"This group of examples will not only inspire you to think about how you might use curation in your own marketing, but also shows just how powerful curated content can be to illustrate your expertise without the ongoing burden of creating your own content." - Rohit Bhargava
Content curation is unique among content marketing strategies because it relies on third-party off-site content. As a result, audience behavior is very different from traditional online marketing campaigns where all content is consumed within a brand’s online properties. Let’s take a look at metrics to pay attention to specifically for content curation initiatives, and just as importantly, misleading metrics that you should ignore as well. We will provide a walk through of metrics by channels for your curated content namely sites, email newsletters, social media outlets, and feeds.
Craig Badings of Thought Leadership Strategy provides a framework on identifying a unique topic and position of interest to your prospects. While he talks about this in the context of developing a thought leadership strategy, it is also a prerequisite process to any content curation initiative:
... identify whether anyone else already occupies this space. If so you may be two steps behind already. Thought leaders are always two steps ahead. Then research your market to gain an in depth understanding of their issues and possible solutions.
Harvard Business Review recognizes that content will be one of the 6 biggest social and digital trends for 2013:
Content may become your company's most valuable asset in 2013.... Organizations must create compelling content to exploit this.
In addition, HBR is saying that another trends is that there will be too much data and not enough insight:
There aren't enough qualified human beings (analysts, sociologists, strategists, etc) to mine all this data. But this won't last for long. 2013 may be the year we focus less on data and start thinking about how to understand, interpret and make good use of it.
Put the two together, and what you get is curation: creating content for brands, while helping to draw insight from the overload of content.
Curata's Pawan Deshpande guest blogs for the Content Marketing Institute, suggesting 14 places where curated content can be sourced, and highlights the importance of where to source your content:
After you pick a topic to produce content around, one of the most common questions about getting started with content curation is where do you get your content? After all, your curation efforts can only be as good as the source of your content.
A proposed copyright law could restrict Google from display snippets from newspapers in Germany has led to a public and high stakes, high profile clash. While many newspapers want to clamp down on Google displaying portions of their content, Google, many legal experts and technology advocates are very concerned about these proposed measures:
A letter to Bundestag members signed jointly by 16 copyright law professors, the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, and Grur, an association representing 5,300 German copyright lawyers, warned that the law could cost Germany jobs. “There is a danger that this law will have unforeseen negative consequences,” the letter read.
A deep insightful interview with Maria Popova, the architect behind Brain Pickings. Maria talks about her daily life as well as how she finds content, consumes it, generates new thoughts and ideas. As a professional curator, she cites discipline and regularity as an important factor:
Because the volume of what I need to get done in a day is so enormous, I’m super disciplined and there’s a routine to my day that helps center and move me along.
Even if you are curating only as a small part of your daily job, it's worth a read to get in the mindset of a professional.
Upcoming Webinar: 5 Simple Steps to Becoming a Content Curation Rockstar on 12/5/2012
Edelman Digital thinks that the future of brand marketing is for them to become the media. That's not a new thought, but Edelman further details predicts that this will happen as brands curate content from various channels to form what they call the "social-creative newsroom". They don't mention the word "curation" here but that's clearly what they are hinting at:
It’s all going to come down to this: content, quality, frequency and relevancy. If companies are to become media, they must master the art and science of merging marketing with a real-time news cycle. The content a company produces must be compelling and built for an audience with an itchy “like” finger.
The results are in from Curata's 2nd Annual B2B Marketing Trends 2012 Report and content marketing is on the rise! We surveyed more than 450 marketing professionals to better understand the B2B marketing landscape. Here are 10 tweetable facts we’ve prepped to share the knowledge!
Curata held it's annual 2012 User Conference last week and was attended by one star special guest by to make the big announcement.
Timely article given Hurricane Sandy on how to curate snippets of content to create blog posts in emergency situations that take multiple perspectives into account. From Storify co-founder, Burt Herman:
The way to make sense of social media is through human curation aided by technology
On November 1, 2012 Curata will host its 4th Annual User Conference at Hotel Marlowe. The conference will bring together multiple customers, along with keynote speaker and Socialnomics author, Erik Qualman and McKittrick Associates analyst, Susan McKittrick.
A new theory that the role of the journalist and media more broadly has changed from being a reporter and finder of information, to being an amplifier of existing content -- in other words, a curator:
A reporter’s job for the longest time has been to find information and report it. This is what we have called news... So what is the role of today’s media person? In addition to reporting news, I think picking things to amplify is also important.
Forbes says that content curation is not for all brands, and recommends a few things to consider for brands that want to curate content:
So while curation is a valuable strategy for certain brands, not all brands can or should be curators. Yet every brand can and should be creators of content. More specifically, brands must think and act like publishers, creating shareable content that inspires others (preferably many others) to both create and curate. Content is the social atom, the thing around which every other thing happens. So I ask you: Would you rather curate others’ content, or have others curate your content?
When you understand how content curation works, you begin to see it's much like museum curation. Curators care for and increase the size of the museum's permanent collection. Here are five reasons content curation needs a human touch as much as your neighborhood museum does:
CMSWire cites Curata's market reports on content curation. They conclude that regardless of whether you call it curation or aggregation, it has a strong role to play for marketers:
Overall, if companies are sharing content with the intent of promoting their thought leadership, who are we to complain about what they're calling it? But it stands to reason that, with a little more awareness about what content curation is, those who do it could have access to better tools and best practices — which would help them become more efficient.
Help us find out the habits of marketing thought leaders by sharing your insights in the 2nd Annual 2012 B2B Marketing Trends Survey. The survey should take you approximatly 5-7 minutes to complete.
Blog post by Joshua Merritt where he lays out a few best practices for content curation. He says that content curation should not be easy, otherwise you are not adding a lot of value:
You don’t go to a museum to look at crap (unless it’s a crap museum)
As content curation gets more and more popular, many people take the easy way out of just syndicating content through tools like paper.li that simply pipe in and pipe out content without letting the curator be a curator be selective, add their own perspective, and ultimately add value.
During our webinar last week, we conducted two polls to engage the audience and get their perspective on how they use content to engage leads and how curation fits into marketers marketing strategies.
Guest Post by Maribeth Ross, VP Marketing, NetProspex.
Maribeth provides her perspective on how a content marketers role is to help customers how their product fits into a customers world and 3 tips for content markers on how to think like a buyer.
Thoughtful article on 5 best practices about content curation including: (1) Identifying a topic, (2) curating from a variety of sources, (3) linking to the original sources, (4) quoting and citing from the source and (5) sharing infographics wisely. Also gives examples for each for small businesses interested in curation such as:
...a local bakery could curate content from a variety of related sources on a range of topics that their audience might find meaningful, such as party ideas, wedding planning tips, baking best practices, serving ideas, and local events.
Pinterest is one of the latest social media platforms to hit the Internet. It was created by three people; Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, and Ben Silbermann and officially launched at the beginning of 2010. According to its site, Pinterest.com, it is a ‘virtual pinboard’
I'm happy to annouce that registration is open for our upcoming webinar Content Marketing: From Creation to Curation with Pawan Deshpande, CEO at Curata, Inc. and Joe Chernov, VP of Content at Eloqua.