Why Your Small Business Should Consider Digital Content Curation

Digital content curation-collecting information on the web and sharing the best with your network-is fantastic way to establish brand recognition and generate buzz without the time or financial investment that traditional content creation demands.

This concept isn’t anything new when you think about it. For example, radio stations pick out what songs they will play and when they will play them throughout the day. They didn’t create the music of course, but they did share it with their listeners anyway. Of course curation isn’t limited to music and art. Here we will discuss a little more about what digital content curation really is, what it can achieve, and how you can use it on your blog or company website.

Understanding Digital Content Curation

One of the most common misconceptions marketers have is that their content must be purely original. Creative content is said to be valuable only when it includes a company’s proprietary content. But it’s actually better to share content that’s not your own. Why? You don’t seem like you’re trying to pump up your own posts all the time, and you shine the spotlight on other content creators, which helps you build relationships with them.

Other experts in your niche are constantly publishing business trends, market research, case studies, and new discoveries. Therefore, in order to stay relevant and an authority in your industry, you should acknowledge and share them with your target audience.

It’s popular to believe that only valuable content is original content. After all, anything that might be considered old news, dull, or even plagiarized could be disastrous to the success of your content marketing strategy. But with the power of the Internet, there is a whole wealth of new, exciting things happening everyday in every field.
Through digital content curation, you find content on the web that is relevant to your company niche, products, or services, and then repurpose that content for your fans, followers, subscribers, clients, customers and network. You probably already read through dozens of blogs and news sites in your industry, so it shouldn’t take too much effort to find some trusted sources to curate from.

What Can It Achieve?

Digital content curation is a great way to get a better understanding of what your audience likes and dislikes. Content marketing demands tons of testing to gather enough data to see what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Delivering content outside your own creative strategy allows you to find things you never would have thought interested your followers.

As a result, you just gained valuable insight into a new opportunity for growth in your industry. This also encourages healthy topic diversity, looking at things from all angles instead of one. In the long run, this will not only keep your current clients interested, but attract completely new audiences as well.

What You’re Building

Besides the small circle of blogs and news journals you keep up with, finding a large amount of industry-related content sites can be a challenge. By establishing relationships with your small group of regular blogs, you can continuously aggregate from them exclusively in exchange for your own content, although throwing new sources into the mix can provide new perspective for your followers.

Vincent H. Clarke is a marketing analyst and blogger for USB Memory Direct, a wholesaler of custom promotional products. As someone who works in marketing, he enjoys learning and blogging about content strategy and personal productivity.

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