8 Ways to Up Your Social Media Content Game

"Content marketing," Creative Content license. | Credit: Flickr by The Wild Blogger

In today’s times, you can no longer limit strengthening your relationship with your audience to just talking to them about your brand, products and services. You need to create interesting and relevant content for them and, when you up your social media content marketing game, you can also add in curated items.

That being said, content curation is more than just about sharing random content you like. To really make it work for you, you’ll have to put in extra effort.

Use the Right Content Tools

Because you’re unlikely to have the time to sift through all of the amazing content out there, you can save yourself trouble by using content discovery tools and news aggregators. Here are a few that can help boost your efforts:

• Feedly: This RSS reader notifies you when your business is mentioned online, tracks internal information, and allows you to follow feeds you like and keep your articles organized.

• Trapit: This tool enables you to put your own social marketing content on the platform, as well as pull in relevant content from the web. Curated content can be distributed equally across your social media accounts to keep your audience engaged.

• BuzzSumo: This tool keeps you up-to-date with trending topics via automated alerts. It also lets you search for the most shared content on any topic and see what the top 10 influencers are sharing.

Turn to Social Media

Yes, you read that right! While you’re trying to curate content for your social media accounts, that’s exactly where you can locate new content to share with your followers. Take for example, Twitter, where you can segment followers into groups using a feature called Twitter Lists, which makes finding relevant content a lot easier.

If you use Facebook or Instagram, scan profiles of your most ardent followers to gauge what their interests are. Other social networks where you can look to for interesting stories are Digg, Quora and Reddit.

Dig Deep for the Best Content

Your curation efforts should highlight useful content that your audience is unlikely to have seen before. Note that anyone can share articles posted on popular websites, but doing the same won’t help your brand stand out.

The trick is to leverage underground content and portray yourself as a trend finder, eventually building strong brand awareness and expanding your follower base. Don’t look in the most obvious places; frequent websites that are abstractly relevant to your business. Your audience will thank you for digging up the best content for them.

Only Share Credible Sources

Bear in mind that whatever content you share on social media reflects your brand, irrespective of the source of the original content. Sharing content that is poor in taste or value or unreliable can cause your target audience to see your brand in a negative light. So, always check who published the content and where before sharing anything.

Furthermore, identify credible and trustworthy content pieces, such as scientific journals, trade publications and industry blogs. You can also share content published by industry leaders or celebrated personalities on Twitter or LinkedIn. Content published by Public Relations teams, feeds and email newsletters can be your additional content sources.

Refrain from sharing content published on a site that has a dubious URL or is laden with grammatical errors.

Stay Relevant to Your Target Audience

Curated content, just like your own content, has to be of value to your target audience and followers. For this, the content you share has to be relevant. If you share content that doesn't answer your audience's questions or doesn't address their needs, it's going to be of no use to them or to your business.

Sharing relevant content is also a great way to get conversations going with your audience and establish your brand as a trusted advisor. So don’t share content just to fill in spaces in your social media calendar. Lazy marketing can drive away even the most loyal followers.

Add a Personal Touch

Simply sharing curated content isn’t enough; you need to tell your audience why they might be interested in what you’re sharing. Add your own text to the curated content that helps your followers associate it with your brand. Crediting the original content source is recommended, but make an effort to dress up the content and showcase it as your own idea, albeit borrowed creativity.

Remember to stick to your central theme, ensure you’re sending out the same message with all of your posts and always add the ‘YOU’ factor to every post.

Frame the Content Well

Especially for Twitter, don’t just share links as they come; start with a compelling first sentence to grab audiences’ interest. Also, add unique value to your shares by tweaking headlines and using keywords that work, or with a hint of humor, where appropriate!

Further, if you have the resources, you can also add value to curated content with design elements. When cropping photos, optimize dimensions and go for full-width images.

Be Consistent

While having a defined strategy and sharing quality content is important, being consistent in your efforts counts, too. It’s already challenging to draw the attention of followers, given the multitude of marketers on all social media platforms, and you don’t want to be lost in the crowd with inconsistency in sharing posts.

Let your voice be heard loud and clear, and on a regular basis, by your audience. With so many social media tools to schedule your posts in advance, being on-track shouldn’t have to be a problem.

Conclusion

Content curation is an amazing way to gain traction, build your audience, and make an impact on your followers. If you do it right, your social media content curation efforts can well pave your path to becoming a celebrated leader and industry expert.