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Content Curation Tips for Stellar Social Media

What is content curation? It is the act of finding content to share throughout social media platforms. Finding relevant, interesting, and informative content to post is important for anyone in social media. There is an art and science to finding the best content and it is well worth your time to be thoughtful and careful in what you share. Give people a reason to follow you and keep following you!

Per Beth Kantor, “Content curation is not about collecting links or being an information pack rat, it is more about putting them into a context with organization, annotation, and presentation. Β Content curators provide a customized, vetted selection of the best and most relevant resources on a very specific topic or theme.”

The first step is defining what your topic or focus will be for your content. What do you want to be known for? What is your business focus? Pick several keywords for your content and be consistent. These words should also be used throughout your social media profiles so that people will find you when they search for keywords that interest them. This doesn't mean that you have to share only social media (if that was your keyword) but a good percentage so it is clearly your focus. Nurture the niche that you are trying to create for yourself.

Here is Guy Kawasaki's Useful Sources for Good Stuff to PostΒ articleΒ which is a chapter from What the Plus! in which Guy shares his tips for content curation. Mari Smith is also a huge fan of proper content curation. Here is a video that Mari created with Social Media Examiner called 8 Ways to Find Great Social Media Content:

As Mari says “Always be curating (ABC) other people's content (OPC).” Mari and Guy both like to use the phrase cherry-picking content from great sources, I am not sure where the phrase originated in social media, but they are both people who excel at content curation from great sources. They each have their own unique style and you need to create one of your own! One aspect of content curation is making it unique.

A few of my favorite sites for finding amazing content:

  • Pinterest: You can tweet or post to Facebook right from Pinterest. I would caution against pumping all your pins to Facebook, as with all curation, be thoughtful and considerate when sharing. Your goal is to enchant not turn off your followers.
  • StumbleUpon:Β Set up your interests, search by topic and be ready for great content at your finger tips.
  • Alltop:Β This is my Alltop page which will show you my favorite websites that I curate automatically on Alltop. Super easy!
  • Follow great curators and share their material! Make lists on Facebook and Twitter as well as circles on Google+ of people whose content fits your criteria.

Several ways that I efficiently share my curated content:

  • Buffer AppΒ ~ I adore the team behind BufferΒ but the practical reason I use this daily is that it is easy and effective. I use the Buffer App for ChromeΒ so when I see content that I want to share, I can work it into my content plan for the week. Everything doesn't need to be shared in one big group when I am reading blogs. This is a much more advantageous and balanced method for sharing. I also like the drag and drop feature for scheduling out your tweets or posts as well as the analytics. This is an example of what you see in the Buffer analytics section.
I also use Buffer to send Power Tweets from Twylah. Again, done to balance out my content sharing. If I spent a half hour reading my friend's Twylah pages, I share the tweets that I want to send over a week. Smart!
  • More on Twylah here: Take Twitter By the Tail with Twylah
  • Do ShareΒ ~ Another Chrome extension that I use daily. Do Share allows you to schedule posts on Google+. It works for personal Google+ profiles as well as Google+ pages.Β Tzafrir Rehan is always around on Google+ so hit him up with a mention if you have questions.
  • PostRocketΒ ~ still in BETA but I love the recommendations for types of posts to share on Facebook as well as the analytics.

It is important to be consistent when you are a content curator. Sharing at the times when your followers are online and active is always smart.Β TweriodΒ is a tool that tells you when your followers are active on Twitter. You can also share this information directly to Buffer from Tweriod. Brilliant!

A very important thing to remember is that you are curating other's content NOT stealing it. Per Steven Rosenbaum, “Take the time to give attribution, links back, and credit. The sharing economy works because we’re each sharing our audiences, and providing the value of our endorsements. If you pick up someone’s work and put it on your blog, or mention a fact without crediting the source, you’re not building shared credibility. You’re just abusing someone else’s effort.” I would also add that this goes for tweets, posts or any other content. It is actually easier to share on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook than it is so cut, paste and steal someone else's work. Hit retweet or share.Β Be cool. Don't steal.

I hope you got a few tips from my post and some ideas from the resources that I shared. What are your best content curation tips?

Resources:

5 Tips for Great Content CurationΒ by Steven Rosenbaum

Content Curation Primer by Beth Kantor

12 Most Mind-Blowing Content Curators to Follow by Susan Silver

12 Most Helpful Tips for Curating Content by Margie Clayman

Featured image courtesy ofΒ cizauskasΒ via Creative Commons.

Article by Peg Fitzpatrick
 

14 Comments

  1. I think Stumbleupon, Alltop, and Pinterest, and probably Redditt are definitely the best content discovery tools at the moment. Anybody know some others?

    1. Β @etelligenceΒ I have not tried Redditt. Is this one of your favorite sites? I love trying out new sites but you do need to pick a few and focus on them so make sure you are managing your time.
      Β 
      Thanks for your thoughts.Β 

      1. Β @PegFitzpatrick
        Β actually, no πŸ™‚ I just know that it is becoming a really influential place, and a lot ofΒ the stuff that you see on other sites originates from there (The Google+ hot feed often has several pictures that come from there for instance.) I figured you were the go to gal for content discovery apps Peg! One of the newest things I’ve been looking through is Inbound.org . It’s mostly SEO posts, is a joint venture for fun between Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz and one of the guys from Hubspot. It’s really small blogs usually, andΒ a little odd content. It’s different, that’s what makes it interesting I guess.
        Β 
        Stumbleupon and PinterestΒ could keep you busy for hours though. I barely have time to look through the articles on Triberr and the content roundup scripts I’ve set up. Here’s a great one: BundlePost. You canΒ set up a Google+ feed forΒ search terms, and it’s integrated with Twitter so you can schedule up a ton of relevant, new posts that are delivered right through theΒ feed (just check the boxes besides the ones you like). I played with it one day, and it is really powerful, just not my cup of tea though.Β I am set in my ways.
        Β 
        Have a great week Peg!Β 

    1. Β @PegFitzpatrickΒ thanks for mentioning us on this post. we’re working hard to help make it super easy to find some awesome content to share Β πŸ˜‰
      Β 
      @annelizhannanΒ if you get on the list, I promise you’ll get your invite very very soon πŸ™‚Β 

      1. I am happy to include you and I love sharing tools that really work!

        Hooray for @annelizhannan!

  3. Great article and resources Peg…thanks for sharing! I’d like to add one courtesy tip for the “you are not stealing content” reminder. As an author for Inc. Magazine I see my articles shared widely, and I love it. However, when people post the article in its entirety on their own blog it is not supporting the author fully. Remember that authors are paid based on page views, so it’s really great when curators not only cite the source and author but hold back some of the article and link thru to the original site. We love you for that! πŸ™‚ Thanks again Peg!

  4. Β @JessieZubatkinΒ Β contentcuratingΒ Thank you very much. I will check out your site.
    Β 
    I have had some issues with my blog and people “borrowing” my ideas so I think it is important to give people some best practices to follow and learn from as they go. If no one tells people that it is wrong and so many do it, it becomes a very apathetic social media society. I would like to help people grow and learn the right way which is part of the reason that I included Mari and Guy in this article as I have seen them both model great practices.
    Thanks again!

  5. Excellent article and tips Peg! Content curation can be an enormous time suck for a lot of people so knowing where to go and how to make it as easy as possible is key to consistency. I LOVE Buffer App and Alltop – two of my daily top used tools.

    1. @rradice Did I leave out any of your favorite tips? Content curation can also be really distracting too. It takes focus to not get sucked into too much content. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.

  6. Thanks for this great post, Peg. I always love seeing bloggers who have a real understand of curation and its benefits. Curation has changed social media for the better, allowing curators to aggregate their content while also adding their own thoughts, then share it everywhere. Have you tried Scoop.it? It might be a shameless plug (I’m a part of the team), Scoop.it allows you to curate up to five topics with the free plan and allows you to share your posts to as many of your social networks as you desire all in one click. I’d love to talk further about curation or Scoop.it with you! Thanks again for the great post.
    Ally
    @allygreerΒ 
    Β 

  7. wonderful piece of information Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer! I will bookmark your blog and have my children check up here often.

  8. I’m so glad that we “met” today, Peg. Thanks to this article, I’m all caught up with tweriod, buffer, and alltop. And somehow I thought I knew a lot about social media before today?! Cheers!

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