5 Content Curation Best Practices To Make Your Business Shine
I don’t know about you, but when I think about the amount of content available online, it really blows my mind. Think about this stat from YouTube alone: “100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.” Every. Minute. The Internet may seem overloaded with content, but this is actually good news for businesses. A business incorporating an online content strategy which also includes content curation has the chance to shine by providing more value and information to its audience.
Although many businesses know and understand they should be regularly creating and sharing original content, some are either unable or unwilling to do so. The main reasons are budget, time, and lack of skilled personnel. Content curation especially helps these businesses by allowing them to share relevant content without the time or financial burdens. Just as museum curators sift through volumes of artwork to collect the finest pieces of art, content curators have ways to filter and sort through the volumes of content on the Internet to dig out the best.
These are five best practices to keep in mind for making your curation process as effective and efficient as possible – and to make your business shine!
Good content curation starts with reputable content sources
As I mentioned above, there is a large amount of content online, but your audience only needs to view a small portion of it. Even worse is the vast amount of low or no-quality content, or content which is inaccurate or plagiarized. You will want to thoroughly research and then pinpoint the authors and other content creators within your industry that you feel best represent your own views.
Use content curation tools to save you and your business time and money
Without a doubt, Google is a highly effective way to uncover anything on the Internet. Using Google alone for curating content on a daily basis can prove to be time-consuming and frustrating. I recommend looking into tools which streamline the process, and some of the best tools are free. One of my favorites is Scoop.it. I use this tool daily since it continuously searches through blogs, videos and social media posts for content based on the keywords I specify. The tool provides me with a personalized stream of the results, along with snippets, so I can quickly and easily decide which ones to review. Scoop.it then allows me to either share content from the platform itself, or save it for later.
Watch out for “expired” content
Even some of the best written articles or most clever online videos become outdated after a while. Maybe the topic has been exhausted or otherwise gone stale. Although it’s not essential to curate and share brand new content, you may be better off doing so. This works well, especially when you take into account the fact that many content creators revamp, refresh, re-word and/or re-purpose their content. Content curation tools sometimes dig up “hidden gems” from months or even years ago with timely and relevant content, so don’t completely overrule using older content. Just know that fresh and current content comes out regularly.
Pictures really may be worth a thousand words, so make sure you add them to the mix
Good content curation covers so much more than just blog articles. Depending on your audience, make sure you curate images, Infographics and online videos, in addition to written articles. Again though, double-check this type of content to ensure it is timely and relevant.
Content curation is *not* content creation or syndication
Never republish content in its entirety on your own site and then call it your own. If you receive the content creator’s permission to share his or her post(s), you must properly attribute him/her and link back to the original source(s). One of the best practices to follow when curating content this way is to share a few significant excerpts, put them in quotes, and provide your personal commentary or insights. This practice makes Google “happy” when it comes to SEO and keeps you from looking like a thief.
So, are you ready to curate content for your business?
Related Resources:
TopRank Blog https://memarketingservices.com://www.toprankblog.com/2013/02/content-curation-best-practices/
Curata https://memarketingservices.com://www.curata.com/blog/4-best-practices-for-ethical-content-curation-part-2-of-content-marketing-done-right/
