Social media never stops. Today’s customer has a voracious hunger for content, and will scroll happily for hours, looking at product images, reading posts, watching videos, and sharing the best of what they find with their friends.

Top brands feed this hunger by posting frequently – multiple times a day to Facebook and Instagram; Twitter needs even more, with a dozen plus daily posts being the norm. For the small business owner, these numbers are absolutely overwhelming. The idea of coming up with ideas, creating posts, and getting them deployed properly over a number of platforms is daunting.

One way to reduce the workload is to share curated content. Curated content is material that is created by someone else (preferably not a competitor!) that is likely to be relevant to your customer. This can take many forms – articles, videos, graphics – and all you have to do is share it with your audience. No time-consuming creation required.

There’s a benefit to sharing other people’s content with your customers. While we’re all becoming accustomed to the idea that social media is inarguably a commercial space now, people really don’t want to be barraged with promotional messaging all the time. When you step back and focus on providing your customer with entertaining or informative material, it’s a lot like selecting merchandise you know they’ll enjoy buying: a form of customer service that’s rooted in knowing what your buyer likes and appreciates.

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That being said, you can’t exist entirely on curated content. There has to be a balance that includes your own custom content, so that your social media marketing helps reinforce your identity and value in the customer’s mind. To keep things simple, follow the rule of thirds: One third of your content should be your own creation, one third can be curated content, and the final third comes from interacting with your fans and followers. If that final third is weak or non-existent right now, don’t worry: this can grow over time with the right engagement strategy!