Where to find good quality content to share on social media

What is content curation?

Content curation in the digital world is the process of sorting through news, blog posts, articles, images, infographics, social media updates, videos and other information sources to find quality content for a particular topic that’s worth sharing with your audience.

How to curate quality content for your social media channels

There is no right or wrong way to curate content for your audience. But it’s important to know what your audience likes and responds to. You might have to experiment to find out what gets engagement and toss what gets crickets. If you’re already monitoring the results of the content you share, then you’ll have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Finding quality content  to share shouldn’t be hassle. It shouldn’t take much time out of your week. I like to curate content in batches and then schedule posts for the coming week – it saves me time.

If you’re stuck for places to find good quality content, here are some of my favourite ‘go to’ sites:

flipboard.com

Flipboard is a site that curates content for a wide variety of topics. You can either download the Flipboard app for your phone, or view the site from your desktop     or laptop.

When setting up your account, you can choose the categories of information you’re most interested in and are relevant to your business. Flipboard shares news from around the world in each of those categories and displays content in an easy-to-read format.

It shouldn’t be too hard to find content relevant for your followers. What I love most about Flipboard is that it looks beautiful.

plus.google.com

Google+ is Google’s social media platform, but it has never enjoyed the success of Facebook because it’s not simple and intuitive. However, it’s still a great repository for articles. Search Google+ for articles related to your industry or niche.

Google+ is also available as an app or from your desktop.

I find the communities are the best place to look for articles. Look for communities with lots of active people and see what content they are sharing. You’ll have to sift through quite a lot of self-promotional posts, but look for the articles with lots of likes and comments and if relevant to your audience, share these with your followers. It’s also a great place to share your own content such as blog posts in the appropriate communities.

scoop.it

Scoop.it is an interesting beast. You can either set up an account and easily curate content yourself from a range of sources (for example, from Twitter, Youtube, news sources and many others) on a particular topic, or you can visit boards that others have already curated and find good content there to share with your audience. You can also add your own content to your board, making it available for others with a similar interest to curate.

reddit.com

Reddit is like a home page for the internet. It’s divided into categories and subcategories (subreddits) across every topic you could think of. People post links to articles within a category and popular links are ‘upvoted’ and a lively discussion often ensues. If you’re posting your own content, be warned. Redditors catch the scent of marketing and self-promotion like rabid hounds. Before you share any of your own content, make sure you share other’s content first and join in some commentary to avoid the wrath of redditors!

www.feedly.com

Feedly is a tool for viewing all the blogs you follow in one place. It takes a little while to set it up, but once all of the blogs you follow have been added, you can categorise them in a way that’s meaningful to you and see at a glance new content to read and share.

www.alltop.com

Alltop is the new kid on the block for me and I’ve only recently discovered it. Alltop describes itself as the ‘online magazine rack’ of the web. It aggregates content from a range of sources and covers every topic you can think of – from animal rescue to homeschooling to zombies.

You can create your own magazine rack and submit your own site to Alltop.

Automated content curation services

I use Quuu, an automated curated content service for posting relevant articles to my Twitter account. Some people are a bit dubious about automated services but of all the ones I researched, Quuu is by far the best. Articles are hand-picked by the Quuu team and I don’t have to worry about sourcing the content, writing the headline or researching the hashtags – that’s all done for you. My modest Twitter following has more than doubled since I started using Quuu with very little effort on my part.

What sort of content should I curate?

A big mistake many people make with their social media posts is talking about themselves too much. Don’t be that person or that business. If you want to engage your target audience, you need to get the balance right. Just like networking in real life, it’s important to listen and ask questions.

To get the right balance, test and refine what works and ditch what doesn’t.

What should I post on my Facebook business page?

If you’re stuck for what sort of posts to include on your business’ Facebook page, try posting a mix of:

• educational and helpful content related to your industry – people love sharing content that makes them look smart or on-trend, so give them content they’d love to share
• behind the scenes photos and stories from your business – humanise your business
• inspirational quotes and images – love them or hate them, lots of people love them and they encourage sharing and engagement
• questions related to your industry to encourage engagement – people love talking about themselves
• short videos related to your industry that are informative or entertaining – lots of people prefer video content
• Facebook Live videos – if you dare (or if you’re not up for going live, practice first and upload the best version)
• self-promotional content – note that I included this one last.

There is no magic formula and each business is unique, but talking less about yourself and more about others is a good strategy.

What should I post on my other social media channels?

Each social media channel will have its own flavour but think about how the above ideas for Facebook could work on your other social media accounts. For example:

• Twitter – news, infographics, links to articles
• LinkedIn – sharing news, articles, blog posts that are relevant to your industry
• Pinterest – pin images from blog posts, news articles, infographics relevant to your industry
• Instagram – your own photos that share your unique view of the world.

I’d love to know where and how you curate content for sharing with your audience. Let me know in the comments below.