Curating Content: What Other Articles Don’t Tell You

Ed Pronley

June 2, 2022 (Updated: May 4, 2023)

woman organizing her content on her laptop and phone simultaneously

Curating content can sometimes feel more like an art than a science. That’s because, even with an abundance of data and research, it’s still difficult to know exactly what your audience is thinking and what they want to see. But don’t worry, we’re here to help you sort through all the ambiguity of curated content and help you create a winning curation strategy. In this article, we discuss:

What Is Curated Content?
Benefits of Curating Content
Does Curated Content Only Work For Social Media?
How Much Content Should You Curate?
How To Curate Content

What Is Curated Content?

Image via Unsplash by Luis Villasmil

Curated content is valuable content that a brand highlights for its audience, most of whom have probably not seen the content in the first place. In most cases, when describing content curation, most people use the word “curation” in place of “promotion.” And that’s a good way to remember it. When brands curate content, they’re finding the best content to promote to their audience and grab their attention. Curated content can come from anywhere, that includes external sources and businesses, to the content on your very own website. The point is to give something to your audience you think they’ll find useful and important, no matter where it came from.

Does Curated Content Only Work For Social Media?

Traditionally, if you research curating content and how to perform it, people mainly talk about social media. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When you curate for social media, you’re working to catch the current trend. Not only does that always put you a little behind on what’s currently popular, but its popularity is already fading. What people often forget to do is curate content on their own website.

It’s important to go through your older content, polish it, and promote it to your audience. That way, you can continue to keep your audience on your site and possibly convert them into customers or clients. The best part is, when you curate your own content and organize it by relevant categories, it will stay relevant and beneficial for longer. You’re not catching up on a trend, you’re acting like a museum. You’re digging through your archive of 20,000 fossils, paintings, and sculptures and picking the best ones to represent that art form or dynasty.

Benefits of Curating Content

Here are some of the main benefits you can receive by practicing content curation:

Increases Satisfaction

When you curate content for your audience, you show them things you know will interest them. Seeing recommended articles, blogs, and other pieces of content that relate to their needs and problems can help boost their satisfaction and increase their loyalty to your brand. No matter if you curate for social media or your own website, you’re recommending helpful information that gives value to your readers.

Demonstrates Your Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a fancy term for saying you know what you’re doing. Whether you’re creating excellent original content for your audience, or you’re recommending content from other sources, you know what’s going on in your industry and why it’s important. When you share that content with your audience, they see your understanding of the industry and how you can help them. If you’re curating content from other sources, it also shows that you care about your audience’s challenges and well-being enough to look outside of your own expertise.

Builds Relationships

When you constantly show your audience content that interests them, it helps to build a relationship with them. The more relevant and helpful the content is, the more likely they’ll come back for more. The more they come back, the stronger the trust they have for your brand. This helps to develop a cycle where readers who love what you recommend go from normal audience members to qualified leads for your sales department.

Improves Marketing Endeavors

Speaking of, curating content can help improve your marketing strategies in other ways. When you curate content on social media and build satisfaction, it encourages people to go through your previous posts. Here, they might find links to your website or to other content you produce, furthering their journey down the sales funnel.

If you curate on your own website, it creates a call to action for people to explore your company further. Those other pieces of content might include calls to action of their own, encouraging your audience to download additional content, sign up for an email newsletter, or simply make a purchase.

How Much Content Should You Curate?

Though people often ask this question when referring to social media curation, it’s important to keep in mind for your website’s curation as well. The best thing to remember is that it’s not a matter of quantity, but quality. If you’re constantly sharing content on social media for the sake of boosting your presence, you might gain a lot of likes (or not, since social media algorithms are usually tough to crack), but it probably won’t help your website traffic or conversion rate.

Similarly, on your website, if you curate or recommend every article you’ve ever written, your audience won’t find what’s most helpful to them. Pick just a few articles and blogs that are most important or valuable to your readers. Show them that you understand their troubles and you’re able to accurately choose content that’s most relevant to them. The same goes for social media. Only share content you know your audience will enjoy and find value in. That helps them see your brand as something that sifts through the internet’s content to bring them only the best.

How To Curate Content

Here is a list of steps to help you curate content for your business or brand:

1. Research Your Audience

Before doing anything else with content curation, you need to research and understand your target audience. That’s because research can show you what your audience likes to see and read. The better you understand that, the more easily you can attract your audience to your brand, social media profile, or website. For social media, start by looking at your competitors. What type of content do they post or share? What types of content receive the most likes, shares, comments, and overall engagement? You can use that knowledge to share similar content to your own page and attract the same engagement.

For your own website, conduct a thorough analysis of your content and webpages. Which articles are currently driving the most traffic? That’s the content that your audience wants to read, so why not make it easier for them to find and promote it throughout your site?

But it’s necessary to ensure the content is something that brings your audience value. That includes your content, as well as content you share from other brands and businesses. Your competitors are already publishing and curating content on high-performing topics. Are you curating what you should? Is there a strategy to it? Do you know how to develop one? It’s more work than you think. It’s not just saying “I like this,” and going from there.

At CopyPress, we can give you guidance on what content to create and how to get it in front of your audience. Schedule a call with us today to see how we can help you develop a curation strategy that sets you apart from your competitors and gives your audience something of real value.

2. Look at your data

The point of having data is to discover trends and better educate yourself and your team about how your website is doing and which pages or posts are gaining the most traffic. With this information, you can make informed decisions about what comes next for your content marketing. Our blog post about using Google Analytics to improve your content marketing explains this a big further.

Basically, you can use metrics to understand what your audience wants to read about. It’s pretty good practice to curate your top performing posts from organic traffic to your site because people are already searching for those terms and finding you, finding value in what you have to share. Curate that content for the website visitor who’s clicking around, too.

3. Create a List of Content

When you start your curation, it’s helpful to make a list of content to share or promote. One of the best ways to do that is to make a spreadsheet. Then, use it to keep track of content that catches your eye or that you think might interest your audience. But don’t stop there. You can use the list and organize different pieces of content by category. This can help you group curated content that specific audiences might enjoy and ensure it’s easily found on your website, keeping your audience around for longer. The longer someone stays on your website, the more likely you’ll end up with them as a qualified lead.

It can also help you plan out your curated marketing strategy. Do you have a new product or service launching soon? Gather all the curated data you can that relates to that product or service and share them with your audience periodically before its release. You can even use the spreadsheet to make a schedule of when you share certain content on social media or update it on your website. That schedule can help you curate consistently and make sure you’re not doing it too often, compared to publishing original content.

4. Prepare For The Content’s Promotion

Now that you have a list of the content you want to curate, it’s time to ensure it effectively attracts your target audience. Start with your social media content. Go through each item on your list and determine how it best relates to your target audience. Then use the spreadsheet to write out and plan each post you want to create for it. Use the text in your post to engage with your audience and let them know how the content can help them.

For your website’s content, take a look at how you can update it. How old is the piece of content? Are there any links or facts that you need to update? Does it still engage with your target audience? Take the time to make changes to it and ensure it’s still useful and compelling to your readers. It’s also important to make sure it’s optimized for search engines. When you use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, you can make sure people find your content more easily.

No matter how or why you curate content, it’s always helpful to promote articles and blogs you know your audience will resonate with. But curation is just one of the many ways you can perform effective content marketing. Creating your own written content can help you publish articles and blogs on topics you know your audience will want to read.

Start by scheduling a call with CopyPress. We have a team of writers, editors, and quality assurance specialists who know how to attract audiences in any industry, no matter how niche. Let us help you develop a winning content marketing strategy that engages with your readers and converts them into customers.