Curated content: 4 tips on finding what to share on social media

Curated content is one of the most efficient tools in a social media marketer’s toolkit. Rather than creating everything from scratch, you find content from external sources that is relevant and valuable to your audience, add your own perspective, and share it. The result: your feed stays active and useful without the full time investment of original content creation.

The challenge is finding good curated content consistently. Random browsing is not a system. Without a deliberate process, content discovery becomes inconsistent, time-consuming, and often leads to sharing content that is only vaguely relevant. The four tips below give you a framework for finding high-quality curated content efficiently and keeping it flowing.

Not yet convinced that curated content belongs in your social media strategy? See our five reasons why social media should not be all about you.

Determine your content ratio before you start

Before you begin curating, decide how much of your social media output will be curated versus original. Getting this right at the start prevents you from either over-curating (which makes your feed feel like an aggregator with no distinct voice) or under-curating (which creates an unsustainable content creation burden).

A widely used starting point is the 60/30/10 rule:

• 60 percent curated or educational content: Third-party articles, research, industry news, and resources from trusted external sources that serve your audience genuinely
• 30 percent original content: Blog posts, videos, graphics, case studies, and other content you have created yourself
• 10 percent promotional content: Direct promotion of your products, services, or offers

Some teams use a simpler 50/50 split, or the rule of thirds (one third original, one third curated, one third engagement and conversation). The specific ratio matters less than choosing one deliberately and sticking to it long enough to measure results. 76 percent of organizations now use generative AI to improve content ideation and production, which means the volume of content in most feeds is increasing. A thoughtful curation ratio helps you stay consistent without contributing to the noise.

Track the performance of your curated and original posts separately for the first 30 to 60 days. Engagement rates, reach, and follower responses will tell you whether to shift the ratio. Most brands find that audiences respond positively to curated content when it is clearly selected with their interests in mind rather than shared purely for volume. For guidance on how often your brand should post across platforms, see our full guide.

Define the topics you want to cover

Your curation should have an editorial focus, not just a general subject area. The more specifically you define your topics, the easier it is to evaluate whether any given piece of content belongs in your feed, and the more coherent your feed becomes for your audience.

Start by listing the topics that sit at the intersection of your brand’s expertise and your audience’s genuine interests. A fitness equipment company, for example, might define its topics as: workout programming, recovery and nutrition, performance science, and home gym setup. A legal software firm might define its topics as: legal technology, practice management, regulatory updates, and law firm business strategy.

For each topic, consider two dimensions:

• Depth vs. breadth: Do you want to go deep on a narrow topic and become the definitive source for that specific audience, or cover a broader topic area and appeal to a wider audience? Both are valid strategies. Depth builds stronger loyalty among a specific community. Breadth builds wider reach.
• Evergreen vs. timely: Some topics (foundational how-to content, research, and best practices) have long shelf lives and can be shared repeatedly with different context. Other topics (breaking news, platform updates, industry announcements) are highly timely and valuable precisely because they are current. A good topic strategy includes both.

Write your topic list down and keep it somewhere accessible. It becomes your editorial filter: when you find a potential piece of content, you check it against your list before sharing. If it does not fit a defined topic, pass on it regardless of how interesting it might be to you personally. Staying on-topic is what makes your feed valuable to your specific audience. This connects directly to knowing your target audience well enough to curate for them precisely.

Build a reliable source list

The foundation of efficient content curation is knowing where to look. Without a defined source list, you spend your discovery time searching rather than evaluating. Build your source list once, maintain it over time, and your discovery sessions become dramatically faster.

For each topic on your list, identify three to five trusted sources. What makes a source trustworthy for curation purposes:

• It publishes consistently, so checking it regularly yields new content
• Its editorial standards are clear and high (no misinformation, clickbait, or extreme sensationalism)
• Its perspective and values are broadly compatible with your brand’s, even if it covers topics objectively
• Its audience overlaps meaningfully with yours, so content it produces is likely to resonate with your followers

Source types worth including in your list:

• Industry publications and trade media: The authoritative outlets in your field. Every industry has them.
• Research institutions and data sources: Reports, studies, and original data that give your curation a factual backbone and provide genuinely shareable statistics.
• Thought leaders and practitioners: Individual experts, researchers, and practitioners whose content is consistently high quality. Follow them on LinkedIn, X, and wherever they publish.
• Complementary brands (non-competitors): Brands that serve a similar audience without competing with you directly. Their content often overlaps with your audience’s interests.
• Platform-native sources: Accounts and creators on the platforms you post on. What performs well on LinkedIn for thought leadership may differ significantly from what resonates on TikTok or Instagram. Build a source list for each platform separately, not just a master website list.
• Newsletters: Many of the most insightful industry writers now publish on Substack, LinkedIn newsletters, or direct email. Subscribing keeps high-quality content arriving in your inbox rather than requiring you to hunt for it.

Once you have your source list, organize it using an RSS reader. Feedly is the most widely used option in 2026, with an AI assistant called Leo that learns your preferences, prioritizes relevant content, and filters noise automatically. Google Alerts is a free option for monitoring keywords and topics across the web. For discovering what is actually being shared widely in your niche, BuzzSumo surfaces the highest-performing content on any topic by share count and engagement. For a comprehensive list of tools designed specifically for content curation and discovery, see our guide to 10 tools to help you discover and share more curated content.

Build a discovery routine and keep it consistent

Having a great source list does not help if you only check it occasionally. Content discovery needs to be a scheduled habit, not something you do when you suddenly realize your social media queue is empty.

Most social media managers find that one of two routines works best:

• Daily micro-sessions (10 to 15 minutes): Open your RSS reader or discovery tool at the same time each morning, scan the new items, and save or bookmark anything that merits sharing. This keeps content discovery light and integrated into your daily workflow rather than a large separate task.
• Weekly batch sessions (45 to 60 minutes): Once a week, sit down with your source list and discovery tools, evaluate the week’s content across all topics, and queue up curated posts for the coming days. Pair this with a scheduling tool so the content goes out at optimal times without requiring daily manual posting.

Whichever routine you choose, build it into your content calendar as a recurring item so it gets the same attention as content creation. Many teams treat their weekly discovery session as editorial time: reading, bookmarking, and drafting short commentary for each piece they plan to share.

One additional habit that makes a significant difference: when you find a piece of content worth sharing, write your commentary immediately rather than saving a bare link to revisit later. The context and perspective that makes a curated share valuable is freshest when you have just read the piece. A bookmarked link with no notes attached is a broken workflow.

As your curation practice matures, pay attention to which sources consistently produce content your audience engages with, and which topics outperform others. These signals should inform both how you weight your source list and how you allocate your original content creation effort. Strong curation performance on a particular topic is often a signal that original content on the same topic would be even more valuable.

And always add your own voice. The content already exists. What makes your share of it distinctly yours is the sentence or two of commentary, the question you pose to your followers, or the connection you draw to something specific about your industry or audience. That editorial layer is what separates curation from aggregation, and authority from noise. For more on building an authentic brand voice in your social media content, see our article on finding your brand’s voice.

For a broader look at building your social media content strategy, see our guides on which social media platform is right for your company, 10 tips for creating engaging content, and 26 social media metrics you should track.

When your curated content drives engagement and brings new contacts to your brand, the next step is building a lasting relationship with them. DailyStory gives you the tools to capture leads, automate personalized email and SMS follow-ups, and segment your audience based on behavior and interests.