5 Reasons You Need Content Curation
Writing is hard work. Researching content to inform your writing takes a lot of time. Every aspect of content marketing takes patience, resolve and focus. Who has time for that?
Anything that makes the content marketing process just a little bit easier is worth its weight in gold (unless it’s intangible and weighs nothing, then you can just assume it’s worth a lot).
Content curation seems to be a big buzz-phrase in 2015 – and if you ask us, it certainly should be. Here are 5 reasons why content curation is super valuable:
It saves you time: To be super successful with your content marketing strategy, you need to put out a lot of content on a consistent basis. Oh, and it needs to be high quality and useful. Often, it is impossible to write all of the content you need and get anything else accomplished. That’s where content curation comes in. It’s more than likely that someone else has written something great on the topic you are going to be exploring. Read their content, learn from it, and use it in your writing. Properly cite them of course, but all of the points in your post do not need to be original. It will save you time, provide you credibility by sourcing outside information, and of course, save you some brainpower.
It can improve your writing: Tying in with the previous point, you should be citing content written by others. Not only will it save you time and lend more credibility to what you’re writing, it may just make your writing sound better. You’re probably a great writer, but face it, sometimes people say things a little better than you can. Use it to your advantage.
It can help you ideate topics: Putting out a steady stream of content means you need to have a lot of ideas on hand of what to write about. When the initial ideas start to run dry, you can use a curation tool to help you find some new topics. Searching for content on your industry, product category, etc., will surface many articles that cover several different angles of topics. Read these articles and find ones that you can take a stance on or discuss from a slightly different perspective. You do not need to have topics that no one else has broached; to stand out, you just need to make sure that what you write about the topic comes from a slightly different, but useful, perspective.
It can help you stay relevant: There are so many things happening in the world, that it’s often hard to keep up. Especially within business, there are new innovations, products, use cases and brands popping up every day, if not every few hours. It makes sense to use a content discovery tool to search for content on your industry and stay up-to-date with what’s going on each day. This way you know what’s going on, and if something good to write about pops up, you can be all over it. You will be relevant and you’ll be keeping your content fresh.
It can help you find influencers and reach out to them: Searching for industry content will surface articles written by influencers. Reading and then incorporating their content into your posts should certainly be part of your marketing strategy. Once you’ve written an insightful piece that meaningfully incorporates an influencer’s points, let them know about it. Chances are, they may then share your content with their audience. Read more about how to do this in our previous post: 4 Steps to Fuel Your Influencer Strategy Using Content Curation
If you have any questions about content curation or using content discovery tools - reach out: info@upcontent.com