It is very easy to fall into the trap of posting ONLY about yourself and your company when starting off in social media.
Check out this blog I wrote! Take a look at this photo I took! Look at this sale I’m having! Look at what awesome services I have!
Although there is definitely a time and place for these types of posts, you need to balance out your social media strategy and position yourself as an industry expert.
Want to know the best part about adding this element to your overall strategy? It’s less work for you and your business. Yes, you read that right – LESS work.
Let’s start with the basics. What is “curated content”?
Curated content is just a fancy way of saying material that you find (typically online) – that was not created by you or your team.
Curated content can be anything from a blog post, photograph, meme, video, podcast, an interview, funny TikTok, to an infographic.
Side note:
Now, this isn’t as black and white with photography – because many have copyright laws attached. If you want to share a photograph, but aren’t sure if you are allowed – it’s always best to reach out the original content creator and ask permission to share (with credit). But typically, articles, blogs and videos (etc.) are very safe to share – as spreading the link around benefits the original author immensely.
The most important thing when using curated content is to give credit where it is due. Plagiarism isn’t cool, and it’s also not going to get you further if you try to pass content off as your own. Curated content is NOT about claiming others work as original, or taking credit for ideas that were not yours to begin with (ie. altering authorship on blogs and copy, or as an employer – taking advantage of your past and current team’s hard work). The beauty of curated content is sharing others relevant content to your followers, which in turn will get the attention of the original author and their followers.
Sharing relevant curated content can help position you in your felid as an industry expert, without coming off a self-promotion whore.
As with anything, content is all about balance. You will still need to create your own original content and share it across your channels. However, curated content offers a much-needed break, and will benefit you in the long run.
Polished Tip:
You can spend an hour or so a week sourcing relevant curated content in a file, and refer back to that bank when you need to share a great piece of content! Not only does this save time, it can also keep you organized to know exactly who to give credit to.
Overall, the addition of curated content to your social strategy not only benefits you and your team by saving you time, it also benefits your audience by providing them with awesome and relevant content/information.
Not utilizing the power of curated content yet? If you want to add curated content to your SMM mix but aren’t sure where to begin or what you should be sharing, reach out to us at Polished Media today.
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