Content Curation Marketing

Business owners, have you heard? There is a new buzzword in internet marketing:  Content Curation.  As with many technical buzzwords, by the time you understand what it is you feel as though all the savvy business owners have been doing this for years and you are already behind the eight ball.  So allow me to introduce this remarkable new trend, demonstrate why it’s all the rage and explain how it might lead to a breakthrough for your small business.

Content curation is about the information you display on your website.  This is important because searching for information on Google can sometimes feel like taking the proverbial “drink of water from a fire hose”.  We can bet we’ll find a few worthless sources before landing on a site we feel is trustworthy.  There is so much info and noise out there, good and bad, that finding a single go-to source on a specific topic (such as your area of expertise) is a huge help.  We are all looking for trustworthy content.

How do you become one of those go-to sources?  By the selective display of content on your website.  You become a strainer that removes the noise and collects the valuable content for your audience.  Think about a curator at a museum or library.  Curators don’t paint the paintings or write the books.  That would be silly.  Their job is to use their deep knowledge and expertise on the topic to identify the very best materials, and organize them for the benefit of their visitors (clients).

Here’s the genius of content curation for business owners.  In my experience, most owners are passionate about their products and services, but don’t always have an intrinsic desire to write blogs and create YouTube videos.  Instead of contributing your own uninspired content to the “noise”, a better path may be to collect and share quality content that already exists, and to add your own opinions to this content.  It is important to give credit to the original author or artist (a crediting sentence and link will usually do) and there is a world of “free” information just waiting to be used.  Most authors – myself included – love to have more readers, viewers and watchers enjoying their work; we don’t mind you sharing our content as long as we get due credit.

Content curation saves you time and resources, and bolsters the value of your website.  Google knows about the noise problem in its search results.  Within the last two years, the search giant has been gradually modifying its ranking algorithm to give more visibility to websites that provide a steady stream of fresh, quality content.  Making Google happy is always a good idea.  But never lose sight of your true audience, your customers, followers, and fans.  When they receive the best quality information out there, they will come back to your website again and again.  It’s a win, win, win!

My point is there is a reason that content curation is the new marketing buzzword.  It is buzz-worthy.  I have a hunch this new internet marketing trend is here to stay.