5 Reasons To Pick Up The Curator Habit

Between blog posts, social media updates, daily blog reading, and reading other people’s social stream – feeding your content marketing efforts has become overwhelming. There’s too much content to create for too many sources. There’s no way to do it all.

You’re right. So why not combine some of your efforts and make your life a little easier?

One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.

Why should SMBs look to picking up the content curator habit?

Below are five powerful benefits.

1. It’s Easier On Your Back

As mentioned above, becoming a content curator takes some of the production load off your business, by allowing you to focus on sharing instead of the heavy lifting. If you took our earlier advice, you’re already reading blogs on a regular (maybe even daily) basis. So why not help your audience by acting as their filter and posting a list of the articles that you found most useful over the past week. Work it into your daily reading pattern by keeping a document open you can drop links in as you find them. Then, at the end of the week, you have something you can post without investing too much extra time, perhaps just adding a few sentences as to why you found that link useful/relevant.

2. Reduce Costs

Hey, not only is content creation not free, it’s also not cheap. The time you spend writing, creating or purchasing images, or editing content all adds up. By taking some of the burden off yourself, you also remove some of the cost. When you can publish a link post in 20 minutes instead of dedicating four hours to creating something from scratch, that’s four hours you can spend in your business. It’s also content you didn’t have to pay a trained writer to help you with.

3. Diversifies your Perspective

Of course, being a content curator isn’t just about ease. It’s also about the new perspective it brings to your audience.

By sharing what you’re reading, you broaden the view of the world for folks who look to you for advice and expose them to new voices. They may be familiar with your take on the industry, but now they’re able to hear it from others as well and benefit from that different perspective and their different experiences. As a blogging business owners, this is perhaps one of the best things you can do to help educate your audience.

4. Builds Relationships

You know what happens when you start linking out to other authority sites in your industry? They notice. And then they start checking out your blog. And your website. And they start linking back and talk to you.

Strategically featuring third-party content on your site or in your marketing is a great way to build relationships in your industry and let others know that (a) you exist and (b) that you like what they’re doing. And don’t be surprised when they return the favor.

5. Adds Value

The best reason to pick up the content curating habit is an easy one. It simply adds value to those in your industry by being their filter and introducing them to only the good bits. Just like you, you’re readers are busy, too. They don’t have time to read every blog out there related to your industry. By helping separate the signal from the noise you do them a great service and add value to their day, giving them a steady flow of munchable content to serve their needs. You’ll also ensure that they’ll keep coming back to your blog to see what juicy nuggets you’ve found for them today.

How can you work curation into your content habits?

• Use tools like Google Alerts, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, and other social sources to help you find fresh, relevant content
• Create a weekly blog series where you pick out the best posts from the last week and share them with your audience.
• Add curated links to content you write to add depth and additional insight.
• Create an email newsletter designed to “catch up” your readers on what they may have missed.
• Use curated links to feed your social media updates.
• Create a Scoop.it or Storify account to help you organize your curated finds and share them throughout the day

Content curation isn’t an easy job. It takes time to sift through blog posts to find the articles that truly deserve attention and merit. However, it’s an important one and a task that should be used in conjunction with other content efforts.

Do you make it a habit to be a content curator?

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