Content curation has become integral to social media marketing. Strategic social content curation can be defined as the discovery, collecting and sharing of relevant, industry-leading content across your social channels. If you have committed to going social, a company presence on at least the big four social networks-Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn-is essential. However, just having social media profiles is not sufficient. Social content curation is valuable to others and can help you attract a wide social following and increase social lead generation. There are numerous high-quality resources for discovering content to share on social media.
9 Social Content Curation Resources
1. Klout
Klout is recognized as the most influential metric for online influence. To determine if someone is truly influential, check out his or her network influence and Klout scores. A network influence score analyzes the influence of one's engaged audience-how much influence the audience wields and to what degree it listens to and engages with a particular thought leader and his or her shared, original content. The more social engagement and discussion you generate, the more your Klout score will rise. Klout scores range from 1 to 100.
2. Topsy
Topsy is an analytic tool, which can help you identify industry thought leaders and trending industry topics. To attain status as a trusted and credible authority, you must be knowledgeable about and actively engaged in industry discourse. Topsy allows you to identify influencers by keyword, company name, person or category and discover which content topics are hot for your industry. You can analyze the degree of influence content creators have on certain keywords, what they have written and shared on social networks and what others have published about these influencers. Using Topsy can bring enhanced strategy and focus to your social content curation.
3. Social Media Today
Social Media Today features content from "the world's best thinkers on social media." SMT is highly selective about what it chooses to publish; the website is a top-notch destination for discovering relevant content for your social content creation needs.
4. Bottlenose
Bottlenose combines your Twitter and LinkedIn activity preferences and continually scans trending topics to deliver tailored results in real time. Bottlenose also offers solid social search capability.
5. Sulia
Sulia's tagline is "the interest network," which is quite an accurate summation. Sulia offers a streamlined and visually attractive user experience; you may notice its similarities to Pinterest.
6. Rt.ly
Rt.ly's name is a shrunken version of real time, which is run by the creators of Bitly. Rt.ly offers content along with trending statistics-informing you how popular a particular piece of content is in real time.
7. Social Buzz
Social Buzz works by taking your keywords, running a search and then finding the analytics associated with the results to give you the most relevant content curation options.
8. SocialEars
SocialEars uses contextual analytics in its search for content. Their search results rank content by its real-time share factor and by the influence of content creators, so the content SocialEars delivers will likely have clout and be authoritative. The only drawback is that the data required to perform the analytics is still maturing, and currently SocialEars does not have searchable data for all industries.
9. LifeHack
LifeHack can help you save time by aggregating, curating and delivering the top stories on relevant topics. Key features include comprehensive sharing data on Facebook, Twitter and industry blogs. LifeHack also curates and highlights important content, delivers top stories through a mobile app and email, and provides a personalized search engine for your content curation needs.
How Much Curated Content Is Enough?
Curate and share six pieces of content on Twitter daily. For Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, two is sufficient. Always cite the content creator's name. Use his or her Twitter handle or a link to their page on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+. Your social content curation should be staggered throughout the day between 9 am and 6 pm. If you use a social media management dashboard, such as HootSuite, you can schedule your posts once each morning. You should share your curated content Monday through Friday.
Strategic social social content curation will boost your social following and amplify reach and exposure, which can lead to increased social lead generation and conversion. Without social content curation, you may lose social capital, and your website and company could suffer as a result. Curating relevant, highly shareable content could help you attain status as an industry thought leader and significantly increase website traffic and new business generation.