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Museum curators have been around for centuries. Initially employed by kings and emperors to collect art and artifacts from other civilizations, curators eventually came to furnish galleries and museums with those findings, commonly based on a theme. Every piece of the collection was connected and created a strong context and deeper understanding for the viewing patrons.
As a content marketer, your job is not only to create original content, but to curate quality content from other sources on the web, as well. Beyond reblogging, retweeting, resharing, or even scraping posts for information, the best curation draws on outside sources to support your messages. If done well, curation is the ticket to boosting both your brand and your audience loyalty.
So, what, exactly, does curation do for you?
Differentiates you as a thought leader
“All-knowing experts” and “gurus” often come across as too pretentious to be trusted. Through curating, you share your own industry knowledge by acknowledging others’. But this takes time. Keep curating and sharing with your intended audience. Eventually they will turn to you for guidance. Is a new trend worth their attention? They’ll turn to you, as a thought leader, for the answer.
Builds community and contributors
Content producers, writers, photographers, bloggers, and other creatives love attention. Recommending their work points your audience to them, and, ideally, they’ll share the sentiment by pointing their audience back toward you. This is also a great way to attract contributors or guest bloggers—something that will come in handy when you experience burnout. Speaking of…
Prevents burnout
Right now, online content marketing is still a fairly new concept. Until your brand or company has the resources to produce original content every day, content staffs risk suffering from burnout. Curation can save you. Not only are you presenting something for your audience that promotes your brand, enhances your SEO, and builds your community, but you are intentionally exposing yourself to new streams of information that are garnering new ideas.
Keeps you grounded
Although it may sometimes feel like we’re working in isolation online, that isn’t the case. No matter what industry you’re in, someone else is likely creating similar content. And that’s good for everyone. Establishing yourself as the curator of the best, most unique, coolest content in that industry keeps you humble and approachable. And the more valuable resources and perspectives your audience has to draw from, the more informed they are likely to be when it comes time to convert them into customers. There’s value in that for everyone.