How to Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your Brand

How to Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your Brand Think about the content you share for a second. Is it all your own content? If so, that needs to change. As much as your audience may love you, they want to see a variety of content. This is what we call content curation. Its simply sharing the content from others similar to you on social media.  Sharing others’  content is one of the best ways to show that you’re not all about you, and that you value a variety of perspectives beyond your own. If you are already curating content, are you doing it correctly? Is it the right content for your audience? Lets take a look! By the end of this post, youll be a pro at content curation. Table of Contents Whats the Definition of Content Curation? What Are the Benefits? See Some Examples of Well-Curated Content What Content Should Your Company Curate? Choosing Tools and Developing a Workflow The Best Curation Frequency and MixHow To Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your BrandWhat Is  Social Media Content Curation? Marketers borrowed the word curate from museums. Curators are the ones who strategically choose  collections of art that appeal to a specific audience to feature in their museums. When you apply that concept  to social media curation, the definition looks like this: Content curation involves: Planning topics your audience loves. Searching for content from others that ties into those topics and your audiences interests. Sharing only the best information you find on your social networks for your audience to. To help you get started, here are a a few freebies to download: Content Curation Template: Keep track of your favorite content curation sources with this Excel template. Content Curation Frequency Infographic: Know the best frequency and mix for sharing content. Social Media Marketing Calendar: Plan every post, all in one place. Five Key Benefits to Curating Content There are many reasons a team will turn to using curated content for social media. Your Marketing Team Can't Produce Enough Social Media Content  On Their Own Social media requires a steady stream of professional, reputable content. Twitter alone should have about 15 unique posts a day (typically). By utilizing great curated content, you're able to fill those gaps more easily. How to Curate Content For Social Media To Help Boost Your ReachIt's Efficient and Cost-Effective Since you're not being slowed down by creating every piece of content yourself, curation is a great way to still have a content marketing strategy in place without investing a huge amount of money and time. Position Your Brand as a Thought Leader Once you get to know your audience and curate only the best, most share-worthy content tailored to them, you'll be recognized as a trustworthy and dependable specialist in your area. In other words, they'll trust that you know what you're talking about. Maintain Conversations With Your Audience Especially in the early stages of your content initiative, it's important that you figure out exactly who your audience is and what kind of content they like to devour and share. The only way to do this is by experimenting with several different content types, and the last thing you should be doing is creating all  of that content. By curating and tracking performance, you quickly pick up on what your audience  finds valuable, in what format they like to consume, from which sources, at what time of day, etc. For audiences that are more mobile and social, content curation is a great way to start and maintain a conversation every day. It also allows you to be present with your audience without making it all about you. Experiment with content types and topics to find  out what your readers  want. #contentcurationIt's a Great Way to Connect With Influencers Behind the scenes, the relationships you build with other influencers in the space by showcasing their work is a happy byproduct of content curation. Remember that analogy I made about the kid who stole homework and claimed it as his own? That's all wrong. It's more like the kid collected and compiled the best work from multiple kids' homework, printed out copies for everyone, and shared it as a study aid. #ContentCuration is like finding  the best work from everywhere and  sharing it with everyone.As a curator, when you share someone else's content, you are giving it more exposure and doing so in a favorable light. You are saying, "Hey, check this out. The message in this is totally on point." And the original content creators will remember this! When done right with proper attribution, curation creates symbiotic relationships. 7  Examples of Quality Curated Content So, what does quality social media content curation look like? Get an idea with these seven  examples. Every one of these posts does the following things: Shares something from a reputable source. Adds its own perspective with custom post copy. Adds value for each brand's audience. #1.   Convince and Convert #2. RealTruck.com #3.   Passion Planner #4. Cambria Quartz #5. Buzzfeed #6. Lemonly #7. Sanford Health Assembling Your Content Curation Toolbox Now that we've covered how awesome and beneficial content curation is, it's time to implement it into your own strategy. First off, you'll need to locate and find curation worth sharing. It's one thing to share content, but it's another thing to share good content. So where do you find this magical content? RSS readers. Gather the RSS feeds of content you know your audience will consistently enjoy. Categorize them tightly into narrowly focused topical groupings so you can better plan on the topics you’ll share when the planning stage comes. A tool like Feedly works well for this. BuzzSumo: This powerful platform is excellent for surfacing highly shared and trending content. Google Alerts. Sign up for Google Alerts on topics your readers care about.  Be cautious about two things: 1) make your search as narrow as possible, or you’ll regret the flood of information, and 2) read the content you find since it’s a bit of a wild card what Google will dig up for you. You can send these alerts directly to your email. Focused social network lists. Create Twitter lists  of people who  belong in particular niches. Having all of the users in your general news feed isn’t helpful if you're trying to curate according to topic when it comes time to plan. Just as you want to categorize your RSS feeds, you ought to do the same with your social feeds. Forums and groups. Places like Inbound.org and other similar industry or niche related forums are perfect places to find currently hot content. Look to curate  content that is getting a lot of discussion on it. Pieces that die in silence without much reaction can be seen as being down-voted by the crowd. That kind of content is  probably not something your audience is going to want to read and talk about, either. Sign up for emails. Find great email newsletters that consistently share content you might not otherwise find. They’re doing curation of their own, and there’s nothing stopping you from making use of their finds. Just be sure to check them out to be sure it’s something your audience would want. Don’t assume  just because someone else gave it a seal of approval. If you're looking for more options, check out this list of tools  from Curata. With tools like Feedly and Storify, you can create different categories of content and save time!  In the social media world we have  no time to spare, so curation tools are here to help. Know What And How To Curate You can’t share junk. No one wants their social feed filled with garbage, so simply publishing posts for the sake of needing to do it is a bad idea. Find the best content, the content you enjoyed, the content your audience members are sharing and talking about, the content that is actually helpful. Curate and share only the best content your audience is  talking about that is actually helpful.That means you have to actually read the stuff. You have to be willing to go past the headline and make sure the content you’re going to share is well-written, well-thought, and (here’s a pet peeve of mine) accessible if your audience member doesn’t have a subscription to a website. Nothing is more irksome than following a link to a piece of content I can’t read unless I subscribe. Unless you know your audience is mostly subscribed to a site, share that content by linking, summarizing, commenting on, and quoting it in your own standalone blog post. If a tool makes it easy to fill your content curation schedule with recommended content without you having to read it, be careful. You're trusting them to curate for you and your audience is expecting you to be the tour guide in the library, not someone else. Curation keeps your social schedule fresh and promotional social messages  to a minimum.Start By Finding Your Content Core As a content curator, it's your goal to share content that your audience will enjoy and benefit from.  The purpose of the content core exercise  is to understand the difference between what you do, and what you need to talk about. Visually, the content core looks something like this: At the center of your content is what you do. At , we make editorial calendar software, so this is a combination of social media and content marketing topics. For our customers, we solve problems such as: Providing a single interface for planning and executing content marketing efforts. Displaying an upcoming publishing schedule on a visualized monthly calendar. Allowing users to reschedule content via simple drag-and-drop. Facilitating team communication and an effective workflow. Providing a tool that helps them save time and grow their blog traffic. These are topics we should definitely write about and be searching for to help our audience understand a correlation between our tool and their needs. As we move away (ever so slightly) from our content core and focus on what our target audience really wants to hear about, we improve the  effectiveness  of our content marketing and better focus in on our target audience’s needs. Keep this in mind when you are searching content  through various sources. There are plenty  of tools out there that will help you with curation, you just have to figure out what your audience wants to read about then decide which sources will work best for you. Here are some examples of strong sources: Reputable publications in your industry. Blogs from other companies you partner with. Your clients, if you're an agency or consultant. Content Marketing Institute also put together a killer list of curation sources. Are you curating content from the best possible sources?Identify What Types Of Content Your Audience Likes To See Does your audience prefer videos or blog posts? How about quizzes or polls? Identify what resonates with your audience and try to curate your content types around that. But how do I know what my audience likes? Look back no more than six months into your social news feed history. Look for trends in what you’re audience responded to. If you see a 35% increase in engagement when you post videos, focus on curating video content posts. Look to your audience, they’ll tell you what they want to see. How to Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your Brand Think about the content you share for a second. Is it all your own content? If so, that needs to change. As much as your audience may love you, they want to see a variety of content. This is what we call content curation. Its simply sharing the content from others similar to you on social media.  Sharing others’  content is one of the best ways to show that you’re not all about you, and that you value a variety of perspectives beyond your own. If you are already curating content, are you doing it correctly? Is it the right content for your audience? Lets take a look! By the end of this post, youll be a pro at content curation. Table of Contents Whats the Definition of Content Curation? What Are the Benefits? See Some Examples of Well-Curated Content What Content Should Your Company Curate? Choosing Tools and Developing a Workflow The Best Curation Frequency and MixHow To Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your BrandWhat Is  Social Media Content Curation? Marketers borrowed the word curate from museums. Curators are the ones who strategically choose  collections of art that appeal to a specific audience to feature in their museums. When you apply that concept  to social media curation, the definition looks like this: Content curation involves: Planning topics your audience loves. Searching for content from others that ties into those topics and your audiences interests. Sharing only the best information you find on your social networks for your audience to. To help you get started, here are a a few freebies to download: Content Curation Template: Keep track of your favorite content curation sources with this Excel template. Content Curation Frequency Infographic: Know the best frequency and mix for sharing content. Social Media Marketing Calendar: Plan every post, all in one place. Five Key Benefits to Curating Content There are many reasons a team will turn to using curated content for social media. Your Marketing Team Can't Produce Enough Social Media Content  On Their Own Social media requires a steady stream of professional, reputable content. Twitter alone should have about 15 unique posts a day (typically). By utilizing great curated content, you're able to fill those gaps more easily. How to Curate Content For Social Media To Help Boost Your ReachIt's Efficient and Cost-Effective Since you're not being slowed down by creating every piece of content yourself, curation is a great way to still have a content marketing strategy in place without investing a huge amount of money and time. Position Your Brand as a Thought Leader Once you get to know your audience and curate only the best, most share-worthy content tailored to them, you'll be recognized as a trustworthy and dependable specialist in your area. In other words, they'll trust that you know what you're talking about. Maintain Conversations With Your Audience Especially in the early stages of your content initiative, it's important that you figure out exactly who your audience is and what kind of content they like to devour and share. The only way to do this is by experimenting with several different content types, and the last thing you should be doing is creating all  of that content. By curating and tracking performance, you quickly pick up on what your audience  finds valuable, in what format they like to consume, from which sources, at what time of day, etc. For audiences that are more mobile and social, content curation is a great way to start and maintain a conversation every day. It also allows you to be present with your audience without making it all about you. Experiment with content types and topics to find  out what your readers  want. #contentcurationIt's a Great Way to Connect With Influencers Behind the scenes, the relationships you build with other influencers in the space by showcasing their work is a happy byproduct of content curation. Remember that analogy I made about the kid who stole homework and claimed it as his own? That's all wrong. It's more like the kid collected and compiled the best work from multiple kids' homework, printed out copies for everyone, and shared it as a study aid. #ContentCuration is like finding  the best work from everywhere and  sharing it with everyone.As a curator, when you share someone else's content, you are giving it more exposure and doing so in a favorable light. You are saying, "Hey, check this out. The message in this is totally on point." And the original content creators will remember this! When done right with proper attribution, curation creates symbiotic relationships. 7  Examples of Quality Curated Content So, what does quality social media content curation look like? Get an idea with these seven  examples. Every one of these posts does the following things: Shares something from a reputable source. Adds its own perspective with custom post copy. Adds value for each brand's audience. #1.   Convince and Convert #2. RealTruck.com #3.   Passion Planner #4. Cambria Quartz #5. Buzzfeed #6. Lemonly #7. Sanford Health Assembling Your Content Curation Toolbox Now that we've covered how awesome and beneficial content curation is, it's time to implement it into your own strategy. First off, you'll need to locate and find curation worth sharing. It's one thing to share content, but it's another thing to share good content. So where do you find this magical content? RSS readers. Gather the RSS feeds of content you know your audience will consistently enjoy. Categorize them tightly into narrowly focused topical groupings so you can better plan on the topics you’ll share when the planning stage comes. A tool like Feedly works well for this. BuzzSumo: This powerful platform is excellent for surfacing highly shared and trending content. Google Alerts. Sign up for Google Alerts on topics your readers care about.  Be cautious about two things: 1) make your search as narrow as possible, or you’ll regret the flood of information, and 2) read the content you find since it’s a bit of a wild card what Google will dig up for you. You can send these alerts directly to your email. Focused social network lists. Create Twitter lists  of people who  belong in particular niches. Having all of the users in your general news feed isn’t helpful if you're trying to curate according to topic when it comes time to plan. Just as you want to categorize your RSS feeds, you ought to do the same with your social feeds. Forums and groups. Places like Inbound.org and other similar industry or niche related forums are perfect places to find currently hot content. Look to curate  content that is getting a lot of discussion on it. Pieces that die in silence without much reaction can be seen as being down-voted by the crowd. That kind of content is  probably not something your audience is going to want to read and talk about, either. Sign up for emails. Find great email newsletters that consistently share content you might not otherwise find. They’re doing curation of their own, and there’s nothing stopping you from making use of their finds. Just be sure to check them out to be sure it’s something your audience would want. Don’t assume  just because someone else gave it a seal of approval. If you're looking for more options, check out this list of tools  from Curata. With tools like Feedly and Storify, you can create different categories of content and save time!  In the social media world we have  no time to spare, so curation tools are here to help. Know What And How To Curate You can’t share junk. No one wants their social feed filled with garbage, so simply publishing posts for the sake of needing to do it is a bad idea. Find the best content, the content you enjoyed, the content your audience members are sharing and talking about, the content that is actually helpful. Curate and share only the best content your audience is  talking about that is actually helpful.That means you have to actually read the stuff. You have to be willing to go past the headline and make sure the content you’re going to share is well-written, well-thought, and (here’s a pet peeve of mine) accessible if your audience member doesn’t have a subscription to a website. Nothing is more irksome than following a link to a piece of content I can’t read unless I subscribe. Unless you know your audience is mostly subscribed to a site, share that content by linking, summarizing, commenting on, and quoting it in your own standalone blog post. If a tool makes it easy to fill your content curation schedule with recommended content without you having to read it, be careful. You're trusting them to curate for you and your audience is expecting you to be the tour guide in the library, not someone else. Curation keeps your social schedule fresh and promotional social messages  to a minimum.Start By Finding Your Content Core As a content curator, it's your goal to share content that your audience will enjoy and benefit from.  The purpose of the content core exercise  is to understand the difference between what you do, and what you need to talk about. Visually, the content core looks something like this: At the center of your content is what you do. At , we make editorial calendar software, so this is a combination of social media and content marketing topics. For our customers, we solve problems such as: Providing a single interface for planning and executing content marketing efforts. Displaying an upcoming publishing schedule on a visualized monthly calendar. Allowing users to reschedule content via simple drag-and-drop. Facilitating team communication and an effective workflow. Providing a tool that helps them save time and grow their blog traffic. These are topics we should definitely write about and be searching for to help our audience understand a correlation between our tool and their needs. As we move away (ever so slightly) from our content core and focus on what our target audience really wants to hear about, we improve the  effectiveness  of our content marketing and better focus in on our target audience’s needs. Keep this in mind when you are searching content  through various sources. There are plenty  of tools out there that will help you with curation, you just have to figure out what your audience wants to read about then decide which sources will work best for you. Here are some examples of strong sources: Reputable publications in your industry. Blogs from other companies you partner with. Your clients, if you're an agency or consultant. Content Marketing Institute also put together a killer list of curation sources. Are you curating content from the best possible sources?Identify What Types Of Content Your Audience Likes To See Does your audience prefer videos or blog posts? How about quizzes or polls? Identify what resonates with your audience and try to curate your content types around that. But how do I know what my audience likes? Look back no more than six months into your social news feed history. Look for trends in what you’re audience responded to. If you see a 35% increase in engagement when you post videos, focus on curating video content posts. Look to your audience, they’ll tell you what they want to see. How to Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your Brand Think about the content you share for a second. Is it all your own content? If so, that needs to change. As much as your audience may love you, they want to see a variety of content. This is what we call content curation. Its simply sharing the content from others similar to you on social media.  Sharing others’  content is one of the best ways to show that you’re not all about you, and that you value a variety of perspectives beyond your own. If you are already curating content, are you doing it correctly? Is it the right content for your audience? Lets take a look! By the end of this post, youll be a pro at content curation. Table of Contents Whats the Definition of Content Curation? What Are the Benefits? See Some Examples of Well-Curated Content What Content Should Your Company Curate? Choosing Tools and Developing a Workflow The Best Curation Frequency and MixHow To Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your BrandWhat Is  Social Media Content Curation? Marketers borrowed the word curate from museums. Curators are the ones who strategically choose  collections of art that appeal to a specific audience to feature in their museums. When you apply that concept  to social media curation, the definition looks like this: Content curation involves: Planning topics your audience loves. Searching for content from others that ties into those topics and your audiences interests. Sharing only the best information you find on your social networks for your audience to. To help you get started, here are a a few freebies to download: Content Curation Template: Keep track of your favorite content curation sources with this Excel template. Content Curation Frequency Infographic: Know the best frequency and mix for sharing content. Social Media Marketing Calendar: Plan every post, all in one place. Five Key Benefits to Curating Content There are many reasons a team will turn to using curated content for social media. Your Marketing Team Can't Produce Enough Social Media Content  On Their Own Social media requires a steady stream of professional, reputable content. Twitter alone should have about 15 unique posts a day (typically). By utilizing great curated content, you're able to fill those gaps more easily. How to Curate Content For Social Media To Help Boost Your ReachIt's Efficient and Cost-Effective Since you're not being slowed down by creating every piece of content yourself, curation is a great way to still have a content marketing strategy in place without investing a huge amount of money and time. Position Your Brand as a Thought Leader Once you get to know your audience and curate only the best, most share-worthy content tailored to them, you'll be recognized as a trustworthy and dependable specialist in your area. In other words, they'll trust that you know what you're talking about. Maintain Conversations With Your Audience Especially in the early stages of your content initiative, it's important that you figure out exactly who your audience is and what kind of content they like to devour and share. The only way to do this is by experimenting with several different content types, and the last thing you should be doing is creating all  of that content. By curating and tracking performance, you quickly pick up on what your audience  finds valuable, in what format they like to consume, from which sources, at what time of day, etc. For audiences that are more mobile and social, content curation is a great way to start and maintain a conversation every day. It also allows you to be present with your audience without making it all about you. Experiment with content types and topics to find  out what your readers  want. #contentcurationIt's a Great Way to Connect With Influencers Behind the scenes, the relationships you build with other influencers in the space by showcasing their work is a happy byproduct of content curation. Remember that analogy I made about the kid who stole homework and claimed it as his own? That's all wrong. It's more like the kid collected and compiled the best work from multiple kids' homework, printed out copies for everyone, and shared it as a study aid. #ContentCuration is like finding  the best work from everywhere and  sharing it with everyone.As a curator, when you share someone else's content, you are giving it more exposure and doing so in a favorable light. You are saying, "Hey, check this out. The message in this is totally on point." And the original content creators will remember this! When done right with proper attribution, curation creates symbiotic relationships. 7  Examples of Quality Curated Content So, what does quality social media content curation look like? Get an idea with these seven  examples. Every one of these posts does the following things: Shares something from a reputable source. Adds its own perspective with custom post copy. Adds value for each brand's audience. #1.   Convince and Convert #2. RealTruck.com #3.   Passion Planner #4. Cambria Quartz #5. Buzzfeed #6. Lemonly #7. Sanford Health Assembling Your Content Curation Toolbox Now that we've covered how awesome and beneficial content curation is, it's time to implement it into your own strategy. First off, you'll need to locate and find curation worth sharing. It's one thing to share content, but it's another thing to share good content. So where do you find this magical content? RSS readers. Gather the RSS feeds of content you know your audience will consistently enjoy. Categorize them tightly into narrowly focused topical groupings so you can better plan on the topics you’ll share when the planning stage comes. A tool like Feedly works well for this. BuzzSumo: This powerful platform is excellent for surfacing highly shared and trending content. Google Alerts. Sign up for Google Alerts on topics your readers care about.  Be cautious about two things: 1) make your search as narrow as possible, or you’ll regret the flood of information, and 2) read the content you find since it’s a bit of a wild card what Google will dig up for you. You can send these alerts directly to your email. Focused social network lists. Create Twitter lists  of people who  belong in particular niches. Having all of the users in your general news feed isn’t helpful if you're trying to curate according to topic when it comes time to plan. Just as you want to categorize your RSS feeds, you ought to do the same with your social feeds. Forums and groups. Places like Inbound.org and other similar industry or niche related forums are perfect places to find currently hot content. Look to curate  content that is getting a lot of discussion on it. Pieces that die in silence without much reaction can be seen as being down-voted by the crowd. That kind of content is  probably not something your audience is going to want to read and talk about, either. Sign up for emails. Find great email newsletters that consistently share content you might not otherwise find. They’re doing curation of their own, and there’s nothing stopping you from making use of their finds. Just be sure to check them out to be sure it’s something your audience would want. Don’t assume  just because someone else gave it a seal of approval. If you're looking for more options, check out this list of tools  from Curata. With tools like Feedly and Storify, you can create different categories of content and save time!  In the social media world we have  no time to spare, so curation tools are here to help. Know What And How To Curate You can’t share junk. No one wants their social feed filled with garbage, so simply publishing posts for the sake of needing to do it is a bad idea. Find the best content, the content you enjoyed, the content your audience members are sharing and talking about, the content that is actually helpful. Curate and share only the best content your audience is  talking about that is actually helpful.That means you have to actually read the stuff. You have to be willing to go past the headline and make sure the content you’re going to share is well-written, well-thought, and (here’s a pet peeve of mine) accessible if your audience member doesn’t have a subscription to a website. Nothing is more irksome than following a link to a piece of content I can’t read unless I subscribe. Unless you know your audience is mostly subscribed to a site, share that content by linking, summarizing, commenting on, and quoting it in your own standalone blog post. If a tool makes it easy to fill your content curation schedule with recommended content without you having to read it, be careful. You're trusting them to curate for you and your audience is expecting you to be the tour guide in the library, not someone else. Curation keeps your social schedule fresh and promotional social messages  to a minimum.Start By Finding Your Content Core As a content curator, it's your goal to share content that your audience will enjoy and benefit from.  The purpose of the content core exercise  is to understand the difference between what you do, and what you need to talk about. Visually, the content core looks something like this: At the center of your content is what you do. At , we make editorial calendar software, so this is a combination of social media and content marketing topics. For our customers, we solve problems such as: Providing a single interface for planning and executing content marketing efforts. Displaying an upcoming publishing schedule on a visualized monthly calendar. Allowing users to reschedule content via simple drag-and-drop. Facilitating team communication and an effective workflow. Providing a tool that helps them save time and grow their blog traffic. These are topics we should definitely write about and be searching for to help our audience understand a correlation between our tool and their needs. As we move away (ever so slightly) from our content core and focus on what our target audience really wants to hear about, we improve the  effectiveness  of our content marketing and better focus in on our target audience’s needs. Keep this in mind when you are searching content  through various sources. There are plenty  of tools out there that will help you with curation, you just have to figure out what your audience wants to read about then decide which sources will work best for you. Here are some examples of strong sources: Reputable publications in your industry. Blogs from other companies you partner with. Your clients, if you're an agency or consultant. Content Marketing Institute also put together a killer list of curation sources. Are you curating content from the best possible sources?Identify What Types Of Content Your Audience Likes To See Does your audience prefer videos or blog posts? How about quizzes or polls? Identify what resonates with your audience and try to curate your content types around that. But how do I know what my audience likes? Look back no more than six months into your social news feed history. Look for trends in what you’re audience responded to. If you see a 35% increase in engagement when you post videos, focus on curating video content posts. Look to your audience, they’ll tell you what they want to see. How to Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your Brand Think about the content you share for a second. Is it all your own content? If so, that needs to change. As much as your audience may love you, they want to see a variety of content. This is what we call content curation. Its simply sharing the content from others similar to you on social media.  Sharing others’  content is one of the best ways to show that you’re not all about you, and that you value a variety of perspectives beyond your own. If you are already curating content, are you doing it correctly? Is it the right content for your audience? Lets take a look! By the end of this post, youll be a pro at content curation. Table of Contents Whats the Definition of Content Curation? What Are the Benefits? See Some Examples of Well-Curated Content What Content Should Your Company Curate? Choosing Tools and Developing a Workflow The Best Curation Frequency and MixHow To Curate Content the Best Way to Grow Your BrandWhat Is  Social Media Content Curation? Marketers borrowed the word curate from museums. Curators are the ones who strategically choose  collections of art that appeal to a specific audience to feature in their museums. When you apply that concept  to social media curation, the definition looks like this: Content curation involves: Planning topics your audience loves. Searching for content from others that ties into those topics and your audiences interests. Sharing only the best information you find on your social networks for your audience to. To help you get started, here are a a few freebies to download: Content Curation Template: Keep track of your favorite content curation sources with this Excel template. Content Curation Frequency Infographic: Know the best frequency and mix for sharing content. Social Media Marketing Calendar: Plan every post, all in one place. Five Key Benefits to Curating Content There are many reasons a team will turn to using curated content for social media. Your Marketing Team Can't Produce Enough Social Media Content  On Their Own Social media requires a steady stream of professional, reputable content. Twitter alone should have about 15 unique posts a day (typically). By utilizing great curated content, you're able to fill those gaps more easily. How to Curate Content For Social Media To Help Boost Your ReachIt's Efficient and Cost-Effective Since you're not being slowed down by creating every piece of content yourself, curation is a great way to still have a content marketing strategy in place without investing a huge amount of money and time. Position Your Brand as a Thought Leader Once you get to know your audience and curate only the best, most share-worthy content tailored to them, you'll be recognized as a trustworthy and dependable specialist in your area. In other words, they'll trust that you know what you're talking about. Maintain Conversations With Your Audience Especially in the early stages of your content initiative, it's important that you figure out exactly who your audience is and what kind of content they like to devour and share. The only way to do this is by experimenting with several different content types, and the last thing you should be doing is creating all  of that content. By curating and tracking performance, you quickly pick up on what your audience  finds valuable, in what format they like to consume, from which sources, at what time of day, etc. For audiences that are more mobile and social, content curation is a great way to start and maintain a conversation every day. It also allows you to be present with your audience without making it all about you. Experiment with content types and topics to find  out what your readers  want. #contentcurationIt's a Great Way to Connect With Influencers Behind the scenes, the relationships you build with other influencers in the space by showcasing their work is a happy byproduct of content curation. Remember that analogy I made about the kid who stole homework and claimed it as his own? That's all wrong. It's more like the kid collected and compiled the best work from multiple kids' homework, printed out copies for everyone, and shared it as a study aid. #ContentCuration is like finding  the best work from everywhere and  sharing it with everyone.As a curator, when you share someone else's content, you are giving it more exposure and doing so in a favorable light. You are saying, "Hey, check this out. The message in this is totally on point." And the original content creators will remember this! When done right with proper attribution, curation creates symbiotic relationships. 7  Examples of Quality Curated Content So, what does quality social media content curation look like? Get an idea with these seven  examples. Every one of these posts does the following things: Shares something from a reputable source. Adds its own perspective with custom post copy. Adds value for each brand's audience. #1.   Convince and Convert #2. RealTruck.com #3.   Passion Planner #4. Cambria Quartz #5. Buzzfeed #6. Lemonly #7. Sanford Health Assembling Your Content Curation Toolbox Now that we've covered how awesome and beneficial content curation is, it's time to implement it into your own strategy. First off, you'll need to locate and find curation worth sharing. It's one thing to share content, but it's another thing to share good content. So where do you find this magical content? RSS readers. Gather the RSS feeds of content you know your audience will consistently enjoy. Categorize them tightly into narrowly focused topical groupings so you can better plan on the topics you’ll share when the planning stage comes. A tool like Feedly works well for this. BuzzSumo: This powerful platform is excellent for surfacing highly shared and trending content. Google Alerts. Sign up for Google Alerts on topics your readers care about.  Be cautious about two things: 1) make your search as narrow as possible, or you’ll regret the flood of information, and 2) read the content you find since it’s a bit of a wild card what Google will dig up for you. You can send these alerts directly to your email. Focused social network lists. Create Twitter lists  of people who  belong in particular niches. Having all of the users in your general news feed isn’t helpful if you're trying to curate according to topic when it comes time to plan. Just as you want to categorize your RSS feeds, you ought to do the same with your social feeds. Forums and groups. Places like Inbound.org and other similar industry or niche related forums are perfect places to find currently hot content. Look to curate  content that is getting a lot of discussion on it. Pieces that die in silence without much reaction can be seen as being down-voted by the crowd. That kind of content is  probably not something your audience is going to want to read and talk about, either. Sign up for emails. Find great email newsletters that consistently share content you might not otherwise find. They’re doing curation of their own, and there’s nothing stopping you from making use of their finds. Just be sure to check them out to be sure it’s something your audience would want. Don’t assume  just because someone else gave it a seal of approval. If you're looking for more options, check out this list of tools  from Curata. With tools like Feedly and Storify, you can create different categories of content and save time!  In the social media world we have  no time to spare, so curation tools are here to help. Know What And How To Curate You can’t share junk. No one wants their social feed filled with garbage, so simply publishing posts for the sake of needing to do it is a bad idea. Find the best content, the content you enjoyed, the content your audience members are sharing and talking about, the content that is actually helpful. Curate and share only the best content your audience is  talking about that is actually helpful.That means you have to actually read the stuff. You have to be willing to go past the headline and make sure the content you’re going to share is well-written, well-thought, and (here’s a pet peeve of mine) accessible if your audience member doesn’t have a subscription to a website. Nothing is more irksome than following a link to a piece of content I can’t read unless I subscribe. Unless you know your audience is mostly subscribed to a site, share that content by linking, summarizing, commenting on, and quoting it in your own standalone blog post. If a tool makes it easy to fill your content curation schedule with recommended content without you having to read it, be careful. You're trusting them to curate for you and your audience is expecting you to be the tour guide in the library, not someone else. Curation keeps your social schedule fresh and promotional social messages  to a minimum.Start By Finding Your Content Core As a content curator, it's your goal to share content that your audience will enjoy and benefit from.  The purpose of the content core exercise  is to understand the difference between what you do, and what you need to talk about. Visually, the content core looks something like this: At the center of your content is what you do. At , we make editorial calendar software, so this is a combination of social media and content marketing topics. For our customers, we solve problems such as: Providing a single interface for planning and executing content marketing efforts. Displaying an upcoming publishing schedule on a visualized monthly calendar. Allowing users to reschedule content via simple drag-and-drop. Facilitating team communication and an effective workflow. Providing a tool that helps them save time and grow their blog traffic. These are topics we should definitely write about and be searching for to help our audience understand a correlation between our tool and their needs. As we move away (ever so slightly) from our content core and focus on what our target audience really wants to hear about, we improve the  effectiveness  of our content marketing and better focus in on our target audience’s needs. Keep this in mind when you are searching content  through various sources. There are plenty  of tools out there that will help you with curation, you just have to figure out what your audience wants to read about then decide which sources will work best for you. Here are some examples of strong sources: Reputable publications in your industry. Blogs from other companies you partner with. Your clients, if you're an agency or consultant. Content Marketing Institute also put together a killer list of curation sources. Are you curating content from the best possible sources?Identify What Types Of Content Your Audience Likes To See Does your audience prefer videos or blog posts? How about quizzes or polls? Identify what resonates with your audience and try to curate your content types around that. But how do I know what my audience likes? Look back no more than six months into your social news feed history. Look for trends in what you’re audience responded to. If you see a 35% increase in engagement when you post videos, focus on curating video content posts. Look to your audience, they’ll tell you what they want to see.