Different Ways to Curate Content for Your Social Media

Using other people’s content can be a great way to fill out your social media content while keeping it relevant and useful to your audience.

There are a number of ways that you can find and curate this content.

My personal favourites are as follows:

RSS Feeds (Feedly)

I personally use Feedly to manage my RSS feeds (you can use any RSS reader).

You can save your favourite blogs and websites (most will have RSS feeds) into your reader. You should categorise and sort these into folders. This will make it more managable. It will also ensure that you can find the content you are looking for at the right time. You can then browse, read and schedule at your leisure.

The RSS feed can save you time. This is because you don’t have to visit each website and don’t have to remember which websites to visit. Instead, your feed will automatically be updated when they publish new content. Using RSS feeds can also reduce your inbox clutter. By signing up to the feeds, you don’t also have to sign up to their mailing list (unless you want to).

I will normally check my Feedly twice a day (so it doesn’t become unmanageable). I also use both the website and the app (so I can use it wherever I am).

Mailing Lists and Round-ups

Although Feedly can be used to replace newsletters, it shouldn’t put you off signing up for the mailing lists of your top/favourite resources. Just be sensible about what you sign up to so that you are not overloaded. Also if you don’t read it – unsubscribe.

Some people also write mailing list only content and curated round-ups which can also be useful to sign up to direct. I subscribe to a few experts that write weekly roundups and share the best content from their field of expertise. It is then easier to curate content from an already curated list.

I also find that this results in higher quality content.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts are alerts (via emails or RSS) that include the latest relevant Google search results for content that matches your search terms and can be delivered as often as you like.

The alerts are great for monitoring mentions of specific people or companies and events as well as keywords that might be specific to your business or industry.

At minimum you should create Google Alerts for your own Brand/Company as well as your main keywords.

Hashtags and Trending Topics

As well as providing a source of inspiration for social media content and for increasing your visibility. Hashtags (and trending topics) can also expose you to content that you may wish to share on your own social media channels.

If you are not already following the key hashtags for your business/industry – you should do this on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are another way to curate and organise your content. You will want to curate content from high-quality and professional sources. Therefore you are likely to have a list of blogs and resources already in your RSS feed. However, you may also want to include these resources in your Twitter Lists as well.

In addition to this, there are lots of different types of Twitter Lists you can set up to help manage and curate content. Examples of lists I use includ:

• List of Corporate Accounts. If your company has multiple accounts – curate and share content across accounts. Having a list will ensure that you find these accounts easily.
• List of Event/Conference Attendees and Speakers. Create Twitter lists for events that you are attending or hosting for relevant and interesting content.
• List of Twitter Chat Participants. If you run or attend Twitter Chats particularly if they are industry-specific, the twitter chat attendees/participants may be a useful source of on message content.
• Competitors List (private list). Your competitors can also be a resource for high-quality content.

Need help setting your social media campaign goals and planning your social media content? Why not grab a copy of our Social Media Planner.