Home » Misc » How to curate content for instagram

How to curate content for instagram


How to Curate Your Personal Style Through Instagram for Business Owners

1 August by Emily Thompson

In a recent Clubhouse masterclass about passion projects, I dished out that Instagram is one of my ongoing art projects. In all seriousness, I use my Instagram feed as a way to cultivate a beautiful life, and practice some iPhone-ography and filter magic to curate a little body of work that does little more than simply bring me happiness and continually inspire me to seek out the beauty in my life and live in the moment. You can find my feed @emilym_thompson on Instagram.

If you’re in the market to pretty-up your own Instagram feed but aren’t sure how to get started, I’m sharing my workflow below to help you find your Instagram groove.

Here’s how I’ve curated a pretty Instagram feed, and how you can do it, too:

1 – Look around your life and through your photos for

you.

What things do you photograph most? What colors are all over your life? What things do you most want to share?

Take a look at what’s going on around you. Be an observer of your own present moment or the things you’ve captured of moments past. Look at the colors, subjects (like plants or shoes), shapes – what is your life already telling you about what you’re interested in and who you are visually?

BONUS: It doesn’t hurt to find Instagram feeds that you admire for a bit of inspiration. I find that the best feeds use a consistent color scheme, style, and subjects, and some have a cool mix of photos and graphics. Here’s a couple to get you started:

  • @simonandruby
  • @tiffanyima
  • @thebarebride
  • @aww.sam
  • @oldenglishcompany

2 – Find the common thread and focus on that.

From what you’ve seen around you and in the photos you’ve already captured, what’s popping up for you a lot? Maybe you take lots of photos of clouds, or flowers, or your food. Maybe your bedroom is covered in crystals and plants. Or maybe you’re actually infatuated with water and glorious rays of sunshine or the color pink. Whatever it is, find the commonality in what you’re interested in—because it’s either all over your life or all over your photo stream—and start there.

For my own feed, I focus on neutrals with pops of color, because that’s what my life is. My home is high-contrast, with lots of black and white, but warm with lots of wood. I gather inspiration from what’s already around me and capture things pretty much as they are. My favorite subjects are plants, cocktails, food, and anything on my wood countertops.

3 – Choose a filter that highlights your aesthetic.

Now, I’m a VSCO Cam girl, and my “signature filter” is more than just a preset. I spent a bit of my time forming my aesthetic, but now it’s something that I just replicate for every photo.

Here’s how I do it:

  • I import my photo into the VSCO Cam app
  • Apply filter S3
  • Adjust the exposure (up or down depending on the photo)
  • Adjust the contrast (usually up, but down when needed)
  • Decrease the saturation
  • Increase the temperature

I know that looks like a lot, but it takes me all of 15 seconds to do it, and you certainly don’t have to be as sophisticated. All you need to do is find something you like, using an app that you like, and just do it – for every photo.

And there’s also nothing wrong with #nofilter if that’s your jam. Rock it out.

4 – Pull in your images and curate your look.

I strive to not be one of those people with my nose always stuck in my phone, so I admittedly rarely Instagram in-the-moment. Instead, I take photos while I’m out and about, and later, while I’m home sitting around, I’ll pull all my new, shareable images into my VSCO Cam library to edit them up and see which ones will make it to my feed.

Because of this, my VSCO Cam library is filled with even more beautiful images than I’ve even been able to share on my Instagram feed. It’s a nice little library for me to pull from when I’m wanting to make an update and have something I want to share—like a story, or a quote, or maybe just a couple of emojis and the rad image.

Build your library of images and take a look at your style. Share what you want as needed.

5 – Capture the ongoing beauty in your life. Share it and hug it.

Once you have this nice little system down, share your images and watch your Instagram transform, and your personal style flourish. As you share this curated style, it will continue to morph and refine.

Now, my Instagram feed isn’t the most beautiful feed on the planet, I’m positive, but it is me. When I look at it, it’s my life, in a series of pretty little squares. And curating my life in this shareable way has absolutely made my private life a more beautiful place to be as well.

Maybe someday I’ll share my views on how Pinterest is helping us all live more beautiful lives too, but for the moment, get started with your Instagram. Just another little way that the internet creates magic in our lives.

Now, you can go give it a go.

Follow us on Instagram:

  • @beingbossclub
  • @emilym_thompson
  • @andkathleen

Emily Thompson
Emily is the co-host of Being Boss Podcast, helping creative entrepreneurs learn how to run their own creative business with the tough love they need to hear to do the work. She also owns Almanac Supply Co., a maker and retail business focused on creating and curating items to help you live closely with nature, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

What Do You Need Help With?

Search for:

Browse These Topics:

Being Boss Foundations

Business 101

Next-Level Boss

6 Instagram Feed Tips for Creating a Curated Feed

Telling your brand's story through images and video helps create richer brand experiences. To effectively tap into the power of visual storytelling, you need a curated Instagram feed. Instagram satisfies the craving for the immediate and the visual. With 1 billion people using Instagram every month, it’s not surprising that there are 25 million business profiles on Instagram. With those incredible numbers, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Instagram has become a powerful marketing tool.

However, posting now and then isn’t enough to make the most of Instagram's influence. Curating an Instagram feed with the aim to optimise engagement requires work. As you have mere seconds to capture interest on Instagram, you need a feed that stands out.

In order to achieve this, you need to dedicate the time and attention to curate an Instagram feed that ticks all the boxes for your target audience.

Curious? Here are a few tips on how you can get the most out of a curated Instagram feed.

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

Instagram Feed Tip #1: Establish a cohesive brand image

The trick to crafting a cohesive brand image through Instagram is consistency. Now, this doesn’t mean repetition. It simply means picking a theme and sticking to it. Pick an area that’s relevant to your brand or service, and opt for images that relate to one another.

Next, ensure that the images and videos you select complement each. An impactful feed features images that work together harmoniously with each bearing a piece of a story that gradually builds and constructs an overarching brand image. Above all, the goal is to pull in content that complements and aligns with each other to create consistency.

Strategically opt for color themes and design touches that work well together. Think about how your images will appear in a grid formation and ask yourself – do these posts complement each other? A feed comprised of sporadic and ill-matched images not only appears unprofessional and messy, but it also makes your profile forgettable. Think about the immediately obvious details which stand out. Be mindful of the composition, tone and logo placement to make a strong first impression.

Instagram Feed Tip #2: Know how often to post

You now know that you should post consistently for best results, but how often is that? For example, your brand might post consistently, but only once a week. Users' feeds are filled with new content by the minute. If you're only posting once a week, users may never even see what you have to offer.

To grab their attention, consistency is key. However, you also need to post new content to your curated Instagram feed often. Ideally, post one to three times each day. You don't have to go overboard, but offering a daily dose of quality content to your audience keeps them engaged.

The one crucial component to remember is to always opt for quality over quantity. If you only have one great post a day, then stick with that over three lower quality posts that don't fit your brand's tone/image. Create a posting a schedule to make this much easier to accomplish.

Instagram Feed Tip #3: Add your Instagram content to your website

To get the most out of your content, you're going to want to follow this Instagram feed tip. Make sure that you're repurposing your content by adding it to your website, typically on your home page.

By adding your content to your website, you encourage website visitors to follow you on Instagram. You also make your website fresh, interesting, and up-to-date.

Here's an example of a tour company posting their Instagram feed on their website. They encourage website visitors to use their hashtag for a chance to be included. This helps the brand generate content for their social media accounts and their website.

Here's another example from the official website for tourism in Albany, New York.

Both examples were built with Curator, a free and affordable social media aggregator.

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

Instagram Feed Tip #4: Target interested users

One of the best things about Instagram is it's an established community and you can tap into that existing community by connecting with related users and brands. Engage millions of users across the world by posting content on Instagram that's interesting to them and using relevant hashtags.

No matter what industry you're in, a curated Instagram feed filled with consistent and relevant content helps you transform your feed into a source of interest and inspiration.

So, if you're an outdoors brand, you need to think about what your audience will be interested in. For instance, reposting images of unusual camping spots across the world will immediately appeal to your desired audience.

Remember, Instagram isn't just about pretty pictures. Users want those images to be meaningful to them. Curate content from other users/influencers in your industry. Curate content from other relevant brands. The more useful the content is, the more loyal of a following you'll create.

Work carefully on your strategy to discover what content appeals to your audience most. Pay attention to comments and what content users engage with most. Then, give your audience what they want.

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

Instagram Feed Tip #5: Skip the hard sell

Nothing turns off your audience more than trying for the hard sell. Many brands make this tragic mistake and it hurts their reputations. A curated Instagram feed isn't the place to push a product or sale. It's not the place to bash the competition either.

While you can definitely share a new product launch or an upcoming sale, this should never be the majority of your posts. In fact, these should seem more like sidenotes than the purpose of your curated Instagram feed.

Your audience isn't interested in buying from you right away. While that may sound counterproductive to the purpose of building an engaged audience, customer experience is everything. The first step is building a relationship.

You build a relationship with potential new customers by building trust. Show them you care more about their needs than your bottom line. Skip the hard sell and offer them content that helps make their lives easier and better. As you build this trust through Instagram, your audience goes beyond Instagram to check out your website.

From there, they opt to buy from you versus the competition. Why? You were the brand that took the time to help them. You cared more about their needs. Now that they trust you, they'll trust you enough to buy from you.

Even if they don't need anything right now, they'll share your content and help you build your brand's reach even faster.

Instagram Feed Tip #6: Switch up your feed to keep things interesting

Social media app Buffer's Instagram account has a cohesive, fun color scheme, but their photos aren't all the same. They post photographs as well as graphic designs.

Investing in a curated Instagram feed is a big step towards investing in your audience. This seemingly simple feed is crucial to establishing a positive brand image.

By focusing on curating content versus simply selling, you'll drive more traffic and engagement to your brand. Instagram has the audience you need. You just have to leverage it.

Therefore, it's pertinent that you pick an aggregator that you can rely on. This will help you curate the best content without all the hassle or stress. Make the most of your Instagram feed with a reliable aggregator like Curator. Check out Curator's features to find out how your brand can start benefiting from a curated Instagram feed today!

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

What is content curation? How to do it and why it's important • BUOM

December 30, 2021

Content curation is a valuable strategy for publishing content regularly and positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. This allows you to save on content creation resources and still provide value to your audience. In this article, we'll discuss what content curation is, why it's important, and how you can curate content for your business. We will also share some tools to help you curate content more easily. nine0003

What is content curation?

Content curation is the practice of collecting valuable content from various sources and posting it online to share with your audience. The content curator is responsible for finding relevant content in a particular category and sharing that targeted information with readers.

Content is curated in all forms, including:

  • RSS feeds

  • Links posted on blogs

  • Social Media Feeds

  • Internet News Sites

Read more: Content Creation: Definition and Steps to Developing a Great Content Strategy

Why is content curation important?

By finding and sharing useful content with your audience, you can become a valuable resource for your online followers. Content curation allows you to:

Become an expert in your niche

Content curation allows you to stay in the spotlight among your subscribers as a valuable source of information, positioning you as a leader in your niche. This is especially true if you add your own thoughts or positioning to the content you share. nine0003

Save time

By sharing content created by others, you can keep the conversation going with your online audience, but save valuable time for yourself and your team because you don't have to create all the content yourself.

Creates industry-wide connections

By regularly sharing content from leaders and influencers in your industry, you can make new connections with these people. They, in turn, may share your content as a thank you for your support. nine0003

Grow your business

The more content you share, the more people will see your content. The more they see that you add value regularly, the more likely they are to visit your website, join your email list, or buy from you.

Up to date

By browsing and reading the latest news and trends in your industry, you will be able to maintain current knowledge of your industry.

How to curate content for your business

Here are the steps to get started curating content for your own business.

1. Decide how much content you will curate

Decide what percentage of content you will create and curate. You can even decide what percentage of content will be used on each network. For example, you might plan to curate 70% of your content, and of that 70%, 60% will come from Twitter and 40% from Instagram. There is no single answer as to what percentage is best for curation. Test different percentages and see which mix gets the most engagement from your audience and from which sources. nine0003

2. Define topics

Define different topics for the content you plan to curate. This will make it easier to find content and allow your audience to have a wide range of content to consume. You can choose topics that are strictly related to your industry, or you can take a broader approach and find topics that are relevant to your brand.

3. Find your sources

Find a variety of sources to expand and entertain your audience. nine0003

Here are some of the most popular content retrieval strategies:

  • Reshare content on social networks: You can reshare content from popular social sites such as Instagram or Twitter. Make a list of industry hashtags and look for relevant content that has been posted with those tags. Depending on your industry, LinkedIn can also provide valuable curation content.

  • Manual Research: Read online industry publications to learn about the latest trends or strategies in your niche. nine0003

  • Content curation tools. Use content aggregators that make it easy to view posts from websites of your choice.

4. Share with your audience

Post found content to share with your audience. To maximize time, it is best to use a scheduling tool and plan content in bulk over several days or even weeks. You might want to look for a tool with a browser extension that allows you to easily schedule content from a web browser as you explore. nine0003

5. Analyze your results

Monitor how engaged your audience is with your curated content to determine what to post next. For example, you may notice that your audience engages the most with the content you share about a particular topic. In this case, you want to adjust your content plan to include a larger percentage of content on that topic.

Content curation tools

Here are some of the best tools you can use to help create successful content:

  • Feedly: Feedly helps you stay up to date with the latest trending topics and curate blog content to use for posts or suggest content ideas that you could create yourself.

  • Pinterest: Pinterest is a great tool where you can learn useful tricks and tips you can use when creating your own content. You can save ideas to private boards to come back to them later. It's also a great way to find blog content to share, especially since you can see how many times it's been pinned to Pinterest and make an educated guess as to whether it'll be well received by your own audience. nine0003

  • Trap!t: This is a "smart" tool that gets smarter the more you use it to curate content. You can share curated content across all social platforms.

  • ScoopIt: This tool allows you to search for content by keyword and share it directly on social networks.

  • BuzzSumo: This tool keeps you up to date with the latest trending topics, allowing you to find and share related content right from your dashboard. nine0003

  • Twitter Lists: Twitter Lists allows you to add influencers, news websites, and companies to a list so you can quickly view any content shared by someone on the list.

5 steps and 5 content curation models

Every business needs content. It must be of high quality, there must be a lot of it, and it must be generated constantly. At the same time, it is very desirable that it be inexpensive. How to achieve this? "Take under the wing" other people's materials. We tell you how to do it right. nine0003

What is content curation

Content curation is the search, processing, organization and distribution of content based on other people's materials.

Content curation and piracy are two different things. In our case, the task is not to steal content, but to creatively transform it.

The word “curate” itself comes from the Latin verb curo, “to take care of”. In ancient Rome, the curator kept the latrines clean, and in the Middle Ages he took care of the parishioners in the temple. Since the 18th century, this has been the name of a person who ensured the preservation of works of art in museums. nine0003

Things have not changed much over the years. Previously, they followed pictures, now they follow pixels and bytes. That is, the curator selects and places third-party content, adding additional value to it.

Let's share 5 steps to implement curated content and talk about 5 models for its creation.

5 Steps to Curated Content

If you've ever done any sort of collections or ratings, then you already have experience curating content. For such materials to become a useful tool for content marketing, they need to be dealt with not spontaneously, but systematically. nine0003

1. Setting goals

A business must have business goals and an overall content strategy, of which curated content is a part. It maintains contact with the audience and helps build trust.

Content must be relevant and useful. Often it saves the audience time and helps to achieve their goals. It supports the main content, and can also educate, entertain or inform. The main thing is to keep a balance.

The task of the curator is to add value to the content. nine0003

2. Planning

  • Decide what is trending on your topic.

There are many ways to find out what interests people. One of the simplest is Google Trends. For example, this is how the popularity of queries about mulled wine for the January holidays is growing.

  • Decide how much content to curate.
  • Choose content distribution channels. The choice of channels depends on:
    • from content type; nine0016
    • on the specifics of content consumption.

Content should be easy to consume. If you publish the same materials on different sites, it needs to be adapted for each channel.

You need to take into account the image format, video length, available number of characters. For example, only 2,200 characters are available on Instagram, and the image must be 1,080 by 1,080 px. If you do not “fit” the image and do not shorten the text, you will end up with a cropped photo and a torn post. You can't do that. nine0003

Content promotion: 44 ways to reach new content

3. Production process: content creation and distribution

Find and organize sources that regularly publish quality content. You can supervise any media: scientific and professional publications, blogs in social networks, news.

Then create content using one of the 5 models we'll cover in a moment.

Visual Content Creation Guide: Tools and Practice

Finally, share content on selected channels. Of course, with the source. A little more about this in the block about ethical curation.

4. Analysis of results

In fact, there is no curated content analytics. There is content analytics in general. You need to watch how different types of content behave, including curated content. Keep in mind that each channel uses its own metrics, and the effectiveness of content is not always easy to measure. nine0003

Although it is difficult to track the effectiveness of content marketing, professional work with content is extremely effective: it attracts new customers, forms an image, and allows you to increase the check.

TexTerra has many articles and materials about content marketing analytics.

How to determine the effectiveness of content marketing: marketing metrics and how to monitor

5. Correcting results

Errors provide an opportunity to analyze what was wrong and tell you what needs to be changed: format, presentation or context. nine0003

After adjustment, everything starts over. Content marketing is impossible without constant testing and analysis of the results. These 5 steps are cyclical.

Models of content curation

Different sources give different models, methods and approaches to content curation, but they are quite arbitrary and largely overlap with each other. Here are the main models that will help you understand the specifics of the work.

1. Summarising

Does not require much content preparation. This is a short summary of the material. The news media call this the short line. nine0003

For example, the LiveLib book service shares its impressions of the new series trailer.

2. Aggregation

Collection of the best materials on the topic. Aggregation can be thematic. For example, the EdMarket online school makes selections of the best books and services on its Instagram.

There is also a chronological aggregation - a collection of materials for a certain period. For the New Year, TexTerra released a selection of the top 30 articles for 2020 using their own content. You can also curate your content. nine0003

Here are more examples of aggregated articles from TexTerra:

  • Giant collection of content marketing articles
  • 200 internet marketing books
  • Instagram post ideas
  • A selection of articles on copywriting
  • Portfolio examples

3. Distillation

Removal of excess material and presentation in a simplified, easy-to-consume form.

The creators of the site "Brifli" publish a summary of the books with an approximate reading time. Everything they have on the site consists of distilled content. nine0003

This model is suitable when you need to explain something complex and boring in simple language. For example, on the site baby.ru they did just that. They released a short article about unemployment benefits for women, highlighting only the most important.

4. Elevation

Search for small notes, posts and create a more meaningful topic based on them. It's scaling the problem out of situations or stories that don't seem to matter as much.

For example, there is an article by the SelfMama project on the Mel education blog. The authors touched upon the problem of labor discrimination against women in response to the story of a student who was not hired under the pretext of a probable decree. nine0003

5. Mixing

This is a mix of different content formats. One way of mixing is mashup. Gather different information or perspectives on a problem and create a new point of view.

What is not curated content

Curated content is sometimes confused with changing formats, or repopulating (from the English word repurposing). For example, a slide from a webinar presentation that you can post on Pinterest is a repost. nine0003

If the content is published unchanged on different sites, it will be syndicated.

Ethical Curation

Photos, text, videos and other content are protected by copyright. To use these materials, you need to make sure that they are licensed. Usually this is creative common (CC).

If there is no license, then the Civil Code allows the use of materials without the consent of the author, but with an indication of it, only to individuals for personal (non-commercial) use. And then, provided that the materials before that were made public legally. nine0003

On some materials, the authors themselves indicate the conditions. For example, this publisher forbade the use of fragments of their book for any purpose.

Here is information from the site about advertising and creativity of AdMe.

Usually, authors note that their materials can be used with a link to the source and / or attribution. If this is not explicitly stated and there are doubts, you can try to negotiate by writing to the author personally.

You can repost (not copy!) on a social network without permission: the authorship is preserved in this case.

Learn more