The triumphal march of the smartphone, along with its social media, has completely changed media usage behavior and thus also our communication habits. In this mobile world, digital content marketing has to adapt to changing usage habits and requirements. Brands that want to impress users with their own media and content in a sustainable manner and effectively bind them to themselves have to think beyond production and publication. Content curation becomes a critical instrument for success, which is used permanently today, but is still often underestimated.
Efficiency and scalability
With a closer look at the principles and potential of curated content, it becomes clear why this topic can be the answer to some of the most exciting challenges – such as the efficiency – of content marketing.
Social media itself is naturally heavily based on curated content – neither Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram nor TikTok produce their own content. They perfect the personalized curation of content through algorithms and data. They filter and aggregate the things relevant to the user from today’s flood of content and information. That is a large part of their performance. And also their business secret. Because that makes your business model incredibly profitable. It is practically impossible to produce sufficient content in the age of “always-on” and live content exclusively, even for the big brands. The efficient aggregation and curation of target group-relevant content is essential for survival in the content marketing mix.
Content and bandwidth
But also from a content perspective there is a lot to be said for distributing self-produced content. Companies are well advised if they no longer focus on the product in content marketing, but rather on consumers and their need for information or entertainment. Sufficiently breastfeeding this with your own, self-produced content is not only difficult for cost reasons. A properly compiled mix of topics that serves the interests of consumers in an up-to-date and attractive manner is able to cover a much wider range of content with the same budget. You can react quickly in terms of content and take no major risks due to the low investment.
Consumers find out about alternative offers and technical backgrounds anyway, because the next source is just a click away. Content curation can help to create an offer that meets a comprehensive, current demand. A demand that offers different perspectives and formats.
Challenges and opportunities
Curating content may offer companies and editors great potential. It also presents them with new organizational, legal and technological challenges. While it is widely used in digital communication teams today, it is not always well accepted in many traditional editorial offices that traditionally focus on creating journalistic content. Establishing new processes and tools is therefore not always easy.
In particular, the legal framework is increasingly coming into focus today, especially since classic authorship and digital distribution are often diametrically opposed. Those who observe copyright principles can curate digital content properly and avoid violations of the law. The principle of linking and aggregation is so dominant on the Internet that the legal discussion will keep us busy for many years to come. Appropriate basic knowledge should be imparted to each team member and editor.
5 tips for the successful use of curated content
In day-to-day editorial or communicative day-to-day business, it is important to use content curation as a tool sensibly and efficiently. Below we give some tips on how to implement this successfully.
1. The quality has to be right
Curated content should be no less sophisticated, high-quality and informative than your own. The goal is always the same: it’s about offering users real added value. Above all, you should share contributions that you have read yourself and that represent a real additional benefit in the context of the overall offering.
2. Optimize content research
Searching and finding current, relevant content can be complex. It is therefore important to organize this process as efficiently as possible with the right tools, workflows and strategies. tchop, for example, allows the automatic integration of RSS feeds. This way, content can be aggregated so that the best can be edited and published with just a few clicks. Twitter lists are just as suitable as a carefully compiled news feed. It is worthwhile to subscribe to exciting newsletters and to keep track of what influential experts post on the respective topic. In addition, there are a variety of other tools that help – depending on the topic – to quickly and efficiently fish exciting content from the Internet.
3. Add your own comments
tchop makes it possible to provide links to external content as well as social media with your own comment. With a personal comment, you not only share content, you also help the user with the correct classification. You can position yourself as an expert and show that you are familiar with the topic. In addition, discussions and feedback loops can be initiated with the correct comment. This is particularly interesting if the shared content is itself an opinion or an objective position.
4. Experiment and try out
With Content Curation you can try out different content and formats to check which content is most popular with your followers. So you can generate ideas for your own content. For example: Pick up a topic that has received many comments or perhaps questions and write your own contribution or add the missing information.
5. It’s all in the mix
The question often arises of the right mix between your own and third-party content. Of course, this is difficult to assess across the board. However, there are a few helpful benchmarks. The so-called “5-3-2” rule helps many social media managers to plan a balanced content mix and it can also be used for your own media. The following breakdown is recommended.
- 50% curated content, i.e. Posts that link to external sources and websites
- 30% self-created content: self-created content that is of interest to your followers
- 20% subjective, personal content, i.e. Content that has a stronger connection to the sender, the brand or the company and that is also more strongly marked as an opinion (e.g. personal comments and statements)
As I said: there is also very successful content that works with a much higher proportion of curated content. Especially in the news area, this can be attractive within certain target groups. For example, tchop has a number of customers in the sports news sector who implement this very successfully every day.
6. Measure what arrives
Just like your own content, curated content should be subjected to a performance analysis as part of the overall offering. tchop offers a corresponding dashboard for this. Live usage data is received in this. In this way you can control which content achieves the most interaction and derive valuable insights for content planning for both your own and curated content.
Summary
The topic of content curation encompasses many exciting aspects that have been gradually revolutionized and improved by new concepts, tools and technologies in recent years. The approach offers a lot of potential both in classic publishing and in the area of content marketing, especially since your own content offering can be realized with a few resources, with a wide range of content. Social media has made the whole thing the central principle – and is obviously very successful. Classic media and editorial offices should take up and use it accordingly. The decisive factor is the relevance of the content for the user in the right context, not necessarily just its origin or authorship.
Many of our customers use the diverse possibilities that tchop offers for content curation. We would be happy to provide you with some examples and best practices. Talk to us at any time.