Release Your Inner Curator: it’s good for business development (Part I)

 

If you read our recent post, “Is your blogging bad? Maybe you should try content curation…,” you may be starting to feel your inner curator stirring.  The post introduced the idea of content curation for new business development.

Over the next three weeks, we’ll show the steps you can take to gear up a content curation program of your own.  The first two steps follow here.

Step One: Set Your Curation Strategy.

The first decision you’ll have to make is how big you want to go.  This will determine the scope of your efforts and will guide you towards the tools you’ll need to accomplish your goals.

For some businesses, content curation is the core of their inbound marketing effort.  An entire site or microsite may be devoted to sharing their curated content, and the company’s lead generation may live and die by the strength of this website alone.

But for discussion sake in this series, let’s say you want to start small, especially since many of the concepts we present over the next three weeks will upscale nicely.

Maybe sharing a monthly digest of curated posts and articles with your prospects will suffice; or maybe sourcing content to bolster your agency’s presence on various social media outlets is what you’re looking for.

Begin with the end in mind.  Specify the results you want your curation strategy to deliver, and build your strategy to deliver them.

Step Two: Choose a topic.

Some agencies may struggle with this aspect of the process, if only because it requires that they take a conceptual leap in how they approach new business.

As an organizing principle, you’re going to want to choose a topic that will guide your search for content sources.  It has to be specific enough to appeal to your audience and set you apart from competition, but general enough that you can find content reliably.

So, as an agency, have you even defined an audience yet?  Have you differentiated your agency positioning?

(Differentiation! We write enough posts about you.  Get out of here,  you little rascal.)

If you have carved out a unique agency positioning, then you’ll know who your audience is and your content curation has a much better chance of being successful.

Search for blogs, articles and other content that will appeal to your prospects – on the topic of “small business social media marketing” for example – and see if you can find enough sources with quality posts updated on a regular basis.  It may take some fine tuning, but eventually you should be able to dial in on the level of specificity that suits your needs.

…Coming Next

Next week, we’ll present the next two steps to bring out the inner curator in you:

• Gather Sources
• Provide Your Own Insight

In the meantime, give thought to your strategy and topic. These two steps set a solid foundation for content curation, and will facilitate the new business results you seek for your firm.