More content marketers should act like museum curators.
Museum curators pick an exhibit theme, carefully select the artifacts, and organize them into a story that visitors will want to consume.
By adopting a similar strategy, you — and, ultimately, your audience — will reap the rewards.
You will create more quality content without having to create new content.
You will tell unique stories shaped by others’ content.
You will position your brand as a thought leader without having to write draft after draft before the author-executive signs off.
You will become a trusted and helpful resource by digesting content from multiple sources.
Curation can take your content marketing further without an additional investment of resources.
What is a content curator vs. a content aggregator?
Being a successful curator requires first understanding the difference between a curator and an aggregator.
Think of it like this.
When people reshare or repost others’ content on social media without commenting, they are aggregators. Their audience assumes the “reposter” is interested in the content, but they don’t know what’s particularly interesting or helpful about it.
In this LinkedIn post, I was an aggregator, sharing a post from Christina Nicholson on the value of public relations. I didn’t help my audience understand the topic even though they couldn’t discern it from the opening line, “I’m handing over thousands of dollars to her … and she has no idea where I came from.”
When people comment on or write an introduction to the shared or reposted content, they act as curators. They let their audience know why they found the content valuable or how it might relate to them.
In this example, Nigel Brown curates an article about RFID (radio-frequency identification) in retail written by Tony D’Onofrio for Loss Prevention Media. Nigel summarizes the highlights and links to the original article.
Pick a topic
Though curating allows you to develop more content with fewer resources, that doesn’t mean you can scrimp on quality.
First, identify a theme or topic about which you could curate content and that your audience will find valuable. It could be a synthesis of industry news. It could be takeaways from scholarly content. It could be a compilation of takeaways from your brand’s content. It could be a deep dive into a topic for which you don’t have subject matter experts on staff.
When you decide on the theme, fill in the blanks in this sentence:
We will curate content about _________________ to help our audience _______________.
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