Every business has a content marketing strategy it uses to engage audiences across multiple channels and lead them down the sales funnel.
A large part of this content strategy is content curation. While creating original content is great, it’s unrealistic to expect unique content for every daily social media post. This is why most content marketers use a mix of original and curated content.
Curated content also affects sales. An audience that perceives your brand as a credible authority in your niche is more likely to purchase your products or services. Links within bios and social media posts also lead readers directly to your products, making purchasing easier.
In this article, we’ll uncover how curated content fits into your content marketing strategy and how you can build a content strategy that boosts the bottom line.
The role of content curation in content marketing
Content curation is the process of collecting and sharing great content with your target audience via your social media channels, website, and email marketing newsletters. It’s a great tactic to use when trying to complement the original content you’re already posting.
The content you share can include articles, infographics, videos, podcasts, blog posts from industry experts, and more.
The foundation of any effective content marketing strategy is good content. However, many organizations and teams don’t have the resources or time to publish a long-form blog post or expert interview two to three times a week. Content curation solves this problem.
With curation, the audience gets valuable content they can engage with, while marketing teams can rely on external content to supply their current content distribution.
Benefits of content curation
Here’s why curated content should be a part of every content marketing strategy:
- Boost customer relationships
Curated content is a great way to connect with your audience. For example, sharing an infographic from a reputed source allows you to start a discussion regarding that topic in the comments.
Your curation strategy can also include user-generated content, allowing you to spotlight a follower and show the audience that you value their input.
All of this builds a better connection with your community.
- Build credibility with your audience
Content curation helps you stand out as a thought leader that knows their industry and products. It tells readers that you’re committed to providing them with value and establishes you as an expert authority in your field.
- Highlight your products
You can also curate content that lets you highlight your products within context. For example, you can share a blog post on the difficulties of using SEO tools and link to your tool in the caption or comments with an added excerpt on how you can help.
- Create a diverse social media feed
Move past standard marketing content and liven up your brand’s social media profiles with interesting third-party or user-generated content. A varied social feed keeps audiences engaged.
- Form relationships with influencers
Sharing content from influencers and experts increases the odds of them engaging with your posts. Use this to build relationships with these influential people. It can eventually lead to a beneficial influencer marketing campaign.
- Save time and money
Curating content reduces the burden that comes with consistently creating original content for all your social channels or websites. This helps you save time and money that would’ve been spent on creating more content.
Build an efficient content curation strategy to drive sales
Here are five tips on building a content curation strategy to boost sales.
1. Focus on your target audience
Content marketers often make the mistake of sharing any relevant information related to their industry. But is this what their target audience really wants?
Every marketing strategy has a target buyer persona that is most likely to buy. Your content curation strategy must focus on this persona as well.
While it’s tempting to share general industry updates in the hopes of attracting a larger viewership, it won’t appeal to the specific customers you’re trying to attract.
Build a content curation strategy that focuses on your target audience’s primary social media platforms. For example, if they prefer Twitter over Instagram, cater to that and create an effective strategy for Twitter.
Also, understand their pain points and focus on how you can solve them. Share content that helps solve these problems while still highlighting your products.
Other patterns are also important for your sales-focused content curation strategy, such as the time your target audience is most active online or the number of posts they want to see every week.
Market research and social media metrics will help you understand these patterns. For example, if your posts receive most of their likes and comments on Wednesdays and Fridays from 5 to 9 pm, then this is the right time to publish content.
2. Analyze your competitors
Once you’ve figured out the golden ratio of curated content to post, it’s time to analyze your competitors to see what resonates with your target audience.
Perform keyword research and explore the tags for these terms on social platforms to see what others in the industry are posting. Is it leading to actual engagement with their audiences?
Competitor analysis is also great for understanding current trends and learning how to create relevant content for them.
You can see what your competitors are doing and gain inspiration for new ideas. For example, you can observe how they highlight their products in curated content and lead readers into the sales funnel. Then, you can brainstorm and implement your own techniques.
3. Share content with a purpose
The content you curate needs to be tailored. It shouldn’t be a mix of random sources and posts. Create a specific strategy specific to your niche, the latest trends within it, and topics revolving around your products.
Everyone within a niche isn’t selling similar products to your brand. If you’re in the local music industry, your primary product could be rock band guides or resources on easy songs to learn on guitar, while your competitors focus on classical instrument guides and tips to read sheet music. So, their curated content strategy and trends are not relevant to yours.
Focus on topics that will actually help you bring attention to your products, whether that’s through a caption or a comparison image.
It’s also a great idea to share local content that resonates more with your customers. The same goes for user-generated content, aka content created by customers who post about your products or services.
Here’s an example from Maybelline, which shared content created by a makeup artist who used its products to achieve a stunning look.
User-generated content is relevant, authentic, and shows audiences that you value your customers. It adds to your content curation strategy and can include memes, screenshots, and testimonials.
If you want to share user-generated content, it’s recommended to ask users for their permission before reposting.
4. Use more than one platform
Like most digital marketing strategies, content curation is effective when it encompasses multiple platforms. While most of your strategy will focus on platforms your target persona prefers, you must still cater to other mediums.
Apart from different social channels, curated email newsletters are great for content marketing. They provide users with updates on a topic they’re interested in and drive them back to your landing pages. Curated newsletters are also an excellent internal communication tool for employee engagement.
Here’s an example of a curated newsletter from investment platforms Stockal and Scripbox.
You can also embed content from other sources on your website or blog to pad existing original content. This will help you scale your content production, increase brand credibility, and improve web traffic.
5. Monitor and optimize
Content marketing is heavily reliant on monitoring and analyzing the right metrics. The same applies to curated content. You need to track metrics related to views, engagement, and click-throughs to see if your strategy is working or if changes need to be made.
Sales will dwindle if audiences engage with social posts but do not click through to your product or service pages. It’s a sign that you need to implement different tactics. Maybe you can change what you’re posting about or post at a different time.
Use tools like Google Analytics to analyze your website and blog. Most social media platforms have marketing analytics enabled that allow businesses to monitor content. Take advantage of these to analyze your performance and fine-tune your content curation strategy.
Wrapping up
Content curation is ideal if you want to spruce up your content marketing strategy. It reduces content creation costs while simultaneously boosting content distribution and audience engagement.
While you can’t rely solely on content curation, you can sprinkle curated content into your existing marketing content to liven up your website, blog, or social feed. Our content curation hub has all the resources you need to learn more about content curation and its benefits.
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