As discussed in my last post, the event planning industry is going through some real tough times. To keep you and your business visible, you should be considering content curation as a high priority activity. If you read part one then I’m sure you understand the why by now, so lets look at the how.
There are quite a few ways to collect blog posts and social media shares. How you do it depends on where you are looking. All the tools we will be looking are free, however one or two require work around’s. Most social networks offer ways of ‘favouriting’ or ‘saving’ a post or share. Some methods are obvious, some are not…
Saving Content On Twitter
The Twitter website has a different method to bookmarking than the app. One the website, click the icon as shown in the following image. One the app, click the share button and select ‘bookmark’
Tweetdeck and Hootsuit do not offer the same kind of feature. The work around is to create a column or stream of favourites/likes.
Curating on Instagram
You can bookmark posts that you like by tapping/clicking the bookmark icon. On the website, you can visit your profile and select to view all the posts you’ve saved. On the app, visit your profile and tap the menu top right and select ‘saved’
Bookmarking on Facebook
Look to the top right of each post, there are three dots. Click and there’s an option to save the post for later. To see your collection, look to the right under ‘explore’. If ‘Saved’ isn’t there, click ‘see more’.
Finding content on blogs & websites
The best way to find posts that will interest you, and your readers, is to collect together as many industry relevant websites as you can in an ‘Aggregator’ – a program or service that collects information in to one place (see this Wikipedia definition ).
These aggregators use a feature that most blogs have – an RSS feed. Sadly, it is becoming overlooked and many blog owners are unaware of how import it can be. It is basically a specially formatted index of your most recent posts in a machine readable format.
An RSS aggregator uses these RSS feeds to find new posts from each site. They are then displayed in one one place. There are plenty of aggregators to choose from, however there are certain features you need to look for. These important features include, organising your feed categories, saving articles, and adding tags to them.
For more about aggregators, including reviews and various ‘paid-for’ options, check out this post – The 15 Best RSS Feed Reader And News Aggregation Apps
If you would like an easier way to find posts by event planning professionals, then check out my own site – Event Planner News. A great way to find posts to mix in to your content curation efforts.
When do I have the time to curate content?
The advantage of social media apps is that when ever you have some spare time, your can use your smartphone to locate and save interesting and related content. Later, when it comes to writing your own post, you can use the apps and their websites to start collating and reviewing. Of course this becomes easier when you use an aggregator as the posts from the blogs you are interested in are presented in one place. This makes it as simple as scrolling down the list and seeing what catches your eye.
This solves my content problem now, but what about later?
Business bloggers have been using curated content for a long time, it’s a proven strategy to demonstrate authority and leadership. In fact, content curation has become a business model in it’s own right. When the current crisis is over, there is no reason why you should stop. In fact, it may take the stress off you when it comes to creating new posts for your business blog.
Going forward
There are plenty of tools for you to use to aid you with discovery and for keeping well organised. Check out my suggestions and see which ones help you the most. Develop a routine that works for you. If you find an app or service that fits with the way you work, then let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your stories of how curated content has worked for you.
About the author
This guest post was written by Bob Toovey (Twitter – @bobtoovey), founder of Event Planner News (Twitter – @eventplannernws).
