More content marketers should act like museum curators.
Museum curators choose an exhibition theme, carefully select the artifacts, and organize them into a story that visitors will want to consume.
If you use a similar strategy, you – and ultimately your audience – will benefit.
You create higher quality content without having to create new content.
You will tell unique stories shaped by the content of others.
You position your brand as a thought leader without having to write draft after draft before the author and executive approves.
You become a trusted and helpful resource by digesting content from multiple sources.
Curation can take your content marketing further without additional resource investment.
What is a content curator versus a content aggregator?
To be a successful curator, one must first understand the difference between a curator and an aggregator.
Think of it this way.
When people reshare or post other people’s content on social media without commenting on it, they are aggregators. Your audience assumes that the “reposter” is interested in the content, but doesn’t know what is particularly interesting or helpful about it.
In this LinkedIn post I was an aggregator and shared a Posted by Christina Nicholson about the value of public relations. I didn’t help my listeners understand the issue, even if they couldn’t tell from the first line: “I hand her thousands of dollars… and she has no idea where I come from.”
When people comment on or write an introduction to the shared or republished content, they act as curators. They tell their audience why they found the content valuable or how it might relate to them.
In this example, Nigel Brown curates an article about RFID (radio frequency identification) in retail written by Tony D’Onofrio for Loss Prevention Media. Nigel summarizes the highlights and links to the original article.
So be a curator, not an aggregator, and your audience (and your brand) will thank you (or at least appreciate your content).
How to Become a Content Curator.
Choose a topic
Although curation allows you to develop more content with fewer resources, that doesn’t mean you can skimp on quality.
First, identify a topic or topic that you could curate content on and that your audience will find valuable. It could be a roundup of industry news. It could be insights from scientific content. It could be a compilation of insights from your brand’s content. It could be a deep dive into a topic for which you don’t have subject matter experts on the team.
When you decide on the topic, fill in the blanks in this sentence:
We will curate content about _________________ to help our audience _______________.
Choose the tactics
Now that you have determined your topic and overall benefit, you can choose the tactics. You can create something new or select an existing vehicle that could benefit from curated content. This could be a podcast, newsletter, blog, video series, or social media post. You can also combine multiple formats.
Will you be curating a blog post? PageTraffic Buzz does this. It publishes an article entitled The 10 best digital marketing articles of the week.
In this edition, Navneet Kaushal highlights key insights from 10 articles, including this one, “A Comparison of the 10 Best Email Marketing Tools.” The author provides attribution and links to the original source while summarizing what readers can expect—the features, pricing, and performance of each tool.
Can you share your thoughts on a single in-depth article or podcast episode? Nigel Brown did this with the LinkedIn post mentioned earlier in this article.
Will you be curating content from your brand or a sister brand that has already been published?
Marketing Brew’s newsletter includes content from other parts of Morning Brew’s media world. This May 13th newsletter featured an article about Taylor Swift’s influence on a $60 item of clothing, originally published by Retail Brew.
Will you create a newsletter with a roundup of interesting or new content?
The Daily Skimm curates entertainment, news and more in its newsletter. Included outputIt curates a quote from Ryan Reynolds about Taylor Swift naming his children. It then deals with the news topic of the day (Michael Cohen’s testimony in the Trump trial). The first two paragraphs connect to content from AP News, Axios, Politico, and CNBC.
You could also curate longer-form content, such as an eBook that combines content from your brand and third parties on the same topic. The possibilities are huge.
Once you know what the content will look like, you can better understand how much or how little to curate. For example, a 1,500-word weekly curated blog article might require multiple sources and more time to create than a four-minute podcast segment (approximately 600 words) discussing a single curated source.
Additionally, decide how often the curated tactic will be distributed and set expectations for the timeliness of the integrated pieces. If you’re writing an industry newsletter or publishing a topical segment on your podcast, you’ll need to curate more timely posts than if you’re curating an in-depth eBook on that topic.
Now you can create a content curation calendar and list the total number of curated articles you need and the frequency at which you need them. It’s okay to use a range for quantity, but don’t get distracted by frequency.
Search for content
Now that you know the topic, you can set up the curation process.
Starting from scratch every time or hoping that you will stumble upon content to curate is not a strategy and will result in you quickly abandoning the strategy because it is too time consuming. You should set up a system that scales easily. Start by documenting everything in a spreadsheet or other tracking system
Use an SEO strategy
Pull the keywords from your SEO strategy. Since it’s probably a long list, you’ll need to test and refine it. Select five to ten phrases that are more likely to consistently produce good content for curation. If they don’t prove fruitful, swap them for other keywords.
You want the curated content to feel fresh. Depending on your topic, this could be content from the last week, the last month, or the last year. This is rarely content from two, five or ten years ago. When searching on Google, after searching for your keywords, click the “What’s New” tab at the top of the search results page. More recent news is displayed.
TIP: Set up one Google Alerts for your primary target words.
You can also follow a similar search process on YouTube to find relevant videos.
Make bookmarks your friends
If you find websites or other content resources that could provide a steady stream of articles worth curating, bookmark them and add them to your tracker. Sometimes they may have relevant content that is not yet ranking well. Unless you go directly to their URL, you will never find this content.
Don’t forget to use the search capabilities of these go-to domains to discover content that may no longer appear on the homepage.
Sign up and follow
Subscribe to newsletters, podcasts and videos on your topics. They can provide you with a wealth of resources to use or set you on a new path for further research.
TIP: Set up a separate email address for subscriptions to avoid an overflowing inbox.
I like newsletters because I can quickly read the content and cut and paste into my notes. But audio can also work. In such cases I use a free tool, e.g YouTube Transcript, to get text so I can make it easier.
Also venture into social media. These platforms can be helpful in several ways – finding people and hashtags relevant to your topics. Follow favorite sources that share links and breaking news on your topic. Follow the most relevant hashtags to see what content is showing.
Use a tool
Generative AI can also help you with this. Type prompts that use your key topics or questions into a tool like Gemini or another that provides real-time information. Ask for the original sources and make sure those sources contain the content.
Although I haven’t used any paid tools in a while, there are many available to speed up the curation process:
- Curata allows you to create, curate, organize, comment and share content.
- Feedly uses RSS feeds to track specific topics and trends.
- Scoop.it allows companies to create hubs to create, curate, share and consume content elsewhere.
- TagBoard works for hashtag curation on social media.
- Huzzaz acts as a video curation platform.
1 more idea
If you’re curating content on more intellectual or research topics, use tools like Google Scholar to find scientific articles.
Give credit (it’s due)
When curating content, be sure to keep sources in mind. If you want to avoid plagiarism (or even the appearance of plagiarism), you must give proper attribution to the original sources. In your content, note the original source by name and, if possible, link to the curated article, podcast or video.
Tell a curated story
Third-party content can prove to be a valuable resource for expanding your content strategy and giving your audience more with fewer resources. However, the content only serves as building blocks. Like a museum curator, you still have to figure out how to make it cohesive to create a story that your brand wants to tell and that your audience wants to consume.
All tools mentioned in this article were suggested by the author. If you would like to suggest a tool, share the article on social media with a comment.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute