HOW TO: Curate Content For Your Brand

Feb 15, 2011 by Stephanie

Content curation is such a hot topic these days – I included it in my Five Social Media Trends for 2011 and many others did too. It’s in every single conversation I have with new clients, and it seems to take up a lot of headspace for current clients as well. And I find myself trading curation tools, techniques and ideas with my social media colleagues all the time. So as a followup to my earlier post on the topic, which was primarily focused on content curation for Twitter, here is my latest thinking on how brands can curate content to enhance their social media streams, broaden their reach, and generate community engagement.

It’s important to note that while I primarily refer to Twitter here, I’m interested in and often recommend content curation across multiple social platforms. Facebook is equally important, but good content curation methods could also help with blog or Posterous/Tumblr writing (selecting links to include, writing roundup posts on topics) or feed email newsletters or even print newsletters.

Broaden the Brand Voice

Determine how to attract not only current customers but potential new customers to your content by thinking a bit outside the lines of your actual brand premise. If you sell a travel product, perhaps your content could include links to destination reviews by travel bloggers, news about airlines and fares, and links to images of great destinations. People who are thinking about traveling or travel frequently will appreciate the content, and, when they’re in the market for your travel product, they may think of you. If you hew too narrowly to your own product or topic, you may miss a chance to attract new audiences or to get engaged with an influencer just outside your sphere.

Develop Curation Sources

I’m a big fan of the RSS reader, and I make my clients fans too once they see how great it is to have all the blogs they love delivered right to their desktop or smartphone. So when we’re starting to discuss content curation, they sign up for Google Reader (my reader of choice – but choose whatever you like) and we start to populate it with blogs and news sources which could provide good content for their Twitter or Facebook streams. As we find new sources, we add them in. Another great source is daily email newsletters – like Smart Brief on Social Media or Jay Baer’s 3x2x1 Newsletter. And of course we curate right out of our own Twitter and Facebook streams too. Twitter services like Formulists make it easy to pay closer attention to people we engage with and RT frequently. Choose a few sources and start making some selections; you’ll quickly see where you need to add sources and broaden your reach.

Balance Original and Curated

For most brands, you’ve got some content of your own that you want to get out there, and that’s one of the key goals of a lot of social media marketing, right? That is, to generate awareness of your product or service. So while it would be nice to think that people will be aware of you through your resourceful content curation alone, it’s also good to remind them from time-to-time of who you are and what you do and why they should engage with you. Just do it gently and in a nice way, so you don’t sound spammy or like a brand broadcaster. There’s no hard-and-fast rule on how much of your content you should balance with others‘; for some of my clients it’s a 1:12 ratio, for others it’s 1:2. What you decide to do will depend on your brand voice, expectations, and community. Just don’t make the mistake of deciding that it should be 1:2 only because you don’t have time to curate 10 items a day, yet you want to put out one broadcast item per day.

Schedule It Out

While the act of finding good content can be time-consuming, it will get faster over time once your sources are developed. Another major time-saver is scheduling out the content in advance, so you’re not tied to your Twitter page all day. I’m a user and big fan of HootSuite (especially good if multiple people are curating and scheduling content), but CoTweet is also good – and I’ve recently started testing Timely, a very simple interface that allows for advance scheduling while selecting the optimal time for your followers to see your tweets.

Acknowledge Your Sources

One of important ways to attract more followers and enhance your engagement is to be generous – that is, give credit where credit is due and thank people for their interaction with you. When I send good content out into my stream I always credit the source with a “via @name” or “from @name,” and if someone picks up one of my links I thank them for the retweet or link. That type of courtesy will not only win you more friends and followers, it may help you get your content curated into other people’s streams.

What techniques are you using to curate content for your organization? Do you have a rule about how much original content to send out into the world? Are there tools helping you accomplish this every day? Do share in the comments!