93% of businesses use some sort of content marketing in their marketing strategy, which makes sense considering it costs 62% less than traditional marketing methods, generates almost 3x as many leads and 90% of consumers prefer to learn about a brand through content rather than ads. Content marketing is win-win if done well and encompasses social media, blogging, SEO, email marketing and other organic and owned channels. And one of the easiest ways to constantly share and create new ideas is through content curation tools.
One of the reasons content marketing is so cost effective and generates so many leads is because it relies on your work and wisdom to engage your customers and prospects and pulls them into your business’ marketing channels that continue to foster relationships and convert them. By providing helpful, insightful or enjoyable material to your customers right from the start, they only want to learn more from you and interact with your business further by coming in, calling, following you on social media, signing up for emails or subscribing to your blog.
While it is profitable, over half of companies struggle with producing enough engaging content for their audience. The biggest challenge in content marketing is finding the ideas behind each piece of content!
So what is the fastest way for you to think of the next great blog post, infographic or video that will go viral (or maybe just engage your audience a bit more)? The answer is: content curation tools, a wonderfully simple way to relieve the pressure on you to create so much content on your own.
What is Content Curation?
Very simply, content curation is finding other people’s content to share, selecting only the best items that are relevant and hard-hitting for your audience. So for a yoga studio who is looking for content, curation would consist of gathering and sharing different 3rd party articles about a particular vinyasa, popular yoga pins, FAQs on yoga, inspiring quotes on pictures of yoga poses — things their audience might find helpful and that they found useful or thoughtful in some way.
We all look for ways to save time, our most precious resource. If you can save people time and point to the best information on a subject, you create a tremendous amount of value to your customers.
Here are some other examples of how to create valuable content curation:
A children’s play space or educational service can post events for families from the neighborhood, latest research on education and curation of the best educational toys for the holiday season.
A plumber can post how-to videos found on Youtube that show how to do simple things, like getting a ring that fell down the sink drain, share articles that talk about what to do following certain plumbing emergencies to lessen damage and curate product reviews for showerheads and sink faucets.
A restaurant could curate events occurring in the area, as well as the benefit to certain ingredients they use and how certain dishes are created from scratch, such as pasta.
A retailer can share the latest trends appearing for their particular product, where certain styles have been seen on celebrities and how to best combine or style certain trends.
While it provides enough value to just share the content, you can also provide your own spin on it to help solidify your brand voice. Curating content brings it all together so that it can inspire your own content. It is an inspiration board for your future work.
The yoga studio could take that pin they liked that showed how to do a certain Yoga pose and turn it into a short how-to video series on various poses. The FAQs could inspire an infographic on beginner yoga. The vinyasa article could turn into one explaining what a vinyasa is (which is one I would be interested in reading).
Content curation tools gathers things that inspire and interest you or your business’ area of expertise and then lets you take your own spin on them.
Curating Starts With Finding Content
Begin by setting aside a few minutes each day or week to gather various content about your particular subject together. Maybe it is ten minutes at the beginning of your workday, during lunch or at the end the day, just devote time to it. The more it is a habit, the easier it will be. And it’s educational to read about your industry and be up-to-date on the latest news. Again, win-win.
The second step is curating it in some fashion, using a content curation tool that makes it simple for you to sit down and just scroll through content to find what piques your interest the most.
Start by Watching What Successful Content Competitors Post
Facebook Page Insights allows you to watch competitors and see which of their posts do the best
Twitter allows you to create private lists so that you can follow competitor posts without anyone knowing
Using a RSS reader you can follow competitor’s blogs, tracking what they are writing about and what topics they capitalize on
Remember a lot of what they are posting is curation and linking to 3rd party sites. Of course, you probably don’t want to post content that leads to them, but the 3rd party sites they are curating from and topics they regularly discuss can become a part of your content plan as well.
But just because it works for your competitors doesn’t mean it will work for you. Stay true to what your business offers and what your audience appreciates from you for the most effective content.
Best Content Curation Tools
Feedly
Feedly is a RSS reader, which means it can pull in multiple blogs automatically into a single inbox. You choose topics you want to follow and add blogs that post articles about these topics.
A plumber could search the topic “plumbing” and be shown multiple blogs that regularly write about common plumbing mistakes, helpful solutions for plumbers and a variety of plumbing related articles. Feedly allows you to simple search the service your business provides and find popular blogs to follow. And if you already have a favorite blog you follow, you can simply add it to your list.
When you sit down to curate interesting articles you can go into Feedly, select your topic “Plumbing”and see featured articles as well as a stream of articles from the sites you added to that topic. Or you can look at each blog you added to the topic “Plumbing.”
When you find an article that inspires you, save it for later so you can return to that inspiration or record that new idea elsewhere. The downside to using a reader like Feedly is that you don’t have a place to make notes, besides saving the article for later.
Hashtags.org
Hashtags.org allows you to search different hashtags, how each one is performing on social media, common hashtags used in conjunction with one, profiles who frequently use them and recent social posts containing them.
Looking at what people are already sharing with a particular hashtag or even how well it is performing can show you if it is a topic you should be writing about or if there are other topics that connect to it.
A florist could search #flowers and see when it was most frequently shared in the past 24 hours, profiles that frequently use that profile and, most helpful, see what hashtags are frequently shared with it. Hashtags such as #wedding, #moms and #garden could inspire an article about the latest wedding flower trends or an image how-to properly trim flowers from your garden.
To get the most in-depth information about a hashtag you will need to upgrade, plans start at $49 a month. For those looking for inspiration, the free plan should cover your needs, giving you insight to what people talk about the most when using a particular hashtag.
Eventful
If you are interested in what’s going on in your community but don’t know where to start, look no further then Eventful. This site pulls in top events in the community and allows local venues to even add events in their area.
A local bar could see what events are going on in their area that week and share exciting concerts, like The Black Keys playing a local venue. They could go even further by posting on social and their blog that there will be a special for anyone coming in that night with a Black Keys ticket!
Search events in your area by inputting your zip code and searching through the results that most relate to your business. For a bar that could be local concerts, festivals or sports games.
Quora
While this won’t show you articles or popular posts on other sites it will show you what your potential audience is interested in learning more about. Quora allows people to post questions and the community answers them. By searching the topic your content focuses on you can find what questions people are asking (and gain exposure by answering those questions as well).
A small business that helps people learn languages could search “difficulties with Russian language” and find multiple questions on where/how people can start learning Russian, the challenges and how someone can learn many different languages. These questions could become infographics (‘How to Start Learning Russian, the Easy Way’) or articles for a blog, such as ‘The Secret to Learning Multiple Languages.’
Content Idea Generator
While this does not curate other content for you, it curates content ideas, which is exactly what you’re looking for! Just input answers about your business in 18 questions and have over 100 ideas at your fingertips. These won’t be the best ideas or maybe even make sense, but they are a starting block. They can give you a different perspective on your topic that has the potential to be really interesting.
The results for an accountant don’t all make sense but they pique interest enough that they could each be a compelling piece.
Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
Similar to Content Idea Generator, Hubspot’s version gives you 5 article titles for a weeks worth of content. You input 3 keywords (nouns) and are given generic titles that could be content right off the spot or need some tweaks to be a worthwhile article for your audience.
An organic pizza joint could input words like ‘pizza,’ ‘organic ingredients,’ and ‘local restaurants’ and come up with some ideas they maybe would have never thought of like “What will pizza be like in 100 years?”
What is great about this content topic generator is it doesn’t take a lot of time, just some keywords to get something you can run with. It’s a great first step. Once you understand the types of blog topics it recommends, you will naturally come up with them on your own.
Buzzsumo
Harnessing the powers of social shares, Buzzsumo shows you the most shared content of any keyword you select. And it’s not just “content” in a generic form, you can choose whether you’re looking for infographics, videos, articles and more.
The hardest part about content curation here is thinking of relevant keywords. Take a vocal coach for example, searching ‘vocal training,’ ‘learn how to sing,’ ‘great singer tips.’ A lot of the results lead back to one website that has over 3,000 shares. While you may want to check out what they are doing to receive so many shares, that doesn’t help you think of your next blog article. But a change of keywords brings up three articles that your singing audience would appreciate, such as ‘Tips to Keeping Your Voice Sounding Fresh’ and ‘How to Sound Like Arianna Grande.’
Organize Your Content Ideas
You’ve found the articles to inspire, but now you need a place to organize all that genius. Don’t feel limited to just writing them on a sticky note (I wouldn’t recommend that way either, you will lose it). Use a method that makes organizational sense to you so you never lose track of content ideas.
Some great free online applications for project management to take advantage of are Trello and Evernote (which both have apps for on-the-go). But don’t forget tried and true methods like an editorial calendar.
Start setting aside some time in your week to sit down and scroll through one of the content curation tools above for your go-to idea generation. Quickly those writer-block days will be in your past and you’ll start seeing your content marketing success in social shares and SEO.
Conclusion
Now you have the tools to find and organize content, you just have to take advantage of them! A good rule of thumb for content sharing is the 80/20 rule. 80% of the content you share can be from 3rd parties that are providing helpful pins, pictures, how-tos and the other 20% is original content inspired by all of your experience and exposure to your specific business field.
Make a schedule for yourself where you set aside ten minutes every workday or an hour once a week to curate content to share with your audience, help you catch up on what is going on in your industry and think up new ideas for your own original content.
Content Sharing and Syndication
Lastly, make sure you make the most out of your content! Between blog articles, Youtube videos and all the corresponding micro-content you want to be sharing your content everywhere for your current and prospective audience to find. With a local content marketing platform like LocalCast, you can syndicate your content to every local channel (social media, directories, news sites, email lists, coupon sites, etc.).
Measure Content Engagement and Metrics Across All Your Channels
Then you can track which content ranks the highest on Google, which content has the most reads and engagement across channels, see what people are saying about you with social-listening and see the results from your local marketing on every channel to get the most out of all the content your curate and publish.
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