Content Curation World

When you see someone re-posting "unedited and uncommented" 20 news stories to Scoop.it, Twitter and Facebook within the arc of just 60 minutes, and you see thousands of daily visitors checking  that account, you start wondering, whether content curation is just a fad, a buzzword to sell more of the same, or whether those doing this have any idea that they are digging their own credibility grave too deep and early.

Excerpted from Business2Community: "Having a frequently updated Twitter stream filled with interesting, engaging content from obscure sources that you contextualize is content curation, right? Not so fast.

A curator isn’t just someone who can find great “stuff,” though it is an important skill.

A curator is someone who creates a specific experience using found objects and contextualizes those objects within a limited space. A curator not only collects and interprets, but houses that work to create unique experiences."

*Added to What Is Content Curation: Definition collection.

Erica Ayotte writes about the growing friction between shallow content marketing practices sold as content curation (automated republishing of content across diverse social media channels), and what it really takes to stand out and provide a useful information service.

She writes: "Digital content curation is definitely NOT automation and it’s not mindlessly reposting already popular content.

...

What digital curation does include is hand selecting great content and often commenting or otherwise providing context or a unique perspective to accompany a piece of content.

...

The Internet is a big place And those who point us in the right any direction are becoming increasingly valuable.

By making the Internet smaller, focusing our attention, providing context, and creating relevant experiences, curators actually enhance our online experiences.

Let’s hold curation up to the standard that it deserves and stop pretending that interesting tweets = content curation.

This process takes time, skill, and creativity that should be recognized.

Rightful. 8/10

Full article: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/defining-digital-content-curation-0557045

I share a lot of feelings and views with Lauren Fairbanks though I do not see things exactly the same way she does. But then again she is a content marketing specialist and I am an explorer of how curation can help us beyond business goals.

I can't but agree and applaude her when she writes: "...big issue that mass curation creates is a problem that Doug Kessler of UK content marketing firm, Velocity Partners, calls “the deluge of content marketing“.

This means that companies and individuals who create half-assed content (think: rehashing old news or someone else’s original idea just to have something to post) create a mass of garbage online that’s more difficult for potential customers and clients to sift through to find information that’s actually going to be useful for them."

Likewise when she advises to pay more attention to what is being curated: "... there aren’t any software solutions that I’ve seen that actually do a smart job of curating content.

Yeah, you can pull in a bunch of content that revolves around a certain keyword ... but curating content in a smart way that will actually help drive your business goals takes putting in actual time and effort to find really great, really useful content..."

And when she begs brands and self-proclaimed curators to stop to simply copy and paste pieces of content from other magazine articles while not adding anything of their own: "Copying and pasting from multiple articles isn’t going to help you create useful content that’s going to help build your brand or sell your services.

Neither is trying to automate the content curation process so that you take all of the work out.

You get what you put in, and if you’re not willing to invest time and money into curating the right way, you shouldn’t expect to see a positive ROI from it."

Problem is, as I see it, that they might get back for a while a lot more than what they invested for, simply because there are still to many people unable to appreciate or distinguish rehashing, copying and pasting and simple republishing from true curation. But we will get there, as the taste of true lemons, isn't the one of limes.

Rightful. Provocative. 8/10

Full article: http://stuntandgimmicks.com/blog/what-is-content-curation/

(Image credit: dog covering both ears - Shutterstock)