Maggie Siemer
Curating content should really be a no-brainer. It provides valuable resources for your followers and you don’t have to create anything new. Former Mentoring Program participant and current Help-Us-with-Whatever-Crazy-Thing-We-Need participant, Maggie Siemer is going to share today how she has helped us curate content to publish on social media and how you can do it too. ~Kristina
Guest Post by Maggie Siemer
For the past several months, we have increased the number of posts on Nonprofit Marketing Guide’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. The posts are a mix of new and old blog posts as well as relevant articles from other online publications and blogs.
Followers do want to hear about all of the great things you are doing through social media, but they’re also interested in other information related to your cause. Sharing informative posts is also a great way to set your organization up as the place to go to find up to date information about your area of expertise.
Nonprofit Marketing Guide has seen a steady increase in followers, especially on Facebook and consistent reach and engagement on both platforms.
I know what you’re thinking – you barely have time to create your own content to post, how are you going to find other people’s content to share?
Read on for some tips to streamline the process…
Use a Scheduling Tool
I use Buffer to schedule posts in advance; Hootsuite is another popular social media scheduler.
I took a look at NPMG’s Facebook and Twitter analytics to figure out the best times to schedule posts. Right now, I’m going with when the most followers are online, but once we have more data, I will look to see if there are certain times that we’re getting more engagement.
At the beginning of the week, I spend a couple of hours scheduling out the week’s posts on Buffer and set it and forget it for the most part.
First schedule any content for the week from your editorial calendar. If you have a blog, you can use automation to post blog posts to social media without ongoing effort from you.
Next, fill in repurposed posts (more on that later!) and finally, add articles from other relevant sources.
Buffer and Hootsuite both have Chrome extensions that allow you to schedule posts on the fly if you come across something on the internet that would be interesting to your followers.
Repurpose
The thing about both Facebook and Twitter is that not all of your followers are seeing your content when you post it either due to algorithm or the volume of posts/tweets happening at any given time.
Get your content in front of more people by posting it multiple times unless it’s time sensitive.
I’m not saying that you should post the exact same post over and over but make some tweaks and post again. Every week, I schedule repeat posts of NPMG’s blog posts (loosely based on the social sharing timeline in this blog post).
Then I fill in any days that don’t have a repurposed post scheduled with older posts. I can see in Buffer which posts were the most and least popular based on different metrics and pick older posts accordingly.
I also pay attention to what people are asking about in the All Access Pass Facebook Group and find posts that address frequently discussed topics so make sure you’re listening to your followers.
Set Up a Tool to Curate Outside Content for You
There are a few ways you can do this. Hootsuite allows you to monitor other organizations’ Facebook posts and tweets and Twitter lists so that when you’re looking for articles to post, they are easy to find and share right from Hootsuite.
I use Kristina’s Mixed Links posts and Kivi’s Alltop page to find articles relevant to nonprofit communications to post on NPMG’s social media. Alltop shows feeds of the most recent 5 posts from a lot of different blogs in every category you can think of. It’s easy to create an account and then after you spend a little time adding blogs to your page, you’ll have a curated place to go for articles.
I also save evergreen articles in Evernote to pull out when I need something interesting to post.
It may seem daunting at first, but just set aside a few minutes at the beginning of the week to find a few interesting articles and that will get you started. You’ll soon realize you are actually saving time by not creating new content to post every day.
Do you already curate content? Share your favorite tips and tools in the comment section below.
Maggie Siemer is Executive Director of the St. Louis Track Club, promoting physical activity for people of all abilities in the St. Louis area. She also helps Nonprofit Marketing Guide with social media and program management. When not at work, she is probably snuggled with one of her cats or dog and a good book.
