Curating Content With Others

Sometimes the person responsible for curating social media and blog content will have access to experts or others who can provide useful information that they themselves lack. For instance, if you are creating content that is targeted to millennial first time homeowners, you might want to have how to guides and walkthroughs for content that crosses a variety of disciplines and professions. For example, your target demographic might be interested in everything from maintenance, insurance, style, and investments. However, this wide slice across many disciplines makes it difficult for one person to create accurate yet simplified content ready for consumption. In this scenario, you have can either attempt to create the content yourself without help (and inevitably make mistakes), or employ an expert to help you create useful content.

If you can find someone who has experience in a given area, blending their experience in the subject area with your experience creating accessible and interesting confidence is the goal. This collaboration will only be fruitful If you can properly harness their experience. I would recommend doing this in three different steps. If you have an expert, first approach them and ask them for their advice on solving a problem or troubleshooting an issue. Once they have agreed to help, ask them to explain to you as if you have no prior knowledge about the subject. Ask them to teach you, walking you through step by step and allowing you to learn the steps of solving the problem. As they do this, write down the steps. If you have questions, ask them. By the end of this, you should be able to confidently teach it to someone else.

Secondly, go and rewrite your explanation into a guide. Go step by step, and try to make it accessible. If you are struggling with a step, go back and make sure that you truly understand the problem and the steps needed to solve it. Do this until you are confident that you have created a complete and accessible guide, which is also accurate.

Finally, distribute your guide. The two people who should absolutely be consulted before publishing a final draft, are the expert you consulted, and someone unfamiliar with the problem. This way, you can get two different types of feedback. Your expert can check your guide for accuracy, ensuring that you are giving correct instructions. Your readers will certainly be frustrated if they follow your advice and it gets them in a pickle. So definitely take this time to ensure that your guide is accurate. The second person will be your test audience. How will someone will no experience respond to your guide? If the first review is the accuracy check, this is the accessibility check. The more accessible you make your guide, the greater the potential audience for your post will be. It is easy to explain something to an expert, but the mark of a true educator is someone who can explain a complex topic to an uneducated or inexperienced audience.
These three steps are crucial for utilizing experts to create content which can be useful to those with a wide variety of needs. In the digital age, this is the equivalent of the rise of large box stores. Historically, there were stores for every specialty. If you needed food you would go somewhere different than if you needed textiles, or paper, or mechanical equipment. However, some businessmen realized that they could save money if they began consolidating. Putting a variety of services under one roof allowed producers to save money on overhead for floor space, and allowed customers to get their shopping done more quickly and efficiently.

Similarly, people go to a variety of different sources for their information and services. They call an electrician when they need electrical work, a tax expert when its tax season, and a realtor when they are looking to sell their house. However, if you can do this for them, and bring together the expertise of professionals from a variety of disciplines into a single webpage, you can remove their need to spread their searches across a variety of different sites. If you can keep them on your page and enjoying your content, then you have achieved an incredibly valuable marketing victory. Becoming a trusted source for as many of their needs as you can will cement you in a position of trust and authority. This trust can then be used to engage them in your products or services.

In other words, one of the best ways to appeal to a broad audience is to create content which addresses a variety of different areas by collaborating with experts to bring in valuable knowledge to your site. You benefit from the experts knowledge by increasing the appeal of your content. Your expert benefits from the exposure you will give him once he is featured in your post.