There exists a widely-held preconception that content marketing is all about the hard graft of creating original content. This is misguided on two levels. One: creating content needn’t be hard work. Two: by churning out created content alone, you run the risk of becoming a “me, me, me” brand.
Creating unique, original content that is compelling, relevant and engaging is, of course, crucial to the content marketing agenda, yet there should also be room to share curated content that fulfils the same criteria. This will tell the story that your organisation is not ego-driven, but a well-informed and active member of its respective community. As an added bonus, it will help to broaden your content spectrum and offers a useful way to increase your overall output of quality content.
How to get started as both a curator and creator of content:
1). Analyse and evaluate
First up is a content analysis, during which honesty is key. Does your brand blow its own trumpet that bit too often? Many marketers are completely unaware of how much “me, me, me” time their content strategy is guilty of.
Conduct an honest audit to establish if it’s time to rethink content curation by first analysing your last four weeks-worth of social shares. If more than 50% of your content links back to your own website, this suggests scope for improvement. Aim for at least 75% of your updates leading back to your site via a third party to maintain credibility with less ego.
Another method is to evaluate your ten most recent business blog posts. If the average number of links to third party web properties is the wrong side of one, it’s time to do some curating.
2). Revisit the content marketing strategy
We’re experiencing an epidemic of egotistical content marketing. To treat the symptoms, start at the beginning, by revisiting your original content marketing strategy.
When collecting and curating, always come back to those core topics and issues your brand is striving to be associated with.
Step away from the loudspeaker system, and rethink the needs of your online audience. Consider the information that is crucial to their decision making process, whether that be new studies and research, changes to sector legislation, breaking news or slowly emerging trends. Your job as content curator is to polish and disseminate this content, adding a fresh, useful spin if and when appropriate.
As a guide, aim to weave curated content into your bespoke original content calendar to achieve roughly 50+% curated content.
3). Measure and monitor
You wouldn’t assess your household budget without first measuring everything that comes in and out, and curated content is no different. Evaluate all KPIs to gain a core understanding of whether your content curation strategy is in fact working.
This should encompass your brand’s success at attracting (with metrics to include likes, followers, circles, site visits) and at engaging (metrics may include retweets, shares, comments, inbound links).
Over to you
Has your brand succumbed to “me, me, me” content marketing? It’s easily done, but the first step to recovery is to have awareness of the problem. For advice on how to balance the creator/curator role, call us on 0845 055 9264.
