For most small business owners, content curation is a key element in building their social media strategy.
When curating content, it’s important to “own” the content that you are sharing with your audience. By “owning”, I don’t me plagiarizing. Instead, I mean working to make it fit with your audience and further prove your thought leadership.
Here are 9 best practices to make the most of the content that you curate and share.
- Pre-schedule curated content to share with your social media audiences. This allows you to spend time each day actually engaging with people on social media; replying to comments, adding to discussions, welcoming new followers, rather than worrying about what to post. I would never automate posts meant to directly communicate with people because it wouldn’t be authentic. Instead, I can pre-schedule a batch of valuable articles to go out this week and then turn my attention and focus to my community to serve them better.
2. Always introduce the content that you are sharing with your insight. Share your thoughts.
Why did you find it interesting?
What was your take-away?
Why do you think I should spend time looking at it?
3. Mention/Tag the person who wrote the article and/or thank the person who originally shared it. This helps in creating a wider community of like-minded individuals. Plus, it lets people know that you appreciated their content. Always give credit where credit is due.
4. Never share content that you have not read thoroughly yourself. Just because the title is catchy, doesn’t mean the content is worthy. You don’t want to end up damaging your reputation by sharing content that isn’t of good quality.
5. Spread out posts from the same source. Don’t post multiple articles by the same author or from the same organization consecutively. Instead, intersperse them with other quality content.
6. Remember why you are curating content in the first place. You want to build rapport, develop trust and open up dialogue with your audience.
7. Keep an eye on what’s interesting to your audience. Just because you find a piece of content interesting doesn’t automatically mean it will be of interest to your audience.
8. Curate from lesser known resources to help set yourself apart from the masses. Find content that isn’t likely to be shared by others.
9. Take time to respond when people engage with your curated content. You’ve caught their attention. Use the opportunity to make the interaction personal and engaging.
Check out How Feedly Helped Me Define My Personal Brand to learn how I use Feedly to curate content for our company.
