How to Drive Thought Leadership with Content Curation

Content curation is a key tactic for enterprise content marketers. You can’t just share your own original content. It’s best to have a mix, and there are likely impressive content creators in your industry that aren’t your competitors. Your content team should be leveraging curated content as part of your content marketing efforts. However, you’ll need a strategy if you want this to be successful and ultimately position your brand as a thought leader.

What is Content Curation?

Content curation describes the process of carefully selecting content gathered from various, reputable sources on a specific topic. You then share this content with your followers on whatever platform they use. You can also add your own perspective when sharing.

Often, content curation is not a part of a content strategy, but it needs to be. Within large content marketing teams, lack of a strategy can can cause chaos. It’s best to document your content plan around curation. Doing so assures consistency in your message. Being strategic with this aspect of content marketing can also be a thought leadership driver.

Why Curate Content?

There are important voices in your industry. These SMEs (subject matter experts) have perspectives that can support your brand’s vision. As long as they aren’t your competition, their information is worth sharing, and adds to your point of view.

Here are some key benefits of content curation.

• Reach expert status: Your audience judges you based on the content you share. When you add specific third-party content that you know reinforces your solutions, customers can easily connect the dots.
• Balance your content calendar: Even a large enterprise can’t crank out enough content on its own. Plus, that would mean your distribution channels are in a vacuum without anyone else’s opinion. Try the 60/30/10 rule. Post original content 60 percent of the time, third-party content 30 percent of the time, and purely promotional content 10 percent of the time.
• Represent you’re in the know: Industry disruptions can happen at any time within any industry—technology, healthcare, finance, etc. Staying on top of what’s happening in the industry by sharing respectable content from leaders, such as industry associations, illustrates that you know the business.
• Expand your network: Every brand wants to increase its following on social media. You’re always experimenting with ideas to drive engagement and get people to share. Using third-party content can up your shares, which, in turn, expands your content audience. This could lead to new followers and new traffic for your website.

How to Create a Content Curation Strategy

As with any part of content marketing, content curation needs to be part of your content strategy. There are several vital steps to take in order to develop and deploy it.

• Define sources: First, you need to develop an approved list of sources for third-party content. Examples include industry associations, brand partners, influencers that fit your niche (you may or may not have relationships with these people), industry thought leaders not associated with a competitor (i.e., retirees, independent speakers or consultants), government, etc. Complete any due diligence necessary to verify the source’s trustworthiness.
• Decide on topics: The topics you choose to share about can fall into several categories, such as your content clusters (themes you use to bucket your content), trending topics, universal challenges (i.e., COVID-19), events, or anything else that’s relevant and timely to your audience.
• Know your audience: Being aware of your audience’s needs, challenges, and motivations is central to everything you do in content marketing. It’s equally important in content curation. These needs influence your sources and topics. Make sure that, when considering sources and topics, you keep the voice of your customer in mind. You don’t want to share things they’d find polarizing or useless.
• Identify platforms: Your brand is active on multiple social media platforms, and content curation is a valuable tool across all of these as long as you align sources and topics with the right profiles. The third-party content you share on LinkedIn is probably much different than what you would share on Snapchat.

Closing Tips on Content Curation for Thought Leadership

Now that you have crafted your strategy, there are a few more best practices to consider.

• Share what matters when it matters: If the content isn’t relevant, timely, and useful, it doesn’t meet your parameters. If something is breaking news in your industry, then you need to share it now. This is critical to your thought leadership status.
• Be consistent: Remember the 60/30/10 rule and stick to it . Don’t be haphazard with your posting schedule. Thought leaders are always consistent. To execute this at scale, you have to live by a schedule. Use a content marketing platform to keep workflows in check and provide transparency in terms of what you’re posting and when.
• Add your own two cents: As a leading brand, your company has something to say about the content it shares. You aren’t just passing on information—not if you want to be a respected thought leader. For example, a government entity may propose a new regulation in the realm of healthcare. If that’s your industry, you’ve got something to say. Do you support it? Oppose it? Have concerns about it? Tell your followers what you think and why.
• Diversify your content: Don’t just stick to one or two topics. Your industry is much bigger than just a few ideas. There are always changes and challenges, especially in the current environment. Don’t’ harp on about the same subject. Your audience will get bored.
• Tag content curators: Giving credit to the individual writer or organization when you share content is good for both of you. First, the content creator may share or like your post, expanding reach. Second, it could lead to a connection between your brand and the SME, which could turn into co-branded content in the future.

Content Curation Should be Part of Your Thought Leadership Strategy

It’s the perfect time to revisit your thought leadership initiatives and define how content curation fits into it. With a defined strategy for curating content and a commitment to using it to boost engagement and your reputation, you can see positive results for your brand.

And you can do it all, in an organized manner, with DivvyHQ. Check out how it works today and why so many enterprise content teams choose it!