For busy practices, the need to churn out new content can sometimes outweigh the time available to allot for it. One of the simplest solutions is to get good at content curation. It’s simple, but it isn’t easy. Choosing the right content to spotlight can be a challenge, as can matching content to your target audience. Those who get it right, however, have the potential to win over large audiences and develop big voices in their respective niches. Just ask HuffPost or Buzzfeed.
This is why I harp a lot of concepts like ideal avatars and split testing. Knowing first who your target audience is and then learning how the people in it engage with (or fail to engage with) your content is critical. Since these concepts have come up repeatedly before, I’ll simply state that this blog is loaded with content on how to generate and maintain engagement.
For now, let’s look at some of the things professional medical marketers and medical blog writers do to ensure authenticity, readability, and relevance when curating content. How many of these things are you doing already? Which ones are you neglecting?
Use Original Sources Whenever Possible
Information is only as good as its source. Even if you are 100 percent certain that the information in the curated content is correct, check the source. Sources have ways of reinforcing and deconstructing your credibility. If the same information can be found in a medical journal, don’t use Blog X as your source.
Please also be careful with wiki sites and other sources that allow users to update, change, and edit entries. Make sure any links you use are live and go directly to the cited content. Academic and industry sources usually don’t have these problems, but consumer sites that exist for profit often do. Think about what your adoption of good content looks like. If you aren’t familiar with a source but can’t find any sites with better name recognition, at least vet the site for its credibility and mention your efforts to verify content you curate.
Find Plenty of Corroborating Information
One source is never enough. You will likely settle on one source for your piece and build your own content around it, but the information you are sharing and endorsing needs to be verifiably accurate and timely.
Now, I know, once you’ve decided on a topic you’ve probably already done all the preliminaries. This is probably a current issue, there are probably plenty of sources. You would be surprised how often even big-name blogs drop the ball in vetting curated content.
Properly Cite All Sources
So, you’ve found some good source material. Now, it’s time to fit it all together. Decide which piece will be used as the basis for the article first. Then, as you develop your supporting copy, pull corroborating data from all the other sources to reinforce your message. There are content curation aggregates out there that can help with this but the better ones are paid.
Whenever you convey information from one of those sources, be certain to specifically cite the source, link to it, or both. Both is definitely better. Your content should also be mostly your own. Try not to overstuff with quotes outside the source article as this will negatively impact SEO. If you can’t find enough to say, write about something else or reach out to a reputable medical copywriting agency like BeezContent for help.
Use Both Current and Evergreen Content
There are plenty of evergreen themes that you can, and should, include in your blog. I always recommend having some good anchor content that uses basic industry keywords that don’t fluctuate significantly over time. This helps keep your SEO on an even keel and provides the balance needed between evergreen and current content.
For content based on current issues and trends, you might want to consider archiving or cycling out content that is no longer relevant. Keyword-rich archived content can still aid in better SEO, so unless the information is more momentary, it’s usually better to archive than to remove.
Content Curation Tips
I want to end off by sharing a few more relevant tips that I think will improve and augment the experience of consuming the curated content you produce. Hopefully, this gets both the creative and strategic cogs turning …
1. Provide an objective, professional opinion on your subject. Let your audience know what your take is on the information in the article. Don’t be too professional or academic. Content curation has a specifically human side.
2. A mix of curated and original content is always best. We can help with both. Contact us!
3. Answer common questions before they’re asked. Readers who walk away from your content with few or no questions will unquestionably trust you more than they will if your content seems less tied-together.
4. Be careful when selecting source material. It might seem like I’m repeating myself (because I am), but the fact remains that this is the most important part of all of this. Your credibility is only as good as your sources.
Above all, know the limitations that exist within your organization when it comes to content creation. Churning out content is easy. Churning out good content that represents you well takes effort. Don’t have the time or expertise to do it right? That’s where we come in. At Beez, we work with writers with experience writing a broad variety of content on medical topics. Talk with us today about your next blog project.
