How Content Curation Will Boost Your Marketing Plan 2016?

When Google released Panda and Penguin in subsequent years, their intent was clear: don’t let the Content marketers steal content, instead let them curate content with due credits. Our industry has accepted the fact that we need to gather relevant content with sites like Scoop.it and Hubpages and show Google that our website is an asset library or door to quality business & information. Content curation has changed over time with digital signatures, patent images and creative videos. Thus, keeping a balance between original creation and sincere sharing (curation) of content will now be vital for marketing, more than ever.

Good Curation is Equal To Writing Original

Curation is secondary to writing original, but has equal votes, from the community of SEO builders. We, writers not just want to write for the sake of SEO, but for the engagement, long comment threads and shares. But marketers need a true message with good reasons so they can put it in the right place for right people. That’s how content curation comes into act. When someone writes way better with good facts and figures to support, you share their content smartly rather than cursing yourself being not able to write a better one.

So, your marketing agenda must emphasize on writing good and sharing even better.

Curation: A White Hat Technique

Content curation is a white hat technique only if you are not trying to be too clever. Let’s forget the engagement and lead conversion for few minutes. When Panda 4.0 was announced in 2014, marketers saw it as further roadblocks by Google, but few were able to see the brighter side.

Especially, the small enterprises and startups with not so deep pockets. Google wants fresh and updated information with every search. So, value of fresh and high quality content (whether created or curated) become a weighing factor. Firms with years of online reputation may get ranked lower for a particular keyword than a small website that has a quality content published recently.

You must understand the difference of curating and stealing. A lack of credit or courtesy to the rightful owner may also screw your ranking with one of the search engine bots. So, if you are serious about content marketing of future, you must keep a fine line between what’s white and what’s not.

Curated Content Get More Shares (Even More Than Your Official Blog)

As I had already mentioned two of the brilliant places for sharing and curating (Scoop.it and Hubpages), there are many more emerging and established. As, we have few popular destinations, nearly all marketers curate there. This helps in getting more relevant data to share and also make a strong web spider with others in the process. You may also find link exchange opportunities on agreed terms. This means, you have more people who can share your content to their own customer base. The Reach increases and with that comes more shares and likes.

Few Points and Notes to Wind Up

• Curation must be personalized, it must be information well applauded and understood by you. This also augments the relevancy and readability for your audience.
• Use Newsletters, Social Media and email-marketing for Sharing. They might be the “No follow” options, but if you are using proper sharing portals like Pocket, Feedly or Curata. The former will act as Conversion rate builders with a branding touch.
• Don’t curate the whole day, strive for content quality and virality.

Just before 2016, we will see some major advancements by search engines as many of the updates were rumored and chattered to be published this year. So, keep some room of thinking and flexibility in your marketing plan. But surprisingly you have an advantage here, you know the intent of what search engines want and if your curation goes with the intent, the new rules won’t be any headache.