According to the content curation firm HiveFire, some of the greatest challenges facing content marketers in the United States are creating original content (73.6%) and finding high-quality content (43.0%). In an online world of tweets, retweets, blogs and links to other blogs, it is becoming difficult to provide content that your organization can call its own to reach marketing and business objectives.
With all of the applications that can be used to automatically gather and share content on social networks, some content marketers may want to step in and put the brakes on their system to evaluate if the right content is getting out. By going back to the basic business objectives of an organization, individuals involved in the content curation process can start thinking strategically. Some food for thought for such a brainstorming session may include.
1. When should you blog?
2. What should you retweet?
3. What social media applications should you be using?
4. Are the right people in place?
5. Are you using the right Tags / Hashtags?
When should you blog?
Blogging in the context of content curation ensures that you own the content that is posted. As a result, you have the power to either a) "shape" your brand before the eyes of your target audience or b) reinforce your brand. In both situations, bringing content that will substantiate what your brand offers is critical at all times. Putting forward evidence that your organization has THE solution to the target audience's problem is one of the avenues to engage with them and ultimately prompting them to buy.
What should you retweet?
How many of you think before clicking the "Retweet" link on Twitter? Are you retweeting for the sake of retweeting or are you sharing to reinforce your brand or position it in the market place? In a perfect world, an organization would retweet tweets that is applauding a product or service however; organizations do not operate in a perfect world. In situations where an organization receives a tweet about a prevailing trend in an industry, wouldn't it make sense to retweet it? Two good reasons: a) Retweeting is a sign of acknowledgement and understanding of the upcoming trend and b) it is a great way to gauge reactions from followers about the trend.
What social media applications should you be using?
The content that you will be curating will have an impact of the selection of tools that you will be using to deliver the content. In addition, having a critical mass of individuals in the target audience on these applications is a strategic element to consider. Understanding that there are portions of the target audience who maybe reached efficiently via one tool versus another tool is something that cannot be overlooked.
Are the right people in place?
Not to cast any doubts about the abilities of current personnel but a content curator should have a certain skillset. Along with the soft skills mentioned in the blog, "4 Soft Skills For Content Curation", there are some definite hard skills to be used from a strategic point of view. Here are a few hard skills to keep in mind when staffing your content marketing function:
- Advanced web searching techniques
- Real-time searching
- Content strategy analysis of competing firms / organizations
Are you using the right Tags / HashTags?
Although tags / hashtags maybe a small aspect in context of a social media strategy, it is a strategic tool that can be used to "brand" your content on such platforms as Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Ideally, you want individuals to associate a set of tags or hashtags with your organization. This is easier said than done and requires constant use and posting them on other promotional platforms on the web.
Want To Know More?
Read the following past posts: