To Create or Curate Content; Is That Even a Question?
Unless you are a huge (inter)national brand and have a matching budget to go along with it, only posting your own branded content is an almost impossible task. Let me ask you this; if you work with a small business, a small team and a small budget you do want great results with your marketing, correct? If so, your strategic marketing plan should include ways to curate content for your business, to share across all your social media platforms in addition to your own branded content. Curating content takes time and effort, but does not add any additional cost to create.
As mentioned, to curate content for social media – the right content; content that your audience wants – takes time and effort. What if we gave you ways to speed up this process?
In this article, you will find what and how to curate quickly
- What: creative content ideas that work
- How: 11 easy ways to quickly curate content like a social media pro
Content Ideas That Work
When looking for content to curate, or create for that matter, think about using different types of topics and content pieces to fill your editorial calendar. Best social media practices include sourcing a wide variety of content to engage and inspire your audience. Not one business is like another, so be sure to pick curated content that most likely will be well received by your very targeted audience.
Content ideas include
- Local news stories
- Charity events
- Sport events
- Business events and conferences
- National news trends
- International news
- Industry related news, tips and trends
- Questions
- Fill-in-the-blank
- Explainer (How to) videos
- Infographics
- Product infomercial
- Behind-the-scenes
- Surveys
- Polls
- Interviews
- Memes
- Jokes
- Cartoons
- Quotes
- Before and After
- Office Celebrations
- Office Events
- National holidays
- National days
- Weekly shows
- Weather
- Seasonal posts
- User-generated images
- Voting contest
- Photo contest
- Giveaways
- Quizzes
- Riddles
- This or That
- Show me your.. (pet, desk, garden)
The main idea here is to present content to your audience that will inspire them to take action! Whether they share, like or comment, any reaction is a good reaction as this signals to other users on that platform that your content is good. This will create ‘traction' and will attract more people to view your posts.
How To Curate Content Like a Pro!
Below, find 11 quick and easy ways to find content to curate!
1. Google Alerts
Setting up Google Alerts for your business name to monitor what is being said about you online is a must for reputation management. Have you ever considered using Google Alerts to find new content?
Google Alerts are easy to set up and using these alerts is a great way to find niche articles, to monitor your competition and to be the first to share newsworthy content! It is up to you to decide to receive emails as soon as articles are published in real time, or whether you want a ‘digest' sent to you once per day.
2. Google Searches
There are several ways you can use a simple Google Search to find new content to curate.
The first one is to simply add a few words to the search box and see what pops up! Here you will find topics that are highly searched. Click on any of these to find articles.
The second way you can use Google search is to click on the other options listed at the top of the page.
If you are looking for local news and local articles, combine your topic keyword with a location keyword. The image search works great to find quotes to share! Make sure to click through to the websites to share from, do not share images directly from Google.
3. News and Feed Aggregators
Feedly, Flipboard, or any other tool used to aggregate content are a great way to read the latest and greatest newly published articles. Daily check-ins and usage of these tools will give you tons of curated content to share.
These tools are completely customizable, so for the social media manager who also needs to stay up on information about multiple industries, news aggregators are a must-have tool.
4. Facebook Search
Using Facebook Search is smart content curation!
Once you type your keywords in the facebook search bar, you can filter what you are looking for by clicking on ‘post', ‘photos' or ‘videos', just to name a few ways you can search for specific content. If you are looking for short ‘how to videos', this is a great way to find them!
Always click through to the post you want to share and use the timestamp (underlined in the image) to get to the post.
From there, you will land on the original post
and then you can grab the URL of that post to schedule (or instantly share) your curated content!
Facebook Search should be in your toolbox for simple, quick and easy curated content discovery!
PRO TIP: Use the Facebook ‘save' function to save posts instantly as you scroll your newsfeed. Create a ‘collection' for client posts like this. The Facebook ‘save' function works on both desktop and mobile versions of Facebook.
5. Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups can be a great source of curated content. Join industry-related groups like our Social Media Managers group, local groups, news outlet groups, mastermind groups and online influencer groups. More often than not, they have special sharing days where members are invited to share their own content. Lots of value can be found in threads in your Facebook groups; looks for the group owners for direction on what to share and when!
Don't forget to not just take, take, take from your Facebook groups, but offer value and share newsworthy content as well.
6. Pinterest
If you are looking for evergreen content to curate, look no further than Pinterest. You can share articles you've found by clicking through to websites or share specific pins or whole boards! The idea of curating content is to provide value for your audience; if you see pins or boards that hold value, share! What you find on Pinterest does not have to stay on Pinterest. You can share articles, pins or boards to other social media platforms. Of course, Pinterest is by far the best source to find Infographics.
7. Trending Topics
Both Facebook and Twitter have a ‘trending topics' sidebar.
On Facebook, it looks like this
Don't forget you can click on the little icons on the top righthand side to find additional trending topics in
- politics
- science and technology
- sports
- entertainment
If you are looking for a fast and dynamic post, trending topics can provide a great gateway to engagement! Make sure to ask your audience their opinion on what is happening when you post as to get a conversation going!
On Twitter, you are in charge of the trending news you see.
You can change to see what is trending based on your location, or preferences. By clicking through on any of these hashtagged trending topics, you will find a wealth of information to share.
PRO TIP: Just because you found it trending on Twitter does not mean it needs to stay on Twitter. Try curating Twitter-found content to Facebook and vice versa!
8. Twitter Lists
You can create Twitter lists, or subscribe to lists other people have made. Once you subscribe to a list, you can go to this lists at any time and quickly find what members on that lists have tweeted. In essence, Twitter lists create smaller and more niched Twitter feeds for increased productivity and easy content curation!
Curating niched content just became a lot easier!
9. Hashtag Searches
You can pretty much use hashtags to search on any social media platform. Most widely used on both Twitter and Instagram, hashtags also work well for searching for specific industry content on Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook. While not used often, they even work for searching for content on LinkedIn.
If you want to do a comprehensive multiple platform hashtag search, read this article by Ian Cleary of Razor Social. He answers any questions you might have on how to perform these searches and what tools to use!
10. YouTube
Videos are hot on social media, so why not search YouTube for some gems and curate these videos?
You can share any of these public videos to your social media channels.
PRO TIP: Find curated content to embed in your next blog article! Check out the way we did just that in this article about pricing.
11. Repurpose Own Content
Last but not least, look to your own content to curate from. Technically, repurposing your own content is not ‘curating' content, yet you could ‘reuse and curate' your own old content quickly if you are looking for a ‘quick post'. You can reuse images from past holidays, refresh quote images you've created with a new background image, create new videos from old blog content, or create new blog content from old videos. You can download your Facebook Live videos and upload them to YouTube, then embed these videos on your website and share these links to social media. We recommend you amass a library of evergreen content you can source from at any time!
Variety is the spice of life.
Present your online audience with many different types of content. Measure, and learn, what content works best and what time of the day, what day of the week you get the most traction on each platform. Eventually, curating content will become second nature!
What is your favorite way to curate content?
I am a Certified Social Media Manager, Strategist, International Keynote Speaker, Organic Specialist and Agile marketer! Blogging is my creative outlet. Running, hiking and skiing are how I recharge. You'll recognize me on stage and online by my always present orange glasses, a nod to my Dutch heritage.
