4 Steps to Fuel Your Influencer Strategy Using Content Curation
Why do you have a content marketing strategy? One reason is likely so you can boost your website’s SEO. Another could be to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. You could also just really love writing. There are multitudes of reasons for having a content marketing strategy, but a lesser known and used goal is to get on the radar of industry influencers.
When you write content for your brand, you are likely citing other articles to support your points. When you do this – do you ever tell the person whose article you are citing that you mentioned it? Probably not.
You spend hours a day planning, researching and writing content for your target audience in the hopes of increased leads and sales. Hopefully, you are using a content curation tool to help with the research process and to free up some time. If you do use a tool, like UpContent, follow these four steps to start getting noticed by the ‘big dogs:’
Step 1: Search for content on your topic within your curation tool. This will surface many articles with different authors you can check out.
Step 2: Read through the relevant articles and choose the ones with the content that best supports your article’s point. Then, check out the author’s bio (looking for areas of expertise), look at the comments section of the article, and finally, see how many followers the author has on Twitter. Assess whether you believe this person would be a valuable individual to your brand recognition. (If you use UpContent, you can sort your results with the Influencer filter; it will pull the content written by influencers or published by influential sources to the top of results).
Step 3: Once you’ve chosen a few authors and articles, incorporate meaningful citations into your post. Be sure to add thoughtful commentary and insights to the cited content so you are not just regurgitating information without adding value.
Step 4: Let the influencer know you’ve cited them in your content. This can take many different forms. You can Tweet at them with a link to the article, or you can write them an email linking to the content. The most important thing is to be direct and to get to the point quickly. Why should they care you cited their content?
This is not an ‘I cited an influencer and told them and now I’m done’ deal. To really get noticed, you need to continue to find ways to engage with these influencers – read more of their content and comment on it, share their content, and offer valuable feedback where appropriate.
The ultimate goal is to provide the influencer with enough value that they are ready and willing to share some of your content with their audience.