When Curating Beats Creating

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Every salon website and social media channel needs to be nurtured with regular updates to keep clients hungry for more. It’s the way your business stays ahead of the pack. But creating a constant stream of brand-new, relevant and vital content is sometimes exhaustingly hard work and it can feel as if social creativity has sucked up all your time and taken over your life. Am I right?

Sometimes it’s helpful to take a break and capitalize on all the great advice out there that you already follow and interact with personally. Many forget that content curation is just as important to your stream of content as content creation. There’s a ton of stuff out there just begging to be used and ready to lighten your load.

What this means is seeking out the best, most relevant online content and recycling it – either sharing it directly with your audience in its current format (think about the last time you reposted a fashion magazine article) or mashing it up to include in your own post. For example, a ‘Friday Fav’s’ blog post on your website. That’s different to cutting and pasting other people’s stuff and claiming it as your own – which you should do, obviously. Just be aware of any restrictions on usage and always cite the source of anything you share or rework. And we mean always!

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should give up on producing your own content, but rather that you should mix and match your own content with resources to make the best use of your time and provide a balanced content stream. It not only lightens your load, but it also demonstrates you’re hooked into current information channels and adds credibility to your own content.

To borrow a phrase from the green movement: re-use, recycle and reduce the hours you spend producing bespoke content. Here are our top tips on how:

  • Always cite your sources and be aware of usage rules.
  • Make sure you use credible sources. The internet is home to a lot of dodgy, opinionated and downright false material, so any source of information should be knowledgeable, objective and consistent.
  • Use tools like Flipboard to sort through available information on each topic. Or if you love Twitter, use lists from credible sources.
  • Create a consistent way of to use what you find. For example, you could do a weekly ‘This Week in Hair’ blog, summarizing key trends or sightings.
  • Add your own thoughts or tweak articles to give depth, add credibility and impose your brand personality.

[Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons User Imbrahim.ID]

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