Curation at Content Marketing World 2011 - What you missed

Content Marketing World 2011 just wrapped up in Cleveland yesterday.  On day one and day two, there was not a lot of talk about content curation as a content marketing strategy, but on Thursday, it came out in full force, over and over again.  Here’s a snapshot of what was said, and what you missed if you weren’t there.

Initially, there was a lot of confusion over what Content Curation is, and what it is not.  As seen above, Arjun Basu, the Content Director of Spafax, questioned the difference between curation and editing. However, there were a number of speakers who outlined the definition of content curation - the process of continually finding, organizing, and sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific topic or issue, and how this differs from editing content.

 

Curation and editing share many attributes in that an expert is reviewing a body of content that someone else produced and producing a final result.  There are many difference though.  For starters, an editor is modify the original work of a content producer, but the role of a curator is quite different.  The curator does not modify any original work, but rather is responsible for selecting original work and annotating the work without modifying the original.

Many people often confuse content curation with piracy or regurgitation.  In my presentation Constructing a Powerful Content Curation Formula for Your Brand, I reviewed how content curation differs from aggregation, why it is not piracy, content farming, or regurgitation of content.  Content curation requires you to abide by a set of ethics where you always cite sources, link to original content, and only reproduce a small portion of the original content.  Most importantly, content curation is a very human process with a curator in the middle, not an algorithm. 

Unlike other forms of content marketing, where are marketer is tasked with producing all the content, content curation is unique in that curation relies content produced by people outside of an organization.  As a result, brands need to think beyond their own messaging and even possibly include content about their competitors if they want to become the go-to brand.  

During lunch Barbra Gago of Left Brain DGA created a larger than life video with tips on different ways to curate content from various thought leaders that was shown to all the attendees of Content Marketing World.

After lunch, Sue McKittrick, and analyst of the Patricia Seybold Group delivered a thought provoking presentation on content curation for marketers and how to evaluate if it’s right for you with three main objectives of curation: amplify, engage, and to enlighten.

As a final leave behind, I gave out printed copies of our two eBooks on content curation.  They went fast and we ran out, but you can always  which you can download at the links below for free.