I recently wrote an article for the Content Marketing Institute’s blog on the benefits of curating content along with creating original content. The article also provides tips on how to curate content if you want to attract more B2B leads.
Although directing your audience to others’ content may seem like counterintuitive marketing advice, it can actually help you drive more traffic to your website, increase your conversions and build your reputation as a trusted advisor.
However, as I review my own marketing, I find that I don’t spend enough time sharing or curating others’ content (for the difference between sharing and curating content, see my Content Marketing Institute article). Sometimes I do well and fill my social streams with great content that I’ve picked up from others. However, when I get really busy, I barely remember to share my own blog posts, let alone share what others are posting.
I want this to change in 2014. Here are a few steps that I will take to ensure that I share lots of great content this year. These steps can also help you if you want to make your content sharing and curation efforts more efficient:
Share items that are featured in Google Alerts.
I subscribe to Google Alerts for keywords that are of interest to my target audience, such as “content marketing”. This makes it easy for me to find relevant content to share, as the latest news items are emailed to me daily. What I like about the items in Google Alerts is that they come from trustworthy news sources. However, Google tends to feature the same blogs all the time, so I wouldn’t rely on Google Alerts as my only source for content.
Use a content discovery and sharing tool.
One of the most time-consuming aspects of sharing or curating content is finding items that are relevant to your target audience. Luckily, developers are creating tools to make this process easier. This blog post lists a number of content sharing and discovery tools that can help you find the right content for your audience.
Reciprocate more.
Reciprocation is a key part of building an online community. That’s why I’ve been taking note of people who share my content, and I am trying to share their content in return (as long as it’s relevant to my target audience). I’ve subscribed to some of their newsletters and blogs to receive notifications when they publish something new. I also plan to put these people in a separate Twitter list so I can quickly see their latest tweets when I log in to Twitter.
My goal is to share others’ content five times a day on Twitter and once a day on Google+. That’s the minimum, but I hope to beat these numbers as much as possible. I also want to find more opportunities to curate content on my blog, LinkedIn and SlideShare.
Do you want to get better results from your content marketing?
Please join me in the 2014 Content Sharing and Curation Challenge. To get started, leave a comment below stating your goals and how you plan to achieve them. You can also join the Google+ community for this challenge to share ideas with other B2B marketers. Let’s help each other become better content marketers in 2014!