How to Easily Curate Content for Twitter

curate content for Twitter

One thing we should all know by now is that it’s just not cool to talk about yourself all the time on Twitter (and social media in general). If you’re constantly promoting your own content and offerings without mixing other kinds of content in between, you risk turning off your community.

So, what’s the fix for this? You curate content for Twitter!

When you curate content, you’re sharing tweets that feature valuable content from other creators across the web. It’s as simple as that! Not only is it an opportunity for you to learn from others, but it provides those who follow you with plenty of great information to consume. And really, that’s what it’s all about… Being of service.

Content curation has other benefits as well. It’s cost-effective because you don’t always need to be creating content of your own to share. It helps you to generate more conversations with those in your community by giving them something to talk about. And it helps you connect with the influencer who created the content in the first place.

How to Easily Curate Content for Twitter

So, you now know the benefits of content curation for your Twitter profile (and other social media platforms as well). But how exactly do you find valuable, high-quality content to share? Let’s break down a few simple ways you can get the job done quickly each week.

1. Decide How Much Content You Want to Curate

The first thing you want to do is determine how much content you’re going to curate. It helps to balance out self-promotion with curation so you can be sure you aren’t going overboard with either one. Plus, it’s great when scheduling since you’ll know how many pieces of content you need to find.

Back in 2016, Curata conducted some research to find out how the top content marketers handle this. They found that a great mix of content contained:

  • 65% originally created content
  • 25% curated content
  • and 10% syndicated content.

Of course, you don’t have to follow this formula exactly. You want to figure out what works best for you and your audience. And don’t be afraid to test and tweak to see what resonates.

2. Consider What Your Audience Actually Wants to See

The next step to successfully curate content for Twitter is to be sure you’re delivering the content your audience wants to see. If you’re sharing a bunch of content that doesn’t appeal to them, you’re not going to see engagement in terms of retweets, replies, or link clicks. And you’ll likely lose good followers and attract all the wrong people to your account.

Instead, you need to be smart about what you’re sharing. Think about the topics that would interest them and make a list of everything they want to learn about. For example, I know my community is interested in tips regarding Twitter and social media in general, so that’s what I make sure to share. Once you have the topics down, you can find the right sources, which brings me to my next point…

3. Locate Top Sources & Add Them to a Twitter List

Make sure all of the sources you’re curating content from are high-quality. You only want to share the best content with your community. And once you know the topics you’d like to cover, you can easily find great sources who will provide the information you need.

Then, add them to a Twitter List! Not only does this take advantage of an amazing Twitter feature that’s still underutilized, but it keeps everything all in one place. This way, whenever you’re scheduling content, you can refer to this list and scroll through to find great blog posts and videos to share yourself.

You can also check out my blog post on Twitter Lists for more tips.

4. Keep Track of Your Favorite Sites With Feedly

Another great option is to use a tool like Feedly. It allows you to easily stay updated with all your favorite blogs and publications. Plus, you can also add Google keyword alerts to get new content that way as well. So, whenever you need to curate content for Twitter, you can simply open Feedly and see what your go-to sources have been posting lately.

5. Search BuzzSumo to Find Top-Performing Content

If you aren’t familiar with BuzzSumo, it’s a tool that analyzes which pieces of content perform the best for any topics or competitors in your field. With a quick and easy search, you can pull up a plethora of content that you can then share on Twitter.

For instance, I could search for something like “social media strategy” and discover a variety of posts from sources all across the web. Then, I’m able to read the content and decide whether it’s something I want to share with my community. It’s a great way to discover other content creators that you might not have known about otherwise.

6. Now, Start Scheduling Tweets!

You’ve taken the time to curate content for Twitter and now you have a list of amazing blog posts to share with everyone. The final step is to actually schedule the posts and fill up your social media queue. Keep an eye on your analytics afterwards to see which posts are gaining the most traction because this will influence your content curation strategy moving forward.

Call to Action:

  • Begin to curate content for Twitter by deciding what kind of topics you want to cover. As mentioned, make sure it’s something your audience will genuinely be interested in.
  • Then, create a Twitter List of your favorite sources and add them to Feedly as well for easy reference whenever you need to find content to post.
  • And finally, start filling up your queue with all the new posts you’ve discovered!