Understand the value of your voice in content curation

When it comes to writing content, there is no question that you want your content to be interesting and memorable. Hopefully, you are publishing a combination of original and curated content. That gives your readers interesting articles to read and a broader and more unique perspective. However, your selected content won’t be valuable to your business if you don’t add your personal touch.

Your unique style and voice

Because there is so much content and so many topics, it is very important to choose carefully what you want to share. The opportunity (and abundance) in front of you when it comes to content is enormous. Self-curated content offers a wide variety of interesting topics and forces readers to digest whatever they can get. However, curated content needs to be handled in a specific way if you want to put it to good use and if you are going to make the most of it for your audience and for your business.

What you must constantly keep in mind is the idea that you must constantly add value to the curated content that you have chosen to share with your target audience. Your voice (or your interpretation) of what is being discussed is critical to its success. If you simply give credit to the person who wrote the content, but it doesn’t really add any value in terms of your own thoughts and insights, why do you even bother sharing that content? The reason that members of your target audience are on your website (or are interacting with you on one of the social media channels that you have in common) is that they value your opinion on whatever you are discussing with them. If that weren’t the case, you would be interacting with someone else (such as the person who wrote the content you selected).

When it comes down to it, your voice is at least as important as the content itself. Unique content and unique value should have the same impact.

• It should never be as simple as sharing someone else’s content: Your perspective weighs heavily on members of your target audience. They hope that you will help them solve the problems they are experiencing. You should always be guided by the concept of WIIFM (What’s in it for me?). While voicing your opinion on the content, you shouldn’t be shy to be controversial, if that’s what is required in that particular situation. If you simply present the contents, it is like serving a boiled chicken meal. The basic food is there, but it is tasteless and has very little appeal. Curated content, when presented properly, takes content that is basically sound and relevant, and turns it into so much more. Your voice makes it exciting, educational, and compelling. The last thing you want to do is take someone else’s content and duplicate it with nothing else. If that’s the case, your audience member can go to the author’s website or social media channel and read it there without engaging you.
• The challenge of finding your voice: As simple as the concept of adding your voice to the content you have selected is, it is often more challenging than you might think to come up with what you really want to say about that content. Of course, one of the main things someone else’s content should do (hopefully) is inspire you to write valuable ideas that will positively impact your audience. It goes without saying that you must be extremely discriminatory when it comes to what you choose to share that was not originally written by you. The truth is that content is often a conglomeration of ideas and concepts from various sources. If you have strong writing skills, you will be able to communicate information in an extremely valuable way to the people who read it.
• Find themes that are very close to what you represent: If you are looking for content that is very close to what you are doing and what you really want to share with other people, it is probably relatively easy for you to find that content. Depending on how dark it is, you can find as much (or more) as you need. It’s important to remember at this point that publishing curated content alongside your original content will only enhance the contribution you are making. What you want to do is promote the discussion and get other people excited about the topic and involved.

Conclution

Adding your voice to curated content is an extremely valuable thing to do. People interact with you and read what you share with them because they recognize its value. The more information you provide them on a specific topic, the more they will recognize your value as a business owner, as well as the value of the content that you are making available to them. Another important thing to remember is that when it comes to using curated content, time is sensitive. If you don’t act quickly when it comes to sharing other people’s content, someone else will come and use it first. Another approach that may work for you is to take the original content you wrote over time and put it together to create new articles. That is still in the realm of healing, but you are taking it from what you have already created. It’s an interesting concept that may be worth exploring.