If you want positive ROI from your marketing strategies, your company must have a blog. Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to get positive return on their investment. Further to this, B2B marketers who use blogs can generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. The only cost to blogging is your time – but it’s well worth the effort.
However, for many marketers, a lack of time to write blogs isn’t the only issue - it’s also a lack of ideas. That’s where content curation comes into play. Content creation is the act of finding important and well-written content on the web and re-sharing that content verbatim within your own marketing.
However, that’s not its only use. It can also be used to help you find unique and interesting blog topics by monitoring what your competitors are saying and helping you jump on trending topics.
Once you’ve found the right content, your marketing team will need to transform the selected topic into a new story, specifically related to your brand. To make content curation work for you, there are four things you need to keep in mind.
1. Blog Topics Should Be Personal
Every blog topic should have your personal touch. If you find a blog from a competitor that talks about marketing hacks, don’t just repeat the same hacks in a new blog. Instead, talk to your team and personalize the hacks based on your company’s experience. You can also add a unique anecdote or case study that illustrates specific success your company achieved using that hack.
2. Blog Topics Should Provide Value
The Internet is filled with millions of articles, news stories, and blogs. Don’t always fall for the first article you find and decide to use that as your blog idea. Instead, search for content that adds value. Your customers don’t want or need a random topic; they desire specific information that will help them make educated decisions and will inevitably save them time and money. The goal of every topic should be to solve a problem that’s particular to your industry and your audience. If your curated content doesn’t solve a problem, keep searching.
3. Curated Blogs Should Offset Promotional Material
If you’re using content curation to find blog topics, don’t just transform those topics into a chance to sell, sell, sell. Your customers understand the fact that you are a business and that you need to make money. They know how to buy your products. Don’t use your blog as a promotional tool. Instead, use it as a relationship tool. By building a relationship, you’ll eventually make the sale by converting customers into brand ambassadors. Use curated blog topics to go beyond selling products and keep your customers coming back time and again.
4. Keep Content Curation Quick and Easy
Don’t spend all day searching the web for the perfect blog topic. You can also use a content curation app such as Pocket to help you collate specified blogs and articles, make lists on Twitter and add all of your competitors to see what they’re writing about, or sign up for newsletters from experts or competitors in your industry and get content delivered straight to your inbox.
Blogs are a must for any successful marketing campaign. If you want your blogs to be successful - then their content is key. Content curation is a great way to find new topics that are popular within your industry and will help promote your brand.
How do you use content curation for your blogging? Let us know
by The Penguin Team on October 22, 2015
As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.
