Content Curation: How to do it the right way!

by Tayyab

Posted on June 13, 2014

One of the effective channels of promoting your business is blogging, through which an industry attracts traffic ultimately converting them into leads. The most crucial part is to specify your domain of readers and make sure you don’t lose your concentration from them. “Write for them” is the main key to blogging.

When it comes to content, many at times writers, to save time, curate the content from other sources in such a way as to make it theirs. By this I don’t mean they steal the entire concept or the content itself, rather curate it into an effective content that represent their business, their goals and aims at its target persona.

Content Curation is a trick well-known to bloggers and technical writers all around the world. The content is to be redefined and reassessed from time to time by the marketers to remain synchronized with the current trends and industry drifts and shifts. Therefore, with close collaboration from the marketing team, the content when curated is so well-polished, refined and personalized that it becomes their own.

When your goals are set, all you need to do is curate the content that you believe is made for your business. Let me share how you can curate that perfect content that speaks volume for your business.

What is Content Curation?

As curata.com implicitly says that content cannot always be 100% original. You can search and shortlist the content that provides most relevance to your business and your goals and make it your own by changing it according to your readers. This, they say is content curation in its true form.

It’s a huge time saver having new and innovative concepts and ideas for your readers. Moreover, your readers will find a place where they can come to read a collection of exclusive ideas without having to examine it themselves.

How to find the ‘Relevant’ Content to Curate?

There are various platforms from where you can find the relevant content for your domain. Some of these I am listing here:

1. Google search
2. Google blogs
3. Alltop
4. Social media networks like LinkedIn News, Google+, Twitter etc.
5. Online Publications like 21st Century, ExtremeTech etc.
6. Online Journals research
7. Extract from other curators like Buzzfeed etc.

How to Curate the Content

As stated above, there are plenty of ways of discover the relevant content; there are many methods of curating that content as well. New technological advancements have made it easier for content to be curated. However, I feel the best way to curate content is to plan your content the right way. This is the content strategy that needs to be defined and followed. These are the steps to follow the content curation process strategically.

Step 1: Establish your Audience – this refers to the buyer persona you’re targeting to write for.

Step 2: Establish your Key Extract – this refers to the end result of the blog which you want your audience to get i.e. your final message put across clearly.

Step 3: Establish the Type of Content you want to Curate – this refers to the ‘relevance’ of the content subject to your business as well as target audience.

Step 4: Rack your Brains into Developing Possible Titles – this refers to the working titles that you come up with initially after specifying and following the above 3 steps.

Step 5: Develop a Blog Outline – this refers to the context of the blog content. The context will reflect your take on the blog along with your perception you want to convey.

Step 6: Pen down the article piece by piece – this will start with writing the introduction, then body and finally the conclusion.

Step 7: Don’t forget to Hyperlink – this refers to the additional information you can give to the readers through the links you may provide in your article for a better and more elaborated understanding.

Step 8: Re-do your Title again – after writing the article, you may find the need to modify the title or make it catchy. You can re-do it.

Step 9: Define your Call-to-Action – this refers to the ultimate purpose of your blog post and what you want your readers to do after they’re done reading.

Step 10: Choose the Right Image – select the ‘exact’ image that best describes your message of the blog. This enhances the potential viewership.

Step 11: Publish it – when you’re done going through all the points, maximized it from SEO perspective and edited your content, let the content reach the masses immediately.

Quality Assurance and Significance of Relevance in Content Curation

Finally, I believe, no matter the type or category of the content that you’re curating, the relevance must be your top priority along with the quality of work you’re producing. If the content is not valuable to your readers, it’s of no use to your business rather is time wastage for you and your readers.

There are tonnes of humorous blogs out there, but they are futile to put up if they have no relevance to your business neither cover your readers’ interests. People want to read what they specifically came to your blog for by taking their time out.

Make it count!

Tayyab