Content Marketing: Power-Up with Curation

This Summer I thought that I’d try riding my bike to work. Given that I hadn’t got on a bike in over 30 years, it wasn’t an easy decision. However, it would only be an 8 mile ride; and aside from the pot-holes, crazy drivers and random car doors opening in my face, I really didn’t have much to lose, right? 🙂  Well, after completing the trip several times, I’ve really enjoyed the experience. That is, except for this one large hill that I can never ascend without taking a break. One day, as a biker pulled up next to me at the top of the hill, I couldn’t help but tell him how impressed I was with his ability to power up that hill. He thanked me and told me that the power generator in his bike certainly helped.

What does this have to do with content marketing? Well, as marketers, we are constantly struggling to keep up with the demands of creating new content for our content marketing initiatives; and sometimes it feels just like that fight to bike up a steep hill. . . or hitting Heartbreak Hill along the Boston Marathon route.  In fact, Curata’s research indicates that fueling our content marketing engine with enough content is the #1 challenge for content marketers. There’s got to be a better way to boost your content marketing efforts than simply hiring more content creators or outsourcing your blog writing, right? The good news is that there is a better way – content curation; and the better news is that only the best-in-class organizations have begun to take full advantage of content curation in addition to their content creation efforts.  This means that you have an opportunity to tap into the power of curation to differentiate your organization and better engage with your audience.

Curata’s definition of content curation is as follows:

Content curation is when a person consistently finds, curates and shares the most relevant and highest quality digital content on a specific topic for their target market.

There are a few key parts of this definition worth highlighting.

• A content curator is a “person” (or team).  Content curation cannot be performed solely by an algorithm.  It involves a person who is extremely knowledgeable in the specific domain, and can be selective and add value by creating content as part of the curation process.
• Content curation is something that needs to done “consistently”.  Other forms of offline curation can be performed once (such as curating an art gallery).  When it comes to online curation, a good content curator is continually and consistently staying on top of a topic area as a trusted resource for their audience.
• A curator is not simply regurgitating any content that they come across, but they are very discerning, discriminative, and selective in only sharing the “most relevant and highest quality” content. (e.g., text, images, video, etc.)
• A curator focuses on the needs of their “target market”.  They do not curate on all topics under the sun, or solely on the trendiest topics.  Instead, they specialize on a “specific topic” of importance to their audience, and over time the content marketer becomes an authority and perhaps even a thought leader and expert on that topic.

Now if we’re able to ” power up” our content marketing effort with curated content, then we can get to our destination more easily and quicker. (i.e., resulting in better engagement with buyers and more sales ready leads). And unlike using an electric bike which would lessen the positive health gains of your exercise routine, using content curation correctly can only improve the impact of your content marketing initiatives.

Here are a couple of resources to get you started on your content curation journey, and certainly don’t hesitate to contact us to learn how to boost your content marketing efforts even more with business grade curation software:

• How to Feed the Content Beast:  A nice and easy read about all of the different ways that you can, and should, curate content. (i.e,. for your blog, eBooks, videos, social media, etc.)
• Content Curation LookBook 2013:  A collection of some of the best content curators in action, including Adobe, IBM, the Oregon Wine Board, and others.