May 9, 2017 / Samanth Owens

How to Use Curated Content for Local Link Building

Lately, content curation has been a buzzword around the web. However, curating content is more similar to curating a museum exhibit than sharing interesting content.

If you think about how museums are curated, you will realize that pieces are carefully chosen for an exhibit, placed for maximum impact and offered to the public with guidebooks, tours, and notations about each piece. Good content curation is presented in a similar fashion, albeit digitally. Here are some tips to help you curate local content for your community to help with your website’s local link building strategy.

1. Add Value to Local Content

Visitors to your website and social media go there to gain value. Just sharing content is a waste of time. After all, your visitors can just go directly to the source and read the content there. However, if you take time to discuss, analyze or recommend specific content, your visitors can offer their own opinions on how they feel about it.

With local content, you can discuss an event and your participation or its impact on the community. You can let people know which businesses you prefer to support and why.

Commenting on local content can range from adding ingredients to a recipe or letting your readers know where to source the organic ingredients. Put yourself into the content and give your readers a chance to interact with you.

2. Share Content on a Regular Basis

If you can, it helps to have a regular schedule for sharing content. That way, people will know to look for your post first thing every morning or on a Wednesday etc. However, you can also offer RSS feeds for your curated content, which allows followers to get it via email when you post it. Schedules help readers build expectations and return for more when they like what you have to say. If they form the habit of checking out your content, even better.

3. Use More than One Platform

The Internet is full of fascinating platforms for posting content. Local followers can find you on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Blogger, LinkedIn and many other sites.

Choosing the platforms that work for you will depend on the type of content you are posting. However, don’t overburden yourself with more than you can handle. Choosing two or three to start with is plenty.

4. Start a Conversation

Online content these days is not a one-way street. The best content will induce a discussion, feedback or alternative posts. You can start an actual conversation, offer a contest with prizes to spark interest or use the online content to rally support for a local event. Find ways to turn your local content curation into a dialogue and ask for reader participation in any way you can.

5. Keep it Legal

Sharing content means respecting the source. If you are not sure that the source will allow you to share, ask permission. It is always appropriate to link back to references and give them credit. Don’t claim other people’s content as your own. That is called stealing, and you can pay a lot of money if you steal the wrong person’s work. The majority of content creators will be thrilled that you want to refer their work as long as you give them the proper endorsement as the source.

Promoting Locals

Promoting other local businesses, organizations, and events through your added-value content curation will be appreciated and often reciprocated in some way. Local content curation can become a win-win scenario for everyone involved helping each other to grow businesses using this low-cost promotional method.

Related Reading:

This blog post is about:

Local link building
Using curated content for local link building
Content curation for local businesses
Curated content for small business