Ever notice how some brands always seem to have the perfect content at the perfect time? It’s not magic — it’s the result of smart content curation and savvy distribution.
Mastering content curation and distribution sets you above the competition as a thought leader who knows their stuff.
In this article, we’ll share why good content curation is so important and provide 5 actionable tips to help you achieve your goals.
Why a content curation strategy is crucial
402.74 million terabytes of digital data are created each day. That’s an unfathomable amount of information available on the internet.
Unsurprisingly, 81% of people feel the itch to unsubscribe from messaging due to information fatigue. There’s simply a tsunami of messaging hitting us from all sides all of the time.
This is what makes content curation so crucial.
When you establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry through careful, quality curation, your target audience knows you supply valuable content that they don’t have to go slogging up a digital Mount Everest to access.
The more relevant content you curate for them, the greater your credibility becomes and the more engaged your audience will be.
Key components of a successful content curation strategy
A good content curation process is more than hitting “share” on a few pieces of content weekly. Curation should be integral to your content strategy, beginning with these critical components.
Know your audience
You can’t effectively curate content for your target audience if you have no idea who that audience is.
Dig into your analytics to understand your audience and what type of content they’re engaging with the most.
Pay attention to demographic markers such as:
- Age
- Location
- Interests
- Gender identity
- Generational culture
Curate your content accordingly.
Find high-quality content sources
Becoming a reliable content curator means you are sorting through the digital noise to bring your target audience the best of the best,
To do this, you need to be curating from high-quality sources.
Tools like Scoop.it are invaluable for this task for several reasons:
Automated Content Discovery: Scoop.it uses algorithms to find and recommend content based on relevance, quality, and credibility. This helps you discover high-quality sources without extensive manual searching.
Customizable Filters: Users can set filters to prioritize content from trusted sources. This ensures that only high-quality material is curated. You can set filters by keywords, publication date, source authority, and more.
Trusted Source Integration: Scoop.it integrates with established content databases and platforms known for their high-quality standards. These integrations streamline curation by ensuring a steady flow of valuable content.
Keep your content organized
Any time you’re dealing with a large volume of content in different formats, staying organized is crucial to efficiency.
Good organization means that every type of content in your repository is easy to find, you can build efficient scheduling and posting systems, and your messaging and branding are consistent.
Tools like Pocket and Feedly allow you to tag and categorize content to stay organized.
Scoop.it also has a feature that allows you to highlight and organize content for specific campaigns or topics.
5 steps to mastering content curation and distribution
Mastering content curation and distribution is not complex, but it does take forethought and organization.
These 5 steps will increase your content curation and expand your platform and customer engagement.
Listen to your audience
Listening to your audience is your number 1 priority. If you curate content that isn’t helpful to anyone, you won’t have an audience to curate for.
Your curation should be targeted and specific, which will separate you from the bots. Specific, engaging content from reliable sources will keep your readers returning.
Use these tactics to understand what your audience wants:
Social listening – Monitor social media platforms and online communities to understand what your audience says about your brand.
Customer data – Who is your audience? What demographics do they fall in? What do they care about? Dig into your data to find these essential insights.
Survey feedback – Partner with your sales and customer success teams to leverage customer feedback management tools for build surveys and analyze the responses from your target audience.
Social media posts – Actively engage with your audience on social media platforms by responding to comments, participating in discussions, and asking questions.
Build the right tech stack
The right tech stack will help you immeasurably as you learn to master content creation and distribution.
The right tools will streamline your process, keep you organized, and make distribution a breeze.
Scoop.it is a powerful tool for curating, organizing, and distributing your content.
Other tools, like Sprout Social, help with social listening and engagement to gather customer data, as well as with planning, scheduling, and posting on social media.
Think through your goals, needs, and the size of your content marketing team. You don’t want to become overloaded with unnecessary subscriptions, but you want to be as efficient as possible with your limited resources.
Look for all-in-one solutions wherever possible and let the tech do the heavy lifting.
Utilize multiple distribution channels
Curating high-quality content is not enough — you must also distribute it to reach a wider audience.
Choosing the proper distribution channels to reach your target audience is important.
For instance, if your primary engagement comes from newsletters, you should focus your resources on cultivating your mailing lists instead of starting a TikTok account because you’ve heard everybody has one.
However, if your primary demographic skews younger, not having long-form videos in your content strategy may hurt you.
Chime, a fintech company, is an excellent example of using multiple distribution channels for their target audience.
By leveraging Instagram’s visual appeal and interactive features, Chime effectively curates content that resonates with younger demographics, highlighting the benefits of its products, such as debit cards, credit cards, and checking accounts.
Social media platforms are popular channels for distribution, but there are others. Don’t be afraid to get creative and try other distribution channels such as:
- Influencer partnerships
- Industry collaborations
- Syndicated platforms
- Online communities
- Discord channels
- Slack groups
- Newsletters
- RSS feeds
Stay on-brand
Though it may be tempting at times to share funny or thought-provoking content, if it doesn’t suit your brand voice, you should avoid sharing it.
Maintaining a consistent brand voice and identity across all curated content reinforces your brand’s message and values. This clarifies who you are and what you’re about, which builds trust and reliability among your audience.
Know what your brand voice is and stick to it.
A brand that does this exceedingly well is HubSpot.
HubSpot offers a plethora of free content. Their blog and resource hub features original and curated content covering various topics relevant to marketing, sales, and customer service professionals.
From its blogs and email newsletters to its podcast and free Academy, HubSpot stays on brand and maintains a constant stream of valuable content for its audience.
Track performance and analyze results
Tracking and analyzing your performance is crucial because you have no metric for measuring success otherwise.
You must first start with a baseline. What are your current traffic numbers? What are your click-through rates? Bounce rates? Engagement?
From there, you want to establish your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which are stats that measure your success.
Good KPIs to track for content curation are:
- Audience growth rate
- Social media shares
- Time spent on page
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- On-page traffic
- Bounce rate
- Backlinks
When setting KPIs, your goals should be clear, specific, and measurable.
Good KPI Example:
Boost social media engagement (likes, shares, comments) by 15% over the next quarter.
Poor KPI Example:
Get more likes on social
The goal in the first example is clear. It includes a set time frame and a specific number by which to measure success.
The second example sets the same goal (better social media engagement) but doesn’t include a time frame or measurement to evaluate success.
Your goals should change as you gather more data, and your content curation strategy will need to adjust as you discover more about your audience and their pain points.
There are many tools available to help you do this.
For analytics, tools like Google Analytics, Social Media Dashboards, and CMS Analytic Dashboards will give you insight into what your users are engaging with.
Heat maps and session recordings provided by tools like HotJar and CrazyEgg show how users interact with your content in real-time, making them powerful tools.
Visualizing your data can also help you understand it better. Tools like Google Data Studio and Power BI enable you to visualize your progress. This makes it easier to spot current trends, where you’re succeeding, and where you need to focus more effort.
Curate and distribute like a pro
Mastering content curation and distribution is all about listening to your audience and presenting them with high-quality content that meets their needs. Learn who your audience is. Stay organized as you accumulate top-tier content from reliable sources, and watch your audience grow.
If you’re ready to streamline your curation and distribution process, sign up to Scoop.it for free, or book a demo to see how we can help you achieve your content curation goals.
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