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Without curators, the internet is quicksand. I have huge confidence in the future of curation. That's because we have so much information coming at us in this digital era. The more “stuff” the internet and all the shiny new social media channels throw at us, the more we need brilliant curators. Without curators, we run the risk of information overload.
Sharing content with your audience is a great way to create awareness, show expertise, grow your brand, and create relationships. Any brand can use content sharing as a way to increase visibility. All it takes is putting the proper steps in place. ... You can't rest on a great product and go radio silent; you need to build a great brand. That takes differentiating yourself and establishing higher visibility. It takes content. The content you create via a strategic content strategy, but also via the third-party content and resources you routinely share. Establishing yourself as a trusted sharer of content has many positive benefits to your brand. It asserts your expertise in the niche, brands you as the go-to source of information (even when you aren't the one creating it!) and positively links you with the industry you are a part of. Any brand can use content sharing as a way to increase visibility; it just takes putting the proper steps in place. How do you become a content-sharing ninja? Here's my method....
...Shuttlerock is a white label photo and content sharing platform embedded on your website. It allows you to generate, curate and publish photos and stories. It means that your website is no longer one dimensional; it’s now multi-dimensional using customers, staff and partners and their social channels to bring your site to life. What are the key benefits? The platform was born out of the frustration of creating content and engagement at scale. Here are the key benefits that highlight how it it will assist you with the marketing of your business on a social web that craves fresh unique content. - More high quality engagement leading to more sales. This is created by the generation of ‘real’ content from ‘real’ people. This “is” content marketing. - Better interaction with customers AND their friends: a social platform on “your” website. And more control of the customer relationship, content and conversations. - Creates an on-going source of fresh content which you can share to your company’s social channels. - Higher search engine rankings. Search engines require fresh content and they rate the social conversations that Shuttlerock encourages. - Helps you build a valuable email list of your customers and their friends....
This is an informative article by Jeremy Floyd about content curation and useful for novices. Here is an excerpt from it: "In the past, we had a few channels of information and each channel had a few gatekeepers that sorted, prioritized and reported the information to the public. Today, information-consumers have an endless supply of channels. News, entertainment, gossip and professional development all drain into the same information stream that flows rich throughout the connected world. The gatekeepers have been removed and anyone is free to flow about the stream looking for relevant and useful information. Since people have “clipped” news articles, there has been content curation. Today, however, the information flow is that of a mighty raging river, and it’s easy to get lost in the current. Content curators are effective at managing a series of information pipes and sharing that with their following. 1. Collect: The content curator’s work is never done. Minutes after perusing your RSS reader 20 more articles have been posted and the cycle starts again. In the mainstream news era, the national news came on at precisely the same time every night.
2. Curate: - Consistent Subject Matter – Because the information flow is swift and always moving, content curators must be consistent with their niche and resist the temptation to follow whims. Define the topics that you are going to cover. - Direct Communication – Social media has no appreciation for nuance, so as a curator, be direct. - Filter Consistently – As news editors filtered the news that was worthy of their readership, think about what is relevant to your readership. Filter out the stories that are redundant, irrelevant or boring.
3. Communicate: - Be human - Bring your voice to your content. Be real. - Be frequent not a freak when you overpublish..."
Read full original article here: http://www.jeremyfloyd.com/2013/02/the-abcs-of-content-curation/
Via Giuseppe Mauriello, John van den Brink
... Now Readability, with has 5 million monthly active users stripping out and reading tens of millions of articles each day, is launching Top Reads, a reading aggregation service of its own based on the most read stories on Readability, to get more people to spend more time on its platform. Top Reads will launch first as a responsive web app for desktop and mobile screens, and Rich Ziade, one of Readability’s founders, says that there will be dedicated native mobile apps on the way in a matter of months if the response is good. Top Reads is not exactly new — it a feature that first appeared as a list in Readability’s mobile app last year, and has been getting strong traffic since, with about two-thirds of the site’s 5 million users using it every month. Enough attention, he said, to get Ziade and his team to explore making it into a standalone service with its own URL. “Discovery is a still big deal,” he told TechCrunch. “We’re getting swamped with stuff to read.” And while his app has developed a dedicated audience using it to read content they are finding themselves, this will help them look at what others are reading, too....
What is Swayy? It’s like Percolate and LinkedIn recommended articles, mixed with trending keywords for the topics you find interesting, combined with an analytics dashboard that shows the trends of what you do and how people react to it. I like it for the simplicity and accuracy of the content curation. Everything I’m actually interested in reading is in one place – I don’t have to skip from another major tech blog over to Harvard Business Review then hop over to another major tech or business blog. It’s all in there. And it has saved me So Much Time....
Between blog posts, social media updates, daily blog reading, and reading other people’s social stream – feeding your content marketing efforts has become overwhelming. There’s too much content to create for too many sources. There’s no way to do it all. You’re right. So why not combine some of your efforts and make your life a little easier? One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.... [Just the curation basics ~ Jeff]
Creation vs Curation, which strategy is better for inbound and content marketing? Does curated content overshadow your own unique content that you create? But you might say… “I can’t write or my content isn’t there yet…” Okay, I get it, your unique content isn’t next level stuff or your simply not creating content. There is hope. A strange thing will happen the more you curate content. You’ll start to recognize good content from bad, you’ll start to see trends in your market, and as most curators discover they get flashes of great content ideas. Curation creates a seeding ground and a feedback loop for great content ideas. If you can’t or don’t think you can write the answer is simple– write anyway, writing is something that improves the more you do it.... [Here's a fresh take on curation vs content marketing ~ Jeff]
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For many content marketers, curation is something of a silver bullet. Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz has joked that we’re in the midst of a content arms race; companies across all industries have realized the power of custom content, and are actively competing to produce better-quality materials. For many companies, it’s no longer enough to blog three times a week and release a white paper once a quarter.
The average B2B marketer is using 12 different content marketing tactics, and a curation strategy can boost the volume of information shared without dramatically increasing the workload. We’ve compiled some of the most fascinating stats and facts on the state of content curation....
Social media and content distribution are often chief tactics included in a content marketing strategy; but, it’s not possible (or recommended) to share your own content 100 percent of the time. As a result, having a content curation and/or aggregation plan might be something to consider as a part of your long-term content marketing strategy. There are many tools available to aid in finding industry-specific quality content that you can share with your audience to continually position your brand as an expert. Additionally, these content pieces can serve as inspiration for future content concepts. Below are nine tools and concepts to utilize for content curation...
It’s human, it’s simple, it’s visual and it’s curated. When it comes to social marketing, organizations are more focused on curated content rather than big data, according to Jake Sorofman, research director for analyst firm Gartner Inc. “OK, don’t forget about big data – it’s a big deal,” Sorofman wrote in a recent blog. “But, these, days content may be giving data a run for it money. For instance, Gartner’s 2013 Digital Marketing Spending Survey found that content creation and social marketing accounted for 21 per cent of digital marketing budgets and as much as 47 per cent of companies see content creation and curation as the top role of their social marketing teams. The survey queried 200 marketers from North American firms with more than $500 million in annual revenues on how they allocate their budgets and which activities are contributing to their success....
Excellent list of algorithm-based content aggregators, including hybrids with voting or editorial components. These are the best of the best tools for content marketing, curation and PR....
Are you guilty of any of the behaviors of a me-me-me brand? Learn how content curation can help companies diversify their content & better serve audience needs. ...Back in late 2011, Jay Baer conducted a study to determine how audiences in social responded to the two different content types (that is created vs. curated). What he found was staggering, and still some of the best data on the subject of content curation. Brands that posted curated content linking to 3rd party sites experienced a 33% increase in clicks vs. those with original content linking back to their own site. Your Recovery Starts Today Now is not the time for denial! To identify and cure the symptoms of a ‘Me-Me-Me’ brand and prevent a relapse, follow these 3 simple steps...
Curation has been steadily rising as a concept as the sheer volume of undifferentiated content has made it nearly impossible for mere mortals to find useful, thoughtful, contextual content on the Web. But its practice is undervalued. In just one example, a 2012 wrap-up in The Atlanticcalled “curate” one of the “words we’d just as soon never write or see or hear spoken again.” I disagree. Information overload drives content consumers to look for human filtered, journalist vetted, intellectually related material. This hunger for coherence isn’t unreasonable; it’s essential....
Via Robin Good, Giuseppe Mauriello
With the instant availability of meaningful content, videos on You Tube, millions of blog scrolls and other informational gateways, organizations are finding the need for content curators in social media. Content curation is the method of locating, organizing and sharing online content. Frankly, we need curators to go through the lofty task of wading through endless scrolls of information until they find the hidden gems. What curators do is weed out the bad and present us with the good: the information that’s interesting, intriguing, things that fit our tastes, enrich our lives and, more importantly, that helps make our online experience more enjoyable.Content curation has gone mainstream and and there are countless people relying on it to free them from the muddled online world.... [Here's a thoughtful look at content curation by Sandra Morales ~ Jeff]
...Content curation is the art and science of finding, organizing, and sharing information that adds value and encourages engagement for the audience you’re hoping to influence. It is a cyclical process: What you find and what you post influence what people search and find about you....
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Curation counts. Here's why.