It’s no longer enough to blog three times a week and release a white paper once a quarter. The average marketer must now use a variety of different content marketing tactics to gain visibility, and curation is fast becoming the most popular.

According to Curata, 76% of marketers now share curated content, not only to position themselves as an authority in their industry but also to strengthen their relationships with their customers too.

Although authority is a primary draw for using content curation, many marketers do it to improve their company’s visibility and to create a buzz around a topic or theme as well. Another benefit of curating content is that it boosts organic SEO, particularly if content marketers share infographics and videos.

Content curation, if done regularly and consistently, works like a magnetic sponge – as it attracts readers who eventually become customers. The more you collect, filter and then share your curated content, the more your influence, network, and following will also grow. Content curation tools make it easier for you to search for relevant content and display your efforts on any digital service. 

If you’re stuck on ideas about how to go about curating content, here we’ve come up with 15 top tips and five techniques you can use:

1. Always put your audience’s interest first.
2. Identify the most relevant, interesting, thought provoking content to share with your audience.
3. Provide content that matters to them as a way of gaining their trust.
4. Publish high-quality content, frequently.
5. Curate content from a variety of sources – blogs, social media, newsletters, etc.
6. Publish curated content three to four times per week or more.
7. Program a social media management tool like Buffer to automatically publish your content at regular intervals throughout the week.
8. Collect and collate your content sources and put them into an RSS reader like Feedly. This will save you having to trawl the net for sources each time you want to find some relevant content.
9. Use a tool like Google News to create a customised RSS Feed which automatically scours the web for news on your sector. This will help you to filter the plethora of content out there.
10. Curate content that can be used on multiple platforms, e.g. listicles, videos and images.
11. Identify where your targeted audience usually hangs out on social media and focus your sharing efforts on this channel.
12. Create eye-catching and captivating headlines to attract more viewers.
13. Involve the whole team in the content curation process – this helps everyone stay up to date with what’s happening in the industry.
14. Measure which of your curated content is better received than others analysing the numbers (clicks/views etc.), and then optimise.
15. Do not forget to give credit where it’s due and give a shout out to the original owner’s work.

5 different content curation techniques

Content curation requires a continual commitment to delivering breaking news, and distilling the noise in your industry, and there are a number of ways you can do it:

1. Aggregate: (This is the most common form of curation) Compile relevant information on a given topic into a single location. Here are 8 reasons why brands should use social media aggregators.
2. Distil: Only share the best insights on a highly-popular topic, by embedding the best Tweets or quotes etc. by bringing them into a central hub.
3. Elevate: Draw conclusions/write blog posts on trends or issues found on social posts on your chosen topics.
4. Mashups: Blend original and curated content into a fresh, original take on the topic.
5. Chronology: Create a timeline of events, using links, social posts, and other curated media.