From Songza to reddit, content curation is a huge part of the social web as we know it. We’re all on the same mission to find the absolute best material to enjoy and to share with our followers. This is especially true for businesses, whose customers and broader online audience follow them based on an expectation of quality content in return.
What is content curation?
In simple terms, the process of content curation is the act of sorting through large amounts of content on the web and presenting the best posts in a meaningful and organized way. The process can include sifting, sorting, arranging, and placing found content into specific themes, and then publishing that information.
In other words, content curation is very different from content marketing. Content curation doesn’t include creating new content; it’s the act of discovering, compiling, and sharing existing content with your online followers. Content curation is becoming an important tactic for any marketing department to maintain a successful online presence. Not only that, but content curation allows you to provide extra value to your brand’s audience and customers, which is key to building those lasting relationships with loyal fans.
Content curation can fit into your marketing efforts in many different ways, all of which should align back to your marketing strategy. Depending on your strategy, the following three content curation methods could prove beneficial to your business.
Weekly curated blog posts
Weekly blog posts collect helpful resources found from around the web, categorize them and publish them as resources for their readers. Some call them a one-stop shop for content, because they remove the need for your readers to do any extensive searching or browsing themselves.
Every week on the Hootsuite blog we release a post called “This Week in Social” in which we share the biggest news in social media and technology from the previous seven days. This curated list of content is put together by our blog team, who sort through content all week to pick out the best and most important stories. While our weekly blog post focuses on social media, this is a tactic that could be adopted by almost any business or industry.
Weekly editorial email newsletters
With email being the second most popular digital marketing channel, weekly editorial newsletters are a big opportunity for content curators, especially those with a base of blog subscribers. Much like the weekly blog post, these editorial newsletters are an opportunity to save your followers the time it takes to search and scour the web for great content. Pick out the gems, organize them in a sensible way and send them along to your email list. These curated lists can accompany emails promoting your own content as well. At Hootsuite, for example, we send our blog subscribers an email of the best content from our blog each week.
Share curated content on your social networks
Social media is one of the channels where content curation is key to staying relevant to your followers and growing your following. Follow the Social Media Rule of Thirds, put your pride aside and share other people’s content.
Why is it important to share outsider content by other businesses or thought leaders? It shows your audience that you know the industry well, that you’re collegial and are aware of competition. It shows that you’re collaborative and confident enough in your own brand to share another’s content. It also doubles your exposure by potentially connecting you to another brand’s audience or online community.
Another day, another Tweet. Or maybe it’s 10 Tweets? Or 25?
Maintaining social media accounts involves a lot more than just firing off a message once a day. To attract and keep a following on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, you need to engage with users and share content that is both valuable and interesting.
Finding that content can be a challenge. That said, there is a lot out there if you know where to look and how to follow.
What can be even more challenging is coming up with the social messaging to support that content. Sure you could use the headline, but so will 95% of the other people who share that blog.
Writing a Tweet or Facebook post that will actually catch someone’s eye in a stream of hundreds, even thousands of other posts is a real test. To help you stay fresh and set yourself apart on social media, here are 3 sources of inspiration you might want to turn to when writing Tweets or Facebook Posts.
1. Reference Quoted Sources:
If you’re sharing a blog post or article with your followers, look within the text for quotes. The words within those two quotation marks might be your best bet for a powerful social media post.
When an author chooses to include a quote, hopefully it’s because that expert or source adds real value with their words. If an interview took place, the writer may have chosen that single quote from an hour discussion, a testament to its importance. Frequently, the quoted expert has also honed their messaging through many interviews and talks. What is powerful in a speech can be equally powerful in a Tweet.
Often times sources are included simply based on their reputation. In that case, quoting someone who is recognizable to your following will increase the likelihood of a Tweet or post being shared. Plus, attributing the quote to that person by mentioning their Twitter handle could result in a high-profile retweet from the source, further expanding your reach.
Quotes are a great way to connect to your followers on a more human, less technical level. This is especially true if the quote evokes positive emotions like inspiration or laughter.
2. Incorporate Pop Culture:
This isn’t a groundbreaking revelation for most of you, but pop culture reference can significantly increase your chances of getting clicks and shares on Twitter and Facebook.
HootSuite once wrote a tweet to promote our Conversations tool based on a famous song you might know. It was:
Quoting Ice Ice Baby seems nonsensical, especially for an Enterprise social relationship platform, right? Well that Tweet performed far, far better than any serious or straightforward Tweet we shared.
Part of this is newsjacking. Mentioning a show that people are obsessed with at the moment (Game of Thrones anyone?) or a current event (a la Oreo Superbowl Tweet) is a great way to capitalize on people’s interests right here and now.
But pop culture references don’t need to be modern. In general, people are more likely to share something that resonates with a larger portion of their own following than something very segmented. Put simply, more people like television and music than the latest trend among chief information officers in North American tech companies. We’re not saying don’t write that technical piece, we’re just saying don’t be afraid to ditch the formal, corporate line and spice up your social messaging using some relatable references.
3. Listen to Your Followers:
Create a stream to see what followers are saying about the content you share.
Believe it or not, you might be a little biased about your own content. After writing a blog post, you will likely have a specific idea about what is the most important part of it. That part will likely become the focus of your social messaging.
But, and this is important, your followers might leave that content with a different impression. The people who read your content without any preconceived notions about it are probably a far better judge of what within that content stands out.
All of this to say that your own followers might be writing much better Tweets about your content than you do. Follow your own content on social media by creating a search stream in HootSuite for the url of your blog or content. This will pull up any Tweet to that piece, allowing you to see what others are saying about it. If any of these messages has received great engagement, learn from their success and use a similar strategy with your own Tweets or posts moving forward.
In the case of social media, there are going to be times where your followers inspire you, not the other way around.
When you don’t pay attention to what your audience is saying, you’re basically giving key information to your competitors. What are your customers’ pain points? What do they love about your product or service? What are those in your industry talking about? All of these questions can be answered through the art of social media listening.
The following guide will outline the importance of social listening and explain how your business can implement a social media listening strategy. It’s time to listen to that voice you have been ignoring—before somebody else (like your competition) does.
What is social listening?
Our social media glossary defines social media listening as “The process of finding and assessing what is being said about a company, topic, brand, or person on social media channels.” This can mean anything from focusing on mentions of your brand on Twitter, to keeping track of trends in your industry that your competitors are posting about on Facebook. What kind of content is getting the most likes on Instagram? These are all examples of social listening.
As our own Ryan Holmes explains, “ for businesses that pursue social listening seriously, the benefits can be significant: real-time intelligence on competitors; instant feedback on how your own brand is being perceived; and actionable data for designing or tweaking marketing campaigns.”
You wouldn’t put a pot of sauce on the stove without checking on it, testing out the flavor, and making sure it doesn’t burn. Your social media strategy should be the same. It’s important to pay attention to not only the reactions of your audience and customers, but the social media activity of your industry and competitors. Social listening is how you do this.
How is social listening different from social media monitoring?
Social listening and social media monitoring are terms which are often used interchangeably, but there are subtle differences to note. A popular analogy, as used by MarketingProfs, is “Monitoring sees trees; listening sees the forest.”
With social media monitoring you are searching for and collecting data and mentions of your brand, industry, and audience conversations. With social listening you’re analyzing this information and taking action—turning the data you have collected into a viable strategy. Social listening means “you can watch for patterns, track sentiment and draw conclusions based on where and when conversations happen.”
The two terms are close in meaning, but social listening takes the idea of social monitoring a step further.
Why does social listening matter to your business?
There are countless reasons why social listening matters, but as I don’t want this to be the ‘blog post-that-never-ends’ the following points are the most notable. Social media listening matters for your business because it helps:
Customer care efforts, as “through monitoring what customers are saying about your brand on social media, you are able to jump in when necessary to remedy situations that require it, or just engage with your [happy and satisfied] customers.” American Express found that the top five reasons U.S. customers use social media (i.e. what you are listening for) include seeking responses from companies, praising a company, sharing information about an experience with a business, venting frustration and complaints, or asking other customers how to have a better experience.
Get feedback, in the same vein as social media customer care efforts, social listening can help you get feedback on your specific products and services. What are people loving or hating? What features do they think would help? All of this can be found through some careful social media listening.
Generate leads, through not only solving customer problems and publicly highlighting your business’ focus on the customer to future customers, but in listening to what those in your industry are talking about and strategically (and appropriately) contributing to the conversation.
Find influencers and advocates by paying attention to your community and those who are actively engaging.
Find top talent by focusing on job-seekers and those in your industry who could be a great fit for your team.
Competitive analysis. Social listening will give you insights into what your main competitors are doing online
For all of these reasons (and many, many more), social listening is something that your brand and business need to take seriously.
Social listening strategy
Now that you can see why social listening matters to your business, you probably want to know how to actually practice it. When planning your strategy, one of the first things you’ll need to think about is what kind of keywords and phrases you need to monitor. To help you out, here are some keywords and topics we recommend listening to:
Your own brand’s name (including misspellings!)
Your competitors (again, including misspellings)
Industry buzzwords
Brand slogans
Your CEO or public representative’s names (and misspellings)
Campaign names or keywords
Now that you have an idea of what to listen for, there are a number of tools available to streamline the process.
Social listening tools and apps
Like with any job, having the right tools can make all the difference. While there are countless tools available, the following are our recommendations:
Google Alerts—set up a Google alert with keywords you are tracking in your industry, mentions of your brand, as well as your competitors’ names.
Quora—use Quora to monitor the questions and key discussions happening in your industry. For more information on Quora’s many uses, see our guide “Write On: A Writer’s Guide to Quora.”
Twitter Advanced Search—narrow down your searches, search by negative or positive sentiment, explore relevant hashtags, and much more. For a guide on using Twitter’s Advanced Search, see our post “How to Use Twitter’s Advanced Search for Lead Generation.”
Hootsuite—use Hootsuite to set up streams that allow you to not only monitor conversations and keywords, but respond or assign the response to someone else on your team. For more information on using Hootsuite for your social listening, our “Introduction to Social Listening” guide is extremely helpful.
TweetReach—offers basic listening tools, and helps you monitor Tweets about your brand, and industry conversations.
ViralHeat—allows you to listen to conversations around your brand across social networks and then “identify trends to drive insights around your social media performance.”
For more on the application of these tools, our guide “3 Ways to Use Social Media to ‘Listen’ to Your Competition” focuses on using social listening as a part of a competitive analysis, but the tips provided by Hootsuite’s CEO Ryan Holmes can definitely apply to the broader process. The three key ways to use social listening are as outlined:
Create real-time ‘news feeds’ featuring your top competitors. By knowing what your competitors are discussing, what their audience is talking about, and the things they are retweeting provides great insight into your industry. Holmes explains “Once you’re set up with an account, type in a few handles and you’ve got a streaming, real-time digest of what your competition is working on and pushing out.”
Take the pulse of the larger state of your industry. You can use a tool like Hootsuite to set up different monitoring functions and track specific keywords and handles within your industry. Holmes himself explains that “By digging a little deeper, I can root out the comments that actually matter.”
Learn what people are saying about you and your product. This can’t be emphasized enough. There is no better way to understand your customer and the general public’s opinions and feedback on your product or service. As Holmes explains, “setting up a stream to monitor references to your own company can be extraordinarily informative (and humbling).”
Social media listening is an incredibly valuable process for every business. Staying ahead of the industry curve, while anticipating and exceeding your customers’ needs is a skill that social listening can help you master.
In today’s digital world, content distribution is nearly as important as the content itself. People are more empowered than ever before to simply ignore content they have no interest in. You can’t buy their attention any more, you have to earn it.
Content quality is, of course, essential to earning people’s attention. But even if you’ve created the Mona Lisa of blog posts, if you don’t know how to distribute your content it’s not going to be seen, clicked, read or shared. This is what makes intelligent content distribution so vital.
There are an absolute encyclopedia of content distribution tools and channels that you can use to promote your work. The tools that you choose should ultimately reflect your audience, providing content to them in a format they enjoy through a network or medium that they frequent.
To help you reach your audience and boost traffic, we’ve gathered 25 great content distribution tools—for owned, earned and paid media strategies—that might be a good fit for your business.
Owned content distribution tools
Owned media refers to the content and networks that your brand controls, and generally involves targeting your existing communities and followers. Your social media profiles, your blog and your website, all owned channels, should be a total given when it comes to content distribution.
If you’re not already sharing your content on those networks, start doing that before moving onto more complex distribution strategies. If you’re already there, the following tools should help you extend your reach even further through your owned channels.
WiseStamp
Email and social media aren’t naturally complementary, but WiseStamp aims to change that. The company builds a number of apps meant to help publishers distribute their content. One function of WiseStamp is particularly valuable for content distribution. It allows you to share your latest piece of content automatically within your email signature. This means that anyone who receives an email from you, regardless of topic, is a potential reader.
No content distribution strategy is complete without email. Mailchimp, in addition to having one of the best brands out there, leads the way when it comes to email distribution. The service allows you to send well-designed marketing emails, automated messages, and targeted campaigns. These emails are then tracked through detailed analytics reports, so you can continuously improve your email campaigns over time.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact provides another awesome email distribution option. Drag and drop your own branding onto email templates and start sharing your content to your email list. Plus, if you want to grow your list, Constant Contact can help you create email sign-up forms for your other online properties. They also provide tools for transforming your emails into social media posts, so you can tap into social networks to further grow your lists. Constant Contact can help you with content distribution today, while growing your reach for better distribution in the future.
Click to Tweet
Click to Tweet provides a simple but valuable service for distributing content: allowing you to create a link that pre-populates a Tweet for people to share. Let’s say you’ve written a blog post with a really powerful quote from your CEO. Using Click to Tweet, you can generate a link that, when clicked, will pre-populate a person’s Twitter compose box with that quote and a link to the post. Then you can use the link in your blog post, on social and anywhere else. This tool simplifies the social share process for your readers, which can lead to wider distribution on Twitter.
Launched in 2012, Medium is the brainchild of Twitter co-creators Evan Williams and Biz Stone and “was introduced as a new publishing platform where both paid and unpaid writers could post pieces on any subject and of any length.” Used by over 17 million per month, including current President of the United States Barack Obama, to say Medium is catching on would be an understatement.
This readership is entirely available to you, for free. Anyone can post to Medium, including you and your business. To really take advantage of this tool, make sure you choose an appropriate topic or theme to characterize your post, include great visuals, and only share content which meets the network’s fairly casual, ‘community’ feel.
LinkedIn Publisher and Facebook Notes
While these two tools are technically dependent on your social media profiles, they represent a very different content distribution opportunity. Unlike simply sharing something on your profile, LinkedIn Publisher and Facebook Notes allow you to create and share longer content that has wider appeal, based on the format and design.
In the fall of 2012, LinkedIn created an influencer program, inviting the likes of Richard Branson, Bill Gates and HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes to share industry insight with LinkedIn users. The opportunity provided these thought leaders with a massive new audience, often of hundreds of thousands of professionals, and turned LinkedIn into a source of valued business content. Now, anyone can take advantage of that publishing platform, and thousands upon thousands of people already have, using the tool to grow their LinkedIn networks and expand the reach of their content.
Facebook only recently revamped notes, but the same potential is there. You have very clean blogging tool, not unlike Medium in style, that allows you to capitalize on your existing audience for shares, while appealing to a wider audience through longer, beautifully presented content. If you’re in the business of blogging, both of these tools should be considered for your content distribution strategy.
Hootsuite Amplify
How can you distribute your content beyond your own social profiles? Tap into the social profiles of your colleagues. Hootsuite Amplify is an employee advocacy solution that could greatly extend your content distribution. Amplify empowers your employees by notifying them of any new pieces of content and allowing them to easily share that content in just a few clicks. The bigger your staff, the more impact employee advocacy can have on your reach and distribution.
GaggleAMP
GaggleAMP provides a service similar to Amplify, allowing you to tap your entire company for help with content distribution. You invite your employees to your “Gaggle,” which will notify staff when there are new online marketing activities they can participate in, including sharing your content. With GaggleAMP you can also gamify the experience to further entice sharing from your colleagues.
Circulate.it
Again, another tool to make use of your colleagues to distribute your content. Ciculate.itfocuses on email, providing all of your coworkers with a daily email newsletter filled with the articles, news, and blog posts you’ve selected. They can then share these on their own social networks with a single click.
Oneload
OneLoad is a content distribution tool focused specifically on video. With OneLoad, you can post your video to 20 different social networks and websites all at one time. This isn’t just a time-saving mechanism, but a means of placing your video on sites you would likely ignore otherwise—missing out on those unique audiences. In addition to social networks like YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook, OneLoad will place your video on Dailymotion, viddler, iTunes and more.
SlideShare is a content network focused on slideshows and presentations, and plays home to some of the smartest content online. An impressive 70 million professionals use SlideShare to learn and find great content, and they have a lot to choose from: over 18 million uploads in 40 content categories. As a content producer, Slideshare represents an interesting distribution option for everything from infographics to videos. Find ways to take your content and place it on Slideshare; you might be surprised at how big of an audience you actually reach.
Hootsuite
Of course we had to include ourselves! Hootsuite is a huge asset for content distribution, with major social networks and other distribution tools integrated or available as dashboard apps. Message scheduling allows you to distribute content to global markets when you might not actually be active on social media (like when you’re asleep), while bulk uploading allows you to easily prepare hundreds of messages for distribution. Basically, Hootsuite brings efficiency and speed to your content distribution strategy.
Earned content distribution tools
Earned media refers to content that comes as the result of your efforts to create awareness, most often on channels you don’t own. This includes public relations, events, word-of-mouth promotion and reviews, social mentions from third parties and contributions to external communities or forums.
Earned media is more important than ever before, since people increasingly trust their friends and family on social media more than any brand—a reality known as social proof. The following content distribution tools should help you tap into social proof and increase the effectiveness of your earned media strategy.
Quora
Quora is home to some of the most interesting content on the internet. People use the network to ask questions of all kinds—literally about everything you can imagine. Where there are questions, there’s an opportunity for you to provide answers. Seek out questions about your industry or even your business, then prove your knowledge with a thoughtful answer, and link to your website or a specific piece of content for more context. Quora provides you with an audience actively looking for insights that you can provide, and consequently an opportunity to distribute your content.
PR Newswire
In their words, PR Newswire “provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content – from rich media to online video to multimedia – and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels.” What does that actually mean? It means they’ll distribute your content to over 200,000 media sources.
Absolutely anyone can submit a news release to PR Newswire for distribution. If you have an announcement or other release related to your product or company, this is a valuable asset for getting the news out there, and potentially getting some news coverage.
HARO
HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out and is a bit of an indirect way to potentially get your content out there. With HARO, you can essentially present yourself as a source on particular topics that journalists can then tap for upcoming stories or media coverage. Once you do get tapped as a source, you can share your expertise and potentially push your content or website within these stories.
reddit
Where Quora has a question about literally everything you can imagine, reddit has a community. People flock to reddit to discover the best content the internet has to offer every day. This happens in the broad sense, but also in very niche communities called subreddits. There is a subreddit for everything, and you can bet that includes your industry or the focus of your business.
Find the subreddit(s) that best match your target audience, begin participating in the discussions and share your content. If the content is high quality, people in these subreddits will upvote it to the top of the page. The posts that top each page will usually earn more reads, shares and engagement.
List.ly
Lists are one of the most powerful types of content online; just ask Buzzfeed. They make it easy to gather resources around a certain theme or topic and distribute them in an easily digestible and shareable way. With List.ly, you and your business can create lists that other people in the community can then discover, contribute to and share. These embeddable lists might be directly focused on your content, or maybe focused on a broader topic with your content included. The key thing is that your name ends up attached to a shareable piece of content.
Paid content distribution tools
Paid media might just be the most traditional form of marketing. You’re paying money in exchange for content distribution in various forms. In today’s online marketing world, paid media refers to tactics like online and social media advertising, paid content syndication, and influencer marketing.
If you’re willing to pay for content distribution, you can easily extend your reach to prospects and readers well outside of your existing network. Depending on your budget, the following content distribution tools might be a good fit for your marketing efforts.
Social media ads work, and they’re cheaper than really any traditional advertising option. Each network brings its own advantages and audiences, but all businesses can—and probably should—tap into some form of social media advertising as part of their content distribution strategy. Check out our beginner’s guide to social media advertisingfor more information. And if you’re still concerned about the cost, there are ways to ensure you’re making the most out of every penny.
StumbleUpon ads
StumbleUpon isn’t exactly a social network and therefore represents an alternative to social media advertising. The website is a simple tool for content discovery, allowing users to pick a few topics and essentially scroll through curated content related to those topics. As an ad platform, this doesn’t offer very much targeting. But StumbleUpon is a cheap solution, one that guarantees a certain number of pageviews for the money you spend. If you’re just looking for distribution and are not worried about the call-to-action or conversions that follow the content, this is a great advertising option.
Tribber
Want to capitalize on the growing trend of influencer marketing? As more consumers turn to blogs, articles and social media instead of advertising to learn about businesses, Tribber helps connect brands with influencers who can get the word out. These influencers come with their own networks and powerful reach, something most brands are after. Tribber is free to use, but you’ll have to pay the influencer for their services.
Buzzstream specifically helps you pitch your content to influencers in the hopes that they’ll help you distribute it. The service focuses on faster and better pitching, by tracking your relationships with influencers and publications, and providing you with a view of your conversation history, notes, social media messages and more. A better pitch means a better chance at getting your content shared or syndicated.
Taboola
If you want to expand your reach, Taboola is a great paid distribution option. Essentially, what Taboola offers you is placement on a variety of other websites. If you hopped around online, you’ve undoubtedly encountered the little “Around the web” or “Recommended for you” boxes at the bottom or alongside other articles. Taboola can place your content in those boxes, driving new traffic and new readers to your work.
Another content placement tool, Outbrain is essentially the same thing as Taboola, with a different set of publishers. Outbrain focuses on targeting, matching content to audiences that may be interested in it.
Nativo
Last on our list, Nativo is, once again, a content placement tool. It too has different publishers. With these three tools, you’re going to want to find the one with publishers who best cater to your audience, and with a price that best fits your budget.
Search for the names of those people you’ve already identified by name using LinkedIn’s search box. Also make the most of the advanced search feature.
You can also use this search box to search for keywords that will be included in profiles. Make the most of using OR or AND in these searches to include a few keywords (OR allows you to look for any one of those terms in the profile, AND allows you to look for a number of words).
You can also search for people using their email addresses.
Join groups that fit your interests or industry. Once you’ve been accepted as a member, browse the member lists and find people with shared interests that you want to connect with.
Use the Questions and Answer function to start a conversation around your key subject area. You’ll find those people interested in this subject will respond to you, after which you can connect with them.
You can’t simply choose to connect with people on LinkedIn as you can with Twitter. They need to give their approval (which I’m a fan of), so if they’re connected to you through someone you’re connected to, request to be introduced to them.
