Remember Rule #1. Curate good content and content your market cares about.
Your goal is to capture the attention of your target market. Most content curation failures stem from a lack of focused and a dedicated sustained effort.
To define your target market give yourself permission to visualize.
Picture a SINGLE person in your niche.
- Who are they?
- What do they care about?
Don’t think about the group, the niche. Think about an individual, a single person, their hopes, dreams and aspirations.
What will make them click?
Picture this person visiting your site every single day.
- Why do they return to your platform?
- What do they want?
- What would make them want to visit your site every single day, over your competition?
- How can you make yourself so important you become part of their daily routine?
When great writers write they don’t write for groups. They pick the individual who most singularly represents the group, and they write directly to her.
Your job as a curator is exactly the same: you’re speaking to an individual, not a group of people. If you get your person right, the group will follow.
What exactly do you want to provide for your target market?
This is your core value as a curator, the idea or feeling you’re known for creating. Your business only grows when you succeed in making your curated content connect with your visitors.
This is Positioning 101. When you apply it to curation, it fuels your traffic machine in a way that’s hard to stop, like a moving freight train. As a curator with defined values, you’re clarifying your market and directing its participants in meaningful ways. Without defined values, you send mixed messages and confuse your audience. You don’t want to confuse them. You want to connect with them.
Ask yourself a few questions:
- Why do you want your target market to connect with your company?
- Why should anyone pay attention to your curated content?
- What’s in it for them? What will they get out of your collection?
- How will you consistently clarify your target’s problems?
- What business do you have curating content in the first place?
- What do you have to add?
- What does your target care about?
When you’re getting started with curation, you’ll spin your wheels if you curate stuff nobody cares about. Dive deep and think about the challenges and opportunities your niche faces.
Another good place to start is by researching the thought leaders, individuals who write about their success in your market niche. You won’t find a market niche where there aren’t a couple of magazines addressing the niche’s wants and needs. Sometimes the magazine or website itself defines a niche and effectively creates a new market from scratch.
There are websites devoted to activities as esoteric as making things out of duct tape, reviewing stereo knobs, mechanical keyboards, high-end backpacks, homemade jewelry and more.
It literally has never been easier to attract a crowd, especially if you’re an authority on something out of the ordinary or just plain rare.
Spend time crafting the most honest answers to these questions you possibly can.
Do it well. Because your business depends on it.
