaping the benefits of an active social media account.
You’ll save time, energy, and effort while still building your authority and encouraging more signups to the platform you have to offer.
What is there to lose?
You want to create a real collaborative social media strategy for your company? ask for a demo of Scoop.it Enterprise!
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