By: ScottCox Wednesday December 20, 2017 comments Tags: Florida Marketing Strategy, Florida Social Media Marketing, Lakeland Florida Marketing Company, Lakeland Florida Marketing

Hello fellow Lakeland business owners! A few weeks ago, we shared a blog about the basics of scheduling for social media. The principles there are great for creating consistency in your social media presence, and in this post, we have a follow up with 5 basics of creative content curation. Who's ready for some hacks?!

• Take pictures in bulk but edit individually.
  We've touched on this in our posts titled The Basics: Scheduling and Keys to Social Media Success: Creativity, but you'll want to take a lot of pictures when you're doing a photoshoot of your products or services and upload them to Google drive. Then when you're looking for pictures to go with posts, edit them as needed for that post. Since editing takes a while if done in bulk, individually editing will keep your flow smooth and will save you time in the long run.

• Look for stock photos on Pixabay.com.
  This gem of a resource will make your curation efforts so much easier. Visit Pixabay.com for free pictures to overlay with text, for high quality photos to accompany posts, or for digitally enhanced pics for that creative idea. Did we mention the pictures are free? Pixabay is your photo curation dreams come true.

• Find specific, available photos on Google
  Can't find that perfect picture, but don't want to plagiarize? Google has made a way for you to filter searches according to their license - which means you can get pictures that are available for commercial use. Click the "Advanced search" option → "free to use or share, even commercially." The search will then show only content you won't get in trouble for using as your own.

• Check hashtag relevance on Hashtagify.me.
  Hashtags are an important part of content, and there's a free tool to help with your hashtag curation. Hashtagify.me allows you to search hashtags to find their overall relevance and current usage in percentages. The site also shows related hashtags so you can get ideas for other popular hashtags to get a wider reach. So, search away!

• Learn from industry leaders and influencers
  Probably the best practice in content curation is following leaders and influencers in your industry, in social media, and in your market's community. Pay attention to what they're saying about their areas of specialty, as well as how they're saying it. Learn from the types of pictures they share, the hashtags they use, and the content they use over an over. Then use the same tricks in your content!

We hope these 5 curation tips help you and your social media presence! If you want more info like this post, check out our series of posts titled the Keys to Social Media Success.