Content marketers are constantly seeking ways to drive conversions. While there are various ways to go about sales efforts, one unique strategy is to invest in launching content curation campaigns.
At its most simple definition, content curation is all about making sense out of immense amounts of available content and across different mediums. This is a positive alternative to being too promotional and/or product poor product content.
In fact, by sharing information about other products or industry trends, you can actually grow your community and help build up your company’s reputation. You’ll also likely be able to get other brands and board and start increasing your audience base.
While this sounds great, how can you actually use this information to drive conversions?
1. In order to be effective, “your audience must be the focus of any successful content curation strategy”, content curation that is dictated by users themselves can be incredibly rewarding. For instance, empowering your audience by holding social media contests/brand-related quizzes and offering promotional discounts, can go a long way in driving conversions via engagement.
2.Embed payment call-to-actions across various channels, including Instagram accounts. Use the power of social media channels to spread relevant content while including links and widgets that enable commercial transaction on-site. Essentially, this will require finding the optimal way to bridge commerce with your online presence, namely across social media.
3. Once your content curation campaigns prove to be successful, your will likely end up with increased levels of traffic. This could mean ample opportunities for ad monetization. Of course, such trends will require data collection and analysis, as well as segmentation strategies order to assess which ads will or will not be suitable for driving conversions.
4. Use creative interactive mediums to engage with your audience, but without overselling. Rather than talk about how great your product or service is, ‘borrow’ from different industry sources and add in your own personal commentary. This is a great opportunity to include sign-up forms to improve your lead generation capabilities and eventually drive them to the point of sale.
5. Invest in advanced and highly engaging graphics to present your bundled content curation campaigns/posts. As an example, sharing photos with a clear call-to-action displayed under the image can engage your community and lead to more interest. This is especially true if the photo comes from your own customer(s). According Yotpo, a platform that enables companies to generate online reviews and content, “adding customer photos increases conversion by an additional 10% over the average uplift from reviews.”
6. Another great way to make your content curation campaigns stand out relies on your ability to partner or link up with other leading brands/industry leaders. By combining your efforts and agreeing on content sharing tactics, you can increase the amount of interest and credibility among a new, and potentially interest audience.
7. Lastly, content marketers can use content curation campaigns to spur increased interest in the products and/or services they present. Such efforts can be spearheaded by tools such as Scoop.it and Uberflip, where content can be easily presented and digested, thus having the potential to go viral.
While it is difficult for many content marketers to step outside of the world of promotional or other more aggressive forms of marketing, an increasing amount of consumers are demanding more thought leadership and brand credibility.
This reality will require such marketers to: expand their knowledge by collecting content from various sources and other industry leaders, present this information in an increasingly exciting and engaging way, as well as reach out to the users directly for their input. In this way, marketers can bridge the gap between content sharing and conversions.
Rotem Gal is VP of Marketing at Inbound Junction