The world of content curation is both enticing and intimidating. While curating content can be an efficient way to fill your site with posts and even improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), knowing how to source material ethically and effectively is tricky.
Fortunately, with the help of WP RSS Aggregator and some guiding principles, you can become a content curating pro in no time. By engaging with your sources, users, and the creators whose work you build upon, you can turn your site into a bustling content hub.
In this post, we’ll give a brief introduction to what content curation is, pointing out a few successful examples. Then we’ll share seven tips for curating content effectively, efficiently, and ethically. Let’s get started!
An Introduction to Content Curation
In short, content curation is the practice of sourcing posts, images, videos, or other content from another site. However, it’s not simply stealing other creators’ work. The best curators know how to build upon the content they gather for their sites, and how to properly attribute it to the original author or artist.
One example of a successful content curation platform is TheSkimm. This news site curates top stories from national and international sources:
Users can get a boiled-down version of events from TheSkimm’s brief explanations of the articles they source, or click through to the full post.
Although they include plenty of original content as well, many Buzzfeed posts also contain curated content:
Including social media posts and photo essays, Buzzfeed uses a wide range of sources. This highly popular content hotspot shows just how effective curation can be when it’s done well.
7 Top Tips for Effective Content Curation Strategies
There’s a fine line between curating content and stealing it. In order to remain on the right side of the law, choose your sources effectively, and use your time well, consider these tips.
1. Target a Specific Audience
No matter what kind of site you have, it’s important to have goals and a target audience in mind. However, these elements are especially important when you’re a curator, as they heavily influence how you choose your sources and display your content.
Whatever your goals – to gain influence in your niche, promote your business, attract followers, or something else entirely – it’s wise to set them early. You’ll also want to narrow down your target audience. It may be helpful to create personas to help determine what types of content may be relevant to your users.
2. Incorporate Your Own Commentary
A misconception regarding content curation is that you can simply copy creators’ work. This is not true at all. Real curators find ways to build upon curated work by adding their own commentary:
Sometimes that means sharing your point of view on a particular subject. It could also include adding unique tips or insights to increase the value of an existing post. For example, in the image above, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings expands upon Walter Lippmann’s ideas about prejudice.
3. Curate for Multiple Channels
It can also be useful to curate content for social media and your brand emails from your website. TheSkimm’s daily newsletter is a stellar example of this concept. By delivering content to users’ inboxes, they save readers the hassle of checking their site each day:
However, you can also draw more users to your site by offering just snippets of full posts on your social accounts and in emails. Selecting the most interesting posts to share via these additional channels enables you to keep your brand on readers’ minds without bombarding them with information.
4. Save Time With Automated Curation
As you may be able to imagine, curating content can become quite time-consuming if you attempt to seek out enough sources to feature daily or even weekly. Fortunately, you can use a plugin such as WP RSS Aggregator to speed things along:
This handy tool will import and display content on your WordPress site from one or more sources. The process is completely automated, so you can simply select your sources, set up your feeds, and then add your commentary as the posts roll in.
5. Seek Out Unique Sources
Users don’t want to see the same articles over and over again. While you could choose to source content from popular news and culture sites such as USA Today or People, it can be far more interesting for you and your users if you look for more unique content to feature.
So long as the sources you choose are still trustworthy and relevant to your niche, this can be a highly beneficial strategy. It can help establish you as an authority in your industry and make your site a go-to destination for all the latest insights into the subjects your users value most.
6. Build Rapport With Creators
We’ve emphasized several times now the importance of curating – not stealing – creators’ content. A vital step in the curation process is reaching out to creators before you start feeding their posts, images, videos, or other work onto your own site. This can help prevent copyright disputes.
However, it’s also just generally polite, as is linking back to the original post. You can see in the image below from MentalFloss that each of the articles in their You May Also Like… section includes the name of the source below the featured image:
Plus, if you can impress creators with your commentary and the way you manage your site, you can establish a mutually beneficial relationship. The creators will provide you with content to work from, and you can give them with high-quality backlinks.
7. Encourage Participation from Users
Finally, a successful content curation site often incorporates an element of community. Engaging users by encouraging them to comment on posts can help increase their loyalty to your brand. You may even want to consider inviting users to submit their own work:
Consider The Huffington Post. Although it started as primarily a content curation site, it now includes original content, sponsored posts, and user-generated content. Enabling users to invest in your site and provide you with additional content can help your platform grow exponentially.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that there are a lot of moving parts to consider when building your content curation site. However, with a few key guidelines in place, you can craft a top-notch curation strategy.
You can start with a specific target audience and unique sources that will draw crowds. By incorporating your own thoughts, sharing top posts via other channels, and engaging creators and users, you may find a community forming around your site. Plus, with WP RSS Aggregator, you can save yourself precious hours.
Do you have any questions about content curation or WP RSS Aggregator? Let us know in the comments section below!
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash.
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