Scoble calls it the new billion dollar opportunity – referring to software that allows to curation – but there is an opportunity to enhance our profile and engagement through content curation. But what exactly is it?
In the old days, we saw this: useful links. No context, no understanding, just a big old list of nasty links
Then people started blogging, bringing in their own opinion and commenting on others – a personal and in depth activity
Social media has allowed us to curate our own content but perceived by many to be a private, individual method
Now we have tools that will allow us either on a personal level or as an organisation to be our own curators of content – for our own use, or for informing our followers
Act as a broadcaster who instead of dumbly repeating information
Helps to sort signal from noise
It’s an opportunity to take all of the information we have and receive
It’s an opportunity to take all of the information we have and receive
And represent it in a way that is informative and attractive, adding value to what would otherwise be “useful links”
Consumers have been creators for longer than ever. Don’t ignore it.
And in return, by giving away your comment, opinion, analysis and content, and signposting useful resources, raise your profile
It can help to spark debate and dialogue and thereby improve engagement with your audiences and customers
And by curating content for yourself and others, and stimulating this dialogue, you start to spot emerging patterns and trends to help inform product development and future content and strategic opportunities
We are probably all used to twitter now and in a very simple format, it can be used effectively as a curation tool. Here stocktwits have put together various lists pulling together tweets from their sources – experienced investors, forex, personal finance etc.
Services like flipboard and Paper.li here create a “daily” newspaper of your twitter feed, pulling through your tweets, lists and selected hashtags. Paper.li judges what is important. But what we have here is “dumb”, blind curation with very little control over sources other than initial selection
From your internal and external feeds.
Tumblr, the microblogging platform, allows a somewhat more sophisticated approach – reblog information from different sources, as images, articles or videos. This helps to position IBM as a caring, sustainable, innovative org with their fingers firmly in the pie pulse of knowledge.
Pinterest is receiving a lot of interest at the moment – one of the fastest growing social tools, currently bringing responsible for more referrals than Google+ , youtube and linkedin combined in January and now integrated with Facebook. Create boards of information dedicated to different themes and users can follow. It can be images, as in the case of the today shows travel board
Or articles and infographics in this example from the digital thinktank L2. Pinterest currently allows RSS feeds of your boards if you would like to embed them on your own site, and an API is on the way
Delicious, the former bookmarking site has now also jumped on the curation bandwagon, allowing you to create “stacks” like pinterest’s boards. Is it likely to win the curation battle? No. Anyway that’s the what
Now how to do it right.
Pick a subject (or two) and focus on that – don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on your strengths – appearing too vague and unconnected will make users lose focus
Give some context to it – don’t just spout information/”useful links”. Give your opinion and add some value to it. Don’t be like twitter.
Don’t be boring or self obssessedhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pandre/pubs/whogivesatweet-cscw2012.pdfCarnegie Mellon University, MIT and Georgia Tech
Don’t be boring or self obssessed – this twitter study shows that questions and information sharing are most importanthttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pandre/pubs/whogivesatweet-cscw2012.pdfCarnegie Mellon University, MIT and Georgia Tech
Scrutinise your sources – make sure they are reputable! And if you share their information, credit them, and follow them to keep up to date (it’s courteous and makes you feel lovely)
Keep an eye out for mentions of yourself or your industry. Even if it is not something you would like to curate, identify the influential people and use them to your advantage
It’s not a replacement for a (content strategy) – it’s a part of it
It has to fit in with your wider strategic activities. Understand why you’re doing it – raising your profile, nurturing trust, etc – there is no one size fits all strategy