The Psychology of Curated Content: Understanding User Behaviour To Create More Engaging Content

To maximize the effectiveness of your marketing, you need to understand your target audience members. The psychology of curated content can massively impact how effective your content is, how authoritative your brand seems in its niche or industry, and more.

So, where should you start? Read on to learn more about how to understand user behaviour and leverage user psychology to create and deliver more engaging, curated content.

What Is Curated Content?

Curated content is content you collect and post on your brand website from other sources, like reputable research publications, fellow brands in your industry, or even subsidiary blogs under your control.

Source

For example, you might have a blog post that curates content from researchers across your niche. The blog post discusses the research and links to the direct research papers so your target audience can see the information in its entirety and from its original source.

Curated content is a very valuable content type for brands of all sizes. That’s because:

• It doesn’t have to be created from scratch, which frees up time for your writers or marketers to focus on other marketing materials.
• Curated content is highly effective at boosting brand authority. By showcasing content that backs up your claims or assertions, your audience will trust your claim within its respective niche.
• Curated content can help divert traffic to other sites in your marketing ecosystem, helping fellow brands or subsidiary brands under your main enterprise.

Regardless, curated content has to be developed and delivered smartly by accounting for user psychology.

What Psychological Factors Influence Content Reception?

The psychology of your website users, product buyers, and other audience members can heavily influence which content is received most positively and why that content benefits your brand. Let’s take a closer look.

Personalization

People don’t like being spoken to or interacted with as nameless cogs in a brand machine. Instead, they want personalized content that feels tailored to their unique interests or needs (regardless of whether it actually is).

In other words, your brand users want to feel like you are personally interacting with them and find them valuable members of your user base. Therefore, the content you curate should be:

• Driven by the personal interests of your target audience members
• Highly relevant to their interests or needs – this can be done by considering what your audience members/users have in common or need from your brand.
• If possible, it should be addressed to individual users or website visitors. This is often possible when it comes to curated email marketing content, like an email highlighting important research or development in your industry.

Regardless, personalization increases the likelihood that users will read the content you curate for them. It also helps to boost brand loyalty, user satisfaction, and other critical KPIs.

Social Proof

Social proof is also an important psychological factor when it comes to content of any type. It includes any reviews or testimonials from others among the same audience or user group.

Source

For example, say that you have curated content highlighting all the best elements of your most recent product release. The content includes curated research papers, white papers, and blog posts from your brand.

In addition to that, you include positive user testimonials about the product. This serves as a form of social proof, improving trust in your content and your brand overall. Don’t discount this major psychological factor when trying to draw in new users. Many people won’t try a new brand without sufficient social proof.

Persuasiveness of Writing

Lastly, the persuasiveness of the writing in the content can also impact its effectiveness and value. People are swayed by persuasive, interesting writing that talks to them with the right tone of voice, uses the right vocabulary, and so on.

Hire skilled copywriters to curate content for you or improve your own writing skills so that you create persuasive, compelling content.

How To Leverage Psychology When Curating Content

Now that you know the most important psychological factors that affect content reception, it’s time to put that information to use.

Curate Only Relevant Content

Be sure only to curate relevant content. If you put together content and packages for your readers, and they are filled with irrelevant content (like blog posts or research articles from other industries or niches), your users likely won’t read it. In the worst-case scenario, they could take this as a sign that you don’t know what you’re doing and lose faith in your brand overall.

Deliver Curated Content Wisely

Lastly, remember to always deliver curated content smartly and consistently to your audience members. For example, you might put together a new curated content article piece – which collects several of your best blog posts over the last year – and send it to those on your email marketing list. Naturally, curated content is only valuable if the right people see it.

Look for workflow software that can automatically deliver curated content to your target audience. The best workflow software will help automate your workflows by integrating with automated email and social media marketing platforms as well.

Make Valuable Points/Messages Clear

Any content curated in an article or post collection should have its most valuable messages, points, and other elements clearly listed at the beginning of the article. These days, most people skim through articles rather than reading them word by word. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean you should get to the point quickly before allowing your viewers to go through the curated content at their own pace.

For example, if you have a roundup post listing your best articles of the last year plus research papers, break down the highlights of those articles and research papers at the beginning. That includes links to all the more detailed information throughout the rest of the article.

Wrap Up

Curated content can dramatically improve your marketing, audience loyalty, and brand authority. But be sure to take user psychology into account when developing and delivering curated content to your audience members. It’s the only way to ensure your content lands as effectively as possible.