Content curation is the cornertstone of your content strategy and is one of the defining factors that determine your brand’s visibility on social media. When you source stories from credible blogs and publications you will be able to make a lasting impact on your audience, and effectively earn the recognition you seek within your industry.
Content curation could however become a long-drawn process. Running manual searches to find relevant and interesting stories is a terrible waste of your precious time. And more so if you’re managing multiple social media accounts (which you most likely will be doing). Here are seven tips to help you discover and curate great content quickly and effectively.
1. Use content curation tools
Content curation tools save you a whole lot of time and effort in finding interesting posts to share on social media. Automating the content recommendation process will help you maintain an active presence on social media, which is crucial if you’re looking to improve engagement with your audience.
For instance, content discovery tools like DrumUp help you curate fresh and relevant content for any niche, without having to spend hours on end sifting through search results. Some of these tools also let you schedule posts to multiple accounts to ensure that your social media pages stay buzzing even when you’re away.
2. Mantain a social media calendar
Building a social media content calendar will save you the trouble of having to come up with a new idea every time you need to share a post. Your editorial calendar can be just as brief or detailed as you need it to be. It will not only make your social media marketing efforts better organized, but will also ensure that the content you share is in alignment with your marketing goals.
Maintaining a social media content calendar ensures that you don’t miss out on sharing any important updates regarding your business. It also makes sure that you don’t post too frequently on one social media platform while completely ignoring another.
3. Use analytics tools
There are a whole lot of social media analytics tools you could use to gain insight into the kind of content that works best for your audience. If you develop a social media content strategy without such insight you’ll be shooting in the dark – if you do manage to hit the target, you’ll owe it to sheer luck, rather than intelligent effort.
Keyhole is one such tool you could use to track URLs, Hashtags and Keywords. Viralwoot is a dedicated tool for Pinterest that lets you track metrics for your Pinterest boards, while also recommending the best times to post on the platform.
4. Maintain fewer social accounts
There’s little sense in creating a Pinterest account for your business if that’s not where your audience is. The objective of using social media for marketing is to make your business more visible and accessible. If you’re able to achieve this with just 2 or 3 social accounts, then that’s all you need.
Understand the social media behavior of your audience, identify 2-3 networks that they’re most active on and focus your energy on those platforms. Your business will be better off with a few awesome social profiles, rather than many shoddy ones.
5. Follow a balanced social media diet
When you’re on Facebook, Twitter and the likes, the risks of getting carried away by the constant inflow of content are rather high. One minute you’re sharing the results of an awesome report that’s relevant to your industry, and before you know it you’re watching a hilarious video that just went insanely viral.
To make sure that you aren’t distracted by the endless notifications on social media, give yourself a set amount of time on each platform. Of course, the amount of time you decide to spend would depend on the scale of your social media activities.
6. Subscribe to newsletters and RSS feeds
Subscribing to specific newsletters and RSS feeds that are relevant to your line of business is another way of streamlining your content curation activites. They act as a great repository of shareable content that’s right in your inbox, available for you to access at any time.
However, in case of newsletters, keep in mind that some of the content may be time-sensitive. If you decide to recycle content from such sources, you’ll need to make sure that a blog or article you intend to share is still relevant to your business and your audience.
7. Use Twitter lists
Twitter Lists can be either public, or private. They make for an effective way of organizing social data. Right from identifying influencers, to keeping up with industry trends, they help you condense chunks of useful information into neat lists of people, places and sources.
Also considering the fact that your business may be interacting with hundreds or thousands of followers on Twitter, lists help you nurture lasting relationships with your customers.
How do you optimize the time you spend on social media management? Share your tips and suggestions in the comments section below.
Image credit: Pixabay
Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community(81)
