5 Steps to Content Curation

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

1. On what topic do your prospects want to hear from you every single day?

2. On what topic does your company have a unique position?

3. 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

1. Bloggers

2. Analysts

3. Trade publications

4. Online news sites

5. 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

1. Select only the most relevant content

2. Be comprehensive and open minded

3. 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:

1. Newsletters

2. a Microsite

3. Social Media

4. Feeds

5. 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

1. 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.

2. The act of curating keeps you relevant

3. Curation places your content in the context of a broader issue and builds credibility

Key Pointers

1. Create, curate, but don’t pirate

2. Always attribute sources

3. Link to original content, do not scrape

4. Be cognizant of fair-use practices

Curation Samples

1. CMO.com from Adobe

2. StartupAdvice.org

3. Green Data Center News from Verne Global

Image Credit: Shutterstock

#pawandeshpande #curata #ContentStrategy #hivefire #ContentCuration