A guide to using curated content in your online marketing campaign
Curated content can help to improve your brand engagement and brand credibility, without costing you precious time or blowing out your marketing budget. But what exactly is curated content, and how can you use it to your advantage on social media?
What is curated content?
Curated content refers to content that has been written and produced by someone other than you. Rather than creating your own content, such as blog articles, you can purchase it off someone else, edit it to add your own unique voice and share it with your audience. The content you curate should focus on generating engagement with your brand, building your brand awareness and building your brand credibility, rather than drive business sales. And before you start to question how curated content can be beneficial for your rankings in Google, read our article on how Google doesn’t punish you for publishing the same or similar content.
The content you find to curate should be relevant to your business and area of expertise. It should always add value to your audience. The purpose of curated content is to offer insight or knowledge into the things you do or the industry you’re in. It shouldn’t promote your business in any way. The form of content you can curate and share can be in the form of infographics, blog articles, webinars, how-to videos, expert tips, and so on. While curated content has been around for years, many businesses have avoided using it. But whether you’re an established brand in your industry or you’re just starting out, it can be a powerful digital marketing tool.
Why should I use curated content?
Curated content can enhance your social media marketing strategy by helping you maintain a full content calendar, provide helpful and valuable resources to your audience and help to connect you and your brand with influencers and industry leaders. Sharing curated content to your social media pages also helps increase your brand credibility by helping you stay on track with industry trends. Best of all, you don’t have to spend the time or money researching and creating the content yourself. While curated content is easier to share as it’s less time consuming, it’s important to make sure you are choosing quality over quantity. It’s all good and well to have a full content calendar, but it won’t mean much if you’re not sharing content that is relevant to your followers.
Marketing benefits of curated content
By sharing a diverse range of content sources, even from competitor brands, you can enhance your brand identity in the eyes of your past, current and potential clients. Being selective in the content you share gives you the opportunity to create a brand image that is trustworthy, knowledgeable and credible. Curating content also gives you the opportunity to be more visual with your digital marketing. While your team may have the time and skills to produce blog articles for your website and social media pages, you might not have the ability to produce a helpful video or infographic. Visual content is highly engaging and effective in reaching bigger audiences on social media and curated content means you don’t have to miss out on it.
Digital marketing has undergone many changes throughout the years and one of those is influencer marketing. Social media users continue to increasingly trust the opinions of influencers they follow instead of trusting the product plugs and recommendations from high-profile celebrities. This doesn’t mean you need to send out free products to Instagram influencers. Instead, curated content gives you the opportunity to share content from trusted industry bloggers or YouTubers who happen to be influencers for your industry. Sharing Facebook posts, Instagram videos or tweets from industry leaders can help you build relationships with people your audience already trusts.
Where can I find curated content?
One of the first places to look for curated content is within your industry. Who are the leaders in your industry and the voices your audience are following and trusting when it comes to information? By sharing the content created by these thought leaders, you can enhance your brand identity as a trusted source too.
Another place to look is trusted content marketplaces. Marketplaces are websites where you can purchase content that is created by professional writers and content creators. These people may already be leaders in your industry, or they may simply be skilled content creators who specialise in your industry. The content you purchase from a marketplace includes all royalties which mean you can edit the content and use it how you wish on your website, social media pages, and in your email newsletters. Simply find a piece of content that your audience will engage with, purchase and download it, make a few edits so that it sounds more like your brand voice and has your own unique flair, and share it.
User-Generated Content
Sometimes overlooked as an effective marketing tool, user-generated content can be a great way to showcase your products or services on your social media pages. For example, Instagram is a visual platform and sharing user-generated content on the platform can help you create a visual brand image without needing to spend the time or money on creating that visual content yourself. But whether it’s on Instagram or other social media pages, you can share user-generated content to showcase and inspire brand loyalty, create brand credibility and promote authenticity. Client decisions are more heavily based on reviews and recommendations from trusted sources and user-generated content can provide that for you.
Curated content dos and don’ts
Dos
- Edit the content to add your own unique voice
- Use third party reviews – but don’t go overboard
- Credit the source – this will help you build those relationships too
- Be selective in your content and only choose high-quality content that is going to add value to your marketing strategy
- Use SEO keywords to optimise the content for your brand
- Ask your team for their input on interesting things they’ve read or seen others share
Don’ts
- Avoid having your own say or sharing your own expert opinion
- Be overly promotional
- Sacrifice quality over quantity
- Post from a curator – make sure it’s directly from the author
- Stick to the same few sources – mix it up
- Just copy and paste the content
Your audience engagement, not your social media follower count, is what really matters when it comes to your online marketing strategy. Curated content can help you enhance your brand identity, credibility and engagement with your audience. Start looking for content to share at Partica’s content marketplace.
Need content for your website, social media, blogs or e-newsletters?
Start-up and established businesses and companies in countless industries use Partica to solve one of the biggest problems they have. Writing, posting and having fresh regular and relevant content for their content marketing.
Partica saves you time, energy and money because you can download, edit and use our professionally written articles to use in your social media marketing, newsletters, blogs and all your other content marketing with no monthly fees.
You purchase the article you want in the category you wish about the topic you desire and edit it as you see fit. For more information about the Partica Content Library articles, or become a partner of Partica, select the option below.
Check out the latest ready to go articles in the marketplace for your content marketing
