Communications Strategy

Excerpted from this interesting article on Outspoken Media:

"The facts are:

***Content curation is a needed skill that will only grow in importance as more big brands and publishers flood the Internet with all kinds of content.
***Curation can be a fun, rewarding and highly effective part of your online marketing mix.
***Curating content requires skill, tenacity and, above all, an unflinching focus on the needs of your audience.

The biggest temptation all search marketers face is to sell our souls to the Borg and AUTOMATE EVERYTHING.

An effective curation strategy requires a healthy variety of sources. If you expect any one tool to do all of the work for you, you’re going to miss a lot of remarkable content.

So, use a fancy tool as one of your filters, if you wish. But don’t fool yourself into believing you can just put it on autopilot and watch it magically send you everything you need to succeed.

If your goal is to curate content that provides true value for your audience, you’ve got to out-hustle all of the namby-pamby posers in your niche who claim to be curating, however half-heartedly.

Here is a collection of solid strategies and tasty tactics that will help you consistently out-curate your competitors.

1) Create Twitter lists of experts and thought leaders in your niche.

2) Save Twitter searches for relevant keywords.
3) Build customized MyAllTop pages to keep up on industry blogs.
4) Set up Google Alerts for targeted keywords.
5) Subscribe to blogs by RSS and view them in Google Reader.
6) Create topical lists on Facebook.
7) Perform keyword searches in Trackur.
8) Explore Regator’s curated blog directory.
9) Hunt down content by category on StumbleUpon.
10) Find applicable articles and experts with Topsy.
11) Join relevant LinkedIn groups.
12) Search Scribd’s documents database.
13) Dig into the bookmarked items on Delicious.
14) Keep an eye on curated niche sites that serve your audience, like Inbound.org.
15) Scour the Web with Snip.it and Scoop.it.
16) Drop your keywords into Bottlenose.
17) Scan the curated lists on List.ly.
18) Sign up for a personalized email digest from YourVersion.
19) Say hello to your little friend: Social Buzz.
20) Swing by Ice Rocket and ROCKZi once in awhile.
21) Ignore Google+ at your own risk. I dare you. #smooches.

Constantly Refine and Refocus Your Curation Strategy:

I like to cram tons of different sources into my content funnel at the beginning of each new curation project. Then, once I’m convinced I’ve cast my net wide enough, I begin the crucial process of whittling down those sources into a much more manageable list.

Be the Pickiest, Little Curator Allowed by Law:

If you’re going to out-curate your competition, every piece of content you serve to your audience has to be exactly the right piece of content.

Set high standards and strive to exceed them...."

Read full, long and interesting article here: 

http://outspokenmedia.com/online-marketing/how-to-consistently-out-curate-your-competitors/

As an avid social media user you’ve probably jumped straight into Pinterest and quickly discovered that pinning can take up an enormous amount of time. Here is a tool that will save you a lot of time, increase traffic and clicks to your pins.

Social networks go in and out of style.Pinterest is all the rage this year. While Facebook stock is at an all-time low.And there's a new "must-use" tool that pops up every other week.Fortunately, none of that really matters.