How To Curate Good Content.

What is content curation?

Curation simply means to research, collate, sort and share content with your target audience. There is a certain theme or topic around which the exercise revolves. The curator usually sifts through the enormous data available online and chooses to quote or link the best of them in order to share with the readers.

Curating Good Content is like creating art - how? 

Because much like an artist who sculpts a shapeless piece of marble into an appealing masterpiece, a curator has to put together all the unrelated mass of content in a very appealing and comprehensible story to the readers. You will see professional content curators (called master content curators) or content curating tools online (Curata, CurationSoft, Storify, Paper.li, etc.). Quite often, you will also see content marketers curating their own content for their readers.

Why do we do it?

Let’s Google a simple term like “blog writing tips for beginners”. Do you see all those results you get?

When someone searching for a similar keyword sees the results, she may get intimidated by the amount of content that’s made available to her. There are so many different types of content that it’s daunting to even begin to choose the one that specifically answers the search query.

If you go through these results, you often find that most of their content is repetitive or at times only a small part of it is useful while rest of it is just, well, irrelevant. If you are a marketer who wants to tap into the breed of fresh content writers, you may want to curate an article on this topic.

One of the reasons for content curation is that you want to cut the clutter for your readers. You want them to be able to get the best of knowledge that can be derived from the internet, in one place. Instead of going through 10 different articles, your readers can get all they want from your curated list.  Doing so also establishes your credibility as a reliable source for high quality relevant answers to search queries.

Difference between good content and relevant content

There are ample amounts of “good” content writers on the internet. What they are talking about and what they write is worth those last 20 minutes you spend reading them before you go to bed. However, in content curation there is a difference between good and relevant content.

Writing a good piece of content is a standalone project. But threading together many different pieces of good content is what curation is all about. And the only thread that holds these pieces together is relevance. Even if one your pieces are irrelevant to the main article then it will stand out like a sore thumb.

Steps for curating

Step 1: Start with the basics

The first step of curation is searching the net for your desired pieces. Search engines are your best bet. You can enter your topic heading and subheading to see how others are talking about you specific topic. 

Feeds: You can subscribe to blogs of your favorite writers using an RSS feed of your choice. Google alerts also work great in this case. Create “blog” alerts for a topic of your choice and set how frequently you want your feeds (as it happens, once a day, once a week). Or you can use newsreaders like Feedly, CommaFeed or InoReader. If you don’t mind paying for your feeds, then you could go for NewsBlur. .

Social media: Social media is a great way to get content. Join a group on LinkedIn that suits your topic’s needs and go through the content that members post. The news shared on your LinkedIn homepage can also be used for this purpose. You can do the same on Twitter, too.

You also have some great sites like Quora, Mahalo or BuzzFeed where there is ample of good content for any topic under the sun. Highly recommended: Alltop.com 

No limits: Avoid limiting your research to blogs. You can take your pick from a host of images, infographics, GIFs, videos that are out there. Videos and images are sometimes better at conveying your point than words. They will resonate much better with your readers. And what’s that about visuals being processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text?

The more visually appealing your content, the more your readers enjoy it.

Step 2: Choose your canvas and colors

The internet is a funny place. You may come across something important one day while you’re just surfing; and when you really need to go back to that piece, you can’t seem to find it anywhere. When you read endless stuff on the net, it is quite normal to get lost and go back to the few you had really liked. If you don’t want to get in a situation like this, you will have to start from the very beginning, even if you haven’t started curating yet.

Use note-making apps like Evernote, Google Keep or StumbleUpon to make random notes. (Evernote tops the list though, due to its highly sophisticated features).

Another option is to make use of your Google drive. You can upload any kind of file (word, presentation, form, spreadsheets or pdf files) on the drive. You can create folders and stash your stuff in the folder. Also, when you click on the “create” button on the left had side, you get an option to connect more apps. This makes it possible to connect any favorite app to your drive and everything gets auto synced in the drive. What’s best about this drive? You can access it offline.

Once you have sorted and saved the best resources for your content, you need to start painting the picture.

Step 3: Get to work, Picasso

One of the common problems of curating content is the presentation. Here lies your talent. Putting together a curated content is not unlike writing an original content. You have to add personality to your broken pieces of content.

One of the simplest yet compelling ways to do so is writing a list post (10 best graphic design sites, Top 20 fashion bloggers, 5 reasons you should get a dog, etc.). Not only is it easy to create, it is also easy for the reader to follow a list post.

However, you can also write a post like a normal blog and provide links for keywords.  For the tone, you can choose to be formal or slightly informal, depending on your topic. Try to make your post fun and informative. At minimum, either one at least.

Apart from this, it is important that you offer your insights or opinions for each link that you give. If you only collate different content in this post, it’s content aggregating or worse, content scraping.

When you curate content, you need to insert your comments or experiences about the information that you have chosen to share.

Step 4: Finishing touches

The next step of any good writer is to edit. Read and re-read until you are convinced that this is how you want it to look. Make sure that you have linked all content appropriately. Check for the usual grammar errors and typos.Reading it aloud is one foolproof method to gauge the post from your readers’ point of view. Your post should be informative and have a strong point of view.

Step 5: Voila! Share the masterpiece with the connoisseurs

Now that you are done, you can put your brush down and plan about how you are going to share it with your readers. Talk about it on your social platforms. Whenever possible post a trackable link on social sites.

Once you’ve uploaded the post, make sure you invite comments from your readers. Welcome them to share any additional information they may have.

 Essentials of curation

Exhaustive reading

Often writers and bloggers take to curation in order to save time. This approach however doesn't serve the purpose. If you really want to offer something of great value, you will find yourself putting extra efforts and time for curation than you would on a typical post. You have to constantly read what thought leaders in your industry are talking about. Keeping yourself posted about the latest news lets you develop an in-depth insight about the topic.

You have to know about your industry well enough to present yourself as a thought leader. No short cuts there. 

Posts that stand the test of time

Curated content has a longer shelf life than the usual content; which means, you will have visitors to your posts long after you have written it. It is very important to update such content on a regular basis, lest they seem outdated to your visitors. There’s nothing more annoying than opening a link just to find that it doesn't exist anymore.

You will have to periodically update newer additions to the existing post or remove the links that no longer exist.

Innovation

Even though art of curation is a new one, innovation is always welcome. Instead of using a reluar blog post every time, you can consider curating through other means, too. You could do an exclusive video or infographic curation post. You can put together a slideshow and share it with your audience.

How does it help you?

Apart from the obvious benefits that your company derives from this curation exercise, it has some benefits for you as an individual too. The exhaustive reading will mentally stimulate you and keep you aware of what your industry is doing and thinking right now. The whole process of constantly sorting and curating good content makes you highly methodical about something as casual as surfing the net. Soon your circle of friends will know you as THE source who knows which sites are best for what kind of information.

You will come across a lot of stuff not related to the topic. However, some of these will be real gems, which you have never heard of or seen before. And who knows, you may end up using them someday.