Creating a social media presence for your center requires posting on a regular basis. This helps keep your followers informed and engaged. You would need dozens of applicable website pages, blog posts, photos and events to share if you were going to fill your entire posting schedule with original content.
Instead, turn to content curation to fill out your content calendar after you’ve scheduled everything you need to about your center.
What is Content Curation?
Hootsuite defines content curation as “the act of discovering, compiling, and sharing existing content with your online followers.”
Content Curation Strategy
Using curated content allows you to post consistently on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media accounts.
There are likely three to five topics you post about on a regular basis. These should serve as the framework of your social media content calendar. When planning your upcoming social media posts, take into account what you’ll be sharing from your own archives and website, as well as upcoming news.
Then, fill in the rest of the slots in your content calendar with content you’ve gathered from relevant sources. Follow the framework of topics you previously mapped out to ensure your posts cover all the topics you’d like your social media profiles to address.
When searching for content to share, look for posts that are relevant to your child care center’s audience of current families and new parents. Make sure you aren’t using links that will lead to your competitors’ websites. Always read all of a status or article before sharing it!
How to Curate Content for Social Media
There are many content curation tools that collect articles based on filters and topics you select. You can also find articles on your own by browsing social media, industry newsletters and Google search results.
Use a Content Curation Tool
Sign up for an account with Feedly, Storify, Scoop.it or another tool that collects social media posts and news articles based on your filters and interests. This method requires time up front to personalize your settings. Once your tool is set up to collect the content you’re interested in sharing, this is an easy way to gather news about child care and parenting.
Create Twitter Lists
Follow industry leaders, competitors and local organizations on Twitter and segment them into lists. Reshare the relevant community news and child care resources these contacts are tweeting about across your social media profiles.
Sign up for Google Alerts
If there is a specific topic or company you’d like to follow closely, sign up for regular alerts from Google. Any news article that mentions the topic you’re interested in will be delivered to your email inbox, ready for you to share.
