Balancing Content Automation and Hand-Curation
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There’s no shortage of content out there, that’s for sure. This is both true in general and also for the vast majority of markets — both mainstream and niche — that are out there today. It’s no wonder that marketers and content strategists are constantly trying to stand out from the crowd: the crowd is huge, and elevating your own voice to prominence is a herculean challenge. With the same few perspectives being echoed about, it might seem insurmountable to successfully drive not just traffic but also conversions where your target audience comes to you for solutions.
The good news is, there are three things you can do to immediately help address this pain point. The first is to set up an automated system to discover relevant content for you, sifting through the vast recesses of the internet in real-time to deliver a variety of high-quality stories from not only mainstream sources, but also from uncommon, lesser-known voices that still have something valuable (and unique) to say. The second is to create your own content to not only fill the gaps in the conversation, but to position your own brand as a solution-provider in these challenging markets. A balance between this high-quality, third party content and your own, original content can be an incredibly powerful combination, but there’s a third step necessary to put it all together: reaching and being responsive to your audience.
And that means making sure your content gets to where it needs to be. Whether it’s over Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other number of channels, there’s a tremendous opportunity to deliver a meaningful and unique voice to your target audience. But you don’t have all day to spend on this, either, and that’s why a balanced approach between hand-curation, where you carefully select and share content manually to social channels in real-time, and automation, where that process takes place without a human needing to step in, is often the way to maximize your effectiveness.
Think about it: the most successful campaigns are focused and informative, but they also engage frequently and on a variety of aspects. Particularly on a fast-paced platform like Twitter, conversations that happened 15 minutes ago might slip so far down someone’s feed that they’ll never see it; sharing a couple of times a day might not be even close to enough. On the other hand, you don’t want to share lesser-quality articles without having a human check-and-verify that a piece is consistent with your brand. But the right tools can make this a breeze.
Imagine having a daily selection of dozens of relevant articles at your fingertips from third-party sources, the ability to plan for an entire day (or multiple days) of scheduled, personalized sharing, all augmented with your own original voice. When done right, this is one of the most powerful vehicles to drive the success of your social campaigns! With the right automated system sprinkled with a little bit of hand-curation, you can set yourself on the path to success in the social sphere, and spend the better part of your time engaging with your audience instead.
-Ethan