Content Curation for a Jam-Packed Editorial Calendar
What is content curation?
So you’re approaching the end of the quarter and you know that it’s time to get rolling on your next editorial calendar, but you’re totally stumped. Maybe you can’t think of new content ideas or you’re just lacking inspiration in general. Don’t stress, we’ve been there, too!
That’s where content curation saves the day. It’s a place you can refer to for content ideas that you’ve saved throughout the quarter. The perfect solution to your brain fog.
Content curation is the process of gathering materials relevant to your target audience and strategically distributing them through your communication outlets.
Content curation is invaluable to a marketing strategy because it ensures that you are producing material related to the themes and discussions that appeal to your intended audience. It’s a great way to gather inspiration on upcoming and trending topics, so you always stay in the loop and produce relevant content.
How to curate content
Content curation is not only key to your marketing strategy, but also it’s a great resource when building a marketing campaign. Having content on hand makes all of this planning simple and straightforward. We’ll show you the steps Collato takes when we choose content to curate.
1. Understand your audience
Before you show off your content on your chosen channel, you’ll need to understand your target audience. What type of content do they regularly consume? Which media platforms do they utilize the most?
If you’re not sure who your audience is, get to know them first before you start curating content. Here’s how to break the ice:
- Survey your audience
- Study your competitors
- Monitor social engagement
- Check on your best customers
- Visit forums and groups
2. Develop ideas
Now it’s time to find the content you’ll share on your chosen platforms. To make the process easier, create separate categories for different content types. For example, a company selling coffee beans could have a mix of content ranging from latte art to espresso guides, and so on.
There are a few tried and trusted ways to find content to curate; here are some ideas to get you started:
- Sign up for mailing lists
- Follow forums and groups
- Create a specialized list
- Download tools
- Save good content
You can try these strategies or combine a few of them. The more sources you curate, the more inspiration you’ll have! And in the end, it will provide your audience with a continuous stream of fresh content that builds trust and relationships in your industry.
3. Evaluate relevance
Equally as important to finding content is making sure it perfectly fits into your marketing plan. A good way to know is if the content aligns with ‘the rule of thirds.” It’s the idea that your content is balanced in a way where you don’t oversell or undersell your brand.
The rule of thirds works like this: one-third of your content is promotion, another third is shared content, and the final third is engagement.
Promotion refers to your own goods and services. It’s content based on what you offer and which pain points you solve for your customers. Shared content is the conversations and interactions within your industry. It establishes your credibility in the marketplace. Lastly, engagement content where you converse with your audience, maybe that’s liking an influencer's post or resharing a reel.
Incorporating a solid ratio of content types will ensure that your audience has the most access to valuable and relevant content through your brand. And plus, it establishes credibility!
4. Publish
You can either manually share your curated content or use a software service to help you out. The latter helps avoid missed posting days and also keeps track of metrics so you can see which content types performed the best.
👆Having a consistent publishing schedule with an editorial calendar is one of the best ways to improve your engagement metrics!
5. Analyze
The key to successful content curation is not just sharing it, but analyzing it too. Reflecting back on the success of your published content offers valuable insights into your marketing plan and content strategy. If it’s not up to your standards, you can edit and personalize the content and share it again. See what works and what doesn’t!
5 cool content curation tools
To have organized and curated content, you need a place to store everything. Here are our favorite tools to help you store and manage all your inspiration!
Finding content
Flipboard is a newsreader and social app where you can follow people, topics, and news important to your industry. Once you’ve used the tool a few times, it produces a personalized news story for you. You can save stories, profiles, and websites to create a mini-magazine to come back to later. Even upload your own blogs to keep everything in one place.
Inoreader
Another great news outlet is Inoreader. It tailors all information, how-to guides, podcasts, and articles to your unique preferences. The content reading platform helps you find important keywords that people in your industry are searching for, giving you some ideas for further content creation.
Pocket provides a space to organize all your content. The news app allows you to group interesting articles based on tags and categories. It even lets you integrate other apps for seamless searching.
Twitter Lists
Have you heard of Twitter Lists? It’s a feature on Twitter to customize, organize, and prioritize tweets on your timeline. That means you can view all the accounts that you follow and pin your favorites so you never miss a beat.
Even make your lists public so your followers can see what you’ve been up to!
Newsletters
Newsletters don’t always have to be a drag, they can actually be a helpful tool to keep you in the know. You might have a long-time favorite newsletter, or perhaps you’re looking for some new ones. Either way, here are a few of our favorite marketing newsletters:
- The Mention Memo: It’s a weekly newsletter with gigs, free resources, and commentary around different marketing topics.
- Geekout: The place for all things social media marketing. This free newsletter curates all the latest social media information out there. And it gives some helpful tips and tricks along the way.
- The Hustle: This daily newsletter covers everything from tech and business to marketing and design. The authors use a casual tone to best appeal to its millennial reader base. It’s a fresh and humorous way to get your information.
Organizing content with Collato
Finding content is great and all, but how do you keep all your information from various platforms organized? With Collato!
Collato is your all-in-one platform for content curation. Save all your information - articles, links, brainstorms - in a card for later ideas and inspiration. You can even make your cards into actionable tasks by moving them into your content plan and editorial calendar. We don’t mean to toot our own horn, but it’s the best place to turn all your ideas into a solid workflow.
Content curation examples
There are endless ways to organize your curated content, it all depends on your team and workflow. You could have a main category like social media, and then have subcategories with the different platforms. An alternative method would be to create a space that has a place for everything, then your teammates can easily add content based on the overarching topic. Here’s an example of how to curate content using Collato:
It's your turn
Now that you're a content curation expert, try it out yourself. Your saved and organized content will give you tons of inspiration for your next few editorial calendars to come!