CMOs, I get it.  There isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything on your company’s to-do list.  With sales, marketing, management and hiring activities, getting around to doing your daily social media is difficult – if not impossible.  Especially when you have a goal of creating content every week.  There just aren’t the resources to do it.

Quit trying to do it all!

When I talk to CMOs about social media, most of them discuss the challenges of constantly creating new content for each of their high value markets.  My recommendation is STOP!  Today, your consumers aren’t expecting you to be an expert on everything.  In fact, if you try to be everything, you quickly become irrelevant.  And the more pressure you put on trying to create content, the more sporadic your content becomes and the less your high value audiences will rely on your publications.

The remedy is simple.  You need to create a steady, rich flow of influencer developed content into your business’ social sites.  Influencers are people who connect the experts in your industry to the people who seek information and insights.  They are easy to find [check out my other blogs and videos on finding influencers] and happy to provide you with great content for your audience.  Your job then shifts from creating content to curating it for your high value audience.

Digital Content Model

Here is a useful way to view curated content.  Every second or every day, influencers and experts are creating great content.  This content is in all forms – articles, white papers, videos or vlogs, podcasts, infographics, and other formats.  They then post their new content on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and other social networking sites.  To augment your created content, you can examine their new content offerings every day, find the best in the topics of interest to your high value markets and then become an amplifier for them.  You can take their content and tweet or re-post it on your social media sites.  You will – of course – give them full attribution and include @handles and publication source and full credit.  You are just amplifying their content.

This means your content model is now a combination of created and curated content.  You will create content when you want to show your expertise or create content which expresses your brand essence.  Once created, you will market it aggressively to reach your target market.

To keep a consistent flow of content when you don’t have time to create it, follow key influencers on the topics important to your target markets.  They will produce studies, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos which you will receive on your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or other sites.  Your job will then be to amplify their content by commenting, Tweeting or liking them.  This will tell your followers you agree with the content and think it will be valuable to them.  Add a few hashtags about the topic and you will also reach new potential followers.  It will grow your follower base.

For both curated content you like and content you create, you will put them into a content library.  Periodically, you will then re-market them on your social assets.  This will engage new readers who didn’t see it the first time.  It will continue to grow your follower base with little effort.

To get curated content that will engage your high value markets, I recommend the following steps:

  1. Discover their needs – Before you do anything, take some time to talk to your high value customers.  Learn the topics important to them and what they search for when they are looking for your products and services.  Determine if they have influencers they follow and what they like about them.  Discover what social networking sites they use and whether they listen to podcasts or watch videos [for work].
  2. Find Influencers – Using their insights, use Social Analytics tools to find influencers in the key topic areas your audiences want.  Also, include in your search the topics of importance in your industry.  Find influencers who publish articles, create podcasts, and generate videos.  If you don’t know how to find them, my next blog will give you the tools and tips to find them on all types of social media.
  3. Follow Them – Before you curate and amplify, follow them and review their content.  I like the 3 minute rule.  It is “every morning, noon and night, take 3 minutes to review content from your influencers”.  OK, it takes a bit longer than 3 minutes but you get the idea.  Be consistent and look at what they publish.  If you find you don’t like their feeds on your business social networking sites, QUIT FOLLOWING THEM.  Only follow the best.
  4. Curate the Best – When you find great, relevant content, put it into your content library and use it when appropriate.  I have my clients identify 5 – 10 major themes their audiences want and then repeat them every month or quarter to ensure they are covering them.  If they have a piece of created content to share, they market it first and use related, influencer content to enhance their stream of information.  We also “withdraw” from the content library if there are gaps in our schedule.
  5. Amplify Often – Just like with your curated content, you can amplify great curated content more than once.  Try different days and times [remember your audiences are global] to share great content with your markets.

Does it pay off for an organization?  When you curate content for influencers with a large audience, some of their audience begins to follow you.  Plus, you stand out to them so they are more likely to curate YOUR created content.  It works both ways.

If you want an easy, effective way to increase your content flow on topics of importance to your target markets without a great deal of effort, CURATE DON’T CREATE!