What Is Content Curation?
Content curation takes many forms. Imagine a line from “curator as filter”, so well used by my friend Brian Yanish, to the write way too much on top of a shared link (me) and you see content curation’s arc.
Brian’s SHARE is his curation. He eliminates large amounts of content to core down to the handful of things he shares. When you visit Design Revolution on Scoop.it, one of my 10 Scoop.it magazines, it won’t be hard to see how much I like to comment.
Content curation is united by the “invisible hand” of the curator (or curators).
Content curation is NOT simply pasting links into a social environment – that is spam. Content curation requires a “Editor of Chaos”-like purpose to steal my friend Jan Gordon’s tag for Curatti.com.
Filtering with a purpose for stated or unstated themes is content curation’s core. The act of curating CREATES themes. Your source content is about surfing, marketing or startups. When you filter, i.e. cut down with a purpose, the “chaos” in any topic you are creating a “curation theme”.
Here are 6 reasons content curation should be the MAJORITY of what your digital marketing team does daily:
Content Curation As Elephant #1:
Easy To Feed Any Device Without IT
Content is neutral. Its what we do to content that makes it look beautiful or lousy on our phones, tablets and laptops. Since “what we do to content” is a constant think of content curation able to form to whatever glass or pitcher you pour your content curation in.
I love the rapid proliferation of content curation tools such as (links are to my accounts):
I like being able to LEARN, CHANGE & TEST frequently with little effort and without having to ask permission.
Content Curation As Elephant #2:
What is the single most valuable tactic to encourage sharing of your content? Share OPC (Other People’s Content). When you curate with attribution, and we strongly suggest you are a stickler about attribution, you recognize and reward hard work of others.
When you share you create a “sharing environment”. I’ve yelled, ranted and jumped up and down about how unsocial many companies, brands and websites are (still). Being SOCIAL is a CSF (Critical Success Factor). Few realize the extent and presence required to be a “Social Business”. Many are going to learn the hard way.
Learn the easy way and start curating OPC (Other People’s Content) with attribution.
Content Curation As Elephant #3:
More Reach Faster
The distance between you, your content, your tribes (of supporters) and back again needs to be short and in constant motion. Listening to Maria Popova (BrainPickings) discuss how hard she works to keep her multi-themed content curation moving in all directions all the time on NPR was an inspiration.
Content curation creates short “virtual cycles” between curator, reactions and feedback. You marketing creates more reach faster with content curation than any other online marketing short of using robots (and wouldn’t suggest bots just yet).
Content Curation As Elephant #4:
Filtering = Subtle Value Add
Filtering is one of the most unobtrusive ways to “sell”. I mentioned my friend Brian Yanish who is a MASTER at keeping his content curation funnel brimming. Brian’s choices are brilliant. They save those consuming his suggestions TIME.
Want your marketing to be an online hero? Save someone’s TIME these days.
No mistake Brian’s creative use of Scoop.it earns high PageRank and praise from Google. Cool thing about content curation is you don’t have to be half as good as Brian to win.
I will do 25% of the traffic today on my Scoops as Brian, but the value of the 150 or so views my Scoop.it feeds in content maketing insight is significant, helpful and low cost.
The more you content curate the easier and more valuable content curation becomes.
Brian is scaled and so benefits from scale. I’m much smaller, but my content curation still creates great time / visits / links returns.
Content Curation As Elephant #5:
Great Way To test
I LOVE getting feedback on content FAST. Scoop.it’s analytics tell what is looked at TODAY. Design Revolution is leading today with 75 of the 120 views my Scoops have generated.
The Design Revolution “pageless” web design Scoop it winning. I’m not a huge believer in pageless web design yet, but the post made concise and persuasive arguments. As the content cooks we watch how many shares, ReTweets and comments Scooped content generates.
If content “trends” for several days we move it to the “need to write more about this” bin. Scoop.it’s content curation fast feedback loop means our content curation gets better faster.
Content Curation As Elephant #6:
Protects Valuable Digital Assets
If my PR4 Scoop.it site were to be wiped off the board tomorrow the ledger would be positive (more benefit than costs). Using Scoop.it allows us to test content BEFORE increasing our investiment.
We increase investment in content when we:
- Write a blog post about it.
- Share what we’ve written on modeled and valuable web properties.
- Add content to our “ASK” for shares and support.
Content marketing is a HIGH COST / LOW REWARD gig these days. Blame “content shock” or whatever its harder for your content to create community than it was last year. Next year promises to be harder still.
Finding ways to lower content creation costs as a % of community creation costs should be on top of everyone’s mind – saving content creation costs are on very FEW people’s minds as the mad rush to an “unsustainable” tactic (content marketing) continues.
Our advices is leave content creation to the mob. Focus on content curation instead to make more money faster, to build bigger and more engaged tribes and keep your job.
Content curation is still in the sticky evangelical stage so you might become a hero. Lowering costs while increasing profits was how P&G taught me to be a “hero”. How about you? Are you a content curator? What do you love about content curation. How is content curation helping you WIN online?
Is content curation your elephant?