This is our second blog post about the results of a large social media marketing survey we connected with hundreds social media marketers, brands and agencies. We first wrote about the time requirements of managing and scheduling posts for social media marketing and how the respondents spent their time. In this post we are going to focus on the results of the survey questions that focused on content curation within social media marketing.
With the entire survey we really wanted to understand where and how social media marketers spent their time, what their challenges were and where the needs exist. Related to content curation, we attempted to determine its perceived importance and effectiveness, as well as the challenges social media marketers face with the function.
From our first piece written about our survey results, we know that 75% of social media marketers are spending at least two or more hours per day on scheduling social media posts, which includes curated content. But we wanted to know how many believed content curation to be very time-consuming.
We asked them “How much they agree or disagree with the following statements about content curation”
1. 66% answered Agree or Strongly Agree that Content Curation is very time-consuming for social media marketers.
We know that back office, time-consuming tasks within social media marketing has a direct correlation with how much time can be spent on the things that actually get results. Time spent on things like commenting, conversations and relationship building suffer when proper time is dedicated to the time-consuming tasks like, finding, editing, hastagging, scheduling and posting relevant, valuable content in your streams that resonates with your audience.
2. To the Statement: Content Curation is most effective when it is done consistently – 95% Agreed or Strongly Agreed
Marketers clearly believe that consistency matters when it comes to content curation if you are going to be effective. However, due to the time-consuming nature of these tasks on a daily basis, marketers often have to prioritize them to the back burner in favor of engagement and relationship building efforts that can’t be ignored. At the same time, 95% of social media managers state that consistency is how to be effective with curation. A substantial quandary.
3. While the majority of 56% said “I need to spend less time curating and more time and resources on engagement“, 32% where undecided.
This statistic was very interesting to us because 66% said content curation was very time-consuming, yet only 56% said they need to spend less time. A HUGE 32% said they were undecided on whether or not they need to spend less time. We believe the reason for the undecided answer might be their less frequent use of curation as compared with the 56%. With 60.3% of respondents identifying themselves as a social media agency, consultant or a brand, more likely to post curated content more frequently on a daily basis, the disparity makes more sense.
4. Respondents were split on the statement “Finding relevant content to post is the most time-consuming“. 42% agreed, while a close 41% disagreed, leaving the remaining undecided.
We found this very interesting as well. We believe experience, type of respondent and the amount of tools employed by marketers and agencies may account for the split.
5. When asked if “Editing and scheduling curated content is the most time-consuming“, 47% of social media marketers said they agreed.
Once you find content to share, you still need to curate it by editing the text of the post, hashtag and schedule it to go out when and where you want it to publish. Nearly half of those surveyed struggle to keep up with this time-consuming process.
This was backed up by a recent study published by eMarketer which explains that “…curation is not as easy as simply finding and sharing content. Organizations need a strategy, and a calendar, and most marketers report that every stage of content curation is still a struggle for them. Even a majority have trouble just sharing the items they do find.” The research noted that upwards of 52% were struggling with effeciently sharing content they discover.
6. Moving from basic content curation questions, we asked if they “always properly hashtag curated content they schedule“. 53% said they always do and still a large 32% said they do not.
Always is a pretty definitive word, to which over half agreed with such consistency in their efforts, while one-third said they do not. This reflects the growing importance and perceived value of hashtagging posts within social media marketing.
Here is a look at all the statements and results together.
It is very clear that social media marketers are in agreement that consistent, frequent content curation is extremely important to an overall social media marketing and content marketing strategy. They also agree that when done properly it is time-consuming and better processes and tools are needed to improve this challenge.
What are the challenges you face that prevent you from being consistent and frequent with content curation?
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Interesting results, especially where almost as many disagreed as agreed, with low undecideds, or where there were high undecideds. Contextualizing is obviously a time-suck compared to curating, because curating often = Google. Contextualizing requires more thinking, customizing. Commenting, sharing, engaging etc are important and the end-goal, but if you’re not curating decent content to begin with, it becomes almost self-defeating. When you’re a one-person shop (aka freelance consultant) with limited time/budget on your hands, at least in my case, I’d err on the side of quality, relevant content, and sacrifice a little on the higher maintenance time-suck tasks. This isn’t the answer for everyone, it’s just what I lean towards at this point in time given the tools available.