With so much content out there today, consistently curating content for your target audiences can build your authority and credibility in their eyes, while also making you seem like a hero for saving them time and effort.
There’s a lot of content out there today—with a lot more coming soon, thanks to AI.
Unfortunately, much of that content is, and will be, 💩.
The current sad state of content presents an opportunity for you to build authority and credibility in the eyes of your target audiences.
How?
By *curating* other people’s and organizations’ content, and, in doing so, separating the wheat from the chaff for your target audiences.
The magic of curating content
When you curate content, you’re establishing your authority and credibility, AND making life easier for your clients, prospective clients, and other target audiences. If you curate content well and do it consistently, you’ll be seen as an authority AND a hero.
Your target audiences don’t have time to consume every piece of content that could be relevant or of interest to them. There are too many articles, blog posts, LinkedIn posts, videos, and podcast episodes published each hour for them to corral and consume, let alone each day or week.
That’s where you come in with your curated content.
Your curated content—likely in the form of a roundup-style email newsletter or blog post—would collect recently published content that you determine is relevant and/or could be of interest to your target audiences.
If your curated content only did that, you’d build some authority and credibility because you’d be seen as someone who’s surveying the content landscape for relevant and interesting content.
But the real magic with curated content happens when you go one step further and write a few sentences about the subject matter of each piece of content you’ve curated, including the “So what?” (i.e., “Why should we care?”) and the “Now what?” (i.e., “What should we do moving forward?”).
Now, you’re not just a collector of links; you’re an intellectual tour guide. You’re not simply pointing out content to be consumed; you’re explaining why its substance is relevant. In doing so, you get to show off your knowledge and wisdom about the content’s subject matter and related topics.
If you serve clients in a particular industry or a geographic region, curating content is a no-brainer. Curating content is an opportunity to be seen as an expert in a particular industry or geographic region without necessarily producing a ton of thought leadership content yourself.
To curate content effectively, you need to be timely and consistent.
To ensure timeliness, a weekly or biweekly cadence for your newsletter or blog post would be ideal. Otherwise, you run the risk of sharing content that’s on the verge of getting stale, or is maybe already stale, which will make you look bad.
And, you’ll want to consistently produce your curated list of content. The longer you keep publishing it at a reliable cadence, the more that people will get used to seeing the email or post, and the deeper sense of authority and credibility (and trust and reliability) you’ll build.
Interestingly, in addition to building your authority and credibility, and causing you to be seen as a hero, you’ll likely enjoy four more benefits when you curate content.
Curating content helps you “issue spot” clients’ and prospects’ future potential issues
Curating content forces you to stay abreast of developments in the worlds of your clients, prospects, and target audiences, which helps you anticipate potential legal or business issues they’ll face based on those developments. Armed with this information, you can position yourself as the go-to person to assist with these issues.
When you review content from sources that are relevant to your clients, prospects, and target audiences, you’re naturally going to get a feel for what’s going on in their industries, in their geographical regions, or even in various aspects of their organizations.
When you do this, not only does it help you more generally become knowledgeable, but you can “issue spot” by (1) thinking about how the topics of the content you’re curating could affect your clients and prospects, (2) strategizing about how you could help them resolve those issues, and then (3) speaking with them about both.
You’ll produce valuable content in less time than it would take to create content from scratch
Curating content takes less time than creating your own content. Figure on spending, at most, half as much time on curating content as you would writing a blog post or article.
Let’s be clear: You’re still doing work. You’re reviewing sources of content, pulling out the most relevant and interesting pieces of content, and then writing short blurbs about them.
But this will likely take you—or a colleague—less time to do than sitting down and writing a 1500- to 2000-word article.
Curated content allows you to put the content you *did* create in front of your target audiences
When you curate content, you have an opportunity to distribute the content you’ve actually created to your target audiences in a non-salesy way. If you’re compiling content that’s relevant to clients, prospects, and other target audiences, and your or your colleagues’ recent content is also relevant to them, you should include it in your curated list.
Instead of sending an email blast regarding your content that screams, “Hey! Look at me! Look what I just published!” your content will appear in the company of other people’s and organizations’ content, which makes your content’s inclusion less “salesy.” Depending on the other content surrounding it, it might also stand out from—and above—that content.
Curating content can inspire your future content
When you’re compiling content of interest to your target audiences from third-party sources, the topics discussed in that content could give you ideas for future content.
Perhaps there are additional factors to be considered when using a particular legal strategy that weren’t discussed in an article about that strategy.
Perhaps the commentary in a blog post about a recent appellate decision misunderstands the decision and its impact.
Perhaps a podcast about recent developments in your target audiences’ industry failed to connect certain dots that, in your eyes, should have obviously been connected.
There’s inspiration everywhere for thought leadership. But the content you curate for your target audiences should be especially fertile with inspiration because it’s focused on topics that are relevant to your target audiences, which means you’ll likely have some opinions about their substance.
Be an authority and a hero by curating content
You know how it is out there in the digital content world today.
There’s so much content. There’s more than ever before, and there’s more coming.
You’re drowning in it. I’m drowning in it. And certainly your clients, prospects, and target audiences are drowning in it too.
Throw them a life preserver by curating content.
Help them sort through all of this content by flagging content that could be relevant to them and then explaining why they should care about the subject matter of that content.
You’ll become both a trusted authority and a hero by making their lives easier because you’re directing them to the most important content they should be consuming—and keeping them from wasting a ton of time finding it.
Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm strategize and create compelling thought-leadership marketing and business development content? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.