By Chuck Sink
In today’s marketing world you need to be a good Content Curator (Curator, huh?) Curating the content is also known as getting the content so if I use the word “get” instead of “curate,” forgive me. The last real curators I knew worked exclusively for museums.
Give Me an Easy Tool!
A client of mine recently asked her SEO vendor what they use to generate fresh content for the dynamic news feed on their website. What “Curator Plugin” did they use? The answer came back starting this way: “There’s no easy answer on this one…” The vendor went on to explain how they manually get (curate) articles for their news feed. “We all do a lot of reading and we share the best of what we find…” continued the answer. That answer is one reason I respect this particular vendor so much. They are diligent specialists and very good at what they do.
Clearly I agree with the SEO vendor’s answer and I would take it a little further whenever possible. Any time you can create fresh content by writing it yourself or actually making newsworthy moves in your industry, all the better! What is your company doing to make news? What important business trends are you observing? Are you witnessing noteworthy phenomena that aren’t being talked about much? The answers will help you originate new content worth sharing with your audience.
Where to Get Content
LinkedIn and Twitter are awesome resources and idea generators for fresh, interesting and valuable content you can share – if you follow the right people. I got the idea for this article by going to Twitter with the intention of scooping an idea for it. I thought okay; let’s see what my Twitter tribe is talking about. Within 5 minutes I had this article outlined from reading a few tweets.
More resources for getting good content for your inbound marketing program:
- LinkedIn-Twitter-Facebook-Pinterest-Google Plus…
- Listening to Customers
- Conversations with Vendors – Supplier Partners
- Conversations at Networking Events
- Studying the Competition
- Interviewing Smart People
- Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo…
- Libraries and Bookstores
- Following Blogs
- Subscribing to Newsletters
- Your Imagination
- Life and Work Experience
- Children and Pets
- The Mall
Make it Work
My last piece of advice for now is to keep your antenna up. Become a fascinated
observer of your business world and record all of your ideas as they occur or you will forget them.
Put some teeth into your inbound marketing campaign by creating a library of content and a schedule for publishing & sharing. Stick to the schedule and add to your content library daily or weekly so you’ll have a continuous feed of valuable information emanating from your brand’s home base.
The go-getters who “curate” and share valuable material get inbound calls from interested prospects while the traditional cold callers serially interrupt busy people all day.
So go out and curate you go-getter!
Great info, Chuck! This is the message we try to get across to business owners, and it’s not easy to convey. Sometimes the best ideas just pop into your head at random times, and you need to be aware of them in order to develop great content.
Pingback: Learn and Network at the Chuck Sink Link Anniversary Event - Chuck Sink Link