What is Curated Content & Why Should You Use It

If you’ve been looking for ways to step up your social media marketing game, you’ve probably come across the concept of curating content.

What is Curated Content?

While content creation involves you (or your team) creating and sharing your own content, curation is when you collect and share valuable, relevant content that you didn’t necessarily create.

You might add your own context to the curated content, or select a quote from it to explore a bit, but the key here is that the actual content you’re sharing isn’t something you designed.

Content creation and content curation are two essential parts of a great marketing strategy, especially when it comes to social media marketing.

Why You Should Be Curating Content

Before we explore how you can add curated content to your marketing, let’s talk about why you’ll definitely want to make that happen.

Content Curation Saves You Time

While you’ll still need to create content to share on your social channels, curation can cut down on the time you need to set aside for that work each week or month.

Even if you decide to add short reflections or adjust the formatting of your curated content posts, you’ll still be saving time and effort that you can put into other areas of your business.

You Serve Potential Customers By Saving Them Time

Speaking of saving time, you’re actually saving your audience time when you curate content.

As a content curator you’ll be providing a service to potential customers who will not have to continuously search Google or dig in on YouTube to find answers or helpful information.

They’ll come to rely on you to supply some of the best and most useful information for the topic you’re covering. And when you share things from experts who do work that’s not exactly like your own, you’re inviting your audience to learn even more.

Content Curation Makes Your An Expert Resource

It might seem counterintuitive but it’s true: When you share something from another expert, it actually raises your credibility with your audience.

Not only does sharing expert info helps you establish credibility, it also makes you a trusted go-to resource for interesting, educational, inspiring, or useful information.

And when people know they can trust you to consistently deliver great content, they’ll look to you more often over time.

You Can Create New Engagement Opportunities

Sharing content from other experts and creators gives you the chance to get feedback from your audience in new ways. Asking them if they agree with something, how they feel about a particular post, or what their biggest ”take away” was from a particular article creates opportunities for sharing and conversation.

This type of engagement also gives you great client insight and allows you to choose future created or curated content that will really resonate with your audience.

You Can Help Share Your Mission and Vision In A Big Way

While simply hitting “share” is one way to curate content, adding your own perspective to the content you share can help you establish your brand’s mission and vision in an approachable and authentic way. You can frame curated content in terms that matter to your audience and offer context that solidifies your brand mission and voice.

One way to do this is by thinking about who will read or view the piece, why they’re interested, how they’ll react, and what they’ll get out of this particular piece of content.Use those insights to frame the way you frame the content and make sure you ask for engagement so you know if your framing resonated the way you hope it will.

Curated Content Doesn’t Feel Self-Promoting

Do you sometimes worry you might come off a bit “salesy” in your marketing?Well, with content curation you avoid that pitfall all together.

The content you’re sharing is not your own, so there’s no “buy now” feeling. And because you’re openly sharing something someone else created while crediting them when you do, the audience will often see you as kind and supportive of other businesses or creators.So, even when you do create content that highlights your offer, you won’t feel like you’re constantly selling and your audience won’t either.

Curating Allows You To Connect With Colleagues and Their Audiences

Another benefit of sharing curated content is that the simple act of sharing content allows you to create relationships and connections with other creators in your field and beyond.

When you tag or give credit to the original creator you’ll often find that it connects your audience to them and theirs to you.

Curating content expands your circle of colleagues and can put you in the same conversation as other experts.It’s a great way to grow your reach, your audience, and your network.

How To Make Content Curation A Breeze

Now that you know why you need curated content, let’s talk about how to get it.

You’ll need to source the content, decide what to share, and (of course) decide on how to share it while giving credit to the original creator and context to that piece as part of your message.

One way to make that happen might be:

• Set aside time each week to search for high-value content
• Search several sources a few times a week to find the best content
• Make a point of saving all of those links
• Spend time electing the perfect set of pieces for each post
• Review and repurpose content from your favorite sources

Or…You could use MeetEdgar’s RSS integration for your content curation.

Our RSS Feed connection makes content curation easier than ever. You can learn exactly how to connect your MeetEdgar account to RSS feeds here.

But here’s the big take away: You’re three short steps away from having us do most of the content curation process for you.

So what’s an RSS Feed and What Does It Have To Do With Content Curation?

An RSS feed is something blogs and websites use to share their latest headlines to a single page. You might already subscribe to a blog or content site’s RSS feed so you get to see the newest posts or articles they share without having to dig through the internet for them.

Our RSS integration reads your favorite site’s RSS feeds and collects the newest content. Once collected, these pieces become part of your content library.

From there, you can review them, decide if they’re share-worthy, and then schedule them as posts on your social channels.

Once you set up the MeetEdgar RSS integration, you’ll see all your favorite content in one place and all you’ll need to do is decide what you want to share with your audience and how.

It’s a content curation strategy that skips the never-ending weekly search for amazing content, and saves you time and energy in the process.

Pretty awesome right?

We’re Here To Help Make Social Media Simple

If you’re ready to make content curation part of your marketing strategy, we can help. Try Edgar for free for 7 days to see how simple it can be to manage your social media and curate amazing content.