3 Ways to Make Your Marketing Team Smarter with Content Curation
Uh oh! The blog posts and e-books have told you only half the story about content curation.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The literature is not wrong, per se. As you have been instructed, you should share other people’s content in public locations: social media channels, e-mail newsletters, your website, or blog posts.
But most curation advice focuses solely on external benefits, and if that’s all you’re doing with content, you’re missing a gigunda opportunity. You can use curation to educate your own marketing team.
Here are three ways that you can use content curation internally to make your marketers wicked smart.
1. Competitive Intelligence
Imagine that you’re a product marketer for Apple. Your specific area of interest is the iPad, and you and your team need to keep tabs on one of your main competitors: the Amazon Kindle Fire. To do your job, you need to stay abreast of:
- Amazon’s major product releases
- General sentiment about the Amazon Kindle Fire
- How tech bloggers are comparing the iPad with the Amazon Kindle Fire
- And more!
With a content curation tool, you can easily comb the web for the latest information about the “Amazon Kindle Fire.”
Day in day out, your content curation software will look for information about the “Amazon Kindle Fire,” and it will automatically show you the latest results. Like these:
Daily or weekly, you can share the most pertinent stories with your team to educate them about what’s going on with your competitors.
Business Development
In addition to being beneficial for your product marketer team, content curation can help your business development team. Who are your competitors saddling up with? What can you do in response?
In the example above, you can see that Amazon Kindle Fire and the Washington Post are buddying up. (This isn’t surprising, given that Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Washington Post.) As a biz dev person, you need to know this information, and you need to know whether you should respond to it.
Content Marketing
Oh, and don’t forget about your content marketing team! They can benefit from internal content curation, too. With a tool like Trapit, you can track your competitors’ content and make appropriate decisions. For instance, should you post your “8 Ways to Use Instagram for B2B Companies” the day after your competitor posts “9 Ways to Use Instagram for B2B Companies”?
Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, your content marketing team needs that information to make a decision.
2. Continuing Education
I don’t mean to sound like Captain Obvious, but the marketing landscape is always changing. Yes, you will continue to make your nifty branding pyramids and your battle cards. But in the digital world, there are so many moving parts: social media, white papers, e-books, blogging, marketing automation, PPC advertisements, SEO, etc.
Most of these skills aren’t taught in universities, which means that your employees need to learn everything on their own. What if you could help them? Content curation platforms can help you create a library with the latest tips and tricks on all things related to marketing.
You set up the search terms. The platform finds the content for you and stores it in one location. Your team can sort through the blog posts, videos, infographics, and more. And your employees can choose their own adventure.
That’s what Gregory Roberts is doing with his team at Black Tie Creative.
3. Current Customers
Between finding leads, leads, leads, leads, leads, leads, leads, leads, leads, and more leads, it’s easy for marketers to forget about their current customers. But retaining current customers is extremely important. In fact, it can help boost your company’s bottom line.
A smart marketing team will not only look for new customers, but they will keep tabs on their existing customers, as well. And if your company wants to really stand out, you will go the extra mile to build that relationship.
Sure, you will do the typical check-ins. Are you using our product? Are you satisfied with the product?
But you can do so much more to personalize and humanize the experience. With a content curation tool, you can search the web for updates about your current customers, and when you find a piece of actionable content, you can reach out.
For example, if you read a blog post that you really like, you can send a complimentary tweet or e-mail. If your customer’s business exceeded its target revenue, you can send a congratulatory message.
A quick, non-salesy e-mail will make your business seem authentic and human.
There you have it!
Those are three different ways to use content curation internally. With their newfound knowledge, your marketers will be prepared to make better decisions and to continue to educate and delight your customers.
Have you been using content curation for business intelligence? If so, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear more about your tactics.
-Mark
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