External Content Curation for Social Media

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Video Transcript | Intro

As it’s traditionally understood, content curation involves gathering and evaluating pieces of media from respected or trusted venues, and then sharing the most valuable gems with your audience.  But modern social media professionals in larger organizations also need to gather, evaluate and share relevant content produced within their organization.

We call these two functions internal and external content curation, and running a successful content marketing program on social media requires understanding best practices for both.

Curation Tools

When curating great external content to support your content strategy, there are many services available to help you surface content that is relevant and engaging simply by entering topics and keywords, and then creating a feed of relevant articles.

BuzzSumo, for example, allows you to search by topic and receive lists of content, twitter influencers, and articles that are trending on social.

Right Relevance lets you perform searches for recent popular articles, as well as for conversations happening on Twitter - which is a great way to find out what people in your industry are talking about.

EpicBeat surfaces content in ways similar to BuzzSumo and Right Relevance, but also allows you to see who has shared the content within the last 7 days, and provides additional content insights to make it easy to identify what’s performing best in your industry.

Twitter Lists

Businesses can also create Twitter lists to surface relevant articles from trusted industry news sources.

The Advanced Search feature on Twitter is also a great way to surface trending content. Create multiple searches by using relevant industry keywords and hashtags, choose an applicable sentiment, and save. Once an advanced search has been saved, you can check back on what’s happening in real time by clicking the search button and selecting your saved searches from the list below.

Creating Value

Once you’ve located great content that will resonate with your audience, think about how to provide value beyond simply sharing a link. Consider aggregating a number of high quality sources into a roundup of links. For example, a post on top travel booking tips featuring details sourced directly from airlines. Or distill a complex report into an easily digestible format, like an infographic or short video. And be sure that whenever you’re sharing content, you’re adding the unique perspective of your organization in the accompanying copy.

Working with User-Generated Content

In addition to sharing articles and information relevant to your audience, many brands make a habit of sharing user-generated content. This is content that has been created by fans of your brand and shared with your business via social media. Not only does gathering user-generated content save valuable time and resources, it’s also a great way to connect and engage with your audience. Incentivize your followers to create content by hosting periodic giveaways. For example, once a month give away a free night in one of your hotels to a follower who posts a photo using your branded hashtag. You’ll get lots of great content to post, and build valuable relationships with people who could potentially become brand advocates.

Looking for more? Check out our full guide on content curation.