Curated Guide to Power up Your Content Curation Strategy

This doesn’t just pertain to the kind of content creation you see on Instagram, by the way.

The internet is full of content: evergreen, repurposed, co-created, and curated.

That’s maybe one of the reasons why the saying “Content is King,” is always prevalent, never scarce. But of these types of content, one claims to be the 15-minute king of content marketing – curated content. You can come up with good content in just 15 minutes. As the adage says, “automate, aggregate, and share.”

What is content curation or curated content?

Content curation is discovering, and collecting the best material available about a particular subject matter and sharing it as one post or article. Think of it as handpicking content that you find valuable in your field and sharing it with others who are in the same area or interested in the topic.

While curated content has gained popularity since 2010, it is still a common, accepted, and compelling content strategy for many Web publishers and social Web users. It is indeed a significant marketing opportunity and even a bigger mystery to do it rightly.

So, how can curated content be an effective content strategy and be SEO-friendly at the same time? Below are a few tips.

Museums Are To Artworks as Marketers Are To Online Posts

This is probably the best metaphor to clarify what content curation is. Museum collects and houses the best artworks it could get. Marketers must also do the same in a way, collect, and share only the best materials to pass along its readers, fans, followers, and customers.

In an article by Kevan Lee of Buffer, he defined curation as sorting a large amount of web content and picking only the best, most meaningful tidbits of information and exhibiting these in an organized and insightful manner.

People don’t want facts; they care most of what importance your content brings to them. Ease? Overlooked stories? Patterns? So what? Audiences are getting smarter. Anytime, they can throw you a tomato with a note on it that says, “Here lays your thoughtless content.” Sounds harsh? That’s the reality of being online all the time.

Takeaway: Curation is not a straight report of facts. It is an online museum that has the best and the most relevant content that serves as a discourse of best knowledge distribution.

Models Of Content Curation

Yes, you don’t just go there; collect all the best data and ka-ching! Publish your curated content. There are models to be determined to identify your purpose.

Looking at how curation might be applied in very specific situations, a trend curator and founder of Influential Marketing Group, Rohit Bhargava puts models of content creation as follows:

1. Aggregation is about curating the most relevant information about a specific topic in one location. It is often in the form of a catalog list. “16 Best Resources for Digital Marketers” can be one of the examples. Some also argue that this is the easiest way to do curation because it is often algorithmically automated.
2. Distillation is more on getting only the best relevant ideas and putting it in a simple format.
3. Elevation targets mainly the smaller thoughts or daily musings posted online and then creating a more significant and overlooked trend out of it.
4. Mashup, on the other hand, refers to uniquely curated juxtapositions and creating a concrete or new point of view.
5. Chronology, remember history? Citing content from oldest to present, telling a story of how things came to be and how we know it.

Takeaway: Identifying your model will give you a more precise direction to where your curation efforts will continue the best work. Mind identifying the model for this article?

6 Content Curation Approaches

Content curation is considered to be one of the most cost-effective, efficient, and expert ways to combat Google Panda. But did you know that there are little-known but helpful strategies to consider before even proceeding with your curation process?

Now that you know the models and importance of adding more content value to your curation, it is also important to know the possible strategies you can use to express your own commentary or annotations better.

In a Content Marketing Institute article, written by Pawan Deshpande, the most effective content curation can be done in 6 different approaches.

1. Abstracting is a low-effort approach where you copy-paste bits of content from your source. This works by pulling the source title, first few sentences, and an image from the article. This might cause the curator some trouble for copyright allegations. This is also known for having too little SEO-value.
2. Summarizing, as the word suggests, requires more effort than abstracting. It can synopsize the idea of the whole source with additional beneficial keywords, making it a unique content as far as search engines are concerned.
3. Quoting is one of the most popular ways of annotating third-party content. It gives thought-provoking block of information from the original content with a mix of the curator’s commentary or thoughts on the topic. This is known to have good SEO value and readership value.
4. Retitling means creating provocative and relative short titles out of the original content. This is most especially known in social media sharing and mobile curation sites. With little effort, you can add value to your reader.
5. Storyboarding includes weaving various content. It could consist of tweets, posts, photos, videos, and blog posts to come up with an interesting story or the curator’s commentary.
6. Parallelizing is about taking 2 points of seemingly unrelated ideas and drawing a connection between them. This enables the curator to tackle a broader scope of discussion. Its SEO and reader’s values are known to be high because of its original and unique viewpoint.

Takeaway: There are many approaches in which you can curate content to up your content strategy. Carefully assess your audience on their behavior, needs, and wants before you choose what’s best for you and your readers.

Create A Content Ecosystem Or Be Part Of The Bigger Ones

Reblogging, sharing, pinning, repining, aggregating – whatever you call it – other people say, “A writer’s curation is other writers’ “theft.”

This shouldn’t be the case in content curation. This isn’t solely about pushing a share button nor repacking someone else’s articles: Steven Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, shares simple and best practices in curating and sharing content.

One of his tips and probably the most remarkable one is being part of the content ecosystem. How? Be a creator and an organizer at the same time. Rosenbaum emphasizes the three C’s as a strong content mix in curation – create, contribute, collect. Create some content and let others have their share on it. Let them contribute and collect the best ideas that you think will better improve or challenge yours.

Takeaway: We are coming to a recession where researching and reading for 4 hours a day is a luxury. The goal of this is to create a one-stop-shop for all your readers’ needs.

Curate Across All Platforms, 2-3 Times A Week And The Favor Bank

Content curation may serve different objectives. It can be a way to keep a broader partner network, a value-added content for your blog, traffic-driver, awareness, and link bait. You might ask then, how can you make your curation effort more consistent and effective? Here’s Matt Heinz’ answer on the question.

If you see hope in curation, you can actively curate 2-3 times a week at max. You don’t need to do that every day unless you’re a robot. You too can, of course, curate across all platforms. Curate posts from influencers, microsites, Facebook, X, and Youtube, but remember not to overboard. Your content might sink in holes or might taste like an awful salad. Nobody wants that.

Heinz’s tricks also include prioritizing content from partners and prospects to show them you value them and the law of “Favor bank” will do its job. It is also of major importance to spread your content to equally good sources.

Takeaway: Exist everywhere and engage to valuable some.

Curation And Google Panda

Google Panda update was a clear signal to all digital marketers that content should be unique and of high-quality. So, how can curating someone else’s content be beneficial to your site? Isn’t it considered duplicate content?

In an SEO test conducted by Bruce Clay, Inc., they have found out that auto-generated type of curation constitutes duplicate content while editorialized curation improves page ranking. The test concluded that curation in the form of original content, paired with excerpt and enhanced annotations as well as links to curated content can help a website achieve the benefits of fresh content without any threat of negative search rankings. With Google Panda update in mind, there are many variables to consider for effective and SEO-friendly curated content. The most important, according to Virginia Nussey of Blue Clay, is having unique content. Nussey adds that a general length guideline for an effective curation is 200+ unique texts of original content per story.

Takeaway: Curation doesn’t mean duplicating. It is still best to input your own thoughts and deliver the best and valuable ideas to your audience.

Curation As Link Magnets

One of the very important notes to remember when curating content is attributing your original sources. An even more important thing to know is that you should link only to — as what Jason DeMers calls it — ‘good neighbors.’

Good neighbors mean a wide variety of high-quality and relevant websites. These outbound links to your accountable sources will eventually result in inbound links. Not only do you get your sources’ attention but might as well gain the eyes and attention of their followings. That could mean thousands and thousands of traffic.

When done right, you might also get to rank for both short and long-tail keywords in your niche as a result of curating valuable content from high-quality sources. Takeaway: Reaping SEO benefits can be achieved by properly giving credit to your sources, by spreading the link love and building relationship to your sources and your niche audiences.

Content Curation Ethics and Links

Ethics and fair use are big questions when it comes to curation. Are there ethics and best practices to follow when it comes to content curation?

Founder and CEO of Curata, Pawan Deshpande, pointed out two major practices concerning ethics and links. First, he said, “create, curate, but don’t pirate.” Originality and the amount of content are some of the key factors to have your curated content rank and succeed for a specific goal. Like printed media, fair use, ethics, and copyright play important roles in the curation process.

Next and probably one of the most questionable thoughts in content curation is putting “nofollow” attributes to your sources. The idea with this tactic is to hoard the link juice and avoid appearing to be a link farm. But with the changing algorithm and increasing attention to influencer marketing, some experts have advised not to put “nofollow” attributes to the sources as long as these sources have high-quality content and have high authority.

As far as link juice is concerned, putting “follow” attributes is indeed passing link juice to the linking website but that should not be the main concern when your goals include gaining credentials, building a relationship with the influencers and entering the spotlight of thought leadership.

Takeaway: Between the two schools of thought, always determine your goals before deciding which one will work for your overall strategy.

There Are Tools For That

In this increasingly online silos, where everyone seems to be a magician, it is important to make sure that you are well-versed with technology.

Nowadays, many of the curated content online is customized using different tools to pull information from multiple sources of Internet’s library swiftly. How many curation tools do you know? 2? 4? 6? Now is the time to know up to 47 curation tools varying from business-grade tools to personal ones that can be used by businesses, marketers, individuals, and hobbyists. This ultimate list of curation tools by Meg Sutton of Curata can help you pull and pick the best and most relevant content for your target market. Some of the tools are Storify, Curata, Feedly, Bundlr, Kuratur, Pulse, Magnify, and 40+ more tools.

Takeaway: Check it out and cut through your task curation. Give us a pick of what differentiates each application.

Strategic Scheduling And Content Curation Promotion

Now that you have highlighted the things that interest your market, curated in a user and SEO-friendly manner, indeed you have done a good job. There it is — you now have something ready to publish. Excellent.

So, how can you make sure that this curated piece can reach your target market? How can your curation tools help? In an article by Top Rank Blog, the author emphasizes on what features should you look for in a curation tool and what can it do to ease your sharing and promotion. One of the features, which many of us might find the best, is the built-in social scheduling and amplification. Admit it; your target market might be on the other half of the planet and deeply asleep while you’re blogging. To efficiently prove your existence, auto-posting to major social sites like Facebook, X, and Linkedin can be a pleasant relief. But remember to schedule all your posts strategically. Know the best time when your target market will best consume your content.

Takeaway: Some of the promotion features include newsletter exporter, integrated URL shortener, and of course, curated performance tracking and data pulling.

Curation, The Next Level Strategy

Whether you are trying to power up your content marketing or wanted to join the spotlight of thought leadership, curation is a great strategy.
Knowing what content to share, what tools to use, and how to make it work are what separate you from a vast online abyss. But then again, difference alone won’t make you stand out. How about taking your curation to the next level?

There’s no better deal than going back to the basics of your content strategy. As Christina Walker of Writtent puts it: Research, Plan to Deliver Value, Create, Distribute, and Measure.

The first rule of thumb in marketing, do your research. Mind both your target market and your competitors. Know what your market wants and what your competitors have and don’t have. Unearth all the data and information possible. Next would be planning. You don’t just go there with your samurai in the hope of slashing your competitors’ tanks and bombs. Planning is essential. Use your research to identify ways to deliver value to your target market. Will curating 10 valuable posts about banana interest them? Or will 101 ways of content curation to eat a banana interest them better? Plan, well. Third, create and strategically deliver your content to your market. It is also imperative to measure the result of your effort. But measuring shouldn’t be the end of your strategy. After knowing the result of your effort, re-strategize, and iterate.

Takeaway: You’re the only one who knows best to take your curation strategy to the next level.

When curating content, it is important to remember all these beneficial tips from the pros. As with everything else, I would love to leave it to your creativity and strategy.

5-Step Curation Process

With today’s digital strategy relying on how to keep your audience regularly informed and engaged through how do you simplify and manage your content strategy? By content curation, of course!

Dominique Jackson of Sprout Social shows us how to curate content like a pro—whether in blogs, posts, images, and even video. How may you ask? He cites a 5-step tested and proven curation process that has helped him in delivering content to his audience for one month in under less than an hour or so.

Before anything else, one must determine what the brand’s Golden Ration for content is. How much is too much original content? How less should you share curated content? Once you’ve figured out what works best, it’s time to start the process.

These concise 5-steps, once simplified, all boils down to: discover content related to your brand from reputable sources, categorize your content, post, and analyze the results. It’s that simple. Ready to take your content strategy to the next level?

Takeaway: Practice the Golden Content ratio. Find out how much and how less your audience wants original and curated content. Once you’ve figured out their behavior through testing and analysis; practice, analyze, and do it all over again for the next month.

The Secrets Sauce of Content Curation

An article by Buffer, the social media marketing tool, is giving away its secrets on how to be an effective influencer and having fun online through content curation. Although they partitioned the article into different categories, what stands out is the part on Curation Heroes.

Kevan Lee lists down on his top influencers who do content curation on their social media and blog site on the daily. As Lee puts it, Curating content is one of the most generous things you can do online—especially if you’re an executive in your field.

Takeaway: You don’t have to compromise your personality when you do content curation. You can be yourself, and share information that you like reading and what you think is essential.

There you have it, a curated article of all topics about content curation. Got anything to add to this meta-article? Hit us up on Facebook, X, or LinkedIn.

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