How to find the best content for social media sharing?

Content curation allows marketers to leverage other people's publications for their own business. Reposting content on social media encourages audience engagement and attracts new users. However, content curators should not click "like" and "share" buttons under every article that is even remotely related to their business. When republishing someone else's content, he needs to make sure it's relevant to his subscribers.

How to find the hottest content that will not leave your audience indifferent? Read below.

Why share other people's content?

It's necessary for your audience to perceive your brand page, themed publicity or personal social media page as a source of valuable information. People today live at such a pace that they don't always have time for a quiet dinner. Therefore, readers will appreciate it if you find and offer them interesting publications.

By offering your customers useful content, you can expect to repost and increase your audience reach. Your own publications will also get more shearings due to increased community engagement.

How to find interesting content?

Content curation involves selecting and publishing content that coincides with the topics of your business. However, if you're using social media to increase your audience reach, publish articles covering events in related industries. If your social networking site covers a business topic, avoid publishing entertainment content, even if it's super-interesting and super-provocative. But remember, this rule has exceptions.

The topic is the main subject of the publications. For example, the topic of the publications on the Forex broker's site is the situation on the currency markets. Topic - a set of closely related topics. For example, the subject of the financial media includes publications about the currency markets, crediting, savings, insurance, etc. Macroeconomics, industrial situation, geopolitics are examples of topics related to finance.

The following tips will help you find really valuable content:

1. Keep an eye on news resources.

These can be general-purpose media or specialized publications.
Most business media combine publications into thematic sections.

2. Browse news aggregators. 

Using a news aggregator, such as Google, gives you access to the most relevant news collected automatically from various sources. Aggregators also organize materials into thematic sections. For example, on the News Export page, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of an aggregator section you're interested in.

3. Collect news from the sources you're interested in on your own. 

You can use RSS readers and customizable aggregators, such as Feedly or Anews. In order to use Feedly, you need to add the sources of interest to your news feed. To do this, use the Add content menu, select the category of interest and check the appropriate publications.

You can also find a feed of an interesting resource or section by title, URL or hashtag.

RSS readers and customizable aggregators allow you to share your favorite content in one click, which helps very busy content curators save time.
Pay attention to popular social media posts

4. Leading social media outlets are some of the best helpers for the content curator.

They tell users what content is popular. For example, Twitter has a "Hot Topics Around the World" section that displays the hottest topics at the moment. On LinkedIn, popular posts are collected in the LinkedIn today section. "Vkontakte collects noteworthy content in the "Articles" section of the news feed.

You can also use the search function to find popular and interesting posts on social networks. Leading online platforms support keyword or hashtag searches.

5. Follow brands and media on social media. 

To display relevant content in your news feed on a particular social network, all you need to do is to subscribe to the pages and subpages of brands and media outlets. This will allow you to quickly follow publications, gauge their popularity and easily share them with your audience.

Social networks can be used as customizable news aggregators. The advantages of this tool over classic news readers include the ability to instantly assess the popularity of a story. Among the disadvantages is the risk of missing out on interesting content. The fact is that large media outlets do not announce all published material on their pages in social networks.

6. Use Google Alerts. 

"Google Alerts lets you receive email notifications of topical posts. To use this service, enter the search query you're interested in in the appropriate field and click "Create Alerts. In the rest of the menu, you can leave the default options.
If you want to delete an alert for any reason, use the "Manage Alerts" menu.

7. Find funny posts. 

Don't forget that people use social media for communication and entertainment. Don't be too serious and boring, let your audience laugh at least once in a while. Entertaining content is published by many industry publications, such as Adme.ru, a resource about advertising and design. Internet marketers will find a lot of interesting content on the site "SEO Demotivators".

8. Use photos. 

Visual content quickly attracts the attention of social media users. When posting content announcements, include images in the previews. Social networks usually allow you to do this automatically. If you don't have a photo in the original post, find a suitable one yourself.

You can search for photos at photo banks: Fotolia, Shutterstock, Depisitphotos and others. Large photobanks have free images, but they are usually reused on different resources. Less repetitive photos can be obtained by subscribing for a fee. You can also find free photos on Creative Commons Flickr.

If you want to edit a photo, for example, add a caption, use online photo editors. You will be interested in Russian-language services Fotogramma or Fotor. You can also take a screenshot and edit it. You can do that with the program LightShot (we wrote about it here). Finally, you can use editing programs like Adobe Photoshop or MS Paint.

9. Keep track of the effectiveness of your publications. 

This will help you identify the most popular pieces of content, reveal existing patterns and audience preferences. Use relevant social media tools, such as Facebook Insights, as well as third-party services to monitor and evaluate. If you publish content on Google+, you might be interested in this article on measuring the effectiveness of that network.

Content will interest your audience if you like it. 

To find interesting content, it is enough to be genuinely interested in the field of your project. In this case, you will choose the right way to monitor the Internet and easily determine which publications are worthy of attention.

You can follow media and brand publications with aggregators and RSS readers. You can also receive publication announcements to your email address. Active social media users can follow newsmakers in their own newsfeed. When posting other people's content, don't forget to comment on it. This attracts additional attention from the audience and increases the value of the material in the eyes of the audience.