What is the Definition of Content Curation?

the collection of all kinds of media that relate to a brand, product, theme or topic

Putting It Together

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Brand Curation

Content curation is best described as the collection of all kinds of media that relate to a brand, product, theme or topic and aggregate them in one place. The focus is on providing quick and clear access to all available content about the product, service or topic.

Curation From A Branding Perspective

In marketing, there are multiple channels that deliver content in the context of more exposure for a particular brand. In this regard, only part of the content is produced by a company or brand itself, while other parts come from the work of third parties, for example blog posts, reviews or other articles.

When a brand decides to accommodate all these different forms of media, i.e. both paid media, owned media and earned media, in one place, this is called content curation. A single source that contains all relevant content for a brand. The purpose is to present all, or at least as much as possible, information in an orderly manner. In this way, good media and content policy can contribute to a broader inbound marketing strategy.

In principle, the concept of curating content is as old as the first time books or other writings were sorted by theme. According to Google Trends, however, it has only been structurally recognized as a potential part of a marketing strategy since 2012. As an alternative to content curation, people can produce their own content. However, this takes more time than the time spent on content curation. Many brands therefore choose a combination of both forms.

What is the difference between content creation and content curation?

News Curation

Answer: the first kind of content you create yourself, the second you compose from content of others. An example: suppose you sell christening jewellery, and you want to post a blog post explaining how you make your own christening garment. Then you can develop a pattern yourself (content creation), but you can also refer to patterns that others have already developed (content curation).

Why content curation?

Content curation offers several advantages:

Speed: It's faster than creating new content yourself...and hence you'll be able to share content faster. You inspire and advise your prospective client. Not only because you share more and more, but also because you show your visitor the way.

Staying Trendy: You stay up to date with the developments within your profession. By constantly looking for good content to curate, you also keep yourself up to date with what's happening in your field. That inspires you too, and of course helps you develop new products for your business.

Showing Relevancy: When you curate related media, not coming from your own brand channels (third party) and you mix this with your own, you are showing Google exactly what you are about.

Boosting Brand Authority: Whenever your original piece is mixed with highly related, high authority and ranking content from third parties it will help siphon some of that authority to your own piece.

Adding Value: By adding valuable third party content as part of your own marketing efforts, you are creating more value for your visitors.

So curating content is not that crazy. If you know how to curate content well, and how to bring it structurally and in your own way to your website or Social Media Channels, your customer will appreciate and follow you.

What do you have to watch out for and a word of caution

If you're going to curate content, you have to make sure you don't violate copyright. Always mention where you got your link from, and give that person the credits for the work. And create context: this is not only good because it makes added value clear, but also from a legal point of view. By interpreting the content, and placing it in a certain context, in your own article, with a clear reference to the source, you make it clear that you did not create that content.

On a sidenote, curating media for the purposes of creating backlinks is also very shrewd way to boost the linkjuice coming back to your property or website.

Neil Patel Shows 3 Ways to Automate Your Content Curation