content curation tips - Express Writers

How To Curate Killer Content Ideas

December 31, 2020February 5, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Content curation is a HOT topic and over the last year or so, as Internet content has grown, its popularity has trended drastically. For a lot of companies, understanding content curation lies at the heart of the future success of their online entrepreneurial enterprises. For others it provides a handy way to keep content coming in and keep the things that show up one’s blog fresh. Content curation is the art of gathering relevant ideas and content about a topic or niche and housing them in a simply navigated repository that gives users, at a glance, the usefulness and viability of the content as well as where the content can be located on the Internet. To many bloggers, content curation represents the next logical step in the evolution of content production. There’s a saying that goes, “There is nothing that is new under the sun,” and as far as content creators have realized it’s a sad reality. Coming up with fresh new ideas for content gets to be tedious and tiring as time goes by. Content curation provides an injection of fresh content while at the same time allowing for the establishment of backlinks to well-respected sites thereby increasing the authoritative value of your site (as well as your search ranking for certain keywords). Content curation is the direction that a business-minded site would move towards since it provides a lot of benefits with a minimum amount of drawbacks. Important! Do Not Confuse Curation with Copying Content curators collect information from sites and catalog them, then go through the catalog and pick out the ones that provide the best information then review their findings for the readers. It is an ongoing process and curators usually spend hours trawling the Internet looking for viable links that they can use in their work. Although curators may extract certain parts of a bit of content to underscore the value of the entire work to their audience, they should NEVER copy content completely from another site. Curators are ethically minded people that aim to promote the useful information in sites that are not their own while giving value to their readers by condensing a tedious Internet search into a single page containing the most useful links for a particular niche. Confusing curation with copying can lead to some serious fallout such as losing your page rank in Google for hosting duplicate content. As a curator you should be wary of finding yourself in such a position. 4 Ways To Plan Your Content Curation Just like anything that has to do with a long-term business solution, you need a roadmap for your content curation. Developing a step-wise plan as to how to achieve the end result of a content curation site that content managers would be proud to operate is relatively simple. It can be broken down into three major sub-steps, each logically placed so as to enhance the step that comes after it. When planning your content curation you should be looking at doing these things in order: Collect Content: Looking through the Internet to discover sites that best fit your audience interest and cataloging them with the appropriate utilities. This is the most important first step in order to create a database of valid links. These should be high-impact sites that cater to the basic needs of your audience. Arranging them by tags in an understandable format is where your journey into content curation begins. Share the Best: Although your original pile of article links may number into the thousands, you’re going to have to do some reading and sifting. Content curation is a time-intensive job and the wider the niche you’re covering the more work is involved in getting your content curation to a point where it’s usable. In order to be considered seriously in your niche the quality of your shares should be very high based on their value to your readers. Audit your Content: The feedback mechanism that separates good content curators from run-of-the-mill ones is auditing of your content. Your shared content may fall short in reaching your target audience and the only way you can figure that out is by doing regular audits and replacing the non-performing shares with those that are more likely to generate better leads. Audits also allow you to fix the technical aspects of your content (such as SEO details and keyword placement) so as to make the share more search engine friendly. Schedule your Shares: Just like blogging, the aim with content curation is to ensure that you have fresh content regularly and on demand. To do so consistently, you should queue up your content shares so that they go live at regular intervals. These don’t need to be within any set time period, but consistent posting keeps your content curation site fresh and ensures that you don’t lose your search rank position through abandonment. There are quite a number of online content production companies that offer content auditing and curation as separate packages or as a combination of both of these important aspects of running a site that is aiming to be an authority in the topic area. Because of the intensive nature of content curation, if you intend to go this route, hiring an external company to do your curation for you is definitely a good idea. 5 Ways Content Curation Can Generate Ideas Curating usually inspires you to build on the content you have or to create brand new content. Just like a muse tends to awaken the creative spirit in an artist, so too does content curation give you a chance to explore different points of view for the same topic. You need to keep an open mind when putting together content via curation since it’s likely that sites that may not align with your point of view have some points that are just as valid as your own. Being objective is very important. Coming up with and curating new content ideas can be a relatively pain-free process, … Read more

7 Do’s and Don’ts of Online Content Curation

January 1, 2021July 14, 2014 by Adam Oakley

Content curation, it’s not a term we hear overly often in the content marketing world, which is more than a little surprising. You can’t call yourself a content marketing expert unless you know more than a little about content curation. Why? Because content marketing as we know it involves a basic set of responsibilities, which include content creation and distribution, otherwise known as writing and publishing or content curation. Even if you haven’t seen the term often, you’ve seen the basic set of responsibilities religiously! What’s The Big Deal? Writing and publishing is pretty standard stuff, right? So, what’s the big deal? Why is curation a trending topic? The big deal is that content curation is an ever-growing trend in which a certain individual or an organized team find, organize, contextualize, and share the highest quality and most relevant digital content on a precise topic for a targeted audience. It can be a huge SEO plus. According to Curata.com, curation hands marketers the ability to publish what people want: fresh, relevant content at a higher volume than a 100 percent content creation strategy would allow. That’s powerful! Curation also offers a diverse variety of insights published for readers, effectively handing them diverse perspectives while allowing them to read peer published and other third-party source content. What does all of this create? Credibility. It actively positions your organization as a go-to resource. Now, you just might be wondering if sharing already published content is a good idea. I mean, Google will rip rankings right out from underneath you if you start dabbling in duplicate content. So, again, what’s the big deal? The last thing you want to do is hurt your SEO. If content curation is performed properly, it won’t create duplicate content or hurt your SEO. In fact, content curation can improve your SEO. And that brings us to all important part of this content curation: The Do’s and Don’ts. The 3 Major Don’ts You always want to avoid the don’ts, which is why we’re considering them first. When it comes curation, here’s what you should circumvent: Duplicating the full text of an article. First of all, duplicating content is unethical. It borders on copyright infringement, and it will hurt your SEO. Second, Curata points out that if you repost too much of the original text, especially without annotating, search engines won’t have the ability to know which content to index or rank in query results. Do this excessively, and Google will likely label you as spam. Curating from the same source multiple times. Variety is the spice of life for readers and search engines. Avoid curating from the same source a thousand times over. Instead, favor a variety of sites. Your readers and Google will see your content as credible and educational. Avoid duplicating full size images. It can seem like a quick means of getting that all important image factor into a post, but it’s a bad idea. You should only use a thumbnail size of the original image. Curata recommends that for the best SEO results, you should alter the image alt text, adjust the size, and create a relevant image name. The 4 Powerhouse Do’s Now that we’ve gotten the negatives out of the way, let’s talk about the things you want you do. These are the tips that turn curation into a stout tool: Work with a view toward your audience. As is the case with any tool used for SEO, we sometimes tend to think more about making it work for the search engines versus the people reading the content. Take this tip from the pros: always keep your target audience in the forefront. If they like your content, they’ll be back…with friends. They’ll even link back to you as an industry source, which means SEO boost. Select your curations carefully. Once you start curating, it’s easy to get carried away and start pulling, well, everything! Keep your topic firmly in mind and only curate what is highly relevant and annotated with your own insights and opinions. As a result, you’ll increase content value and give your audience a broader perspective. Retitle all of your curated posts. This one is important. By retitling, you ensure that you are not competing in the search results with the original article. Search engines consider the title more than the body text. Take advantage of this by retitling with your own keywords. Include your perspective. Annotation and inclusion of your organization’s perspective are a massive must. Your written content should be longer than the excerpt taken from the original article. By giving more than you take, you promote strong ethics and improve SEO by avoiding duplicate content. Tools to Help You Grow Online content curation is a viable way of killing two birds with one stone. It helps populate your site with fresh, relevant content while simultaneous building your credibility as an expert resource. As you start to flex your curation muscles, you might consider using some of the awesome tools currently available. Some of the most popular web-based tools currently include Curata, Listly, Scoop.it!, and Storify. Content curation is a trending and effective content marketing strategy. It can and will increase credibility while driving leads and SEO in positive directions. However, it’s not a point and click tool. It takes work. You still must be willing and able to craft your own unique content and incorporate your spin on each and every piece you decide to curate. Low-quality website copywriting kills. As long as you use curation as a means of increasing your standard of high quality copy, it will benefit your content marketing plan tremendously. Whatever you do, don’t use it as an excuse to copy and paste quality copy from other places without giving more than you take. Otherwise, you just might find that Google takes a lot more than they’ll be willing to give back when it comes to your search rankings.