Do you ever have a hard time thinking of what to post onto your social media accounts?

Or you decide to get some ideas for content and start searching online; Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.  You find something interesting and end up reading multiple articles, signing up for email lists, while an hour has passed and you still haven’t posted anything.

Does this sound familiar?

Or maybe you quickly find an interesting article, so you spend the next few hours creating a similar blog post (all original content of course), finding images to use with it, but get frustrated because you just don’t have enough time to finish?

These are both very common problems, and can be easily solved with two words: Content Curation.

What is content curation?

Content curation is very basically sharing content created by someone other than you.

If you first think of content creation, where you are creating your own content to post on your website, blog, and social media accounts, content curation is instead, sharing other people’s content. Whenever you reshare, retweet, or share a link to another person’s blog, website or graphics, you are practising content curation.

Why is content curation valuable?

You might be thinking ‘why would I want to drive my audience to someone else’s content?’ But that is not what sharing content is all about.

When you find an article that you know your audience would love and you share that content, you are giving value to your readers, which is what you want. For example, if you have a new app that you are launching, and all you ever post is information about your app, it would get a little bit boring. But, if you also share articles about other cool apps, industry specific topics, and interviews with thought leaders, that would be much more interesting, and it shows your audience that you are knowledgeable and stay on top of industry trends.

Content curation is valuable for your audience and helps you to connect with influencers. Click To Tweet

Connect with Leading Influencers

Not only does sharing other people’s content help your own audience, but it allows you to create relationships with established thought leaders.

One of my favourite social media platforms is Twitter, and one reason for that is because I find so many great ideas in a very short amount of time. I am able to connect with major social media influencers, share their content, and show those leaders that I not only love reading their content but that I want to help share their message.

There are a few amazing social media influencers that I follow so that I can stay updated social media (because it seems to change every once in awhile!). If I notice someone who I follow shares an article and I learn something, chances are, so will my audience. So, why wouldn’t I want to share that?

This is a post by Sue B Zimmerman, the Instagram Expert, whom I learn a lot from about social media in general, and more specifically, about Instagram. (She was also the one who said I should write this blog post).

Sue B. posted this helpful article about ways she saves time in her business with automation tools, which is a perfect share for me. This gave me content to post on Twitter and also let me show her that I value her content.

Quick Tip: Only share content that you find valuable, and that you know that your audience will appreciate. If you are sharing only to get the attention of a major influencer, it won’t come across as authentic, and won’t be valuable for anyone.

How can I use content curation?

Now that you understand what content curation is, and why you would want to do it, you might need some tips on how to actually do this effectively for your business.

Tools to use for content curation

Content Discovery:

I like using actual social media platforms themselves to discover great content (Twitter and Pinterest are my favourite) but you can also use:

Content Sharing:

You can definitely share interesting content as you find it, or use a tool to help distribute it:

For more content curation tools, I found this great post by Docurated.

How to encourage other’s to share your own content

If you are writing and creating amazing content on a consistent basis, you might have already noticed people sharing your content, which is amazing! If you are looking to get more shares, here are some tools to try:

  • SumoMe helps grow your website traffic and shares with easy to install WordPress plugins. ShareThis is a similar plugin for social sharing.
  • Click to Tweet embed offers a quick option for your blog readers to share a quote from your blog onto Twitter. You can include your Twitter handle to track mentions and link to your Twitter account.
  • Create amazing and shareable graphics using Canva or Relay

What are your favourite content curation tools? Do you have any great tips to share? I would love to see them in the comments below!