How to Become a Trusted Authority in Your Industry with Curated Content
Today, content marketing is well-recognized as a critical marketing strategy for building your authority.
So much so that individuals and businesses alike invest considerable time and resources into building blogs, creating informative blog content, and distributing them effectively.
The problem is that there’s so much content available that most of it isn’t visible to the public. They have short bursts of prominence and visibility before disappearing past the third page of Google’s search results. It’s harder than ever to catch your audience’s eyes, much less gain their trust.
How do you avoid getting stuck in the loop of content creation without losing out on branding?
The answer is to leverage content curation. This post is all about how content curation will help you become a trusted authority, boosting traffic, engagement, and sales. Dive in to learn more.
About Content Curation
Curating content is all about doing careful research on a topic, checking multiple sources for information, and gathering relevant pieces of information from these sources.
Content curated by a Scoop.it user on ‘Big Data’. Source.
You then share these content pieces in different ways. You could collect the links and send them to your email subscribers via your newsletter. You can link to different sites on your blog or social media. And the most effective way to curate content and distribute it is to use a tool like Scoop.it to streamline the whole process.
We’ll explore just how Scoop.it can make you an authoritative thought leader or brand in the following sections.
8 Ways to Use Content Curation to Build Authority
By leveraging the following content curation techniques, stay up-to-date and share the most relevant and valuable information with your audience effortlessly.
1. Find and Share Up-To-Date Information
Thought leaders and subject matter experts are as popular as they are because they seem to be on top of what’s hot in their industry.
If you want to become a trusted authority in your niche, you should use content curation as a means to find and share groundbreaking news and updates.
First, sign up with niche communities and follow leaders in your field on social media.
For example, if you’re in the automotive industry, you should follow CEOs and similar persons from major brands.
Be active online and look up what they’re doing, sharing, and what the latest news is.
You can also subscribe to magazines, online communities, and networks. Or just scour the news to see what’s happening. And here’s a bonus tip: use Google Alerts to get news about specific keywords as soon as they go live.
Once you find something relevant and new, ‘scoop it’ and share it with your audience.
For example, if you are a tech entrepreneur, you might curate content that’s useful for new startups, such as funding trends, updates on key players, and thought leadership articles.
Sharing curated content in this way keeps your audience engaged and positions you as a go-to source for the industry’s latest updates.
One Scoop.it user shares interesting news about his hometown to provide updates. Source.
2. Share Evergreen Sources
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant over time.
For example, if you’re a realtor business, then videos or articles about buying a home for the first time or a checklist for taking on a mortgage are some types of content that will be useful for a long time.
Authority figures and thought leaders also gain credibility online by being sources of timeless information.
Curating evergreen content will help your audience since you’ll share reliable and practical information that they can refer back to time and time again.
Being a source of enduringly useful information is also a great way to leverage content curation to become a trusted figure online.
3. Leverage User-Generated Content
The billions of pieces of content online aren’t just in the form of blog posts, articles, news, social media posts, or videos.
The comments that people leave, hashtags, reviews, ratings, and more are also significant bites of information. These are ‘user-generated content’ (UGC) that millions of people leave online for free.
How many times have you looked for information online only to find the topic covered brilliantly in an answer on Quora or by an unidentified user on Reddit?
If you want to be different, provide value, and showcase your credibility as a source of great content, don’t forget to curate user-generated content.
Curate testimonials, reviews, or case studies from satisfied customers to help prospects see the value of your brand and offerings. Or leverage UGC to entertain and inform people. Doing so helps people find information about a topic easily and provides value they’ll remember.
4. Find Unexplored Niches
The process of curating content will allow you to explore and collect the best content from a range of sources.
As you curate what you find, you’ll likely come across gaps in your niche that other companies haven’t addressed.
By identifying such gaps early and providing information on them, you can establish yourself as a reputable authority who’s also innovative.
Best of all, you don’t have to create interesting pieces of information from scratch. Rather, share what already exists but hasn’t blown up yet. There are individuals, brands, and SaaS platforms that provide exactly this type of service – they find out what niches are on the verge of exploding online and share what these are to a set of paying subscribers.
You can leverage information about niche or new products, trends, and brands to your in many ways – one of which is to develop a reputation as being a source of such valuable information online.
5. Promote Yourself
Sharing curated content should not halt your own creativity or brand-building efforts.
Mix in your original content with the curated content you choose to share.
Generate interesting and unique content that’s aligned with your niche and brand, and encourage your readers to engage with your posts or share your insights.
By maintaining a balanced amount of curated and original content, you establish yourself as an innovative thought leader and also promote your brand while promoting your niche.
6. Use a Mix of Media Formats
Curated content doesn’t have to be limited to blog posts and articles.
To create a more engaging experience for your audience, consider including different formats, such as videos, infographics, short podcasts, or webinars. Or opt to curate and categorize information based on different formats to cater to people who have different content consumption preferences.
One Scoop.it user added a mix of content formats to their profile making it a helpful resource. Source.
By incorporating curated content in different mediums, you can reach a broader audience.
7. Collaborate with Other Experts
It helps when you can ‘borrow’ credibility from other established experts.
So, don’t forget to collaborate with experts in your field to curate content. You could reach out to a thought leader and ask them to add your blog content, news, or offer to their curations.
Alternatively, you can privately create a partnership where you feature their content in your curation activities in exchange for some kind of benefit. Featuring guest blog posts, podcasts, and social media takeovers are some of the ways you can collaborate with other experts.
Such collaborations amplify the impact of your marketing efforts through increased social media posts, engagement, traffic, and a boost in your online domain authority.
8. Focus on Creating Value with Scoop.it
Finally, remember that curated content should always create value for your target audience.
One of the best ways to do this is to make the entire experience of consuming curated content easy.
Scoop.it is the best platform for easily capturing different types of content online.
Once you sign up, you can easily scoop videos, posts, and multiple formats to your profile. Your audience will find one place with all your information.
There are many ways to levearge Scoop.it to curate information while building your authority. You could:
- Build a content hub for your community or network
- Send newsletters
- Share curated social media content and distribute your information to different social networks easily
- Easily and automatically aggregate the relevant information to fuel your research and write interesting content
Overall, by focusing on value curation and ensuring that your curated content aligns with your brand’s values and messaging, you’ll establish yourself as a major voice in your industry.
Conclusion
Curated content is a powerful tool for industry leaders and marketers to establish themselves as thought leaders and authorities.
By sharing the most relevant and valuable resources from your industry, you gain social proof, inspire brand loyalty, and demonstrate a depth of knowledge and understanding in your field.
Use the tips laid out in this post to become a trusted authority in your industry. Get started today.
The post How to Become a Trusted Authority in Your Industry with Curated Content appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.
