Content Curation on Social Media: Its Benefits and How to Get Started
Are you curating content to share across your social media platforms? If not, you should be! By curating great content from other creators (whether it’s a blog, video, podcast, etc.), you’ll have a whole other opportunity to provide value to your audience outside of content you’ve created yourself. Not only is this good for driving engagement, but it provides tremendous value, which is why people are likely following you in the first place.
In this post, I’m sharing the benefits of content curation on social media, plus a few tips on how to get started with this practice.
The Benefits of Content Curation on Social Media
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can only share your own, original content on social media. There are tons of creators out there who are doing amazing things. And it’s worth sharing that with your audience. Here are a few benefits content curation provides:
- It helps keep your social media accounts active. You won’t have to stress about filling your scheduler’s queue with repeat posts about the same old content from your archives. Instead, you can supplement your content with content from other great creators.
- It provides value. If you come across something you know your audience would appreciate and could learn something from, share it. It’s that valuable content that keeps them coming back for more time and time again.
- It’ll position you as a thought leader. Sharing great content shows people that you know your stuff. And it’s even better when you can add your own unique take to curated posts.
- You’ll see which posts resonate with your audience by monitoring your analytics. Then, you can use that information to shape your future content strategy.
How to Get Started With Content Curation
Content curation is a very simple practice, so it’s easy to get started. By following these tips, you’ll be able to fill your social media queue with tons of incredible content in no time!
1. Know Your Audience
The first step in successful content curation is to understand your audience, their interests, and their needs. You want to ensure the content you’re sharing will resonate and appeal to them. This will help generate more engagement in terms of likes, shares, and conversations. If you’re sharing content that’s not of interest to your target audience, they’ll scroll right past.
Consider what they’d be interested in learning about and what would address any pain points they’re struggling with. The more helpful your content is (whether it’s something you created or it’s from another source), the higher the engagement you’ll potentially receive.
2. Compile a List of Quality Resources
Next, you need to know where you’re going to gather content from. There are tons of resources on the web, but you want to choose those that are reputable and providing quality content. After all, you’re going to be referring your target audience their way. You want to make sure anything you’re sharing a link to is going to deliver on what it promises.
Odds are, you have a few favorite resources in mind already. The trick is staying updated with all the content they’re sharing. And there are a couple of easy ways you can do this. Here are my suggestions:
- Create a Twitter list that features all of your favorite content creators. Then, when you’re looking to curate content, you can visit this list and see what they’ve been sharing lately. A simple retweet with a few of your own personal comments and you’re good to go!
- Use a tool like Feedly that allows you to save all of your favorite websites in one place. You can scroll through a list of all their recent content and find posts that you’d be interested in sharing with your audience.
- Search keywords relevant to your industry via BuzzSumo to see what others are sharing regarding the topics your audience is interested in.
3. Read the Full Post Before Sharing
It’s no secret that headlines can be rather misleading these days. Many creators are using clickbait headlines to attract traffic to their websites, only to provide lackluster content that doesn’t deliver on its promises. Don’t waste your audience’s time by sharing links to these types of blog posts. Take the time to read a post in its entirety before sharing it. This way, you’ll know whether or not it’s worthwhile to post about.
Related: 3 Things You Should Do Before Retweeting a Post
4. Add Your Own Thoughts
To really take your content curation to the next level, strive to always add your own thoughts and opinions to every post. While this takes additional time when compared to just hitting the “share” button, it creates more opportunities for engagement. That’s because you’ll be starting a new conversation with the original creator and with your audience as well.
So, each time you’re sharing content from someone else, add your thoughts. Share why you liked the post. Expand on it with your own opinions. You can even ask questions! It’s such an easy way to get people talking to you.
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