Sharing Content to show Thought Leadership.

Creating, finding and sharing compelling content can prove to consumers that a company knows its territory, is a thought leader in its industry and wants to help customers keep up-to-date on important developments. Marketers are placing an ever-greater emphasis on content marketing’s ability to add value for targets and prospects.

According to February 2011 research from content curation firm HiveFire, nearly half of US marketing professionals surveyed are now curating content as part of their strategy, and another 42% are familiar with the practice but not participating. Even among that group, 85% had done at least some content curation, for example by sending an article or other content to a prospect, but were not aware of it.

The main objectives of content curation, according to the survey, were establishing thought leadership and improving brand buzz.

Earlier research conducted by Junta42 and MarketingProfs in May 2010 found that brand awareness was the top goal of content marketing for business-to-business marketers in North America, cited by 78% of respondents.

And while lead generation and search engine optimization fell toward the bottom of the list in the HiveFire results, content marketing can do much to improve results in both areas. Inbound marketing solutions firm HubSpot has reported on the effectiveness of customer acquisition via blogging as well as how content created for social media efforts can boost search rankings.

But content curation is not a low-touch activity, and according to HiveFire the greatest challenges are creating content that is original and compelling, and finding the time to do so. It was much less of a challenge to find quality content from third parties, but still, nearly half of marketers reported that was difficult as well.

The survey results also found content curation was growing in importance, with nearly seven in 10 respondents saying that finding, organizing and sharing content was more important than it was last year. The same number believe it will be still more important in 2012.

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