Happy Trendsday!

We’ve reached the fourth week of our series on current sales trends. This week, we’re covering a major trend that has been categorically ignored by many sales teams across various industries: content curation and content creation.

Both types of content are essential for a business to have a impactful online presence, but many businesses fail to use both in a healthy balance.

Content Curation

While everyone can understand what content creation is, it’s sometimes difficult to pin down the definition of curation.

Curation means “to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation, as music or website content.”

Why is the act of curating website content important for a business? Because if you curate the right content for your target market, they will view you as an authority on the subject, whatever that may be.

Along with authority, you establish trust with your audience, which makes them more likely to become your customer. If they can trust you to provide compelling 3rd party content, then they can trust your products.

But curation, as the definition suggests, requires time and resources that many salespeople simply can’t afford. The “pulling together” and “sifting through” alone can be an exhausting process, not to mention the time it takes to present the content on social media.

Soundboard streamlines this content curation process. We give you industry-relevant articles all in one place, generate captions and hashtags related to each article, and then give it to you to share on your preferred platform in minutes!

New features like our Google Chrome extension and Conversation Trends ensure that Soundboard content is current and applicable to your target audience.

Businesses that fail to use content curation alongside content of their own creation seem one-dimensional and too “pitchy.” People online are not typically looking for a product, they are looking for conversation and content that interests them.

If you publish on their interests, you can make the customer acquisition process more seamless and organic.

Content Creation

We’re all familiar with content creation. The question, when it comes to online business, is what kind of content should you create? The direction most sales teams take is content about their products, services, or their company in general.

We’re not going to deny the need for great content about your company’s offerings, but this genre of content is probably the most unappealing to almost any target market–at least initially.

The kind of content that attracts customers are articles and videos in their area of interest, in a field related to your company’s area of expertise. Obviously, this will take some consumer behavior research, but it’s very much worth it.

If your company can insert itself in the industry’s conversation through help articles or video tutorials in unrelated areas, it greatly increases your chance of qualified leads converting.

Refer to HubSpot’s content creation guide for a super in-depth walkthrough of what exactly goes into the process of creating online content.

Needless to say, if you’re not establishing your brand through content creation, then you are missing a growth opportunity as a salesperson.

Tempering content curation and content creation can be tricky. Through providing both, you create a community around your brand, and create better sales opportunities for the future.

That’s all for this edition of Trendsday! Join us again next week as we tackle our final sales trend of 2020.

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Interested in using Soundboard as a content curation solution for your business? If you’re seeking enterprise solutions to expand your sales opportunities, click here.

If you’re an individual in need of personal online growth, click here to start sharing relevant content backed by artificial intelligence!