5-Step Content Curation Guide to Win Fans and Influence People (and avoid Blatant Self-Promotion)

Like What Your Reading? Please Share

Do you crave power?

Not the ‘I want to rule the world’ evil mad-man type of power. Oh no.

A more parochial and pedestrian power. How about the power to win fans and influence people?

So, if you could win and influence people, how would your business be different? How would your life be better?

The answer to ‘I want to rule the world’ is found in curating content.

What is Content Curation?

Museum, art gallery and libraries are organisations that curate content.

These institutions organise and display the works in an order that makes sense. Museums Renaissance paintings, or all the works by Van Gough, or ancient Greek frieze or a library by fiction and non-fiction books, and fantasy and romance.

Back to the power angle and would more power bring:

• More fans and follower? (A vanity metric, BTW.)
• More subscribers? (Big list = revenue = cash.)
• More clients and customers? (Yes, please.)
• Happier clients? (Always a good thing = loyalty = greater LTV.)
• More time with your family and friends? (YES! Always good.)

Winning fans and influencing people is in your grasp. You can do this! Ready for the secret?

Online, content is the currency to win and influence. Don’t believe me? Follow along.

Content is Power and the Conversation Starter

Content is the conversation starter. Yep, ‘silly’ ol’ content.

If you agree ‘content is the fuel, then what *content* do you share to stoke the fire’?

I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let us answer the question:

Defined: What is Content Curation?

Content curation is selectively sharing other people creative works

‘Selectively’ is the operative word. Not sharing everything – that would be the village idiot parroting – but, selectively sharing.

Not plagiarising, not stealing and not copying/pasting.

Content Curation Strategy from three Buckets

Not all content sharing is equal. Take these for example:

• Aggregated Content — sharing other peoples’ content without adding insights, perspective, or commentary – remember the village parrot idiot thing!
• Branded Content — your own.
• Curated  Content — is aggregated content you collect, filter, and add your insight, perspective, and commentary.

Avoid aggregation. Aggregation as it is the Black Plague of the internet. Aggregation adds noise and dilutes your brand.

The Long Game of Curation – a Content Curation Strategy

If history has taught us anything it is that anything worth achieving requires a big effort. And the long game of curation is the time required to build trust with your tribe.

Winning friends is the ‘easy’ part, building trust is not.

The Long Game of a Content Curation Strategy. Here are the 5 Steps to Power and Influence

Before you saunter up to your nearest Tweet button or glide over to your friendly Facebook share button, take a few minutes and understand the basics of content curation, and a content curation strategy.

Cream of the crop marketers know:

1. Which audience to serve and attract
2. The interest of their audience
3. They only share high-quality content
4. They curate consistently
5. They brand themselves and not their company

When you know your audience, and their interests then your content curating strategy is half-done.

Yet, why oh why should we curate content? (Yes, to win and influence, however, let us dig deeper than top-level goals).

Why Should You Curate Content?

…content curation distils the signal from the noise (of the internet). You become a trusted, authoritative resource in your field…if you are the source of truly important and useful information, you will stand out even in the crowded marketing arena and then earn significant audiences. – Rand Fishkin

Content Curation example is sharing and edutainment your audience.

Life would be perfect when you open your email, Twitter, or Facebook and the best of the best of the web is ready and waiting for you to read, consume, and enjoy. That would be *my* ideal life.

Three Content Curation Example

I’ve hit the mini-jackpot and found people who are excellent at separating the digital wheat from the digital chaff. My favourite content curators example is:

The first content curation example is an email with the name Brain Pickings Weekly – by Maria Popova. Maria describes her weekly newsletter – “as a ‘one-woman labour of love — a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why’. An inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness, spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more“.

What a description of a newsletter!

The second content curation example is:

NextDraft – authored by Dave Pell signs off his daily newsletter as ‘Managing Editor, Internet’ :). His curated newsletter contains “The Days Most Fascinating News from Dave Pell” with his unique perspective.

Content Curation Example number three:

Azeem Azhar

: The Exponential View by Azeem Azhar. Zaeem is the founder and CEO of Peerindex. His weekly newsletter covers Exponential change: technology, business models, political economy, & society.

These three are my chosen content curation example from niche curators.

Don’t take my word as Gospel

Life is easy when one humble marketer suggests curation is a good strategy and then offers a few examples. 🙂

One voice is not believable nor reason enough to take action.

This is why eMarketer, the data and research organisation, polled agencies and marketers what they get out of content curation.

Not surprising 85% said they curate content to establish thought leadership. Wait. What? Become a thought leader by curating content? Wow.

Crazy still is 80% said they curate to elevate their brand visibility, build ‘buzz’, and 65% said they curate to boost their SEO efforts.

Thought leadership, more visibility, a boost to SEO. All from content curation. Yes, I’ll take two slices of each, please. Oh my. Oh my.

How does content curation strategy help you win friends and influence people? Content Curation:

1. Curation opens relationships. When you Tweet a link remember to add the ‘via @ person’ into the Tweet. Or when you share on Facebook and tag the owner. Either way, @thoughtleader gets notified.
2. Content Curating Strategy helps you build credibility and influence as a thought leader. When you become known for sharing breaking news, or vegan receipts, cooking tips, or videos on different running techniques. You then pull/attract people interested in your subject.
3. Content Curating is faster and cheaper than creating your own content! Read, enjoy, add commentary, schedule, then share. Does this take 3 minutes? Tops.
4. Content Curation makes you more interesting.
5. Curating makes you smarter (because you are reading more!)
6. Fans/followers have a broader interest then what you can produce on your own. So, entertaining your fans and followers by posting a broader range of content.

The Big Content Curation Guide Questions

When you buy into the content curation strategy the natural next thoughts are:

1. How much content is *enough?
2. What is a good ratio of each type of content to share?

1) How much should you share?

…to know ’what is the BEST’ is impossible. You can only predict, measure, test, and improve…

How much should we share when our Facebook feed is full of pictures, articles, videos, quizzes, and memes?

There is no right or wrong answer.

Intuitively, you have a good idea of what your audience likes. Begin with those topics and curate. Then wash it all (look at what resonated and get attention), rinse out the bad (content with no attention), repeat the good and do again.

Secondly, every audience is different.

How much you share depends upon your market, number of fans/followers, how engaged are your fans, and which channels you are using.

Content curation is the delicate balance between being informative and avoid annoying

No doubt about it, informing versus annoying drives to the heart of how often you should post.

One content utility rule states share until you begin losing fans and followers – then reduce. Yep, that is a ‘driving sitting backwards’ situation, but, hey it works.

Remember to schedule posts when your audience is online and when the engagement is highest.

2) What ratio of content should you share?

The aspirin a day social sharing ‘rule of thumb’ follows the 70:20:10 ratios. Seventy per cent is curated, 20% own branded, 10% lead generation content.

This blog post “Curating Content to Win Fans and Influence People“ is my 20% and your 70% – so please share…

How to Curate Content to Win Friends and Influence People

Scour the web; filter what you find; add perspective; schedule, and post.

Urban’s coup de grace Content Curation System in five simple steps.

1) Find, 2) Filter, 3) Comment with perspective, 4) Schedule and 5) Post.

This, be all to end all, curation system takes one hour a day and fills my sharing queue for days and often the entire week.

…21% of Facebook users say they unfollow brands that post repetitive or boring content. AdWeek

Find content.

1) Finding Content

Finding content is easy, finding the right content is difficult.

Curation and marketing nirvana is when you know the fear/desires/asperation of your audience. Great marketers find a variety of content that solves all the fears.

Find content – put together a list of 15-25+ blogs sites, news sites, industry associations, competitors, and collaborators. Choose blogs and websites that publish the highest quality content.

Plug the list into an RSS reader. RSS readers allow you to ‘subscribe’ to content without giving over an email address. An RSS reader uses (the Really Simple Syndication protocol) and the RSS readers allow you to aggregate blog posts and articles into feeds.

Pick an RSS reader. I use Feedly. But, InoReader, Digg Reader, Twitter lists, Feedbin and many more are available. The paid features, of some, allow full integration with social media management tools – Buffer and Hootsuite.

Separate the digital wheat from the digital chaff.

Let us look at Filter content.

2) Filtering Content

Not all content is equal and not all content from the same source is equal.

Think like a museum curator.

How to you filter is a proverbial $64,000 question.

The 3 Pivotal Filtering Caveats

1^st caveat – your mood affects what you read and what you share. This is normal. Do not freak out. Do the best you can on the day and proceed with caution.

2^nd caveat – be selective and do not share every article you have aggregated. Mind the parroting.

3^rd caveat – use tools – Hootsuite, Buffer, MeetEger, etc., and to schedule.

The third is to add your perspective.

3) The Value Add –> Your Perspective <–

Your Perspective is your Content Curation USP

…adding perspective…is the art of curation. Distilling a concept, adding personal views on top of the original piece…

“Adding your perspective” is your ace in the hole card trick to win fans and influence people.

Most importantly, your perspective is why fans and followers are your fans and followers.

Further, your perspective is a mixture of everything that makes you you. Your upbringing, education, personal experience, work experience, what you have read and not read. These things are your unique selling proposition.

Here are my ‘Best practices’ when “adding your perspective”

1. Read the article (sorry for stating the bleeding obvious, but, the obvious escapes many, sadly)
2. Extract A discussion point and elaborate (mind the 140 character confines)
3. Add the ‘discussion point’ to the existing title, or modify the title to suit
4. Schedule/ Post
5. Go to step 1 – with next article

So, with that responsibility taken care of and before you share ask three important questions:

• Will the lives of my fans improve?
• What problem is this article solving for my fans?
• Which funny bone am I tickling?

Three filters. Pass one and you are golden. Pass all three and you are building authority!

4 & 5) Schedule, and Post

…19% of people say they would unfollow a brand on Facebook if the brand posted too often (more than six times a day) AdWeek

Curate to Win Fans and Influence People

The simple to say, easy to read, hard to do 5 curating steps.

1) Find, 2) Filter, 3) Comment with perspective, 4) Schedule and 5) Post.

Easy.

Let me know in the comments your top curating tips.

Like What Your Reading? Please Share