Content1"Content is King", so much seems to be clear. Besides, many companies that have taken on a kind of pioneering role in the field of innovative marketing and sales not only make use of the numerous possibilities offered to them by social networks since just yesterday. Whether for customer acquisition, employee recruiting or PR: Whoever advertises on the social web has the guarantee to be seen!

However, sharing just your own links is no longer all that matters in Content Marketing. “Content Curation”, a new trend in social media, is now gaining momentum.

If you think that having a Twitter, Facebook and Google+ account is enough to present your business, well - think twice! Since social media marketing is enjoying growing popularity, just stubbornly distributing the own links is no longer sufficient to stay at the very top. Just consider the original meaning and purpose behind social media: It's all about relevant content. Thus, “Content Curation” is the new net trend that has developed to achieve that.

The idea behind Content Curation is simple and not really new: Not only the own content is created, processed, collected and shared, but also infographics, photos, videos or user comments are referenced. What’s done in addition is actually what internet users would do anyway: Content of interest gets individually curated. Relevant information is filtered and collected, ultimately helping companies to establish their brand more effectively.

The new thing about Content Curation however, is the fact that this content is not simply copied. Instead, links are compiled on specific topics, commented or provided with an abstract. The aim is to improve the traffic through third party content.

Content Curation is paving the way for SMEs’ brand building

There is a crucial difference between the established brands, such as Coca Cola or RedBull and SMEs - the marketing budget. As you can imagine, SMEs neither have the money to let people jump from space capsules for advertising purposes nor global marketing campaigns on a regular basis. Therefore, they need to consider other ways to build their brands, and Content Curation represents a practical tool to build and maintain a certain image in the social web. This mainly serves the purpose to strengthen the own brand and to portray the brand by using the posted content as up to date and innovative.

In the end it is used to be seen by the customer and get established in the market and of course to stand out from the competition, besides offering advantages in corporate publishing and online PR:

  • Companies provide an important service by sorting relevant information. With current, refined content and links, it is possible to be seen and establishes as an expert in the fields that interest the appropriate target audience and increase visibility.
  • With constantly updated news the webpage- and search engine ranking gets improved, which is especially an advantage regarding SEO. At best, the sharing of content with third parties creates valuable backlinks that help the websites to continue climbing to the top of search engines.
  • Company exercise true sovereignty when they give their customers, partners or even critics a voice, besides enhancing their reputation crucially.

Content Curation Platforms

How to approach prospects and deliver content to the customers seems not to be an entirely irrelevant question, taking into account the abundance of suitable platforms. Facebook and Twitter are laying the foundation, that is clear, as well as your own blog. In addition, there are other providers that, although they have a lower level of awareness, are no less important. Pinterest, for instance, could establish itself as an effective curation tool in the near future. With so-called "pins" you can for example display graphics in different colors and effect combinations in a visually-appealing way, allowing companies in the creative industry to refer to remarkable artwork of other artists and acquire the image at the same time, besides knowing what is currently in demand. Other common platforms are for instance Storify, Scoop.it, Paper.li, Rebel Mouse, or Vizify.

Whether you use the various tools to select specific content manually and reach users on the platform itself, or if you use the sharing functions to other networks (Storify, Scoop.it and Paper.li), or coordinate already shared content (Rebel Mouse and Vizify) respectively, these tools give you many possibilities you can assemble your own media in an easy and simple way.

Anyway, a closer examination of Content Curation is recommended, especially for small and medium businesses that often cannot afford multi-million dollar budgets for large advertising campaigns. This type of networked content marketing provides a worthwhile alternative and offers a decisive advantage for brand building and competition. Companies should realize what the Internet community demands today: Consumers want more than just biased content. Even beyond the own products there are relevant and interesting topics that ideally complement the own line. By using the numerous tools available, companies can curate these issues and not just strengthen traffic and reputation, but accommodate the requests and zeitgeist of customers as well.

In a nutshell, content curation proves the ability to recognize good, appealing and relevant stories and to publish the comments competently.

By Daniela La Marca