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You can’t be good at everything you do.

My grandfather impressed upon the value of specialization, of becoming really good at one thing and just running with it.

But, just one big au contraire, my investment advisor brother.  You CAN be good at everything.

By finding people smarter than you, by pointing your audience, your clients to other specialists with valuable information — all this curation of great content confers special genius super powers on you as the master conductor, in charge of all the moving pieces of the information orchestra.

Enter content curation

Today’s financial professional can’t create all the information your audience needs to stay on top of markets, to research funds and stocks.

Instead, think of yourself as the firehose of information (the collective Tradestream), highliting important data, news, and analysis that you want your clients to know about.

Put another way, you have an opportunity to educate your clients according to your particular management style — if you don’t, they’ll just lap up the useless CRAP that passes as financial content nowadays.

If you don’t curate, you lose an opportunity to connect and guide your audience.

Your loss may be a competitor’s gain.

3 tools to become a curation genius

1. Determine a content curation strategy: A big mistake I see a lot of advisors make when they first start curating content is that they lack direction.  They’re curating a variety of different stories from vastly different sources and it’s just a big mess.  What’s important to your readers?  What do you want them to know? Are there general themes or clusters that resonate through your writing, lecturing or working one-on-one with your clients?  Find related stuff and push that out in a coherent fashion.  Note: be smart about curation and your frequency.  Don’t inundate your readers with a deluge of content (for example, I tweet 3-5 times a day), publish a newsletter once a week, blog 2x per week, etc.
2. Finding the content to share: I use Google Reader to subscribe (via RSS) to some of my favorite information sources.  Instead of making the rounds and mindlessly surfing the Internet, I get all the content I’ve requested in my reader.  I mark the content (star, in this case) that I want to share later with my audience. Alternatively, I also use Instapaper and Delicious to essentially bookmark articles I want to read later and share with my audience.  I imagine at some point publishing real specific content at new curation services like Scoop.it
3. Distribution of content: I use a variety of channels to push out my curated content. I use Twitter for the most frequent of my publishing — I link and provide a short comment on articles I think my audience would find interesting.  I load up this articles at the beginning of the week in Timely to have them dripped out during the week at fixed intervals.  I also use a service like Ping.fm to automagically publish some of the content I’m curating out onto Facebook.  For another of my sites, I publish an email newsletter 1x week that summarizes the best articles and info my audience demands.  See an example.

Also, if you’re looking for tools to immediately improve your lead generation, I highly recommend downloading HubSpot’s free eBook, “99 Tools to Help You Generate Leads with Social Media”.

More battle-tested tips on content curation

I’ve been curating content for years: for myself, for my portfolio managers, for my clients.  I’ve learned a lot about what — and what not — to do.

• automate: find tools that work for you that don’t require you to spend too much time on this.  There’s business to get done — don’t spend it curating.  If you’re surfing the Net anyway, make it productive by also picking out things and publishing them to your audience.  Anytime you can automate with this, do it.  For example, Twitterfeed allows you to auto publish feeds from your blog or Google Reader onto Twitter.  No extra steps.
• curate with intention: On Tradestreaming (my blog for individual investors), I’m curating content to drive people to my blog and email newsletter.  I don’t belive in publishing purely for the art of it.  I wantnew subscribers and ultimately people buying my book. So, I curate with this end in mind.  If you’re looking for new prospects, curate content those prospects are looking for.  Use enticing breadcrumbs to get them closer to your website, email list and sales pipeline.
• connect with other curators: the beauty of using social tools to curate is that not only will you begin attracting a following of prospects, but some other more strategic partners will start crossing your path.  Infrequently, go through who’s subscribing to your content (like on Twitter) and look for others with large followings.  Reach out to them directly to see how you can help them or what they’re interested in.  If you make a curation buddy, you can attract members of their audience if they point people your way.  That’s a network effect and a way to get new prospects quickly.

Curation isn’t just an exercise in quick and dirty publishing.  It’s really helpful to readers and if done right, can provide a continuous stream of new readers, prospects, and clients.

Are you curating?  How are you doing it?  What’s working for you?

Let me know in the comments.

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