Curation-Corner

Did you read the DigiDay article, Agencies Ditch Blogs, that they published on Monday. "With the rise of social media, businesses are blogging less."

Blogging is about writing

Too many agencies and bloggers struggle with their blogs. It's both obvious and painful to watch. They wind up spending too much time writing about themselves or covering the same areas of interest that everyone else is talking about.

Why you should blog...

i) Because you have something to say.
ii) Because you are passionate about your industry.
iii) Because you are seeing things that not many people are talking about.
iv) Because it helps you to think critically about the changes that your industry faces.
v) Because you love to write.
vi) Because you have to write.
vii) Because if you had more time, you would write even more.
viii) Because you feel that others out there might connect with the content and the connect to you.
ix) Because you're not blogging for work. Your working hard to make your blog work.

Create Something So Compelling That It Makes People Stop, Think, Wonder, Share And Engage

Original Article: http://bit.ly/K63xFu 

Content marketers spend lots of time and money creating just the right content to engage their customers and prospects, but much of it goes unheeded by the most coveted of audiences — the C-suite.

This group relies even more heavily than others on the advice and perspective of their true peers and those they perceive to be authentic experts.

They know the information they need and value, and do not want to waste time with “salesy” pitches and lightweight stories.

So how does this translate into successful content for executives?

Focus on these elements to start:

#1. Hard facts drive credibility… and credibility is key

#2. Provide actionable and timely information on issues that matter

#3. Summarize, summarize, summarize

#4. Channel matters

#5. Push beyond the common wisdom and top-of-mind trends

#6. Evolve from technical to strategic

Match content and format to channel

When you publish executive-level content, take a multimedia approach.

The bottom line: Get out and listen to your executive audience members, research and understand their challenges and needs, link your story to value, and reach them where they are.

Hard to believe. But 95% of all marketers are now curating third-party content.

Content curation, the practice of finding and sharing online content, is now being used by almost all marketers, according to a survey by Curata (formerly HiveFire).

Of 400 firms surveyed, 95% had curated content in the last six months. And 100% of the non-curators had, in fact, shared articles or blog posts with prospects in the same period.

Of the active curators, 45% share content daily, 33% weekly and 21% monthly. Agencies are more active than non-agencies.

Why go to the trouble of pushing third-party content?

The main reason is thought leadership—that answer was given by 85%, compared with 79% last year. Next are branding (80%) and SEO (65%).

But it’s not easy. Companies struggle to find the time to do it and create original content. And there was an 8% increase in the percentage having trouble finding high-quality content.

The main content marketing challenges:

** Having the time to do it—75%
** Creating original content—73%
** Finding high-quality content—56%
** Allocating staff to do it—39%
** Difficulty measuring results—36%
** Understanding how it fits into overall marketing strategy—19%
** Securing senior-level buy-in—15%

As a business owner, it may be hard to delegate time for yourself or your employees to write quality content for your blog vs. work on revenue generating projects.

And when it comes to content, we’re not talking about just any content, but content that people want to read, search engines want to crawl, and social media users want to share.

Finding Guest Bloggers

One of the first things to increase the content on your blog, is including guest bloggers to help you out. Guest bloggers get a lot of benefits by writing for other sites, including yours, such as exposure to a new audience, the chance to build their authority, and the ability to build quality links back to their own blog or website.

How to Create Guest Blogging Guidelines

The easiest way to attract guest bloggers to your blog is through the creation of a guest blogging guidelines page.  

Share details by including the following:  http://bit.ly/J5KCHB

**Your impressive blog stats

**Your audience’s interests and demographics

**What topics your blog covers

**What level of content you need

**Content originality

**Post formatting details

**Post submission requirements

**Community rules

**Self-promotion rules

**Disclaimers

What to Look for in Guest Post Submissions

You will want to make sure the content meets the quality standards of your blog by reading it thoroughly and checking for a few key things:

**Is the content original?

**Who is the author?

**Where does the author link to?

Establishing an Editorial Calendar

No matter where you get your online content from, whether it is guest bloggers or freelance writers, be sure to create an editorial calendar. 

Content repurposing can be a great way to work smarter, not harder.

See the results of repackaging a blog post by Brody Dorland - http://bit.ly/IM5h2k - into an Infographic. http://bit.ly/IM4MW8 

Based on his blog post "12 Things to Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post" - http://bit.ly/JF7ktq 

When we talk about content marketing, we usually think of content created by the business itself.

But what we often overlook is customer-created content, or “social content.”

The most powerful type of influence is when a person shares emotions, actions, and feelings with another. It influences us on a deep, even subconscious, level.

By adding social content to your strategy, things change: http://bit.ly/KSqGwC 

These  four ways encourage social interaction to generate excitement and enthusiasm for your business:

*1. Ask, and you shall receive

*2. Do unto others

*3. Give thanks

*4. Do amazing things

You must find ways to impress and amaze people for the above three ways to work

Social content is a powerful tool that must be included in every content marketers toolbox.

Make sure it’s in yours.

Just as successful professionals and companies share similar traits, so do great content marketing campaigns. They all have four key elements that make up the code for building great content.

http://bit.ly/IB4020 

Ahava Leibtag - http://bit.ly/IB8MN0 - calls them "The Four I's"

1. Inform

Through daily emails, engaging eBooks, and valuable white papers, its content creators churn and burn on important digital and marketing issues of the day.

2. Instruct

Explain your product and coach / support your customer

3. Inspire

Creating an emotional connection with customers

4. Initiate

It’s important to make your customers feel part of a community.

Distribution is critical to a great content marketing campaign across the right channels ensuring that you have identified the answers to these fundamental and imperative questions:

A>Branding/messaging:

Who are you, and what do you represent and offer? What do you need to say? How can you provide value to your customers?
B>User profiles or personas:  http://bit.ly/IB8wO1 

Who are you trying to reach? What do they care about? Where and across what channels do they consume content?
C>Define the campaign:

What types of content are best for these users?

How will you distribute it so there is a cohesive user experience across all components of the campaign?

Ultimately, make sure you inform, instruct, inspire, and initiate your customers and you’ll have chain after chain of great content marketing campaigns.

B2B Content Marketing is the best way to create top-of-the-funnel excitement that translates to revenue down the road.

Businesses that succeed in developing timely, relevant, non-promotional content reach potential buyers both directly and through the most persuasive channel of all: word of mouth. Exceptional content, like remarkable products, induces conversations and incites sharing.

Tips and best practice advice to improve the return on your content marketing.

Content marketing is the art of creating, curating and distributing valuable content, combined with the science of measuring its impact on awareness, lead generation and customer acquisition.

Simply put, it’s business-relevant communications minus the selling. It’s the antidote to “interruption marketing.” Instead of pitching products or services, a content marketer equips buyers with the knowledge to make better-informed decisions.

Central to content marketing is the belief that if businesses deliver consistent, helpful information to buyers at the right time, then prospects will ultimately reward the company with their purchase and loyalty.

This Whitepaper - http://bit.ly/JnyPYd - is a bitesized look at everything you need to know to implement a content marketing strategy, showing you why businesses need it, what different types of content marketing there are, best practice tips to bear in mind and how to measure the results from your content. 

A successful writing partnership requires a deep level of intimacy. A great content writer is a valuable partner that can reap big rewards for your business.

In order to work with clients one needs: 

• To understand how they speak and think
• To challenge them on some of their ideas to build strong value arguments
• To make them work hard to find the story, because their idea may form a great starting point, but it might not be compelling enough to get their readers to act
• To get them to stand back and ask the question: Will my audience be interested in this? Does it address their pain points?
• And sometimes the need to educate them, because what they think is important might not be that interesting to their customers. It can be sensitive stuff.

The following article provides a description of four good apps for writing on the iPad. Each has different features to suit your different tastes.

If you’re a writer, the iPad has a plethora of applications available for all of your creative, scholarly and professional needs. 

Each has different features to suit your different tastes.

In addition, all of them sync to Dropbox, a free online sharing service for all kinds of documents, photos and videos:

1. A Novel Idea - http://bit.ly/JeQRN9 

Designed for both iPhone and iPad

For plotting your story and recording bursts of inspiration

2. Clean Writer - http://bit.ly/JeT3Ev 

Distraction-free editor

3. iA Writer - http://bit.ly/JeUT8q 

Designed for both iPhone and iPad

Helping writers focus without any distractions

4. Writing Kit - http://bit.ly/JeYhjB 

Built-in browser and an amazing plethora of tools

This one is well-worth the $4.99 cost

2012 Digital Content Marketing Survey

Brandpoint and the Content Marketing Institute recently queried 389 marketing decision-makers and found some interesting content marketing trends, including a shift toward outsourcing in content creation.

What’s working?

What are the most important attributes of content?

Here are some of the key takeaways from the survey: http://bit.ly/IQpPeQ 

~Marketers embrace a variety of online tools, but still perceive quality as key to the success of their online efforts.
~They prefer the written word and consider it more effective than images. Social content on such networks as Facebook and Twitter, blogging, press releases and online articles all rank ahead of video as the forms of content most frequently used by marketers.
~The majority say it’s most important that their online content is written for people, rather than search engines.
~What’s more, the majority of content marketers are willing to pay more for the added value of well-crafted, customized, professionally written copy.

The Rising Power of Visual Content

The speed of change in social media is intimidating but certain trends emerge that can help guide marketers as they continue to promote their brands and seek to optimize their social presence.

Over the past few months the importance of visual content has reached an explosive level with all platforms showing impact in different ways.

VISUAL IMPACT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

As companies continue to look to social media to help humanize their brands, there are more and more opportunities emerging with the launch of new platforms and updates to existing ones.

NOV 2011 Google+ launches brand pages

DEC 2011 Twitter releases brand pages

DEC 2011 Pinterest breaks into top social networks MAR 2012 Facebook Timeline transition for brands 2.

These Slides show examples from G+; Twitter; Facebook; with emphasis on Pinterest

Download- http://bit.ly/Jfx2no 

Sound is magnificent, universal, and takes a variety of forms in our everyday lives.

But when it comes to the social web, we tend to forget the wide spectrum of audio that exists outside of the context of music.

Sound is the only medium we can consume in parallel.

Meaning we can consume audio content while we perform other tasks. Like listen to a webinar while we respond to emails or listen to a book while we drive home.

We can simply process way more sound than video.

So how can you bring the authenticity of sound into your brand?

For any service related business, it’s as simple as a record button. 

1. Record a testimonial

2. Record the world around your brand

3. Host a podcast

Both video and audio are important forms of content. There are benefits of both.

Maybe it deserves a closer listen?

Communities like their content served up in many ways, and an Application like Soundcloud’s next version  - http://bit.ly/L0lzWW , brings the ability to share sounds of all styles throughout the social web in an instant.

Just as photos and videos are social, so is sound.

“Unmute the Web”

Original Post: http://bit.ly/L0lzWW 

Now that we’ve all agreed that “Content is King (Again),” maybe it is time to think about some easy-to-follow tenets. 

#1. Follow a 70/30 Rule – 70% of content curated, 30% branded

#2. All content should be Shareworthy

#3. All content should benefit SEO

#4. All content should be digestible

#5. Content should be channel optimized

#6. Earned Media (MSM or fan-generated) is the best media

#7. Paid Promotion

Original Article - http://bit.ly/Kjs0EX 

The Content Preferences Survey, conducted by DemandGen Report, found that 75% of respondents encourage solution providers creating content to “curb the sales messaging".

Research findings indicate a need for marketers to reevaluate their content strategies to ensure that prospects understand the value for their business and objectives, rather than resorting to obtrusive, ineffective sales-speak.

To offer recommendations to solution providers creating content, 55% of respondents selected “focus less on product specifications and more on value.” The survey also underscored the importance of “trustworthy” content. When asked how their content consumption habits have changed over the last year, 60% of respondents said they place a higher emphasis on the trustworthiness of the source creating content.

Email is a primary sharing mechanism, the survey found that more than half (53%) of executives share content using LinkedIn. Some of the other channels used for sharing include Google+, Pinterest and SlideShare, but these options yielded low, single-digit percentages.

The White Paper still reigns supreme, crowning the list of content types that buyers use to research a business topic or solution. But more visual formats, such as webinars (72%); videos (44%); and Infographics (38%) also were cited as emerging formats for research.

A majority (77%) of respondents will share basic info (name, company and email) to access a white paper, while 75% of respondents will share basic info to access an E-book. Conversely, for more visual content, or resources that are more informal and engaging, executives expect immediate access.

More than three quarters (74%) of respondents expect to access Infographics without registration, while 67% expect to access videos without registration.

The Content Preferences Survey report will guide B2B organizations looking to kick off a new content marketing strategy or improve upon an existing strategy, to support marketing campaigns and enhance demand generation initiatives.

To download a complimentary copy of the full report, click here: http://bit.ly/Jc1G1m 

There has never been a greater level of marketing clutter. Yankelovich Consumer Research charts that we've gone from being exposed to about 500 marketing messages a day back in the 1970s to as many as 5,000 a day today.

So we marketers are interrupting consumers more, but with fewer meaningful things to say. Professor Youngme Moon characterizes this dynamic in her business book, Different:

“Today we have more of everything. More brands. More products. More choices. But it all just feels like more of the same. A great big blur of similarity.

And most companies are stuck on a competitive treadmill, competing like crazy trying to keep up with each other. But this only makes them just like everyone else.”

Against this noisy backdrop, it’s important to remember that we break through the clutter by adding to it. We can’t draw attention by shouting louder.

Instead, we break through the clutter by sounding different.

Do you participate online and do you see yourself as a curator?

We have all been given the freedom and the tools to become part of the information ecosystem.

There's only one problem with all this micro-publishing. We broke the web.

Today - and almost overnight - information has exploded.

We've flooded the web with uncontextualized content. With little more than a few random tags and some meta-data, the information ecosystem is flooded with voices, sources, rumors, facts, data, digits, images, and check-ins.

Steve Rosenbaum calls it Digital Overload, and it's an information epidemic sweeping the planet.

To separate signal from noise, there's an emerging class of information superheroes called Content Curators.

"Curators are both collectors and creators. Capturing the zeitgeist of the web, and knitting together images, text, links, and video along with their own original content to create a focused, contextually relevant editorial for an overloaded world."

In a world of too much undifferentiated data, people will pay to 'tune-in' to curators who have a finely calibrated filter.

People will pay for clarity, authority, context, and speed. So, how does the changing nature of the web change the need for curation?. It turns out - it speeds it up. 

The rising tide of Digital Overload has created an over abundance of unfiltered content, and a growing need for curators to turn a noisy web into a infinite number of trusted verticals.

Digital Overload is both a problem and an opportunity. One thing is for certain,
The growth in digital content isn't going to slow down.

How we manage it - and who we trust to curate the information we need - is the next big question of the web.

Original Article: http://bbc.in/JaykkC 

Surrounded by an overwhelming amount of digital content, many people are looking for something that can fill the role of a digital newspaper -- filtering and highlighting interesting content.

The explosion of real-time information through social networks and information services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube has produced a never-ending firehose of content.

We need an easy and efficient way to filter it, and find what is interesting and relevant, and share it with others.

The field is filled with contenders who believe they can solve that problem, including News.me and Flipboard and Zite, and one of the newest is a San Francisco-based startup called Prismatic.    http://bit.ly/JwwDcD 

Like a newspaper, but in real time and social.

What Prismatic does is analyze as much as it can about you when you connect to it with your Twitter account and then start recommending things to you based on what it thinks your interests are, using semantic-filtering algorithms and so on.

Prismatic makes it a lot easier to find relevant content. 

Content marketing that delivers high-quality, relevant information yielding measurable results without promotional push should be on every marketer's 2012 priority list!

Not only because content marketing fuels social media, search, and sales but also because it's more credible than advertising.

Content marketing in the form of emails, branded websites, and editorial content was trusted by 5% or more of respondents to Nielsen's Global Trust in Advertising Survey - Q3 2011-  http://bit.ly/ILN5G7 

How do you get your content marketing on track to drive results?
Focus on the three D's of content marketing:

http://bit.ly/ILMMeC 

Development, Discovery, and Distribution

A. Development Of Your Content Marketing
1. Set marketing objectives
2. Know your audience
3. Extend branding
4. Determine content marketing needs
5. Select media formats
6. Create an editorial calendar
7. Measure content marketing result

B. Get Your Content Discovered
1. Present your content to get attention
2. Remove roadblocks that hinder your content's findability
3. Nudge readers to take action

C. Expand Your Content Distribution
1. Socialize your content
2. Optimize your content for search
3. Offer related content while consumers are in content consumption mode

At the heart of social media, search, and sales, content marketing is a powerful tool when your development, discovery, and distribution work together.

If you're a curator looking for some boundaries in what feels like the Wild West, here are five best practices to consider.

1. Be Part of the Content Ecosystem

Embrace content as both a maker and an organizer

Created, contributed, and collected — the three ‘c’s is a strong content mix that has a measurable impact.

2. Follow a Schedule

Consistency and regularity will also bring you new users, and help you grow a loyal base of members who appreciate your work.

3. Embrace Multiple Platforms

Consider posting short bursts on Tumblr, images on Pinterest, video on YouTube, and community conversations on Facebook.

Bring your content contributions to wherever your readers may be.

4. Engage and Participate

A re-tweet is one of the easiest ways to help build relationships with fellow bloggers and curators. And your followers will appreciate that you’ve pointed them to good content.

5. Share. Don’t Steal

Give attribution, link backs, and credit

We’re increasingly living in a world of information overload.

When people choose to listen to you it’s because you’re able to separate signal from noise. You provide a clear, contextually relevant voice within the topic or topics that you create and curate.

Succinctly written by Steve Rosenbaum 

http://bit.ly/J6gSvJ 

Oversharing isn't just about inappropriate dinner conversations, Social Media is plagued by oversharing of low quality content.

The Oversharing Trap

Oversharing generally starts with a reasonable purpose: share valuable content in order to serve and grow an audience. However, it can quickly spiral out of control for two reasons:

1. You begin serving other content providers instead of your audience. You may justify this because they are sharing your content and helping to grow your audience.
2. You focused on a quantity rule. By adopted a guideline for the amount of content you need to share, you shifted focus to quantity over quality and your standards fall over time.

If your goal includes engaging, serving and growing your audience and you have slipped into the trap of oversharing content, here is what you can do:

http://bit.ly/Ie1vF6 

1. Always put your audience and connections first.
2. Set a very high bar for the content you will share. Anytime you feel the bar is slipping, find new content sources or revisit old favorites to help you reset the bar.
3. Always read, watch or listen to what you share first to ensure it meets your very high standards.
4. Only reciprocate sharing when you can do so while meeting your standards.
5. Get out of your rut. Individual sources can get stale over time, always incorporate new sites into your reading.

If you're looking to make money from your blog, here are three ways to use old content to monetize your blog and create regular passive income.

From having advertisements on your blog to selling affiliate links (or your own product), it’s clear that bloggers want to be able to make money from blogging – it’s just a matter of how (and without upsetting your readers).

Three ways to monetize your blog with older content: http://bit.ly/JoP4lf 

1. Create a Premium Ebook

Look back at your content, and see if there’s an ongoing theme that can be fine-tuned and made available as a premium publication.

2. Create an Educational Video Download

Check your analytics, and see which posts had the most traction. That suggests that there’s an audience for that content, and while your written word may have been popular, a video overview will be even more so.

3. Host a Premium Webinar

If the written word becomes valuable, you can imagine how valuable a live webinar, with the ability to ask questions on the fly and see something happen in real-time, can be.

Ulimately, If You Can Create It, You Can Sell It

Quality never has a price limit on it.

Find the content you feel offers the most value and opportunity to turn into a premium offering.

The good news is, the audience is waiting – you just need to provide.

TwitChimp is a new capability designed to help make Twitter better serve several niches of the community; making it easy for experts on any topic to create curated lists of Twitter accounts to follow.

These lists are then made easy to discover, which helps those seeking producers of relevant content.

Current TwitChimp Features Include:

• An ability to easily create and curate feature-filled lists of twitter accounts on any topic you desire.
• Summation of top concepts/words and hashtags in tweets for an entire list, and a hotlinking of those words to Twitter searches.
• Generation of statistics for lists and users in lists.
• An ability to discover lists by category.
• Search tools enabling lists to be found by keywords in the list or by bios of users.
• User profile pages with stats, bios and links.
• An ability to embed lists on any site on the Internet.
• An ability to follow anyone found on any list.
• Fast tools enabling addition of tags and descriptions to your lists, and an easy, friendly means of re-ordering/prioritizing your lists.
• An ability to spread the word about any list that interests you.
• An ability to suggest new members for a list.
• Multiple fast/easy means to tweet/retweet/favorite right from TwitChimp

A list of ideas that you can use to help generate content for your organization.

Obviously, not everything will apply to everyone, but hopefully this one by Steve Momorella - http://bit.ly/I016WJ - will at least help some address their challenges.

1. Ask those who love you the most

No one has better things to say about your organization than your existing customers and brand loyalists

2.Leverage your supply chain

Gather stories from your vendors, partners, and suppliers talking about the ease-of-use or value of your products with their customers

3. Look within

All organizations have great stories to tell

4. Listen

One of the most beneficial uses of social media, is to setup listening channels, to look for questions people are asking

5. Analyze your analytics

Religiously check your Google Analytics to see what people are searching for to get to your site

6. Trend tracking

Use Google Trends and Twitter Trends to look for up-to-the-minute trends and then mold some content around that

7. Curate, aggregate, and annotate

One newer trend that is very powerful in the social media space is curation.

Aggregating a set of valuable content and then offering your own opinions, thoughts and annotations can be useful and help position you as a thought leader in a particular industry

8. Reuse, repurpose and recycle

Some of the best content for your organization might be “evergreen”, meaning that it is not necessarily time sensitive

9. Subject matter experts

The use of thought leaders both inside and outside of your organization as sources for popular content is increasing

10. Journalists on social media

It is quite easy to begin to monitor journalists using social media such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn either directly or in groups and forums and see what questions they are asking relating to your industry

11. In the news

Promote and highlight news stories about your organization.

Also known as media mentions or press clippings, these stories can be highlighted in an “In the News” section on your online newsroom

Yesterday, 250 million photos were uploaded to Facebook, 864,000 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, and 294 billion emails were sent. No wonder content curation is one of the most important jobs of our digital age.

The volume of information being created is growing faster than your software is able to sort it out. As a result, you're often unable to determine the difference between a fake LinkedIn friend request, and a picture from your best friend in college of his new baby. Even with good metadata, it's still all "data"--whether raw unfiltered, or tagged and sourced, it's all treated like another input to your digital inbox.

Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what's interesting, happening, and cool in their focus. Curators tend to have a unique and consistent point of view--providing a reliable context for the content that they discover and organize.

The growth in content, both in terms of pure volume and the speed of publishing, has raised some questions about what best practices are in the curation space.

Here's where you should start: http://bit.ly/IQdW8I