Curation Revolution

Lee Odden CEO at Toprankblog interviewed 10 thought leaders on content marketing and curation. The article was published one year ago but is still really relevant, probably even more. I love the approach of Brian Solis who asks the good questions :

"Obviously you (as a company) have something to contribute, something to say, something of value to offer which is mostly likely why you’re in business. I need to hear about that."

Curation offers the opportunity to settle this dialogue between a brand and its users, becoming always more engaging. It's not enough to be here, you have to be here to say. As says Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at @marketingprofs, "All organizations are now publishers — meaning, the company with the most engaging and interesting content is the one who wins."

I love this article because of the points it makes about social media and your business stories.  For example: "But first, remember that the goal isn’t to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media."

And then: "We want to do business with what we know, like, and trust. Social media can be used to increase the degree to which we know, like, and trust companies."

The article then goes on to demonstrate how a delicatessen in Phoenix, AZ has used stories of its founders to create a loyal customer base.  There are 4 videos to view in the article and I'll let you determine if you think they work or not.

But what I do like is the author saying, "The More You Sell, The Less You Sell...What I love about these videos is that they don’t devolve into promotions-based drivel. There’s no coupon. There’s no “35th Anniversary Special”. There’s not even a call-to-action."

As consumers, we are all becoming jaded about marketing, branding and sales.  So keep this in mind as you create your business stories.  The points above and others in this article may be well worth following.

This a great blog post from Rian van der Merwe , describing the noise you can find on the web now, and especially content just created for SEO purposes or advertisers. As many, Rian is tired of it.

Rian speaks for many of us who are overwhelmed, overloaded with content that gives us no value at all. This is the problem

"I used to believe that if you write with passion and clarity about a topic you know well (or want to know more about), you will find and build an audience. I believed that maybe, if you’re smart about it, you could find a way for some part of that audience to pay you money to sustain whatever obsession drove you to self-publishing"'

Here's what caught my attention:

****The wells of attention are being drilled to depletion by linkbait headlines, ad-infested pages, “jumps” and random pagination, and content that is engineered to be “consumed” in 1 minute or less of quick scanning – just enough time to capture those almighty eyeballs[2]. And the reality is that “Alternative Attention sources” simply don’t exist.

The Scoopit team agrees!

My input:

****The Opportunity: This is the time for all good curators to come forward - 2012 will be the year of the content curator -

**Know your audience

**Know their pain points

**Find and select the best content, add your own opinions, information or anything that will provide more value for your audience

**Select only the best content, don't just aggregate links that add to the noise

**Become a trusted resource - many opportunities will come to you, it's your time to shine

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Media and Beyond"

Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/tF0opI]