In a recent article I wrote about what content curation is and the many benefits associated with it. In this article I’d like to follow up with the ‘how to’ element – i.e. where to find great content and how to share it with your audience.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, please read this previous article first and come back to this article directly afterwards. Here’s a quick reminder if you’ve read the other article already:

• Think like your audience – what would they like to read, watch & listen?
• You still need a plan – Why are you doing this? What’s your mission statement behind your content strategy?
• Keep the content consistent and relevant – i.e. if you want to be known for something specific, or your audience expect a certain type on content from you, be consistent with your topics.
• Think like a museum curator – selecting the best content and showcasing it to your audience

Content curation sources

In this section we are going to look at ways to quickly gather great content that you can share with your audience on social media. All of these methods are free to use.

AllTop

www.alltop.com

• AllTop is a content curation website that lists 1000s of blogs.
• It’s a fast track to blog articles that are relevant to your niche and your audience
• Create your own AllTop page so you only have to search for your topics once
• Visit it weekly and schedule great content
• Contribute by commenting on the blog articles you find interesting

Wizard tip: Bookmark all your favourite and relevant blogs in to a book marketing system. This could simply be your browser’s bookmark folder. Making it really easy for you to dip into the best content.

Related article – Being consistent with social media

Google Alerts

http://www.google.co.uk/alerts

• Set up daily weekly alerts for any search term
• Google alerts you by email when your search terms appear online
• Set up alerts for as many terms as you like

Google Trends

http://www.google.co.uk/trends

www.google.co.uk/trends

• Find topics and subjects that are popular and trending online
• Search for anything related to your industry/sector/audience
• Use trends to inform you about what’s popular
• Find content related to the trends and share with your audience

Twitter Search

www.twitter.com/search

• Twitter search allows you to search everything public on twitter
• Use key search terms to find out what people are talking about
• Share what you find with your audience
• Contribute by retweeting and replying

Wizard tip: Use Hootsuite to manage your search terms

Twitter Lists

Example: www.twitter.com/chrismarr101/lists

Example – www.twitter.com/chrismarr101/lists

If you have a twitter account you can create your own lists

• Organise your twitter followers in to relevant lists
• Gives you quick access to specific groups of people
• Find and share relevant content quickly and easily

Wizard tip: Use Hootsuite to manage your lists

Facebook

• Use the ‘get notifications’ functionality to alert you when specific pages post content
• Allows you to get updates from key pages you are following
• Share the content with your audience
• Contribute by commenting on the post

LinkedIn Groups

http://www.linkedin.com/grp/

• Join relevant LinkedIn groups and tap into discussions
• See what topics are trending in the groups
• Share content with your audience
• Contribute by joining in the discussions

Applications for sharing content

Now that you have found the content you would like to share with your audience we can take a look at the applications that will help enable you to distribute the content on social.

Buffer App

For managing your outgoing social content

This is by far my favourite app and has been a revelation for sharing great content on social channels. It’s got to be the simplest and most straightforward application I’ve seen for scheduling and I urge you not to ignore this.

As a small business owner it’s absolutely perfect for managing your outgoing social media content.

You can set a pre-schedule for each social channel, which allows you to stay consistent with your social media – the big benefit here is that the schedule is already set, and all you have to do is tell Buffer what you want to send out.

There are browser extensions available, which allows buffer to become a part of your web browsing experience and with one click you can add new content to your Buffer schedule.

Click here to try Buffer for free (some of these benefits are only available in the paid plan)

Hootsuite

www.hootsuite.com

For managing your incoming social media content

Hootsuite is an absolute saviour for managing all incoming social media content. At a glance you are able see what is happening on many channels at once.

If you decide to use Twitter Search to find content and tap into conversations online, one of the best ways to manage all your search terms is by using Hootsuite.

If you have a team of people with responsibility for your business social media channels you can use Hootsuite to keep everything organised between team members, and here at TCMA we’ve been making good use of it for managing twitter between the team.

Click here for a free trial of Hootsuite

Mailchimp

www.mailchimp.com

Email marketing applications have come a long way in the past 2-3 years and have become really easy to use. You can use an application just like Mailchimp, for free, to quickly send out really nice looking emails to a large group of people.

• Personalise all your emails – i.e. you can place first names into your email automatically
• You can track open rates and click through rates, which allows you to track who is/isn’t interacting with your content
• You can draft your emails and schedule them for delivering in the future
• You can use Mailchimp sign up forms for Facebook and your website to collect email addresses and grow your list

Click here to try Mailchimp for free

Related Article – Click here to read about how Sarah Gathercole uses email to share content with her audience

Actions for you to take

• Set up buffer for all your social channels and start using it today
• Start using Hootsuite to manage your twitter search terms & lists
• Set up Google Alerts for your search terms
• Get your email contacts into a list on Mailchimp and send out weekly emails to your audience
• Set up your own AllTop page

The main thing for you is to pick one thing and start doing it consistently.

Taking content curation a step further

You will have noticed that this article doesn’t discuss situations where you have your own platform. If you are reading this and you have your own platform – i.e. a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, etc – then you can take your content curation a step further.

Here are some ideas:

• Using your blog you could embed a relevant YouTube video that your audience would love and discuss why you think it’s useful. Click here for an example from TCMA.
• As part of your podcast schedule you could openly discuss content that you have found from other people and express your opinion and/or reply to their opinion.
• Take on Sarah Gathercole’s strategy and use your email to share stories, news and videos with your audience – click here to read about Sarah.

Whilst you are curating all this great content you are naturally going to come up with your own ideas for content, which is great. Make sure to note down all your ideas for your own content strategy so that you can get off to a good start with content creation.

Related content

• Content curation: 10 ideas and examples to help you curate content in the right way
• Getting started with content curation – Finding great content and sharing it with your audience

Your Turn

1. Where are you going to start with content curation?
2. Is there anything you would include on this list that works well for you?
3. Have you got any useful content tips for other business owners?
4. Do you have any burning questions about what’s been discussed in this article?

Let me know what’s on your mind by joining in the conversation in the comments section below.

Don’t forget to be awesome!

Chris.