4 great places to find great content to share

4 great places to find great content to share

Content curation is a critical component of a successful social media account. You want to find content posted by others but that’s related to the industries you’re targeting. This’ll provide you with a fresh source of content, and it encourages others to follow you.

The hardest part of curating content is locating the sources. Luckily, once you have some dependable sources, finding content will be a snap, and the hardest part becomes finding time to go through it all to choose the best content to share.

Here are 4 sources I check regularly both for the content I share on my company accounts and for content I share on client accounts.

1. Newsletters

Some people think with the popularity of social media that email newsletters are dying. It’s not true. They’re a popular tool for driving traffic to one’s website. There are still a lot of people out there who find value in email newsletters. I comb through my newsletters daily to see what social media and writing content is out there.

2. RSS

When Google shut down Google Reader, people predicted the fall of RSS. It’s still as useful as ever though, and many websites still publish an RSS feed. I replaced Google Reader with Digg Reader; I found it had a lot of the same functionality, so it was pretty easy to transfer over. When you find a website whose content you like, add it to your RSS reader. Once you’ve subscribed to a few feeds, check your reader every day for great content to share.

3. Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to find valuable content. Find popular hashtags for your industry and check them regularly on your favourite social media account (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Pinterest all use hashtags) to see what others are sharing.

4. Your followers

The popular social media websites provide you with ways to see what your followers are sharing. Pinterest has a general feed when you log in. Google+ does as well, but you can filter it by circles, too. Twitter’s timeline can be overwhelming, so Twitter lists can be useful. For your company Facebook account, check your Pages Feed, a News Feed for your company page.

By increasing your curation pool, you’ll have a greater selection of content to choose from to share on your page.

A general rule is 20% content that’s specific to your company and 80% content from others that’s related to your company. People don’t want to hear “Sell! Sell!” from you all the time. Sometimes? Sure, but there’s very little value in it for them.

Curate content from others that’s related to your industry and share it with your followers to become a content expert in your field.

By Kim Siever

I am a copywriter and copyeditor. I blog on writing and social media tips mostly, but I sometimes throw in my thoughts about running a small business. Follow me on Twitter at @hotpepper.