Creator or Curator?
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What is the best way to share content? The words content curation seem to be floating around alot these days. There are vast amounts of content available for your niche for your audience, and it is important to have a way to collect, organize and make sense of all of that. Some people think you have to choose between the two: be a creator or be a curator. But, the truth is, there is no reason why you should have to pick one over the other. Let's look at what each one is all about.
Content Curation
Content Curation is finding content for your target audience that is interesting, important, relevant and valuable and compiling it in one easy location or package. When you choose awesome content to share with your readers it is also important that you be able to state why you chose it, why it's relevant, why it's important, as well as where and from whom you got it.
Content Creation
It is true that part of content curation is also creating original content to explain why the content you chose is important, etc. But, when people talk about content creation they are referring to original, fresh, relevant, targeted content. Content that you either wrote yourself, or paid someone to write for you.
If you are going to be successful in your niche, it is important that you use both the creation and curation content strategies.
Why Both are Important
You must regularly, consistently create fresh content for your audience and you must also curate content from other sources that is relevant to your audience. As the expert in your niche, you will get the best response when you employ both methods.
Not only will your audience respond well to curation (when done well), but the other “big wigs” within your niche will also respond well. Besides, it can be really hard to turn out fresh content every day of every year, or even three days per week. When you can curate content it can take off some of the pressure but still produce results in your market. Content curation is also great as an added tactic to generate traffic and improve customer engagement, and it makes people trust you.
But, that doesn't mean you should avoid including original, relevant content. When you write original content in addition to curating other people's content, you further demonstrate your knowledge in your niche, you stand out from other websites because you add your personality and experiences to the mix, and all of this also makes you a more trusted source.
You've heard the saying
No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
When you create content you are communicating how much you know. When you share others content for the benefit of your readers you are communicating how much you care. It's not about you. It's about them, so give them a healthy dose of both content creation and curation.
What is your opinion? Do you prefer one over the other? Do you use both? I would love to have you weigh in on the discussion by leaving a comment below.
And if you want to learn more and/or improve your curation skills, Kelly McCausey, over at Solosmarts.com has a great resource for improving content curation. It's called Smart Curation Skills. Go check it out.
