Beginners’ Guide to Content Curation and How to Do It Like a Pro

Content curation saves time and original ideas, while giving marketers a scope to stand out from the crowd by sharing informational data more efficiently, based on what is trending in the market.

According to IMN Inc., almost 82 percent of the marketers today utilize curated contents as a way of online promotion and publication of new topics. However, these are content marketing mediums that many (especially beginners) tend to misunderstand. Here is one thing that amateur content curators should never fail to remember and practice, when they choose to write this style of content.

Curated Contents are Neither Original Contents or Aggregate Contents

These are an amalgamation of relevant data and observation, carefully handpicked from the vast source of information that the online world holds.

The manner in which curated contents are produced makes these types the most highly qualified information shared in the internet today.

It is a process of production requiring both tactical and strategic approach. Some of the steps that are involved include:

• Defining the target audiences and the reason – Why would anyone care about what you write.
• Integration of defining metrics to create a broad strategy: A one-stop-shop.
• Analysis of the matter so as to match the business goals and the target audience needs.
• Filtering and classifying data that add an individual’s unique personal touch.
• Identifying proper tools and channels to share where target audience accumulation happen the most.

The unique thing about curated content is that this cost-effective strategy can add big value to one’s posts, if applied correctly. When shared online, such type of content performs better in terms of online engagement and conversion rate. You may refer to this data chart below to get some practical understanding as to how curated contents are star performers online in terms of the number of clicks and conversion rates.

Infact, curated content on the social media represent 47 percent of all clicks.

What Makes Content Curation Successful than Self-promoted Contents?

Original contents are no doubt prize winners. However, these are less effective and require huge investment of time and energy. The average time needed for the research and production of an original content can be as long as ten hours or even more. Besides, there are several other factors that a business marketer needs to look into and take care of, which makes it difficult for a person to devote so much time solely on creation of new content. The end result might not even turn out to be satisfactory as anticipated.

Content curation is an effective marketing strategy in the sense that one can take one great idea and combine it with other data to form an entirely different piece of story.

General Factors that Form a Curated Content

It Provides Context and Convenience

Not all online contents are well explained. There are instances where the data is even used incorrectly.

A content curator will take time to filter out relevant data, analyze it and then reframe so as to present readers with information that sounds relevant and useful.

It Refuses to Overwhelm

Curated contents are framed to target specific audience interest only. That is why; writers take great care to put only the message that is goal oriented. This cuts off unnecessary information overload, giving the reader a smooth reader experience and insights they would really care about.

It Adds an Editorial Value

Contents with editorial value convey an authoritative voice over a particular issue. Any data that is stated in the content is linked back to its original source. The endorsement builds up a network channel and gives readers a rationale proof of your domain expertise.

It Extends a Content Lifetime Value

An original piece of content might attract readership from some. However, the result will eventually diminish, leaving your content to lurk somewhere behind.

Curated contents on the other hand are interconnected with different other sets of content. This builds up a network that takes a reader back and forth from one page to another. You do not have to remain fixated to any particular niche and can continue to expand your horizon of expertise beyond.

It Impacts Your Search Engine Rank

Curated contents are value added. The high quality information and embedded links make the experience of readers more valuable. A good piece of content will naturally drive more traffic and hence, even influence the number of times it is shared online. This in turn affects the SEO ranking and the position on the search engine.

It Encourages Open Relationship

People love to get featured and when you refer to their observation in your content in the right way, they will appreciate it even more. This helps to build up a kind of symbiotic relationship that will help to build up strong brand recognition.

Essential Guidelines to Building the Perfect Curated Content

Content curation are worth an inspiration that all content marketers (who have not yet given it a try) should give a try. Just like any set of rules, content curation also has guidelines to follow.

It all starts with identifying the target audience and understanding what type of content would work out the best. Next, read down these few guidelines to make your curated contents unique in quality –

Organize the Best of Other People’s Research

Try gathering research based articles written by other people. These are often the storehouses of some of the best insights and explanations that you can put your hands down upon.

You may try using content curation tools like Reddit, Evernote, Feedly and many others to help you save interesting content topics.

Analyze Everything You Gather

Now the best way to find out which information is relevant to what you are going to write is by reading them. This helps to build up signature content quality the key to which only you would know how to frame. Reading through every piece of information to handpick only the information that you find would be helpful in composition and also would be valuable to link back to.

Add Your Individual Commentary

Remember, you are framing down a high quality based article that will help you to achieve some brand recognition. The only reason why you want people to read it and to convert is because you believe in a set of ideology that will help them around. And you want people to believe and to trust you. An individual commentary should be able to put your thoughts into the spotlight so that others can identify the message that you are trying to convey.

So make sure that you do not leave the data dangling aimlessly in your content. String them in a way such to support your beliefs. This will help to add up a professional touch to let your target audience realize who the real expert is.

Maintain Your Content Quality

High quality content also means keeping your body free from errors and plagiarisms – factors that can affect your content credibility and SEO ranking. It can even make your entire content presentation sloppy – something that is definitely not expected in an authoritative article.

Bad news is, these are often detected even in the materials written by top quality content writers. Here is what you can do to save your content presentation from poor typos and grammar –

• Recheck whatever you write for silly mistakes like proper placement of punctuation marks, upper case and lower case, etc. For more guidelines, you can refer to the 16 golden rules to writing great content online.
• Get it double checked via a good writing enhancement tool like Grammarly that will help to detect plagiarism and errors in your content. You should read the reviews and compare it with other products before you actually opt for it

Make it Design Friendly

Presentation matters a lot in every internet marketing medium, especially when it is blending design with content.

In content marketing, proper framing and organization are the key things that matter in the entire presentation. Most readers would only be interested to read out specific parts in your entire content. Therefore, your content should be build for the mass target audience – that is, readers who have ample time to read everything that you write and readers who don’t have time but would live to give a surface glance and yet understand the gist in short.

Here are some things that you must take care not to miss out in the way you present the content:

• Featured Subheads
• Bullet points
• Paragraphs
• Not more than 4-5 lines in each paragraphs
• Use of proper visual information to compliment

Give your content the professional look that it deserves.

Impress Your Influencers

It’s similar to giving credit to people after a wonderful stage performance. Giving out credits to the original creators helps to build up a good relationship and which leads to the formation of a separate distribution base. An important thing to keep in mind is that – you must present your influencers in the best way possible. That is one thing that they highly care about. If they are not impressed with what you have done with their image, your chance of gaining much from the creation is very limited. The best ways to do this are –

• Posting an excerpt and linking it to the original excerpt with the name
• Adding glowing recommendations with cropped pictures of the influencers in your content

These will impress them and they would be pleased to share more upcoming information with you in the future.

Conclusion - Curate a Content that is Threesome Lovable

Readers will love you for the information that you share, making their search easier. Influencers on the other hand, will love you for featuring them with the best compliments.

While Google search bots will love you for publishing a content that is valued for information. Follow the steps and no barrier to conversion will remain closed for you. Do let me know how your content curation goes.