3 killer ways to create & curate social content

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Attract customers by building a relationship with your audience

Target audience: Businesses, brands, digital marketers, advertising agencies, SEO specialists, entrepreneurs, Web publishers, video producers, freelance journalists.

Post by Megan Totka
ChamberofCommerce.com

Afew years ago, the catchphrase “content is king” sprouted up, sending marketers into a content creation frenzy. Now, there’s more than enough content available online to take us through the next eon! So marketers have to find other ways to interact with that content.

The result? Content curation. It’s the perfect counterpart to creating content: by sharing other useful articles, videos, and blog posts with your audience, you build a relationship with them that isn’t 100% all about your brand. And that, in turn, helps you build trust and connections with your audience.

Find the balance

1So we have content creation (writing blog articles, creating videos, etc.) and we have content curation (sharing others’ articles, videos, etc.). How do you find the balance between the two?

There’s no precise ratio of created to curated content. For many, it’s simply easier to curate content, since all you have to do is scour your social stream or find great content in your own research and share it. Also, sharing other people’s content shows you’re not all about self-promotion, and care about your followers’ interests.

Know what to curate

2Just as you want to have a variety of types of content on your own blog or social media stream, you also want to vary what you share.

• Blog content: Other individuals and brands are writing phenomenal content on your industry or areas of interest, and your social media followers want access to the best. Spend time each week reading articles and posts, and then share what resonates.
• Videos: Some people engage better with video than text, so appeal to them by sharing videos. (Bonus tip: Facebook is a great place to share videos, since 8 billion videos are being viewed there a day!)
• Infographics: Get the best of both worlds with infographics, which offer a visual interpretation of data.
• Poignant social updates: Sometimes people just share good information on social media without linking elsewhere. Conferences are great fodder for material to share with your audience. Just follow the hashtag people are using for the event and curate the best tidbits.

Know where to curate

3You can also diversify where you curate and share content:

• Your blog: Try a weekly roundup of the best content on a given topic relevant to your audience.
• Your social stream: Share what others on social media are sharing to help it get a wider reach. When sharing content directly from a website, be sure to include author’s Twitter or other social media handle so they know you’re sharing it.
• Content curation tools: There are websites like Scoop.it where you can share the content you love with your social audience.
• Your video channels: Videos, too, can be curated. If you use YouTube, create a channel for a particular topic and include both your videos and others’. Remember: effective storytelling, including videos, can help you reach even more people. And curating others’ videos is easy; you don’t even have to create your own!
• Your email newsletter: If you send a monthly newsletter, the content in it doesn’t all have to be sourced from your blog. Add links from around the Web to enhance what you share with subscribers.

Both content creation and content curation help you build a relationship with your audience. Find the balance between the two, and you’ll have the winning formula to attracting more customers!

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources and business news. Megan has several years of experience on the topics of small business marketing, copywriting, SEO, online conversions and social media. Megan spends much of her time establishing new relationships for ChamberofCommerce.com, publishing weekly newsletters educating small business on the importance of web presence, and contributing to a number of publications on the web. Megan can be reached at megan@chamberofcommerce.com.

 

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