Content Curation World

"If you can be a guide, a clearinghouse, a trusted place from where to learn, appreciate and understand more, there is no amount of outbound links that is going to counter the magnetic force you will express to those who are interested in what you are pointing to."

This is why the fear every company has about content curation -  talking about *others* in the same field - has not only no reason to exist, but it is also downright counterproductive as soon as others start using it.

Content curation is a venue to make sense of existing information to facilitate access, discovery, comparison, understanding, both on the side of who curates as well as on the one of those who benefit from it.

Part of my inspiration in becoming so passionate and interested in content curation, has been ignited by a post that appeared in 2004, on Robert Scoble's popular tech blog. 

In it, I read: "It's the new marketing... Instead of being desperate and saying "look at me look at me" you tell your readers to get lost.

Go someplace else.

What's the philosophy?

Those sites will take you to the coolest stuff on the Internet. And by doing that, Engadget and Gizmodo have BECOME the coolest places on the Internet. Just like Craig's List, Google, eBay."

Read more:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/11/03/want_some_attention_tell_your.htm 

Robert Scoble original post: http://radio-weblogs.com/0001011/2004/10/31.html#a8544 

See also this slide deck I did in 2007: http://www.slideshare.net/RobinGood/be-your-own-boss 
(check slides 21-22) 

Image credit: Showing direction by Shutterstock

Guillaume De Cugis, co-founder of Scoop.it, hits the nail right on the head for content marketers with a good article on the Business2Community.com site, where he highlights the declining benefits of social media marketing efforts on Facebook and correctly identifies:

a) quality and
b) engagement

as key content variables that do make a difference in remaining visible online.

He writes: "...if you’re just tweeting links, you’re missing out.

Why?

Because:

• Your content is short-lived (the lifetime of a tweet is in minutes; a few hours at best).
• You have no or limited opportunity to provide context.
• You drive your audience away from you; not to your own site.
• No opportunity to convert.
• No opportunity to show related content.
• No traffic from search.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/social-media/death-social-media-publishing-know-0920508 

See the slide deck: http://www.slideshare.net/Scoopit/content-is-king-easy-simple-ways-to-curate-relevant-content 

Tom Webster illustrates clearly why content curation is not a backup solution for those looking for a content marketing strategy that saves them time and resources.

Content curation, according to Tom Webster, "is even harder--and rarer--than quality creative output".

and

"...the ability to create value through curation is uncommon."

And the solution, notwithstanding what conferences and events may appear to suggest, is not simply in having new fancy tools. The real difference is in how me and you curate the content we select.

"And the learned skill (through pattern recognition) that both the content curator and the content docent must share is the ability to discriminate."

Humans can "discriminate" in much more subtle ways than computers can, and this ability, if refined, is going to become a very valuable asset in the near future. 

This is why content curators as well as content "guides" (from museum docents) will play an increasingly important role to their audiences, especially when compared to those who are just passing on "interesting links".

He further writes: "It will be increasingly difficult, in this age of declining content arbitrage, to build an audience through curation—to get new people to gravitate to your content if you are just passing along other people's content.

But if you build an audience first—if you are known for something—then your curation has meaning."

The author also points to two excellent examples of content curation: John Gruber (Daring Fireball) and Chris Penn (christopherspenn.com).

A good reading for anyone interested in better understanding what content curation is all about.

Rightful. 8/10

Full article: http://brandsavant.com/brandsavant/curation 

(Image credit: Guy choosing a place to go by Shutterstock)

I am under the impression that content curation is being hijacked by those who are interested in making you think that, if you adopt curation most apparent traits (picking and reposting valuable content from others) you may be in for lots of benefits and a significant time-saving bonus.

Rohit Barghava is the person who gave, back in 2009, one of the earliest and most appropriate descriptions for "content curation" and who also identified five key basic approaches to curating content.

To this day, those articles remain milestone references for anyone interested in content curation.

This week, in a post published on his blog, Rohit reminds his readers that there's an easy cure for those who can't write or create great content: curation.

He writes: "Here is the best part about content curation, though. It doesn’t require you to be a writer, or a filmmaker, or an on-screen commentator. Curation is inherently behind the scenes.

What it does require, though, is expertise. It requires the ability to think and collect. They are different skills sets than creation, but in a business environment..."

In my experience the art of content curation, unless we refer to the ability to spot apparently interesting stuff and to pass it on to others by sharing it online, is a much more difficult and unfamiliar endevour and it requires many more skills than those required to write a simple blog post on a topic.

Why?

To curate content, you first need, as Rohit rightly points out, to be able to find good, relevant stuff, without having the ability to write it yourself. True. But finding and being able to "recognize" good stuff is not an innate or intuitive skill unless you have trained yourself to do it.

Very few of those who want to do content curation for "content marketing" purposes, take the time to vet, read, verify and evaluate stuff before publishing it. This approach would negate the advantage they think they have gained: saving time and producing more content with little time and effort.

The same is true for collecting and organizing. Saving and archiving stuff may be relatively easy, but labeling, categorizing and tagging in ways that make your collection valuable and intelligible for many others and for a long time to come is not.

Morale of the story:

a) Supermarket caviar costs a few bucks, but it has nothing to do, beyond appearance to the real deal. Try the real caviar and you'll know the difference.

b) Who reaches the top of a mountain after a comfortable helicopter ride, does not have the same view of the guy standing next to him, who arrived there by climbin gup 4000 feet on his own feet. Though the view is the same, they see a very different panorama.

c) Finding and collecting things without proper vetting, categorization, contextualization and explanation, has, little or nothing to do with content curation. It has to do with content marketing which has, as its key goal, the "...acquistion of customers".

Wikipedia says: "Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers."

Content Marketing Institute says: "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action."

One thing is to learn the skills of research, investigation and presentation and then get good at finding and collecting things that my customers are deeply interested in, for the purpose of saving them time while giving them valuable insight on a specific topic.

Another thing is spotting apparently relevant content found online and republishing it without taking any of the time-consuming steps that a true content curator would. An increasingly common practice, fueled by many of the content curation vendors content marketing strategies.

For those interested in quick results in terms of traffic, visibility and exposure, this does appear as a godsend.

But the end result, over time, is more noise, as reposting content with little analysis and no added insight generates lots of more shallow and often unreliable content pointers with little or no additional value.

Serious researching, analyzing, vetting and contextualizing is not easily replaced by retweeting or reposting interesting things one can find online.

While in some instances, "aggregation" can bring indeed some rapid and relevant results by simply collecting and publishing news on a specific topic, all the other forms of curation identified by the author require some dedicated analysis, research and writing abilties to fully express their potential.

In essence, I think that the idea that "if you can't write or do proper research you can always curate", is a pretentious and misleading proposition, which, over time, may ironically work against those adopting it.

Appropriate for content marketers, not for true curators 5/10

Original post: http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2013/07/content-curation-how-to-content-marketing-creator.html

(Image credit: Girl thinking by Shutterstock)

Notwithstanding the viral content-marketing tam-tam keeps selling the idea of content curation as a miracle-shortcut to work less, produce more content and get all of the benefits that an online publisher would want to have, reality has quite a different shade.

To gain reader's attention trust and interest, it is evidently not enough to pull together a few interesting titles while adding a few lines of introductory text.

Unless your readers are not very interested themselves into the topic you cover, why would they take recomendations from someone who has not even had the time to fully go through his suggested resources?

Superficially picking apparently interesting content from titles or even automatically selecting content for others to read is like recommending movies or music records based on how much you like their trailers or their cover layouts.

Can that be useful beyond attracting some initial extra visibility?

How can one become a trusted information source if one does not thoroughly look and understand at what he is about to recommend?

This is why selling or even thinking the idea of using content curation as a time and money-saver is really non-sense.

Again, for some, this type of light content curation may work in attracting some extra visibility in the short-term, but it will be deleterious in the long one, as serious readers discover gradually that content being suggested has not even been read, let alone being summarized, highlighted or contextualized.

Content curation takes serious time.

A lot more than the one needed to create normal original content.

To curate content you need to:

1. Find good content, resources and references. Even if you have good tools, the value is in searching where everyone else is not looking. That takes time.
   
   
2. Read, verify and vet each potential resource, by taking the time needed to do this thoroughly.
   
   
3. Make sense of what that resource communicates or represents / offers and be able to synthesize it for non-experts who will read about it.
   
   
4. Synthesize and highlight the value of the chosen resource within the context of your interest area.
   
   
5. Enrich the resource with relevant references, and related links for those that will want to find out more about it.
   
   
6. Credit and attribute sources and contributors.
   
   
7.  Preserve, classify and archive what you want to curate.
   
   
8. Share, distribute, promote the curated work you have produced. Creating it is not enough.

(While it is certainly possible to do a good curation job without doing exactly all of the tasks I have outlined above, I believe that it is ideal to try to do as many as these as possible, as each adds more value to the end result you will create.)

These are many more steps and activities than the ones required to create an original piece of content.

Curation is all about quality, insight and attention to details.

It is not about quantity, speed, saving time, producing more with less.

Many content curation startups, and many of the people using curation tools will probably not like what I have written in this article, but I have a hard time behaving as if I couldn't see a cardboard façade that's been sold for a real destination.

Content Curation has been hijacked and has been sold as a cheap and easy solution for content marketers plagued by the growing problem of getting greater attention from their readers and therefore of how to produce more quality content within tighter and tighter time constraints.

The façade is the promotion of the idea that by "adopting" content curation tools and "techniques" (like picking, selecting and showcasing "best of content" to others) you can actually rapidly gain the same benefits and rewards that true, highly reputable curators and experts in any field have conquered after years of hard work.

Worse yet, if you confront content marketers with the idea that what they are encouraging people to do, does in fact create more "noise" and confusion than we already have, content marketers will counter with statistical data demonstrating that this "curation strategy" does indeed pay off and also within relative short times.

What these people miss to see is that you can't really fake what makes a great curator great. You can pick and post lots of stuff, you can share and report to all the channels you want, but the ability and patience to truly vet, verify, unearth and illustrate why something is of value, is just another thing. And anyone who has eyes and time to check, can easily see that.

Once the early curation fad is gone, and once there are millions more people reposting stuff they haven't even read, those who will have patiently spent this time to truly gather, vet, collect, organize, contextualize and illustrate unique documents, information and resources, will instantly become the go-to reference points in their information niche.

Morale of the story: You can reach the top on mountain Everest step by step as much as someone else can get there by helicopter. Both of you see the same view and stand on the same ground, apparently, but what you can bring back and share with others is immensely greater than what the other guy can.

Content curation startups and content marketers promoting the use of content curation should highlight, model and exemplify what true, value-adding curation is and guide their adopters to create more value rather than more, shortly lived, noise.

Content marketing can only benefit from content curation, once it realizes that curation is not a technique that can be adopted or an add-on. Content curation requires a true interest on the part of the curator to uncover, highlight and contextualize high value resources that would otherwise go unnoticed or unappreciated. Otherwise he is wasting not only his time and ours, but also diluting, often forever, his reputation as a trustable source.

Full article: http://www.masternewmedia.org/content-curation-is-not-content-marketing/ 

Reading time: 8'

Suggested readings: Content Curation Guide

Enginuity is a socially curated search engine targeted at content marketers, bloggers and other content publishers who want to easily find already socially vetted and interesting / trendy content on a specific topic and share it to their preferred social media (Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc.) channels, publishing platforms (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc.) or social management tools (Hootsuite, Buffer, etc.).

The search results in Enginuity are pre-grouped into web, news, reviews, images, video clips and viral results and ranked by their trendiness and level of sharing on social media channels.

Enginuity also supports direct export to your selected stories to a set of dedicated RSS feeds which you can create and name freely.

My comment: Useful tool for content marketers who are not subject matter experts looking for trendy content that can be easily posted to their media properties. Easy to use. Very broad sharing and distribution options.

Free plan available. Requires registration.

Find out more: http://theenginuity.com/index.php

Plans & pricing: http://theenginuity.com/plans.html

*Added to the Content Curation Tools Supermap in the section: Search Curation