This business model involves sharing content from other people or brands with your target audience. When you curate content, you choose content that is relevant to your industry. This strategy allows you to bring varying content related to your audience without spending time creating additional content.
It is an excellent way to meet your audience’s demand for a steady stream of information from your company. This is hardly a novel idea: art galleries curate works of art, fashion editors curate fashion trends, radio stations curate music, and so on.
Curating digital content has become very popular, particularly in the email marketing industry. In the context of increasing supply and stable demand for content, content curation makes absolute sense. While content curation necessitates an investment of time, energy, and money, it is nowhere near as time-consuming as content creation.
It enables brands to add value to their audiences without the need to create original content from the scratch. This is especially useful for staying in touch with your audience via email marketing, mainly because you have to always contact your email subscribers at least once a week, otherwise they will forget who you are.
As a content creator and brand, you need to develop your own voice and opinions, but no one wants to live in an echo chamber all the time.
The same is true for your target audience. Sharing opposing (but respectful) viewpoints and new ideas from other industry experts adds depth to your platform. It has the potential to spark interesting conversations and foster social connections.
How Does Content Curation as a Business Model Work?
We find it difficult to choose a solution, a product, or a tool when there are too many options available. When there are few, carefully chosen options and an expert we recognize explains their value to us, we are much more likely to choose one.
In a system with a large number of seemingly alternative options, there is always the possibility of organizing, picking, and selecting groups of items pertaining to specific needs, requirements, objectives, costs, and a variety of other variables.
Curation as a business model entails gathering, — for instance, female clothing, showcasing a selection of them, and assisting people in making the best decision. Doing this online eliminates the need for a physical store or even the purchase of clothing; all you need to understand is what good fashion is and also be able to write about them.
Note that people will be delighted to discover your guidance that they will purchase the products from you, or through an affiliate link on your website, where you earn a percentage of the printer’s cost as well as many other variables. Even a simple, intelligent aggregation of all available assets in a specific interest area yields a good enough resource that can increase capacity, reputation, and economic returns.
Those who can offer expert trusted advice in circumstances where there are many alternative options have a valued, sellable asset that can save people a lot of time while offering them an effective and immediate solution to their varying needs.
How Do Businesses With This Business Model Make Money?
The viable means of monetizing this business model is to manage and analyze information in a very particular niche for a specific audience and application, whenever possible. The more specific a collection, the more convenient it should be to monetize it, as Google, Amazon, and other large providers can barely compete with specialists in the field.
One distinguishing feature of commercially viable curated collections is that a significant proportion of the collection is frequently shared publicly and for free. Voluntarily sharing high-value curated information gives the curator/author/publisher credibility, authority, reputation, and visibility if he is not already a renowned authority in his segment.
According to experts, curators can tangibly demonstrate their expertise, competence, and experience with the subject matter at hand by publicly sharing curated info collections. They can accomplish this by not simply aggregating everything which fits their theme, but by carefully choosing only what meets their well-defined (and possibly publicly shared) selection criteria.
A paid newsletter is another way to monetize curation. Other options include blogs, eBooks, e-commerce stores, and consulting/speaking engagements.
Curators can make headway by developing a targeted online presence and then delivering curated content to that audience. It’s obvious that curating content within a specific niche can be a fantastic method for establishing an audience and adding value.
Top 20 Companies Operating This Business Model
- Really Good Emails
- Webflow Blog
- Typology
- Pocket Hits Newsletter
- New York Times Wirecutter
- Daily Skimm
- Buffer Social Media Newsletter
- Raisin Bread by MarketerHire
- McKinsey Featured Insights
- Grow And Convert Blog
- Target
- Starbucks
- Warby Parker
- Apex Legends
- Funko
- Lush Cosmetics
- Lego
- Grove Collaborative
- Asos Instagram
- Airbnb on Instagram
- Starter Story
Conclusion
Content curation allows people to find high-quality, interesting, and relevant content without having to search for it. Although there is more content than one can possibly ingest in a lifetime, it is likely safe to say that the majority of it is of questionable quality.
That’s why having someone else separate the wheat from the chaff and then present their best finds to you has real value. Considering the benefits of content curation to both brands and consumers; it is not unusual that the global content curation market is predicted to hit $2,427.60 million by the end of 2027.