It’s easy to get caught up in sharing your own content on social media. After all, sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is a powerful way to drive traffic to your website and blog.
However, think about your experience as a consumer on social media. Do you enjoy following accounts that only promote their own content? Chances are, you find this a little overly promotional. Remember that your followers think similarly to the way you do!
Instead of constantly sharing your own content, consider sprinkling in additional content your audience cares about. This strategy is called content curation and it can be immensely beneficial when done correctly.
What is content curation?
Content curation is a strategy involving sharing content from other sources. There are a few different types of content curation. One strategy involves compiling content from different sources to share on your blog. These are often called “listicles” and feature information sourced from other websites.
Another strategy is social media curation. This works in the same way, except, instead of sharing content to your website, you share it to your social media pages. There are actually many social media accounts that thrive on curated content only, sharing none of their own original content.
Why curate content?
Your audience likely has a handful of interests. While your content may serve a few of their interests, you can’t be an expert in everything they care about. Instead of trying to be all things for your audience, you can share content from external sources that will meet their needs.
Outside of needing to provide more value to your audience, curating industry content can help fill out your social feed to ensure you're posting at an optimal frequency. By developing a social media feed that shares a healthy mix of internal and external, promotional and educational content, you can ensure you’re delivering the most value to your audience.
Getting Started with Social Content Curation
Unfortunately curating content is incredibly time-consuming. Sometimes, even more time-consuming than sharing your own content. First, you have to find relevant industry publications. Then you need to prowl through all of their recent content in search of engaging pieces your audience will care about. After you find the perfect article, you have to write a creative post to publish on your social media, select an image, and pick out a few hashtags. The entire process can take upwards of an hour and only produce one usable post. If you have a large team and can dedicate a full-time resource to content curation alone, manually doing this might be a viable option for you.
On the other hand, if you’re a small team or solopreneur, manual curation won’t be an option for you. That’s exactly why we built Missinglettr Curate. When you use Missinglettr Curate, you select the categories you’re interested in and the language you use. Then, Missinglettr will begin recommending relevant content you can add to your queue. Each piece of content comes ready with copy to share on each social media platform, an accompanying image, and relevant hashtags. Once you select a piece of content, you have the option to edit the post or schedule it as is.
Best Practices for Curating External Content
Overall, curating content is pretty straightforward. However, there are a few best practices you can implement to ensure you see the most value from your efforts.
Don't share links from your competitors. This might be obvious, but it’s worth mentioning! While your competitors may share content that’s valuable to your audience, it’s not a great idea to send your followers to their website. They just might buy from them instead of you! Instead, look for content from sources that aren’t direct competitors.
Look for relevant resources that will add value for your audience. Don’t just share content that’s interesting to you. Instead, think about your audience and their interests. Look for content that provides the most value possible. Ideally, this will be educational content that teaches them how to do something better, faster, or in a new way.
Don't forget to review post content before adding it to your queue. If you’re using Missinglettr, it’s a good idea to always review a post before adding it to your schedule. Sometimes, post copy may not align with the title or the content may not fit your audience as closely as you initially thought. If necessary, make edits to the content so it fits your needs.
Block promotional and irrelevant publishers. You can hide content you don't like and block publishers from showing up in your recommendations in the future. This will help you curate content even more efficiently by weeding out bad-fit content you’ll never want to share.
Get Started with Curate
It’s easy to get started with Missinglettr Curate! Just link your desired social profiles, add your categories of interest, and you’re ready to go. Remember to seek out content that’s valuable for your audience and monitor the results after publishing.
Missinglettr Curate isn’t just for sharing external content. It’s also a tool for distributing your content further. Discover how to get started with Curate for content distribution.
