Welcome to Content Curation for Snack-Sized Content Marketing

Content curation is all the rage right now and it has quickly become one of those Internet buzzwords. Many of the Web's top bloggers are expert content curators. But like most Internet buzzwords, it's only half-understood by most people.

Content curation means pulling together content from various sources and presenting it to the reader in your own unique way. It may be easier to understand content curation by defining what it is not.

Content curation doesn't mean presenting a list of stories or a weekly roundup of links. It's definitely not a simple cut and paste job where you rip off content from someone else.

The idea is to take the information available and make sense of it for your readers. It starts with carefully sifting through all that's out there and selecting the best items that would interest your readers. You then put this content together into an easy-to-digest format that tells a story, making it relevant, valuable and memorable.

The content is already out there for your readers to enjoy, so why put it together for them? This is the key to good content curation – it's not just a pile of information. We're inundated by a deluge of information every minute of every day. The Internet is wonderful because of this, but it leads to overwhelm. Everyone has to sift through all that's out there to find what they're truly interested in reading. A good content curator does this for you, and builds a following of loyal readers as a result.

One common misconception about content curation is that it's an easy way out of content creation. Since you're pulling together content from different sources, this offers a shortcut to writing it all yourself. This couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, like the content you write yourself, the content you curate can help you establish authority and create a connection with your readers.

If your content is relevant and helpful to your readers, they'll keep coming back for more. It doesn't matter to them whether you're the actual content creator or not.

Think of it from the reader's point of view. Your blog or website is a source of the exact information they want on a regular basis. It saves them from having to do their own sifting online. Over time, they come to see you as a go-to source for their information.

They see you as a knowledgeable expert in your field. An automated program that uses keyword algorithms to suck up content from other sites won't do that.

Curating content should be taken just as seriously as creating your own content from scratch, but one of the advantages of this approach is that it is easier and more cost effective than writing your own content or hiring a writer. It's just a matter of understanding your readers well and choosing the right content.

Next we'll cover 7 best practices of content curation!

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