5 Tips to Turn Your Business Blog Into a Content Curation Machine

Mike Templeman — January 26, 2017 Follow @miketempleman1

Do you know about content curation? If you want to fill out your content calendar reliably without sacrificing quality, you better. Benchmark data suggests that your frequency of blog posts increases web traffic exponentially, with the best results coming if you publish a post at least every other day.

Of course, every post you publish has to be relevant to your target audience, and high-quality enough to keep their attention until you can deliver the call to action. Given that blog posts above 1,000 words generate the highest search engine rankings, you may find it difficult to come up with enough content to fill your blog consistently.

That’s where content curation enters the equation. If you can reliably build your blog to be not just a source of original content, but also a collection or relevant content from around the web, you can publish more frequently and remain just as credible even with less proportional effort.

As Forbes.com points out, content curation began to become a popular marketing strategy in recent years because it makes content more trustworthy and sharable. To take advantage of that strategy, here are 5 tips to turn your business blog into a content curation machine.

1) Follow Industry Influencers

First, you’ll have to find out just what type of content is actually available online that pertains to your industry. The best way to do that is to find the influencers within your area of expertise, and follow them on social media.

Influencers can be other, large brands in the industry, or simply influential customers. They can be perceived experts, or ‘outsiders’ who have made a name for themselves in tangentially related areas. They tend to be eager to use and increase their influence by coming up with and sharing quality content. Follow them, and you’ll find content worthy of curating on your blog.

A service like Nuvi, Buzzsumo, or Hootsuite can be a great tool in helping you find and follow these influencers. Thanks to its advanced analytics and data visualization capabilities, you can also use it to find the type of social media content that performs best, and improve your efforts by focusing on it more in the future.

2) Find the Hidden Content

Content curation has become a popular marketing tactic in recent years. In fact, Curata found that only 5% of marketers don’t engage in this type of marketing at all. Sharing industry insights on your digital marketing platforms has become standard practice.

But of course, you want your business blog to stand out from competitors who might be engaging in the same strategy. To accomplish that, consider focusing not on the most high-profile content in your industry, but ‘hidden’ content that provides value to your audience even though not everyone knows about it yet.

Rather than sharing a Forbes article, focus on a smaller but no less credible source. Find the personal blog of an influencer that might be a Forbes contributor, and link to it directly. Not only will you engender that author’s goodwill, but you’ll be able to find more unique information that makes your blog stand out.

3) Focus on Audience Needs

Not every bit of content curation needs to be focused directly on your audience. While you should use your blog (and digital marketing in general) to hit on your audience’s pain points and create value as a result, that value can also be more indirect.

For example, you can use your blog to focus on other areas of interest that your target audience might share. Once intrigued by your content and its quality, they will check out other content more directly related to your brand.

Of course, you may not have the expertise necessary to write a comprehensive blog post on a topic not directly related to your product or service. That’s why content curation can be such a valuable tool here. Use a service like InTouch Insights, Surveymonkey, or Qualtrics to better understand what your audience is interested in, and find external (but credible) content related to those interests to curate on your blog.

4) Sprinkle in the Curation

Content curation can be a valuable addition to your blog – but it should not dominate it. Instead, find a way to sprinkle in curated blog posts between your original articles.

A regular, weekly roundup of relevant topics could be one solution. Another is to add curated content not just to your blog, but into your email newsletter, which marketing automation software like SalesFusion, HubSpot, or Infusionsoft allows you to do. That way, the content you find in the above steps not only benefits your blog, but your entire content marketing efforts.

5) Attribute Honestly

Finally, to maximize the success of your content curation efforts, it’s absolutely crucial to properly attribute every piece of external content you post both accurately and honestly. Anytime you use someone else’s content, make sure to link to it immediately.

The reasons are quite simple. Above all, your marketing (digital or otherwise) should always be ethical. In addition, linking to high-quality websites can significantly improve your search engine optimization. Finally, linking to other websites, as mentioned above, can engender goodwill and ultimately lead to more links back to your original articles – increasing your traffic in more than one way.

Curated content should not be the driver behind your business blog. It can, however, become a powerful passenger that successfully navigates your blog from one of millions to one of the most relevant and visited resources in your industry. Follow the above tips, and your blog will become a content curation (and traffic-generating) machine.

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