Had the pleasure of listening to Pawan Deshpande, CEO of HiveFire, yesterday at the Content Marketing Strategies conference (I will be speaking on a panel with Pawan at SXSW and he will also be speaking at Content Marketing World).
Pawan discussed the five steps to content curation and I wanted to share them with you here.
Five Steps to Content Curation
Step 1: Identify a Topic
On what topic do your prospects want to hear from you every single day?
On what topic does your company have a unique position?
On what topic do you want to be a thought leader?
I would add that you need a find a topic that will help you ultimately drive your marketing objectives as well.
Step 2: Follow the Influencers
Bloggers
Analysts
Trade publications
Online news sites
Journals
Once you identify these, follow them with Twitter, RSS, email newsletter feeds, etc.
For more, here’s 10 steps to finding the influencers in your market.
Step 3: Share
Select only the most relevant content
Be comprehensive and open minded
Share across channels
Remember, your job is the curator…to select the very best content from around the industry. More is not necessarily better. Share the information that will be valuable and relevant to your target persona.
Tools to share your content include:
Newsletters
a Microsite
Social Media
Feeds
Widgets
Step 4: Organize Content
Key points include:
Build an online library for your content by categories that make sense for you and your readers (think like a publisher). Make it easy for your prospects to navigate (see the samples below). This will also increase your search engine prominence.
Step 5: Create your own content
You need to share your own perspective…your own point of view (check this article for more on that). Pawan suggests 40 curated pieces to one original piece.
The act of curating keeps you relevant
Curation places your content in the context of a broader issue and builds credibility
Key Pointers
Create, curate, but don’t pirate
Always attribute sources
Link to original content, do not scrape
Be cognizant of fair-use practices
Curation Samples
CMO.com from Adobe
Green Data Center News from Verne Global
Image Credit: Shutterstock
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