The Ultimate Guide to Content Curation for Baseball and Softball Social Media Accounts | Tactics and Tools

Are you finding it difficult to create content consistently for your baseball and softball social media profiles? 

You’re not alone. 

Even content marketing experts run into writer’s block every now and then. And when inspiration fails you, content curation can save the day. 

But a creative lull isn’t the only reason coaches and entrepreneurs should consider adding content curation to their arsenal. 

Wait, we hear you asking, isn’t content curation just reposting someone else’s content on your profile? 

Not exactly, and not if you do it properly. 

In this Ultimate guide, you’ll learn how to curate social media content the right way and help grow your brand in the process. 

#What is Content Curation For Social Media?

First things first, let’s clear up any misconceptions you might have about content curation. 

Here’s what content curation is not

• Taking credit for someone else’s work
• A lazy solution for posting content

Those who’ve not used content curation properly have given the term a poor reputation. But let’s start with a definition. 

When done correctly, content curation can boost your engagement and grow your brand. 

Just like a piece of content you’d create yourself and distribute to your audience, curated content should always be valuable to your audience. 

You should also hold curated content to the same standards as content that you’ve created for yourself or your team. 

#Why Curate Baseball and Softball Content on Social Media?

By properly curating content, AKA giving credit to the original creator and presenting your take on it, you can quickly position yourself as an online authority. 

According to the 2016 CMI/MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing Benchmark study, content curation can address some major pain points that all content creators have:

• Producing engaging content: When you curate only high-quality content, your audience will engage more. And if the content was popular elsewhere within the same niche, it will be on your account as well. It’s like assembling a greatest hits album or all-star team. 
• Producing content consistently: Curation complements your original content creation efforts well, allowing you to publish more frequently.
• Lack of budget: Creating original content takes your valuable time and sometimes money – curating saves on both.
• Producing a variety of content: If you curate from multiple sources, you have a diverse set of voices and formats, which can help you reach different segments of your audience.
• Gaps in knowledge: Make up for any gaps in your knowledge or skills by collecting the insights of others in your industry. This is especially important in our sports that are often subject to positional specialization – i.e. pitchers, position players, catchers.  

In a digital age where sharing information is vital to growth, you can’t ignore the benefits of curating.

In addition to addressing these pain points above, here are six more reasons to curate content for your baseball and softball social media profiles.

#1. Gain expert status

When you share relevant, authoritative content from other sources, people will see you as an expert. 

They’ll assume that you’re in front of the latest trends and have the latest insights. Your profile becomes a resource where people can come for tips and advice from other experts. 

If that doesn’t help grow your brand, what will?

#2. Curating keeps conversations going

Creating new content all the time takes work. Instead of falling behind on your schedule and posting irregularly, use content that’s already created for you. 

You’re already keeping up on trends in your niche, reading articles, and following other content creators. So If you come across something you like, don’t just save it for later – add it to your curation strategy. 

Not only does it give exposure to the original creator, it also keeps the conversation going within our industry on that specific topic.

#3. Stay engaged

Your audience wants to know that you’re engaged. If you’re an established authority in your niche, people are coming to your profile for information. 

When you share content from other experts, people see that you’re not solely focused on your own brand or services. 

You show that you care more about your niche than you do about boosting your brand.

#4. Widen your network

When you share content from other people, they’ll be inclined to connect with you.

You can use a curated post as a reason to contact an industry leader or influencer, letting them know you shared their content. 

Other influencers might even share your original content as well. When you share information and credit its authors, you help widen your network.

#5. Grow your business

When it comes to growth, the formula is simple: the more you share, the more attention you’ll get. 

You can leverage this exposure by promoting your brand, of course. Every social media algorithm rewards consistent posting. 

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#6. Stay industry-current

Most benefits to content curation concern your audience and growing your brand. But there are personal benefits as well. 

You’ll learn more about your business by constantly finding and reading pieces of content across the web.

Consuming content to share it with others is a much more valuable exercise than consuming content exclusively for yourself. 

In sharing a post, you will not only consume it, but you’ll also transform or, at the very least, interpret it with your personal take expressed in the curated post’s captions.

And this process just happens to also be the most effective for your own learning and knowledge retention. 

As you can see, there are plenty of great reasons to curate content on your baseball or softball social profiles. 

Now, let’s go over how do you do it properly? 

#How to Curate Content for Baseball and Softball Brands

How do you know a good piece of content to curate when you see it? And how can you share it so that it provides value to your audience? 

When it comes to content curation on social media, seek out genuine, human connections with your audience and other people of influence in our games. 

Content – whether original or curated – should always aim to keep a conversation going. 

With that in mind, here are some essential questions to ask yourself when selecting posts to curate:

• Who should I share this content with? Does my audience need to solve this very problem?
• Is there enough information here to constitute analysis or further discussion?
• Is the source trustworthy?
• If I curate this content, will it strengthen my brand?
• Will my audience have a strong reaction to this content?
• Do I have a unique perspective on this topic? 

Run through this list of questions every time you want to curate a piece of content. You’ll quickly determine if the content is relevant and valuable enough to share with your hard-earned audience. 

One last tip. 

We'd venture to guess that you watched the sweet swings, defensive wizardry, or pitching deliveries of some baseball or softball players much more closely than others when you were growing up. 

And, further, that you may have tried to incorporate those observed mechanics or even small mannerisms into your game – while inevitably making them your own and sharing them within your own performances, maybe even to the observing next generation that came after you.

Well, content curation is sorta similar. 

A lot of it comes down to discovering, observing, and then choosing which brand or individual’s ideas and style you’d like to be inspired by, enter into conversation with, or give your own spin on. 

So be selective and intentional about the content you choose to digest, curate, and eventually share. 

#The Best Marketing Tools for Content Curation

If you’re just getting started on your entrepreneurial journey in baseball or softball, then you may not be ready for these curation tools just yet. 

You’ll definitely want to make sure that you have all the fundamentals of establishing your baseball or softball brand in our industry nailed before opting for the more advanced free and paid content tools we’ve listed below.

And if you want some help getting started – the right way – check out these free professional guides:

• The Ultimate Guide to Establishing Your Baseball or Softball Coaching Brand | Level-up Fast
• How to Use Instagram for Your Baseball or Softball Brand | A Practical Coach’s Ultimate Guide to Social
• Two Must-Haves for Baseball and Softball Coaches to Grow Their Social Media Accounts

But, if you’re a bit further along in your baseball or softball brand’s odyssey, then below is a list of tools for content curation used by expert marketers the world over. 

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#1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a content monitoring and notification service, offered by Google.  

First, you can choose up to 1,000 different keywords that you want to keep an eye on in our industry. 

Then, the completely free service sends emails to your inbox anytime it finds new results that match your chosen terms – such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research.

It’s a must for things like keeping up on the science of hitting, pitching, or performance training in our games – and for keeping an eye on your competitors.  

#2. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great place to start for any content marketing strategy. This easy, powerful tool lets you search for the most popular content on the web, based on either keyword or domain. 

You can find top-performing articles, videos, and posts, as well as top influencers in our games on different social platforms. 

Basically, you can find people of influence to curate content from, as well as see which topics are the most shareable in our niche.

#3. Pocket

Pocket is another great organization tool. It’s an app and a browser add-on, allowing you to save any content or web page to check out later. 

It’s completely free, you just sign up with an email account.

If you’re surfing the web and find an article you want to read later on, for example, you can save it to your Pocket account with the tap of a button.

And it works on both mobile devices and desktop.

#4. SparkToro

SparkToro helps you discover what your baseball or softball audience reads, watches, listens-to on podcasts, and follows on social media – and everywhere else on the web. 

It also helps identify other organic marketing opportunities – like partnerships and outreach, guest editorials and content contributions, authentic endorsements and organic references.

It’s the de facto audience research tool for marketers. 

#5. Feedly

Feedly is a news aggregator that puts all the content from your favorite resources online into one easy-to-digest place. 

You can keep up on content from a specific site or based on a specific keyword – like “pitching mechanics”. 

Having content from your preferred sources in one spot makes it much easier to find things to curate for your social media.

#6. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO tool and keyword explorer that expert content marketers rely on.

You can decide what your goal is – like increasing traffic, getting backlinks, or boosting social shares – and search for content that helps you achieve it. 

Of all the content indexes available on the web, Ahrefs is possibly the most robust. If you’re doing anything with content, including curating, creating, or publishing, then it’s worth checking out.

And if most of that above description sounded like we were speaking another language all the sudden, don’t fret. 

Ahrefs also has one of the premier educational YouTube channels for content marketers. After a few of their video playlists, you’ll understand the wonderful world of SEO like the best of em’. 

#Baseball and Softball Content Curation for Instagram Specifically

Up until now, everything we’ve advised and recommended is applicable to any social media platform you might be looking to grow your brand on.

If you’re curious, for us in the baseball and softball industry, the social platforms that matter most in the current year are Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

This next section will focus on arguably the most important place to be for many baseball and softball brands looking to move the needle on revenue by reaching both up-and-coming ballplayers and their parents – Instagram.

Since Instagram is a photo and video sharing platform, you’ll want to curate content that informs and entertains your audience visually, as well as retains your brand’s aesthetic. 

Following or discovering other baseball or softball people of influence and reposting their Instagram content with your unique spin is great, but how is it actually done right?

#1. Instagram's Save function

The fastest and easiest way to collect content to curate on Instagram is by using its native Save functionality. 

Tapping the bookmark icon at the bottom right of any feed post will save it in your “Saved” gallery. 

To access your account’s Saved gallery, just tap the hamburger menu icon in the upper right corner of your profile, and then tap “Saved” from the menu.

From there, you can access the saved content that you’ll now consider reposting on your account, or you can organize all of your content into named collections within this gallery for future posting.

#2. Your phone’s Camera Roll

Your phone has the ability to screenshot or screen record any image or video that you’d like to curate. 

Of course, you must always credit the creator and follow all of the other best practices we went over above. 

And, similar to organizing and labeling saved content in your Instagram “Saved” gallery, you have basically the exact same folder and labeling capabilities in your phone’s Camera Roll. 

Here’s how to manage your photos and videos on iPhone and here’s how to do it on Android.

#How to Repost Instagram Content Once It’s Been Curated

You might be thinking that all these explanations, checklists, tools, and best practices are great, but how do I actually repost images or videos on Instagram? Like step-by-step?

We won’t leave you hanging. There are essentially two worthwhile ways to do it.

#Use a reposting tool

These same steps that we’ll detail below work whether the post is in your regular current Instagram feed or if you’ve saved it in your Saved gallery already. 

And they’ll be virtually the same no matter which reposting app you decide to download onto your phone.

1. Tap the three dots “...” in the upper right of any feed post you wish to post on your account. 
2. Next, tap “Share” on the far left of the bottom menu that pops up.
3. In the new bottom menu that pops up, tap “Copy”
4. Next, download literally any of the fifty or so Instagram reposting apps that are available in the App Store or on Google Play. 
5. Once you open your new reposting app, it will either recognize the link that you’ve created when you tapped “Copy” and clearly indicate this to you, or it will ask you to paste the link.
6. Next, just follow the steps of the particular reposting app that you’ve chosen to complete your posting of the video or image to your feed.

It’s the same exact process for reposting Stories – with the three dots again in the upper right and the same options to “Share” and “Copy.”

#Use screenshots and screen recordings

Your phone has the ability to screenshot or screen record any image or video that you’d like to repost on your profile.

Of course, again, you must always credit the creator and follow all of the other best practices above. 

And, also again, similar to organizing and labeling saved content in your Instagram “Saved” gallery, you have basically the same folder and labeling capabilities in your phone’s Camera Roll. 

If you decide to curate via screenshots and screen recordings, you will need to do an extra step and first crop the image or video you want to curate. 

If it’s a video, you may even have one final, additional step, which is to trim either the beginning or end of your recording, so it only shows the post and not you getting it centered or turning your screen recorder on and off. 

Given these extra steps, it’s easy to see why so many reposting apps exist. 

If you’re unsure how to do screenshots or recordings, check out this guide for iPhone or this one for Android.  

And if you're unsure how to crop visuals and trim the length of videos on your phone, here’s a guide for iPhone and here’s one for Android.

#Wrapping Up on Social Media Content Curation

Besides being effective tactics for all the reasons we enumerated above, content curation is a major time and energy saver for busy baseball and softball coaches and entrepreneurs. 

Now that you have all the whats, whys, and hows of content curation, it’s time to add it to your content marketing mix. 

Happy social media growth, coach. 

Wanna grow your baseball or softball coaching brand?

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