Content Curator, a professional that boosts marketing

Content Curator? does content get "sick"? Well, no, content doesn’t get "sick", but it’s good to know how to apply first aid techniques in this particular area, if you don’t want what you have created to be relegated to oblivion.

Look at the following statistics: more than 100 thousand tweets, more than 2000 blog posts, more than 30 hours of video, is what is published in a normal day on the Internet. In other words, there is too much content!

And no, the curation process is not something new. 

This profession already exists in well-known areas such as museums, where these experts are employed to choose what should be exhibited in the galleries, which arouses the interest of visitors.

In this case, content curation has a similar purpose, because it works as a strategy to publish what the Internet audience will read, which is relevant and generates loyalty. In addition, content curation is responsible for detecting dubious information or fake news.

If you want to learn more about content curation, this post will help you to provide your audience with a constant flow of high quality content that responds to their needs and interests.

What is a content curator?

A content curator, also known as a knowledge broker, is a strategic professional, trained on what content can be shared on different web channels.

The content curator is a person who is responsible for researching, filtering, selecting and composing useful content to be disseminated to the audience. It differs from content marketing because the professional curator does not create content of his own authorship. 

In other words, a professional curator makes a correct selection of content with high value for the audience, making this selection an innovative adaptation that generates added value. 

What are the objectives of content curation?

Content curation has several key objectives to efficiently keep the audience informed:

• Selecting content only from reliable and quality sources.

• Keeping the audience engaged and satisfied by offering them fresh and valuable content on a regular basis. 

• Developing trending topics in a way that is useful to the audience.

• Establishing the authority and credibility of a brand or website by becoming a trusted source of information. 

• Increasing organic traffic and visibility in search engines, which is essential in the SEO world.

• Avoiding information dispersion on the Internet.

Importance of this technique

In today's world, there is a large amount of information on the web, so the society that consumes it, is called "Information Society".

That is to say, the audience is faced with the need to review more and more every day, in order to find valuable data that provide quality.

The content curation professional is important because he/she dedicates valuable time to select relevant information, helping efficiently to organize and understand what is to be shared through different digital mechanisms.

In other words, companies or enterprises that use content curation benefit because they obtain reliable material, made to objectively capture the attention of their community on strategic topics and issues.

Content curation is not just copying and pasting. Curation is an important publishing strategy because it involves a process of research, selection, organization and creation of valuable content. 

Content curation and Inbound Marketing

Content curation integrates seamlessly with the Inbound Marketing strategy; indeed, they share part of its strategic objectives. 

Rather than blasting users with intrusive ads, Inbound Marketing is based on attracting them with valuable and relevant content. 

Likewise, the content curator plays a fundamental role in this strategy, providing the necessary material to attract the audience and convert them into potential customers.

Content Curation Skills and Characteristics

First, do you know what are the skills or characteristics that define a good content curator? Well, here is a summary of the main skills that every person who wants to stand out as a professional must have:

• The first of the most important skills is creativity, as the content curator will be in charge of giving a unique and more attractive touch to the content he/she is building.

• It must be a person who has a broad knowledge of the subject on which he/she is researching and curating content. That is to say, he/she must be updated with all the news and trends in the field or topic to be curated.

• It is important that every person who wants to be a content curator has a great ability for research. And it is not research for research's sake, it is to extract from their research the most valuable information from reliable sources, to get as a result only the best!

• Finally, every content curator must be organized. This way, he/she will be able to organize all his/her research in an objective and effective way, so that his/her publications are easily accessible to the target audience.

• If we talk about professions, it can be a journalistic professional (because he knows about writing and researching sources) or someone dedicated to content marketing. It could even be someone who acts as a library technician, thanks to his or her experience in information classification.

What is the process for content curation?

The purpose of content curation is not only to keep your audience informed. This content strategy allows you to attract new users or customers, because they will see in your publications that you have authority in the area or topic developed.

Therefore, at this point we are going to show you the process involved in creating curated content, a thorough guide with great practices.

1. Defining the topic based on interests

Before starting to put together the content to be curated, it’s necessary to keep in mind the tastes or interests of the audience. It’s not about writing for the sake of writing, it’s about offering useful, relevant content to solve concerns or requirements.

An efficient way of doing this is to build a representation of the ideal customer, that is, a Buyer Person. How to do it? Well, by elaborating and answering everything that allows you to perceive your ideal audience.

Questions such as: What content is useful to the audience according to their needs? Is the information I read reliable? What contribution or value is delivered, what differentiates it from the rest? and finally, is the content to be published aligned with the needs of the brand? These questions can be particularly helpful.

2. Searching for content and filtering

Once the ideal audience is known, the search for the content to be curated is performed, while filtering by sources or relevance.

In this case, it’s necessary to carry out a good research of all the available content on the topic to be curated, including sources such as social networks.

It’s advisable to choose content that has relevance, quality and is related to the brand language to be transmitted.

Once the content has been found and filtered according to what you want, it’s time to organize and save it according to the sources.

3. Building the content with a personal touch

Now, with all the research done, it's time to start curating the content.

But it's not just about paraphrasing what you're reading. It's about making fresh content, and with useful and original input from expertise in the subject matter being curated. This way you start to generate authority and valuable content.

4. Mentioning sources

When doing content curation, it's not about appropriating research. 

It's about creating relevant content, but one that forms an interaction with the sources you've taken. Otherwise, you resort to plagiarism, a bad practice that will generate rejection and bad appearance for any brand.

If the sources are authoritative, i.e. blogs or websites, it is advisable to cite the web address. If they are social networks, mentioning the account that is the original source will help to create a better perception. 

A critical aspect of content curation is to avoid plagiarism. While selecting information from external sources, it is essential to properly cite sources and respect copyrights. 

Plagiarism can have serious legal consequences and damage a brand's reputation.

5. Publishing the content

Once the construction of the curated content has been completed, with all sources filtered and of quality, it’s now the right time to publish it, both on the official website and on blogs or social networks of the brand or venture. 

6. Evaluating metrics

If a content has been well curated and is of quality, it will be appreciated by the audience with a higher consumption. Therefore, it‘s necessary to evaluate whether the content is generating the expected impact by evaluating metrics, both from websites and social networks.

Not only is it evaluated how good the content has been, but also where the target audience interacts. This will allow obtaining results to improve subsequent publications. 

It is important to remember that content curation delivers more authoritative, useful, professional and quality publications.

7. Optimizing over time

Finally, it’s not advisable to let content be forgotten over time. When necessary, update and optimize what is written to keep it fresh and innovative.

In many subject areas, information or data evolves over time and an update of the content will be necessary.

Tools to measure success in content curation

Do you want to know how to measure your success as a content curator? Here’s a summary of the 4 best tools currently available for this purpose.

Scoop.it

The first of the support tools for successful content curation is Scoop.it. 

More than a tool, it’s a site where you can research and publish all your ideas. It uses “topic” as the name of the content created about something in particular. However, when it is published, it is called a "post".

The advantage of this tool is that it allows you to generate many topics on the same subject to share, and you can add helpful elements such as photos, videos, links and more.

Likewise, Scoop.it allows you to extract content within the community creators, those who are related to the topic and have shared topics. And it makes recommendations, based on the category you have chosen, with a good informative analysis of each topic.

Buffer

Another of the most famous tools that allows you to curate content like a pro is Buffer.

What is it about? It’s a tool that helps the curation professional to analyze publications, in addition to offering metrics that allow you to see the reach of the content, as well as the times it has been shared by Twitter, mentions and more.

Instapaper

You're reading material and then can't remember what you said or wrote. Well, with Instapaper, that's over!

This is a very useful app for those who read a lot of content, as it allows you to save various publications while browsing, but with the advantage of being able to highlight and take note of the ideas that are generated instantly.

Then, you can review and remember again what were the ideas or purposes for which you were watching the content the first time.

Feedly

Finally, we have Feedly, a very useful tool for all those who curate content, especially for blogs.

With feedly, you will be able to compile the source preferences of the audience on a specific topic, which allows you to categorize everything by topic.

It’s also useful for planning the topics that will nurture your content chain.

Benefits of content curation

Before we finish this important topic, we want to mention the benefits you can get by doing content curation as a key publishing strategy:

• It represents time savings for all the staff involved in the design and creation of new content.

• It efficiently synthesizes the available information on a topic, separating reliable content from all that is false or worthless.

• By applying this strategy, you will be updated and informed about the trends in your field, about everything that is around.

• A higher positioning of the content in search engines or in different information channels is achieved, so your business can become a leader in providing valuable resources.

• You can make relationships or collaboration with other people or brands that are experts in the area.

• You become a reference for your sector or community, since you demonstrate expertise.

This has been all about content curation, a strategy that improves online visibility and audience satisfaction.

Did you like this strategy for creating relevant information? If you are interested in this profession, we hope that with our post you can get the most out of it; we also want to read in the comments if you have used this strategy at some point and what benefits you have achieved.