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Step 4: The “How-To”—Curate • Architect • Produce
Content Curation
To be a thought leader in your field, you will want to master a key component in your content strategy:
Content Curation.

Definition
Content Curation: The process of collecting, organizing and displaying information
relevant to a particular topic of interest.

A key component of compelling curation is making sure you have the right blend of voices/experts that you
share with your audience.

Definition
Content Mix: When you pull content from several different sources and then add your
unique experience and perspective.

Creating a Content Mix helps make your content more powerful, elevate you as a thought leader, and make your
job as a content creator easier.

5 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Curate Content in Your Business

1 Expands thought leadership. Thought leaders are the go-to people in their field of expertise. These
trusted sources engage, inspire and empower people with their innovative ideas based on their unique
experience and perspective. You’ll learn more about that shortly, but this is a big key to your content
mix—you want to make sure that the majority of your content (ideally 70%) is coming directly from
your own thought leadership. Draw from your experience and mistakes as well as shortcuts you’ve
learned and present this information in a really clear and simple way your audience can use. Your ability to
give your audience this unique, informative content will bring them value they can’t find elsewhere.
2 Reduces the amount of self-promotion. You need to promote your businesses, and there’s nothing wrong
with self-promotion. In fact, self-promotion is crucial to your success as a marketer. But when you have
other material to add to your arsenal and you can show a depth and breath of content you provide, it helps
balance out the sense of value for your audience so they don’t feel like you’re over promoting. To be clear,
you’re not promoting less (that’s not the goal); rather you’re putting out more value and content so the
ratio of promotion to added value is less.
3 Builds a community with peers. This is an important element that most people aren’t even aware
of—you teach people at what level to treat you at based on the peers we surround yourself with.

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Case Study: Meeting Business Owners
Early in my career, I had the opportunity to attend several high-level meetings with business owners.
These giant boardrooms with CEOs were a wonderful learning ground for me. What’s really
interesting, however, is that even though I was often there to take notes and help make sure everything
got followed up on, I never got treated like the note-taker. And at the end of every meeting, the CEO’s
assistant would come over and hand out his or her card. But I never reciprocated. I always gave my
card directly to the CEO and told the CEO to follow up with me directly.
It would have been so easy and logical to give my card to the assistant. But if I did that, I would have
been positioning myself at the work level of the assistant. Instead, just by the simple act of giving
my contact information to the person in charge, I was subconsciously positioning myself at that
level. I didn’t think about it at the time, however, in retrospect this was a powerful positioning tool.

It’s a total game changer, yet it’s one of the mistakes I see people make in content marketing. They get
unsure of themselves, or discount the level of expertise they really have and they position themselves a
level or two down from where they should be in their field.
Who you surround yourself with in terms of your community of peers—whose content you
share and offer to share with—needs to be at the highest level, so you position yourself at the
highest level.
4 Provides convenience for your audience. One of the biggest problems your audience faces is overwhelm.
They are looking for solutions, tools and strategies to get to where they want to go, but often the biggest
constraint they face is time and the overwhelm of sorting through everything that’s out there. By
consistently providing valuable content that helps them get what they want, you become their “one stop
shop” for the solutions they’re looking for. Don’t underestimate the value this brings to the table for your
community of followers. They are looking to you to be their trusted advisor, and the convenience of you
putting what they need in front them is a big benefit to them.
5 Inspires story and content ideas for YOU. People who know a lot about your area of expertise can
spark great ideas in you, so curating these people’s content is a great way to stimulate new ideas. You’ll
find things you agree with, things you don’t agree with and things you can add context or references to in
order to flesh out an idea. In fact, you’ll likely discover that when you curate third party content, it often
becomes one of the best stimulants for your own content creation.
Finding the most effective content mix for your audience is the key to getting the marketing results you’re
looking for.
The more you try to be everything to everyone, everywhere, the less effective you’ll be. It’s difficult
for almost any business—especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs—to be able to dedicate enough
resources to continually publish massive amounts of content in a multitude of channels. In addition, when you
go too broad, it prevents you from maximizing a smaller number of channels that are more of a direct hit in
terms of getting your audience’s attention.
Instead of trying to “do it all,” think about how you can combine different sources of content to distribute
in a few channels really well. When you pull content from different sources, you can put together a compelling
and cohesive mix that’s relevant and actionable for your audience. This will also serve to establish you as a true
thought leader in your field.

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5 Buckets That Make Up Your Content List

1 Thought Leadership. Whenever you develop content yourself (or as a company), you position
yourself as a leader and influencer in your field of expertise. Generally, this should be the largest
size bucket in your content mix, as it directly delivers the core value you’re providing in terms of
your experience, perspective and step-by-step solutions to your audience’s biggest problems. This ideally
will comprise 60%-70% of the content you put out—that’s how important it is.

Case Study: Pam’s “Four Branches” of Thought Leadership

I teach four areas in my business: content creation, product development, marketing strategy and
business growth. I have a clear framework for each of these four areas (a framework that forms
the base of my core training programs in these areas). So my “thought leadership” content are all
branches that come out of these frameworks for my core areas of focus. A helpful metaphor here is
the branches of a tree that forms the foundation of your message.

Content Product Marketing Business

Creation Development Strategy Growth

2 Outside Expertise. This is content that comes from peers, partners and colleagues in your field.
You provide this content—along with your endorsement and commentary—to your audience in the
form of interviews, joint ventures and shares. Obviously, if you’re not sharing this content in the
form of an interview or through direct links, make sure you have written permission to share the content.
You must follow copyright laws, plus it’s just common courtesy.
3 Sales-Driven Content. This is content that is directly linked to a sales pitch. Your outcome with
sales-driven content is to provide value-added marketing that influences sales. Instead of teaching a
lot of “how-to” content, your goal here is to share what is important to solving their biggest
problems and why your product or service is the best resource to do that.
How much sales driven content you create will fluctuate depending on what’s going on in your business.
You might have periods when you’re launching a new product and you’re putting out primarily sales
driven content—during these times, it might be 80% of what you’re doing. Then, when the promotion is
over, or in between promotions, you go back to this being about 10%-20% of the type of content you’re
putting out.
4 Customer-Driven Content. This content focuses on your customers—it either comes from your
existing customers or it highlights their successes. Your goal is to put the spotlight on your
graduates as thriving and valued members of your community. Not only does this take the pressure
off you to constantly be creating and delivering new content, it also feels great and is rewarding to profile
the success and wisdom of your best clients.
5 Curated Content. This is third-party content that you research, vet out and present with your own
unique framework (and appropriate permissions!). You help your audience by wading through the
vast amount of information available in your field, and sharing only what’s highly relevant in a way
they can take simple and effective action.

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A Word of Caution:
As you fill your buckets, make sure that: a) the content is vetted, accurate and from a good
source, and b) you’re appropriately using and acknowledging these sources according to
copyright law.
To help you, we’ve provided you with a checklist in the Handout or Action Book that goes with this
section that will give you some criteria of what to look for in terms of sources here, so make sure you
check that out.

Case Study: Pam’s Mix

In my own business, about 65% of what I put out is my own content. I do this on a daily basis on social
media, through my weekly blog and monthly monthly newsletter as a basis for what I call “deeper dive”
content for my audience. Also, 2-3 times per quarter I either do:
• A webcast with a colleague or peer, or
• I bring in others for my live events or web events to speak or do joint promotions where I’m
highlighting outside expertise.

9 Criteria to Keep in Mind When Filling Your Content Buckets

There are nine criteria you need to consider when you’re filling up your content buckets so that your audience
has a consistent, cohesive experience.
1 Serve your market/audience.
2 Share content with a similar tone to yours.
3 Only include content that fits within your main 3-5 overarching topics.
4 Connect to experts with a strong audience (to build your list).
5 Vet the content to be sure it solves your audience’s pain and offers actionable advice.
6 Ask your audience what topics they want to know about. Use curated content to fill holes.
7 Only use content from reputable and trustworthy sources.
8 Look for visual content (or curate content from multiple sources into a list).
9 Repurpose your own content.

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8 Ways You Can Use the Curated Content You’re Pulling Together
1 “Best of” Blog
2 Invite comments
3 Aggregate other publications’ research into an infographic
4 Ask influencers for input and compile the responses
5 Newsletters: “Here are the stories we’re reading this week...”
6 Storify: Put social media posts together around a context or theme
7 Embed content: Create content to surround or describe another piece
8 Provide commentary on other people’s ideas: “The Top 5 Things I Learned From This Event...”

Action Step
Fill out the worksheet on Creating Your Content Mix. Don’t worry about getting this
perfect—as with everything in this course, it’s about giving yourself the space to continually
evolve and grow. Keep iterating and use this as a living, breathing document that will change
and evolve as your business changes and evolves.

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