How Content Curation Can Be Your Winning Strategy

Content marketing done right can be a powerful tool for promoting your website and business and for generating more leads. But all that content creation sure takes a lot of time–time you sometimes don’t have.

Plus, after consistently publishing epic content for a while, the well of inspiration can dry up. Your customers and prospects are left with parched throats and you wonder what to do now.

The solution is simple: content curation.

Instead of creating amazing content all by yourself all the time – which quickly becomes exhausting – you curate or collect the amazing content others have created. Add some thoughtful commentary, and you’re done.

Whether you’re trying to revitalize a limp content marketing strategy or change things up for variety, content curation can help you do it.

So why should you incorporate content curation into your content marketing plan?

It’s Great for SEO

In a curated blog post, you collect a bunch of links to the very best content on a topic, whether that content is in the form of

• articles
• videos
• podcasts
• white papers
• infographics

…or anything else. Then you add your own opinions, experiences, predictions, reflections, and other commentary, making the post a unique piece of content that links to other reputable and high-quality sources.

That’s exactly the kind of content search engines love.

Google loves content curation because the post is likely to offer a lot of value to searchers. And your prospects love it because you’ve done all the hard work of finding the best resources, so they don’t have to.

You can use the same concept for article marketing and other text-based content formats, too, but it works best for blog posts and articles on your website.

Content Curation is Easier and Faster

That’s because you’re not constantly brainstorming ideas and creating all-original content. Curating content still takes some work, but it’s certainly much easier than creating epic resources from scratch. And the time you spend on it is only a fraction of the time you spend creating.

Curating content is easier and faster, but it still takes some work and time. Your audience counts on you to provide genuinely useful, valuable content, so it’s your job to find the nuggets of gold scattered throughout the web.

That means you have to do more than search once or twice in Google. Some ways you might dig deeper to find the golden nuggets include:

• use other search engines such as Technorati (for blogs), YouTube (for videos), and iTunes (for podcasts)
• browse content curation platforms like Blekko and Storify
• search link-sharing sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Delicious

Be creative about how you find the best resources. The benefits of the curated post are worth the time you spend hunting for great content.

Curating Content Helps You Make Connections and Build Relationships

The people whose content you collect and publish in a curated post usually notice. Why? Because it’s flattering when someone mentions your name and praises your hard work.

More often than not, the people whose resources you link to in a curated post will comment on it or share it with their network. Some will link to it directly from their website, which can send a flood of traffic back your way.

Some tips on making connections and building relationships with content curation include:

• let the people you mention know about your post in which you mentioned them
• comment on their blog regularly so they better remember who you are
• link to and share posts you are mentioned in
• return the favor and curate work by the person who mentioned you
• reach out to bloggers and experts for quotes to include in your curated post

It Makes You the Go-To Resource

When you consistently provide valuable content, whether you created it yourself or collected the best resources from around the web, your audience learns to always come to you for information and help.

Effective content curation makes you an authority, an expert, and a thought leader.

Just make sure you have enough of your own original content–including case studies, tutorials, interviews, ultimate guides, and more — to back up your expertise and authority.

Content Curation Keeps You Up-to-Date

If you regularly hunt for the best content to include in a curated post, you will see all the latest and greatest the web has to offer… and all the not-so-great, too.

Part of being a go-to resource is staying on top of your industry, and curated content helps you stay updated on news and trends in your field. You can use that market research to your advantage when brainstorming content ideas and creating new offers.

Do you use content curation in your content marketing? Why or why not?

Let us know in the comments below!