September 28, 2017

Is Content Curation Important?

Unlike content marketing, which requires you to make your own content, content curation relies on gathering the best, most useful content and sharing it to a targeted audience via channels such as social media, email, and blogs. As a small business owner, you might be wondering if content curation is necessary if you are already creating original content. Actually, there are seven very enticing reasons why content curation is important for your business.

Maintain Your Digital Presence

An ongoing content marketing strategy relies on a regular flow of content. There’s only so much original content you can create, especially if you are an entrepreneur with a limited marketing budget. However, you can keep your audience engaged by providing useful information from other reliable sources. Sprinkling curated content into your overall content mix will help diversify what you offer your audience while keeping them engaged.

Provide Additional Value to Your Audience

You are an expert in your field but there are others who can share different perspectives and opinions that your audience might find interesting or helpful. When you provide them with this information, you demonstrate your brand’s value beyond providing a product or service. The more information you share, the more valuable you become to your audience.

Position Yourself as an Industry Thought Leader

You’ve been on the internet. You know how much unreliable, false information is out there. If you take the time to weed out the junk and provide your audience with honest, informative content, you are making life easier for them. Sharing the good, meaningful information with your audience demonstrates to them that you are a thought leader invested in learning as much about your field as possible and your desire to share this knowledge, even if it doesn’t come directly from you.

Leverage Other Audiences

You find an outstanding article that you want to share on your company’s social media channels. Of course, you know to mention the original source of the article. The simple inclusion of the article’s original source allows followers of that source to see your mention. Upon seeing it, they might explore your business to see why you posted that article. As they learn more about your company, they decide they want to do business with you. With content curation, you easily tap into the audiences of numerous publications, thought leaders, and industry experts.

Connect with Other Thought Leaders and Experts  

Maybe another thought leader sees that you shared a white paper she wrote about a topic specific to your industry. She’s honored that you shared her work and offers to write some guest blog content for you. You never know what professional connections are out there waiting for a new opportunity to expand their reach. Working together, the possibilities of what you can accomplish with another industry expert are endless.

Additional Opportunities for Your Audience to Share Content From You

The more content you share, the more opportunities your audience has to share content from you. Forwarding your email. Retweeting your tweet. This all helps you get your brand out there more.  

Build Your Brand

You might be in a very niche industry, but there’s a whole world out there. The more you post, share, publish, and discuss, the stronger your brand becomes in the digital world. The misconception that sharing content from other sources directs people away from your business, but that’s not true. Instead, curating content from others allows you to demonstrate everything your brand encompasses without having to spend thousands of dollars on content creation.

Content curation tools can make the process of sorting through everything published online much easier. For WordPress site owners, there a variety of content curation tools that are easy to install and operate. Some of the top-rated content curation tools for WordPress include:

Curious how to integrate content curation into your overall marketing strategy? Unsure of how to add a content curation plugin to your site? Get in touch with Proactive WP today to discuss your content marketing strategy and WordPress site.