Don’t Underestimate Curation

Curation vs creation? Spoiler alert: it’s not an either or.

When businesses begin thinking about how they can use content to build their brand, they often overlook the idea of curation in favour of creation. This belief can cause businesses to struggle to output enough content to retain their audience’s attention online.

Creating original content takes a considerable amount of time, skill and money. Curation, on the other hand, allows you to leverage the time, skill and money of other brands, for your own business’s benefit. That’s the beauty of it.

Traditionally, curation is associated with collections. Galleries and museums have curators who sort and select pieces to display.

Curation in an online/social context isn’t too dissimilar.

Curation is the process of selecting content that will provide value to your audience.

Curation Builds Trust

The common misconception is that by sharing someone else’s content, you’re sacrificing a chance to promote your own brand. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Sharing someone else’s content — provided it is valuable to your audience — strengthens your brand.

When you believe in helping your audience, curation makes total sense.

Curation relies on having an intimate knowledge of who your audience is; what they find interesting and entertaining; how you can help them; when to share with them; and where they live online.

This insight allows you to identify and share content that you know will resonate with your audience.

When a customer watches that inspirational TED video, they’ll think of your brand as the one that shared it with them. They’ll think of the content they just watched and align it with your brand.

Curation vs Creation

Spoiler alert: it’s not an either or.

Creation still plays an influential role in the content mix. Your own content is as authentic as it gets. The more quality original content you can produce, the better. Build a content team if you can.

Before all of that, however, leverage the power of curation to build your audience. Use the two strategies in tandem to share the load. This might mean creation one day per week, curation the other six — whatever works for you and your audience.

Remember, if you’re not sharing content online, you’re invisible. Strive for a regular rhythm of valuable content that hits your audience’s ‘value’ bullseye as often as possible.

Sharing value shows you care. Generosity like this builds trust and goodwill.

That sounds like a business I’d be happy buying from.