Content curation is a trending element of content marketing that is rapidly being adopted by bloggers and businesses to retrieve or source relevant and valuable content.
What was initially a technique used for searching selective online content sourcing from blogs, articles and videos, today content curation has progressed to be an important function of digital marketing, thanks to the many tools that has made the process effective.
However, not everyone has access to great tools, especially the freelancers. We have also found that despite being technologically advanced, these tools still don’t cover all the necessary content, no matter how specific you are with your keywords.
And so, the following freelancer’s guide will help you maximise content curation, drive traffic and generate engaging readers without having to rely on artificial intelligence.
How Can Content Curation Drive Traffic
Below listed are some of the top ways that help in driving traffic.
1. Use Listicles in Content Creation
Studies show readers find posts that are written in lists more useful and engaging. List post (like this blog) increases user engagements, number of shares per post and traffic rate.
When an article is written in a list format, a reader is easily able to scan through the content and get to the heading which is relevant to his search. If he finds it relevant, he will most likely share the post with his friends.
Lists are eye catchy than essays and no break paragraphs. This is a unique combination of advanced algorithm, human intelligence and psychology. Here content is curated based on human psychology predictions.
These articles are also termed as listicles. A listicle article will have minimum 7 headings and sub titles or it will have more bullet points with short and crisp sentences.
ZEEF is an interesting site for curators that embrace this list philosophy. Here curators are able to rank best lists or sites based on quality. Multiple curators make suggestions and collaborate with other lists too. This way the best list post is ranked high and is embedded for future reference.
2. Make Your Content Informative… It Should Justify the Title
Creating and curating content should follow the same basic principle: appeal your target audience and reader. You have to provide high quality content with valuable and relevant information. Your content should provide certain information that the viewer is seeking in the internet.
Initial stage of content curation might be easy but sharing the information in a most profitable, engaging and guiding way is very difficult. Unless you don’t justify your words you won’t be able to build trust and authority amongst your readers.
For example, you choose a topic, “10 best homemade remedies for hair growth”. You share 10 ingredients randomly without giving out reasons what these ingredients or products do to your hair.
Do you think readers would value your words, without knowing why these stuffs should go in their hair? Little do we know that the internet users today have become smarter with their reading and understanding skills.
Your information should add value to the content topic and justify it completely. Additionally, you should also provide suggestions for use, improvements and alternatives(sources) for the ingredient (topic) to make the readers believe in what you have written.
3. SEO SEO and SEO… Reach More Audience
You might curate world’s best post enforcing immense research, but if you don’t do the SEO bit and optimise your content, how will readers know what you have curated? Keywords, tags and meta descriptions are few essential features of content search engine optimisation.
There are several tools out in the market such as WordStream that lets curators search relevant and trending keywords.
Keywords are very essential for content curation because it is the first thing that a reader uses to search information. Keywords should be used in the title, heading, pictures as well as two to three places inside the content.
Back links are also important for content curation. When other bloggers or publishers see that you have linked their content in your post, they will most definitely share your article to their viewers’ network or recent blogs, which will end up generating more inbound links back to your site.
Another important element of SEO is the vocabulary and the word count you use. Honestly unless you are a scientist, a doctor or a technologist curating content for specific niche or target audience, we advise you to not use high end words that are not only difficult to pronounce but also are not commonly used in colloquial language.
Use words from the dictionary that can be simply understood by a 9th grade student. Google ranks a content higher when it’s readable by a 7th – 9th grade student.
The number of words is important because, genuinely, not everyone’s got the patience to read through a 3000 words long article. So, in most cases, a good curated content should not be more than 1500 words.
And we have already discussed the importance of lists earlier in the blog. All of these factors comprise SEO of content.
4. Round Up Posts Can Still Get Your Truckload of Traffic
We know many marketers and content curators find round up posts too main stream but so are blogging, social marketing and video marketing.
Round up posts are articles where you ask expert advice or sharers who are willing to contribute information about your selected topic. Here you will ask a compelling question or a topic for discussion and reach out to various experts to share insights.
The experts that participate in your roundup blog will boost your traffic by sharing it with their network. Your curated content with an expert advice will translate authority.
The perfect example of Round-Up post I could find is, “How to Promote Your Blog – 40+ Marketing Expert Tips”.
If you read through you’ll find this blog quite simple, yet it has received over 40,000 shares.
You can also curate a post about a trending topic and share links of what experts have spoken about it.
5. Use Other Hubs for Content Sharing
Finally, we suggest you to not rely solely on social media networks for sharing content. You have to use or seek for embed curation tools where you can embed lists and pages you create.
Content Curation comes with certain ethical rules and boundaries. So you have to make sure you give credits to sources through links and references.
